I used to have great respect for Chomsky, but any respect I had for him died many years ago. In this case his arguments are just totally idiotic, and beside the point. Most of his article revolves around the capitalization of the word email, which is not the main point. Then he produces a quotation ("...no attempt is being made to emulate a full-scale, inter-organizational mail system") from a particular guy working on one exact mail program, and concludes that nobody in the world prior to 1978 was working on full-scale inter-organizational mail systems either. That argument is just a joke.
Chomsky says: "[These statements] suggest an effort to dismiss the fact that innovation can take place by anyone, in any place, at any time", but that is just a weak ad-hominem argument. Here Chomsky is speculating about what people who disagree with him are trying to do ("an effort to dismiss...") rather than dealing with evidence.
Chomsky just doesn't say anything relevant to the actual evidence in this case. Nor does he offer anything that approaches valid reasoning.
Then Chomsky says "the facts are indisputable", but in fact, Chomsky has not listed or touched upon any of the main facts about this issue. Before the guy invented anything, there were already widespread, inter-organizational, electronic mail systems which had address books, named recipients, mail boxes, mail programs, cc: and bcc: fields, and everything else essential. These systems were already integrated, inter-organization systems. These are the actual indisputable facts. This guy was not the inventor of email, and in fact, appears not to have invented anything significant related to it. The only invention that this guy deserves credit for is being the first person to spell email without a hyphen.
He is claiming to have invented the first "full-scale, inter-organizational electronic mail system".
He did not invent the first full-scale, inter-organizational mail system. There were already such systems in widespread use for years before this guy did anything.
Ignore the name "EMAIL" and instead call it "EMAILSYSTEM", maybe that will help you calm down and act in a reasonable manner.
Strange, because the exact spelling of the word "EMAIL" is probably the guy's only related invention. Insofar as I can tell, he was the first person to use the term "email" spelled without a hyphen ("e-mail"). I think this is his only invention. By telling us to ignore it, you are denying him even that.
Oh really? So circa 1979 on ARPANet you had a single program that contained all these features: "defined user interface, database driven, inbox, outbox, drafts, address book, carbon copies, registered mail, and the ability to forward."
Yes. Read the RFCs. There were outboxes, inboxes, address books, CC, BCC, forward, and so on. Whether it's database-driven or not is an irrelevant implementation detail (in fact it was, but this doesn't matter). It was already a finalized standard, and widely deployed before this guy did anything.
Bear in mind that RFCs finalize things that have been under discussion for years.
He is claiming to the first to integrate all the traditional components of a "full-scale, inter-organizational mail system" into a single electronic version.
No. All of these things were already integrated. The RFC from 1977 is already a fully-scale, inter-organization mail system in a single electronic version.
It's not that hard to understand, but you keep wanting to put up and attack a straw man.
wtf? The parent listed facts only (" by 1975 was transmitting mail between US government agencies and academia throughout the US, Canada and Western Europe? The RFCs are there to prove it."). That is not a straw man.
Show me another program from ~1979 with all the features available in his "EMAIL" program and I will believe you, but I have yet to find one.
Then you're not looking very hard.
Even if this guy had been the first person to conceive of some exact combination of features (cc, bcc, etc), that still wouldn't make him the inventor of email. The basic idea of asynchronous message transfer across networks with named user recipients and mailboxes and programs called "mail" etc, had been around for years already.
I had a college professor who still used an 8KB Commodore PET. He stored his typed notes on cassette. On occasion he would print out a handout using his 8-pin dot matrix printer and then mimeograph it. I have no idea how he still got printer ink for the printer.
Unfortunately the pet only had enough ram to store a few pages, so if any document was longer than that, you had to establish a new file. Many of his handouts ended abruptly after a few pages.
Someone once tried to convince him to get a new computer. He responded: "You're talking to me about a new computer as if I NEEDED it."
Perhaps you should point out which logical fallacies there are, and precisely where he has committed them. Right now, you have given us a question ("how many can you find?"). In essence you're insinuating that there are logical fallacies, without finding any or making any specific claim.
Anecdotes are "trumping" data? Which data? The original article relies upon two isolated quotations, and a link to a gov't study which does not support its claims.
