... a prison sentence. It is one thing to express your opinion. It another to attack other people and physically restrain them from doing what they have every right to do.
What is more, these cabbies should have their licenses threatened. A cab license is not a right.
you don't control that system. That system is pretty much exclusively controlled by your cellphone carrier. As such, the average person would never be told anything and as a result the average user is unaware of it.
We're talking about private encryption.
If you want to have that discussion, we have to keep the discussion to issues where YOU encrypt things. Your cellphone calls obviously don't count since your carrier encrypts the calls not you.
There are several VOIP apps for phones that do client side encryption. Is the FBI shutting any of that down? No they are not.
As to regulation saying who can and who cannot use encryption, it isn't politically possible. The backlash would be unsurvivable. The instant they try to micromanage everyone on that basis their ability to sustain that in law will evaporate.
Here you ask for evidence?... It hasn't happened. The burden is rather on you to show that it will happen in the US. Not my burden to prove any wild ass thing you could come up with is not going to happen.
As to the argument being bullshit, I agree. I didn't make it though. That is your strawman.
try again. I will not respect a strawman argument. Start by making your own argument rather then telling me what mine is... it will help you to avoid that little fallacy.
1. Europe just like the US has outsourced much of its production.
2. Much of european heavy industry is grandfathered and doesn't especially have to change anything. They after all got lots of carbon credits while new companies don't get them. Effectively all you did here was make it harder for new companies to compete with old industry. Palms were definitely well greased for that little trick.
As to making things more efficient, that is actually a good way of ACTUALLY solving the problem. So I grant you that is there but that is hardly a unique accomplishment. Every nation can make that claim including smokey china.
As to your controls on imports meeting certain standards. You import all sorts of things that were produced under the same conditions as every other market. Your imports come from the same smokey sweat shops everyone else gets their stuff. Do you have standards requiring the final product not be toxic? Sure... we have those as well. Doesn't mean the factory itself isn't toxic or that the process didn't pump lots of lovely CO2 into the air.
You've off shored just like the rest of the west. Don't kid yourself.
Of course he does. The point is to placate the dupes and keep the gravy flowing.
Think of all the money that has gone into AGW propoganda that could have instead been spent on funding research into superior solar power, biogas generators, superior supply chain systems, etc. You know... the stuff that will ACTUALLY make a difference.
They spend the money talking about doing something instead of funding the people that will actually do it. Politicians are not those that "do" they are those that "TALK" about doing or order the doing. But they do not "do" anything. And yet, despite so much needing to be done, how much has been squandered making such men rich? Look at the wealth that has flowed to Washington. It is currently the healthiest economy in the country. Rising property values. Booming businesses. And all of it sustained by legions of federal bureaucrats and politicians living it up on the national dime.
The solution to every problem so they say is to give those people more money. Why? What would they do with it? Buy more hookers and cocaine? Yachts? Because arguing they'll suddenly save the environment if they get enough money isn't credible. They don't spend the money they get on that.
Most of them don't even have a solution. They're saying "we have guns and prisons... so if anyone doesn't step into line they get some ratio of imprisoned and shot."
That isn't a solution. That is a threat.
Solving the problem requires developing technologies, industrial models, and energy supply chains that are competitive with existing systems while not causing the same issues.
One technology that could really help is biomass gasification. You can run cars on carbon neutral biomass. Grass, twigs, wood chips, wood pellets, trash, etc. Basically the Mr Fusion from Back to the Future. It exists and it works. You can see YouTube videos of people building these things in their backyards. There are a few people that have built them into their cars and drive around with a car powered by biomass. Think of all those people trying to come up with an efficient way to turn algae into oil. Waste of time because you can just grow ANYTHING, pelletize it in a standard pellet maker, and then burn it. Carbon neutral biomass engines. And we have the technology right now. They were first used extensively during WW2... mostly in europe because fuel was scarce. They have issues such as building up tar in parts of the engine. But that is more of a question of carefully controlling the fuel temperature etc.
And you don't need to actually burn the biomass in the car itself. You can simply produce biogas, store it in tanks, and then refuel cars/trucks/etc as needed at conventional gas stations.
That is one solution. In rural and agricultural environments this technology should be vastly superior to what they're currently doing. Which means making much of current mechanized agriculture carbon neutral. All the tractors and other farm equipment... carbon neutral. The farm itself... carbon neutral and in some cases entirely energy self sufficient.