Martin came to Zimmermans neighborhood looking like a gangsta and behaving like one to some extent.
Looking like a gangsta? Do you mean "black"? He was wearing a hoodie, like about 25% of young people at any given time.
Also, how was he behaving like a gangsta? He walked away rapidly from a confrontation ("I won't run but I'll walk real fast").
Zimmerman didn't pick up the gun when he saw the color of the intruders skin; he was already carrying.
Zimmerman had the gun in his car and was driving to Target. He saw Trayvon, then called the cops and said "[Trayvon] looks like he's on drugs or something" after just looking at the kid from a distance. Then he got the gun from his car, put it in his belt, and chased down the kid.
There is no way to tell if someone is on drugs by just looking at them from a distance. I have extensive experience with hard drug addicts and I could never tell if someone was on drugs before talking to them. I've known about 10+ severe addicts quite well who held down jobs and worked while doing drugs, and who managed to conceal their addiction from everyone. The only exception is if someone has done alot of meth, in which case they become twitchy, which is obvious from afar. Even in that case, however, the average meth addict is not particularly aggressive and is far less dangerous than the average drunk person.
I think Zimmerman was acting under the influence of stereotypes.
So, is that a command to "back off" and "let the real professionals handle it" by the civilian dispatcher who has no authority? No So, is it an "established fact"? No
Yes, it is an established fact. You're being way too literal and are misinterpreting the intent and meaning behind the dispatcher's sentence.
In standard English there is a kind of understatement which is very common and universally understood. For example, I encountered a friendly but unintelligent young woman earlier today and mentioned to a friend that "she's not the smartest person in the world". This did not mean that she had an IQ of 215 which would place her just shy of the smartest person. It meant she was dumb. It was a kind of understatement which is understood by everyone.
Similarly, the statement "we don't need you to do that" is a friendly way of saying "don't do it." For example, if my boss observes someone at work doing something pointless or a waste of time, he might say "we don't need you to do that" because it's more polite than outright commanding them to stop. The meaning would be understood by everyone because that kind of understatement is part of standard conversational English.
The difficulty with peak oil people is that they do not understand how the economy adjusts. Their entire theory of collapse/decline is based upon an incorrect understanding of the economy as a static entity which was built up over decades and will collapse with any changes. In fact the economy more resembles an intelligent organism which is always adapting, seeking out, making changes, evolving.
Most of peak oil doom and energy descent theory is based upon 4 simple fallacies: 1) assuming exponential growth for quantities which are not growing exponentially (like population or energy usage); 2) ignoring alternatives and substitutes; 3) assuming a non-adjusting economy, or assuming the economy will not adjust to alternatives; 4) conflating resources with reserves.
Most importantly, energy decline theorists do not understand the price mechanism. This is their main source of difficulty.
1. Liebig's Law of the Minimum. It only takes one critical resource failure to slow the entire train.
It looks like you might have been reading The Oil Drum or something similar.
The peak oil community is using an incorrect analogy when they apply Liebig's Law of the Minimum to "society". Liebig's law of the minimum refers to limitations on plant growth for lack of essential nutrients; it does not refer to "society" or "the entire train". Unlike plants, society can utilize alternatives whereas plants will die without phosphorous. We are not running out of alternatives and probably won't for billions of years.
Still using fossil fuels for the vast majority of our energy production (see No. 1).
This is because fossil fuels haven't begun to run out yet, so there has been no need yet to begin the gradual transition to alternatives.
Where's your personal nuclear power plant / fuel cell?
Why is it necessary to have a personal nuclear power plant?
Where, in fact, is your gen III nuc plant - the one with 1970's technology?
About 50 miles away from me, connected via a grid.
I wonder how many of them take apart their iPhone looking for the pixie dust.
Most of the iPhone is made out of silicon, which is the most abundant element in the Earth's crust by far and constitutes something like 60% of the volume of the Earth's crust. We will probably never use more than 0.001% of the silicon available to us, since human population is stabilizing. Also, we are not "using up" silicon at any rate whatsoever, since the silicon remains after the iPhone has been disposed of and could be re-mined later. We have enough energy and silicon available to us to cover the Earth in a miles-deep layer of iPhones. Obviously I'm not saying that's desirable or even possible, but we wouldn't "run out" of silicon or energy.
The article you linked is a misleading op-ed with no references to support its facts.
Germany and France sell electricity to each other based upon varying demand; however France has been the larger exporter of electricity over the last 10 years.
I say this not to defend plantation slavery as anything objectively good, but to note the irony that someone who defends FoxConn's treatment of workers while holding views antagonistic toward actual plantation slavery is being very hypocritical because on balance, these workers have it even worse. I'm white and if I had to choose between being a field slave in the South vs working under the conditions the FoxConn workers do with the sort of future that awaits them, hands down I'd choose to be a slave. At least then the master's tyranny would end at sun down.
You're very mistaken about the relative conditions of plantation slavery compared to developing countries' low-wage labor. Plantation slaves made no money whatsoever, and their imputed income from consumption was certainly less than 10% of the $400/mo which Foxconn workers earn. In addition, plantation slaves were frequently beaten severely for non-performance. Most of the slaves did not even survive the journey to the new world, because of harsh conditions on the slave ships. Those who did survive and had the misfortune to end up in the Carribean, usually lived about 5 additional years because of overwork.
Your notion that plantation slave owners "cared more" about their slaves is absurdly incorrect. In many places of the carribbean, the ratio of freemen to slaves was something like 1:10, which posed the constant risk of violent slave rebellion, so violent suppression was necessary and continuous. The slave owners did not "care" about their slaves as they generally worked them to death within 5 years.
As an aside, I've noticed that much criticism of the industrial revolution and of industrial development more generally, is based upon extraordinary over-estimation of the quality of life before the industrial development. There is a great deal of romanticizing (especially on the far left) of subsistence-farming life, of medieval conditions, of village agriculture, and (in this case) of plantation slavery, of all things. All of those modes of life imply an annual income of $300-$400 and severe back-breaking physical labor.
On every step of the way to industrial development, conditions for workers are better than they were previously. The Chinese people lining up for these jobs are not stupid. They are aware that the alternative is village agriculture, and that village agriculture work is harder and far worse paid.
It appears to me that the problem here (wrt to both economics and climate models) is the assumption that we cannot predict anything if we cannot predict everything. That is all wrong. Although it is impossible to model any complex system in all its attributes with precision, that doesn't imply that we can't make any precise predictions whatsoever or that we're reduced to statistical guesses as Loki_1929 claimed. Even in complicated systems, there are some inferences which are non-obvious and which offer precise, accurate predictions, even if they do not predict the entire future state of the complex system.
For example, it may be impossible to predict weather because of its chaotic features, but this does not imply that there are no precise and regular features of climate. For example, the Earth will maintain an energy balance in the long run despite irregularities caused by weather. Although we cannot predict the weather, we can make some predictions about climate with near certainty.
Similarly with economics. It cannot be predicted when a recession will occur, or what the stock market will do tomorrow. But some things can be predicted with certainty. For example, it can be predicted with absolute precision that the purchase of T-Bonds by the Chinese government will cause the trade deficit to increase also and by the same amount, provided that other international debt purchases remain constant. Also, it can be predicted with certainty that a decrease in the bank reserve ratio will cause a proportional increase in the general price level. Also, it can be predicted with certainty that an increase in labor productivity will cause wages to rise and not unemployment. These predictions are highly accurate, and are not at all obvious (in fact the last one is actively disputed by many people).
The problem with both economics and predictions of future temperatures, is that theorists will attempt to make predictions even of things which they know can't be predicted with certainty. They figure that their guess is better than nothing. Thus economists will attempt to predict recessions, and weather forecasters will attempt to predict tomorrow's temperature. When the predictions fail, people unfamiliar with those disciplines will jump to the conclusion that "well the whole thing is just fucked then; it's too complex" and that we know nothing about either economies or future temperatures. But that is all wrong. Unfortunately those same people will subsequently ignore predictions which really are quite certain. At least with weather and climate, the disciplines are separated. With economics, predictions about recessions are grouped under the same label as (for example) trade theory.
Comparing economics to a real science is almost a mortal insult due to the lack of rigor in economics.