Beyond that, shift 100 percent of green energy power plant funding to subsidies for private self generation. Solar and wind power are not like coal or nuclear power. They don't make sense in concentrations. They are defuse distributed energy sources. The most efficient means of collection is to distribute collection throughout suburbia and try to make rural and suburban communities as energy self sufficient as possible.
That leaves urban centers and really nuclear power is the most reasonable source of power for urban populations. Yes, old power plants from the 60s are occasionally a problem. But that is hardly a reason to discontinue the use of nuclear power. It is rather an argument to not build power plants like that in the future. Keep them small so that they can be shut down or decommissioned without requiring all the king's horses and all the king's men. And keep them modern. Understand that they're going to have a shelf life and when their number is up, decommissioned them so they can be replaced with something better. Eventually we should get the thorium reactors we're being promised. And then most of this won't matter anymore.
Probably the single biggest contributor to global pollution is the concept of planned obsolesce. The disposable society. We are constantly selling or throwing away things that are 90 percent identical to what we replace them with... why? Lack of modular construction and repairable design. Imagine if cars were never junked unless they suffered a major accident? What if instead they were simply progressively upgraded and modified. Tweaks to the engine. Tweaks to the suspension. Tweaks to the breaks. Tweaks to the electronics. Tweaks to the body. Do the same thing with everything from washing machines to cellphones. Everything modular. Associate modularity with environmental friendliness. Suddenly, instead of factories that have to replace everything everyone owns every 10 years, those same factories instead only have to produce the upgrades and repair parts to maintain what everyone owns. The amount of things we have build to keep everyone happy is reduced by a magnitude.
Encrypting information is not evidence of criminal intent and it is not possible to declare it so without collapsing the whole financial system to say nothing of dozens of other industries.
They are not outlawing encryption.
Period.
You are correct that they might try to outlaw strong encryption. However, enforcement would require that they audit the encryption which would require them actually trying to decrypt things on occasion. That isn't enforceable because it isn't politically sustainable.
As to controlling everyone with fear, how has that worked out in the P2P piracy struggle? Not at all? Okay... so the fear angle only works if you're actually prepared to nail EVERYONE or just about everyone. If it is just a couple people here and there then people play the odds.
What is more, the politics on this issue do not favor the NSA unless they can get people to stop talking about the NSA.
The NSA doesn't like people to know about them, know their capabilities, understand their mission, or generally be aware of them period. This whole thing puts a big spot light on them and keeps it on them. That dramatically undermines their ability to do anything. The current people running the NSA are at best political idiots. They have completely misunderstood public reactions to their activities.
Because they would enjoy no market advantage if they had to follow the same rules.
What is more, they don't have to comply with your rules under current trade law.
What is more, they have more tools to resist your actions then you have to impose them unless you engage in and win a trade war.
Look, bro... Asia has built its current economy on doing what we used to do in the west... cheaper. You take away their market advantage and their whole economy collapses. The jobs of literally billions of people are in the balance.
Do you honestly think they're going to cooperate with your idea? You're basically saying "If I ask really nice, they'll put a loaded gun in their mouths and pull the trigger... right guys?"
They won't. What they'll do first is patronize you. This is highly effective. Look at what china recently did to Obama. They agreed to all the carbon emissions reductions he asked for... with the condition that they monitor their own emissions with no official international oversight and they furthermore will be the final arbitor as to whether they are or are not in compliance.
Which means they could literally increase their emissions 1000 fold and still technically remain in compliance simply by saying they are in compliance.
This is precisely how Asia has been dealing with nitwit enviros in the west for a generation.
All you will ever accomplish is wasting peoples time, making some trust fund asshats feel like they're not asshats, and enrich people you have no control over at the expense of people that you do have control over. These actions are quite literally counter productive.
If you want to actually effect actual change in the real world that will not just be a shell game to delude idiots... then you're going to have to come up with methods to solve these problems that do not simply sweep it all under the rug.
This is not a job for politicians or community organizers. These people in this situation are less then useless. They bring no value to the table. If you want to solve it, you are going to need engineers and patience.
Beyond that, you're just sticking your thumb up your ass and singing show tunes.