This is totally wrong. Economics is definitely a real science and is extremely rigorous. The problem is that economists have not successfully communicated which things they really know with certainty and which they're guessing about. With climate, climatologists have not successfully communicated the difference between weather (which cannot be predicted well) and climate (which can). In both cases, they have not successfully communicated that they do know some things with great precision even about very complex systems.
And forgive me, but recycling is detrimental to the environment, are you fucking daft?
Nope, read it again. I said that recycling of paper and glass has no value. In fact it has very little value, because recycling paper and glass uses almost as much energy as manufacturing new paper and glass.
I said that biofuels, local food, and organic food are positively harmful.
Aluminum recycling matters, but it's an exception.
2) Really? There's no shortage of land? Right, let me magic up some more land out of nowhere that nobody lives near.
How about the Sahara as a landfill for Europe and Africa? Or the high desert in the American southwest? Or northern Canada? Or the desert in the middle of Australia? Or vast areas of central Asia as in Mongolia?
Bear in mind that garbage in landfills is not spread out evenly over a wide land area. Garbage is compacted and stored as a large cube.
If we took all the wastes from all people in the USA for 1,000 years, it would occupy about 1.8 cubic miles. Of course, we couldn't have a cube going up into the air for 1.8 miles, so we would likely spread it out over an area of 20 square miles or so. This would occupy about 0.0007% of the land area of the US for 1000 years' worth of garbage.
Those food scraps in the landfill become permanent volume. Ever higher mounds.
If this were true, then throwing your organic garbage into the landfill would be effective carbon sequestration and would reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.
The small amount of attrition that occurs is into methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas.
Since 1996, the EPA has required all large landfills to capture and burn landfill gas, thereby converting it into CO2, just the same as if it had been composted.
Nope, there are no benefits to anyone from composting. Whether you throw your organic garbage in the composting bin or the trash, it just ends up as CO2 in the atmosphere. It makes no difference.
Since 1996, the EPA has mandated that all large landfills have gas recovery and burning mechanisms which convert landfill methane into CO2. The result is that greenhouse emissions are CO2 in both cases, and are the same whether you compost something, or throw it in the garbage.
As a Canadian, the standard selfish American "fuck that shit" response to this kind of stuff is always humorous.
I would laugh at Canadians and Europeans (and American liberals) if it weren't so sad. Whereas typical Americans are selfish and say "fuck that shit," Europeans and American liberals actually care about the issue, but then engage in worthless symbolic gestures like mandatory composting, recycling, local food, organic food, etc, which either have no effect or make the problem worse.
It makes no difference whether you put something in the garbage or the compost bin. In both cases the organic garbage ends up as CO2 in the atmosphere. Although the garbage is converted into methane (not CO2) within the landfill, that methane is captured and burnt, and thereby converted into CO2. Since 1996, the EPA has mandated that all larger landfills must capture and burn methane (google the "Landfill Rule" and look at the EPA site). As a result, it makes no difference whether you compost or not. Nor does it save landfill space, since the organic garbage is converted to a gas which then escapes.
Composting is not the most efficient way to prevent methane emissions. It's almost certainly more cost-efficient to burn landfill gas, since that accomplishes the same thing without costly human labor spent on sorting and inspecting garbage. Even if you live in a country that does not burn landfill gas, you should support landfill gas burning rather than mandatory composting.
Composting has no value. It's like local food, organic food, recycling of paper and glass, biofuels, and so on. They make no difference to the environment, or are positively harmful to the environment (local food, organic food, biofuels). (In fact, organic food and biofuels would be catastrophic to the environment if used extensively). The purpose is to give hippies the feel-good, low-tech, back-to-the-land lifestyle which they always wanted, and to impose that lifestyle upon others. Whether it helps the environment is irrelevant and ignored.
The two most important things you can do to help the environment are: 1) live in a high-rise apartment building in the densest urban area possible, since urban dwellers emit a small fraction of the CO2 as suburban and rural dwellers; and 2) support nuclear power. Both of these are vehemently opposed by greenies who spend their time on worthless symbolic activities like composting. This shows that they either don't know what will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or they just don't care.
And did Milton consider the total economic cost of that tradeoff?... Did he add the cost of supporting and/or fending off all of those out-of-work people that would be furloughed if the shovels were replaced with tractors?... Did he multiply the cost of completing the project if the shovels were replaced with spoons?... Did he determine whether the project would even be undertaken if not for the cheap availability of generic people and shovels instead of the expensive need for skilled people and tractors?
Yes, Milton considered all of those things. Those things are all addressed by the old economics from the 18th century. Maybe there are some circumstances where those arguments fall down, but not the circumstances you listed.
satisfy his own rush to cognitive closure and limited view of the consequences as a means of satisfying his own political preconceptions
There are two San Francisco bridges - among the most used and photographed in the world -... was a WPA project - approved and built in 4 years.
I'm a big believer in increasing government spending on infrastructure, but you have to be careful about this kind of remark. The question is whether the GG bridge would have been built eventually, even without the WPA. Also, whether the GG bridge was a better investment than any alternative use of the same funds. We can't just assume that there would have been nothing (instead of the GG bridge) without the WPA, because the same funds would have been spent or invested elsewhere.
If the Keynesian argument is true and output was higher because of public spending then that's great, but in that case it was deficits which were helpful and not the GG bridge specifically.
Even if we wish to run deficits to increase the economy, we should still pick the best public projects for the least amount of labor relative to what's accomplished.
Slashdot Mirror
Chomsky relies heavily upon ad hominem arguments these days.
It appears he did coin the term "email" spelled without a hyphen. He certainly did not invent electronic mail, or any of the essential features of it.
I used to have great respect for Chomsky, but any respect I had for him died many years ago. In this case his arguments are just totally idiotic, and beside the point. Most of his article revolves around the capitalization of the word email, which is not the main point. Then he produces a quotation ("...no attempt is being made to emulate a full-scale, inter-organizational mail system") from a particular guy working on one exact mail program, and concludes that nobody in the world prior to 1978 was working on full-scale inter-organizational mail systems either. That argument is just a joke.
Chomsky says: "[These statements] suggest an effort to dismiss the fact that innovation can take place by anyone, in any place, at any time", but that is just a weak ad-hominem argument. Here Chomsky is speculating about what people who disagree with him are trying to do ("an effort to dismiss...") rather than dealing with evidence.
Chomsky just doesn't say anything relevant to the actual evidence in this case. Nor does he offer anything that approaches valid reasoning.
Then Chomsky says "the facts are indisputable", but in fact, Chomsky has not listed or touched upon any of the main facts about this issue. Before the guy invented anything, there were already widespread, inter-organizational, electronic mail systems which had address books, named recipients, mail boxes, mail programs, cc: and bcc: fields, and everything else essential. These systems were already integrated, inter-organization systems. These are the actual indisputable facts. This guy was not the inventor of email, and in fact, appears not to have invented anything significant related to it. The only invention that this guy deserves credit for is being the first person to spell email without a hyphen.
He did not invent the first full-scale, inter-organizational mail system. There were already such systems in widespread use for years before this guy did anything.
Strange, because the exact spelling of the word "EMAIL" is probably the guy's only related invention. Insofar as I can tell, he was the first person to use the term "email" spelled without a hyphen ("e-mail"). I think this is his only invention. By telling us to ignore it, you are denying him even that.
Yes. Read the RFCs. There were outboxes, inboxes, address books, CC, BCC, forward, and so on. Whether it's database-driven or not is an irrelevant implementation detail (in fact it was, but this doesn't matter). It was already a finalized standard, and widely deployed before this guy did anything.
Bear in mind that RFCs finalize things that have been under discussion for years.
No. All of these things were already integrated. The RFC from 1977 is already a fully-scale, inter-organization mail system in a single electronic version.
wtf? The parent listed facts only (" by 1975 was transmitting mail between US government agencies and academia throughout the US, Canada and Western Europe? The RFCs are there to prove it."). That is not a straw man.
Then you're not looking very hard.
Even if this guy had been the first person to conceive of some exact combination of features (cc, bcc, etc), that still wouldn't make him the inventor of email. The basic idea of asynchronous message transfer across networks with named user recipients and mailboxes and programs called "mail" etc, had been around for years already.
I had a college professor who still used an 8KB Commodore PET. He stored his typed notes on cassette. On occasion he would print out a handout using his 8-pin dot matrix printer and then mimeograph it. I have no idea how he still got printer ink for the printer.
Unfortunately the pet only had enough ram to store a few pages, so if any document was longer than that, you had to establish a new file. Many of his handouts ended abruptly after a few pages.
Someone once tried to convince him to get a new computer. He responded: "You're talking to me about a new computer as if I NEEDED it."
Perhaps you should point out which logical fallacies there are, and precisely where he has committed them. Right now, you have given us a question ("how many can you find?"). In essence you're insinuating that there are logical fallacies, without finding any or making any specific claim.
Anecdotes are "trumping" data? Which data? The original article relies upon two isolated quotations, and a link to a gov't study which does not support its claims.
Looking like a gangsta? Do you mean "black"? He was wearing a hoodie, like about 25% of young people at any given time.
Also, how was he behaving like a gangsta? He walked away rapidly from a confrontation ("I won't run but I'll walk real fast").
Zimmerman had the gun in his car and was driving to Target. He saw Trayvon, then called the cops and said "[Trayvon] looks like he's on drugs or something" after just looking at the kid from a distance. Then he got the gun from his car, put it in his belt, and chased down the kid.
There is no way to tell if someone is on drugs by just looking at them from a distance. I have extensive experience with hard drug addicts and I could never tell if someone was on drugs before talking to them. I've known about 10+ severe addicts quite well who held down jobs and worked while doing drugs, and who managed to conceal their addiction from everyone. The only exception is if someone has done alot of meth, in which case they become twitchy, which is obvious from afar. Even in that case, however, the average meth addict is not particularly aggressive and is far less dangerous than the average drunk person.
I think Zimmerman was acting under the influence of stereotypes.
Yes, it is an established fact. You're being way too literal and are misinterpreting the intent and meaning behind the dispatcher's sentence.
In standard English there is a kind of understatement which is very common and universally understood. For example, I encountered a friendly but unintelligent young woman earlier today and mentioned to a friend that "she's not the smartest person in the world". This did not mean that she had an IQ of 215 which would place her just shy of the smartest person. It meant she was dumb. It was a kind of understatement which is understood by everyone.
Similarly, the statement "we don't need you to do that" is a friendly way of saying "don't do it." For example, if my boss observes someone at work doing something pointless or a waste of time, he might say "we don't need you to do that" because it's more polite than outright commanding them to stop. The meaning would be understood by everyone because that kind of understatement is part of standard conversational English.
The difficulty with peak oil people is that they do not understand how the economy adjusts. Their entire theory of collapse/decline is based upon an incorrect understanding of the economy as a static entity which was built up over decades and will collapse with any changes. In fact the economy more resembles an intelligent organism which is always adapting, seeking out, making changes, evolving.
Most of peak oil doom and energy descent theory is based upon 4 simple fallacies: 1) assuming exponential growth for quantities which are not growing exponentially (like population or energy usage); 2) ignoring alternatives and substitutes; 3) assuming a non-adjusting economy, or assuming the economy will not adjust to alternatives; 4) conflating resources with reserves.
Most importantly, energy decline theorists do not understand the price mechanism. This is their main source of difficulty.
No, no, no....
It looks like you might have been reading The Oil Drum or something similar.
The peak oil community is using an incorrect analogy when they apply Liebig's Law of the Minimum to "society". Liebig's law of the minimum refers to limitations on plant growth for lack of essential nutrients; it does not refer to "society" or "the entire train". Unlike plants, society can utilize alternatives whereas plants will die without phosphorous. We are not running out of alternatives and probably won't for billions of years.
This is because fossil fuels haven't begun to run out yet, so there has been no need yet to begin the gradual transition to alternatives.
Why is it necessary to have a personal nuclear power plant?
About 50 miles away from me, connected via a grid.
Most of the iPhone is made out of silicon, which is the most abundant element in the Earth's crust by far and constitutes something like 60% of the volume of the Earth's crust. We will probably never use more than 0.001% of the silicon available to us, since human population is stabilizing. Also, we are not "using up" silicon at any rate whatsoever, since the silicon remains after the iPhone has been disposed of and could be re-mined later. We have enough energy and silicon available to us to cover the Earth in a miles-deep layer of iPhones. Obviously I'm not saying that's desirable or even possible, but we wouldn't "run out" of silicon or energy.
The article you linked is a misleading op-ed with no references to support its facts.
Germany and France sell electricity to each other based upon varying demand; however France has been the larger exporter of electricity over the last 10 years.
You're very mistaken about the relative conditions of plantation slavery compared to developing countries' low-wage labor. Plantation slaves made no money whatsoever, and their imputed income from consumption was certainly less than 10% of the $400/mo which Foxconn workers earn. In addition, plantation slaves were frequently beaten severely for non-performance. Most of the slaves did not even survive the journey to the new world, because of harsh conditions on the slave ships. Those who did survive and had the misfortune to end up in the Carribean, usually lived about 5 additional years because of overwork.
Your notion that plantation slave owners "cared more" about their slaves is absurdly incorrect. In many places of the carribbean, the ratio of freemen to slaves was something like 1:10, which posed the constant risk of violent slave rebellion, so violent suppression was necessary and continuous. The slave owners did not "care" about their slaves as they generally worked them to death within 5 years.
As an aside, I've noticed that much criticism of the industrial revolution and of industrial development more generally, is based upon extraordinary over-estimation of the quality of life before the industrial development. There is a great deal of romanticizing (especially on the far left) of subsistence-farming life, of medieval conditions, of village agriculture, and (in this case) of plantation slavery, of all things. All of those modes of life imply an annual income of $300-$400 and severe back-breaking physical labor.
On every step of the way to industrial development, conditions for workers are better than they were previously. The Chinese people lining up for these jobs are not stupid. They are aware that the alternative is village agriculture, and that village agriculture work is harder and far worse paid.
I'm a coprophile, you insensitive clod!
It appears to me that the problem here (wrt to both economics and climate models) is the assumption that we cannot predict anything if we cannot predict everything. That is all wrong. Although it is impossible to model any complex system in all its attributes with precision, that doesn't imply that we can't make any precise predictions whatsoever or that we're reduced to statistical guesses as Loki_1929 claimed. Even in complicated systems, there are some inferences which are non-obvious and which offer precise, accurate predictions, even if they do not predict the entire future state of the complex system.
For example, it may be impossible to predict weather because of its chaotic features, but this does not imply that there are no precise and regular features of climate. For example, the Earth will maintain an energy balance in the long run despite irregularities caused by weather. Although we cannot predict the weather, we can make some predictions about climate with near certainty.
Similarly with economics. It cannot be predicted when a recession will occur, or what the stock market will do tomorrow. But some things can be predicted with certainty. For example, it can be predicted with absolute precision that the purchase of T-Bonds by the Chinese government will cause the trade deficit to increase also and by the same amount, provided that other international debt purchases remain constant. Also, it can be predicted with certainty that a decrease in the bank reserve ratio will cause a proportional increase in the general price level. Also, it can be predicted with certainty that an increase in labor productivity will cause wages to rise and not unemployment. These predictions are highly accurate, and are not at all obvious (in fact the last one is actively disputed by many people).
The problem with both economics and predictions of future temperatures, is that theorists will attempt to make predictions even of things which they know can't be predicted with certainty. They figure that their guess is better than nothing. Thus economists will attempt to predict recessions, and weather forecasters will attempt to predict tomorrow's temperature. When the predictions fail, people unfamiliar with those disciplines will jump to the conclusion that "well the whole thing is just fucked then; it's too complex" and that we know nothing about either economies or future temperatures. But that is all wrong. Unfortunately those same people will subsequently ignore predictions which really are quite certain. At least with weather and climate, the disciplines are separated. With economics, predictions about recessions are grouped under the same label as (for example) trade theory.
This is totally wrong. Economics is definitely a real science and is extremely rigorous. The problem is that economists have not successfully communicated which things they really know with certainty and which they're guessing about. With climate, climatologists have not successfully communicated the difference between weather (which cannot be predicted well) and climate (which can). In both cases, they have not successfully communicated that they do know some things with great precision even about very complex systems.
Nope, read it again. I said that recycling of paper and glass has no value. In fact it has very little value, because recycling paper and glass uses almost as much energy as manufacturing new paper and glass.
I said that biofuels, local food, and organic food are positively harmful.
Aluminum recycling matters, but it's an exception.
Yes, but the trick is to make true assertions.
How about the Sahara as a landfill for Europe and Africa? Or the high desert in the American southwest? Or northern Canada? Or the desert in the middle of Australia? Or vast areas of central Asia as in Mongolia?
Bear in mind that garbage in landfills is not spread out evenly over a wide land area. Garbage is compacted and stored as a large cube.
If we took all the wastes from all people in the USA for 1,000 years, it would occupy about 1.8 cubic miles. Of course, we couldn't have a cube going up into the air for 1.8 miles, so we would likely spread it out over an area of 20 square miles or so. This would occupy about 0.0007% of the land area of the US for 1000 years' worth of garbage.
If this were true, then throwing your organic garbage into the landfill would be effective carbon sequestration and would reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.
Since 1996, the EPA has required all large landfills to capture and burn landfill gas, thereby converting it into CO2, just the same as if it had been composted.
Nope, there are no benefits to anyone from composting. Whether you throw your organic garbage in the composting bin or the trash, it just ends up as CO2 in the atmosphere. It makes no difference.
Since 1996, the EPA has mandated that all large landfills have gas recovery and burning mechanisms which convert landfill methane into CO2. The result is that greenhouse emissions are CO2 in both cases, and are the same whether you compost something, or throw it in the garbage.
I would laugh at Canadians and Europeans (and American liberals) if it weren't so sad. Whereas typical Americans are selfish and say "fuck that shit," Europeans and American liberals actually care about the issue, but then engage in worthless symbolic gestures like mandatory composting, recycling, local food, organic food, etc, which either have no effect or make the problem worse.
It makes no difference whether you put something in the garbage or the compost bin. In both cases the organic garbage ends up as CO2 in the atmosphere. Although the garbage is converted into methane (not CO2) within the landfill, that methane is captured and burnt, and thereby converted into CO2. Since 1996, the EPA has mandated that all larger landfills must capture and burn methane (google the "Landfill Rule" and look at the EPA site). As a result, it makes no difference whether you compost or not. Nor does it save landfill space, since the organic garbage is converted to a gas which then escapes.
Composting is not the most efficient way to prevent methane emissions. It's almost certainly more cost-efficient to burn landfill gas, since that accomplishes the same thing without costly human labor spent on sorting and inspecting garbage. Even if you live in a country that does not burn landfill gas, you should support landfill gas burning rather than mandatory composting.
Composting has no value. It's like local food, organic food, recycling of paper and glass, biofuels, and so on. They make no difference to the environment, or are positively harmful to the environment (local food, organic food, biofuels). (In fact, organic food and biofuels would be catastrophic to the environment if used extensively). The purpose is to give hippies the feel-good, low-tech, back-to-the-land lifestyle which they always wanted, and to impose that lifestyle upon others. Whether it helps the environment is irrelevant and ignored.
The two most important things you can do to help the environment are: 1) live in a high-rise apartment building in the densest urban area possible, since urban dwellers emit a small fraction of the CO2 as suburban and rural dwellers; and 2) support nuclear power. Both of these are vehemently opposed by greenies who spend their time on worthless symbolic activities like composting. This shows that they either don't know what will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or they just don't care.
Even the spork predates the spoon.
Yes, Milton considered all of those things. Those things are all addressed by the old economics from the 18th century. Maybe there are some circumstances where those arguments fall down, but not the circumstances you listed.
Are you sure you're not doing that?
I'm a big believer in increasing government spending on infrastructure, but you have to be careful about this kind of remark. The question is whether the GG bridge would have been built eventually, even without the WPA. Also, whether the GG bridge was a better investment than any alternative use of the same funds. We can't just assume that there would have been nothing (instead of the GG bridge) without the WPA, because the same funds would have been spent or invested elsewhere.
If the Keynesian argument is true and output was higher because of public spending then that's great, but in that case it was deficits which were helpful and not the GG bridge specifically.
Even if we wish to run deficits to increase the economy, we should still pick the best public projects for the least amount of labor relative to what's accomplished.
You just totally misunderstood what you read. You should read the quotation again and ponder it.
That is not at all relevant to the point from the parent's quotation.