At best, you'll tax carbon in the US, trigger massive off shoring, and accomplish a net negative impact as the production is moved farther from the product markets requiring at the very least additional transport. In reality, foreign production tends to also have far worse environmental impacts for many reasons. Which just adds to the carbon debt.
You need to see the issues holistically rather then simply leaning on the crutch of coercive police power in a given country.
If the depth of your thinking on the issue goes no deeper then "I can order the police to shoot or arrest people that don't do what I say" then are you truly surprised if people like me judge such thinking to be naive, callow, and self defeating?
Think deeper. This is a game of chess... not tic tac toe. Chickens have been taught to play the latter... please think a few moves ahead here.
The tariff idea would require a complete negation of all our existing trade treaties. The WTO amongst others wouldn't tolerate it. You'd have to engage in a trade war with the entire planet.
Avoiding that would require convincing other member nations to write in an exemption for that action. And good luck getting that from any of the big players.
You're dealing with what are ultimately derivations of human nature on geopolitical scales.
These forces are nearly natural forces in their intensity, intractability, indifference to criticism, etc. They have their own rules they operate on. Like gravity, supply and demand doesn't care if you find something immoral or undesirable. If the demand is there then that sucking void is going to feed its need. Look at the war on drugs. How is that working out? Same thing. Supply and demand. People have drugs. Other people want drugs. The two call to each other until the one services the other. Same thing with energy. You cut off my supply of energy... I want energy... someone else has energy and they're willing to sell it to me. I will get what I want.
You cannot stop me. You can only make yourself an additional problem I have to deal with to get what I need.
You only solve this issue by making sure first and foremost that I get what I need. Try to starve me and you will either get bypassed or eaten in turn.
You say you don't have a cost neutral alternative?
I asked you to look into the raptor's eye. Don't think you're reasoning with another reasonable human being here. You are looking into the eye of something that is hungry, powerful, and clever. And if you do not understand how this creature works then you are not going to be able to control it. It will take what it wants without hesitation, pity, or remorse.
Fossil fuels service a need for energy. They are currently cheap, reliable, and abundant. When the raptor is hungry, it is going to seek out easy to kill prey that it finds tasty.
What you are suggesting is putting the raptor on a diet... feeding it less... and you probably want to feed it something else... maybe kale or something. The raptor is going to be hungry until it isn't. And the raptor is hungry for what it considers food... not what you consider food.
That is what you are reasoning with and are attempting to regulate. When you put up electrified fences, all you're doing is creating obstacles. The raptor doesn't respect these barriers. It simply sees them as puzzles it has to solve.
In regards to global warming, out sourcing instantly bypasses most environmental regulations. It renders irrelevant most of the rules. The raptor escapes and does what it wants.
Another good trick is bribing the gate keepers. You give the politicians a little bit of meat and they leave a little hole in the fence that lets the raptor out to do what it wants. In that case, all the regulation accomplishes is to give corrupt politicians ways to extort bribes. Nothing more in many cases.
If you want to fix the issue, then you need to appreciate that answers that do not answer the question are not answers at all.
Lazy and naive policy wonks keep thinking they can solve complicated problems with lazy hamfisted policies that mostly rely on government violence to compel compliance. Rather then solve the puzzle you are slaming jigsaw pieces into places they do not go. With enough force the cardboard can be ripped and any piece can fit anywhere. This is in many cases the logic of many government policies. "We have guns and prisons. They comply with what we say or we'll throw them in jail or shoot them." All you're doing is creating barriers. The dumb ones won't figure out how to get out. But the clever ones test the walls... tap tap tap scrape along the edges. They watch. They wait. And when their moment comes... they will be ready. They always have been.
I can think of many ways to improve the environment without causing ripples in the equilibrium. My solutions will not be attractive to the crypto marxists... but then they only see the environmental issues as a means to an end rather then an end unto themselves.
For those that genuinely care... the solution is finding a solution for everyone. That includes the industries that feed and fuel us all. You have no solution if your first step is to fuck over the beating heart of our civilization.
Riiiight, because ignoring someone's whole argument and then focusing entirely on the last part where they called you a fucktwit proves you're not a fuckwit.
... some idiot try to grab water like he's picking up a ball or something. Every time they squeeze, it just shoots through their fingers and they get nothing.
Capitalist economies are dynamic. They respond. Squeeze in one place and you create pressure that causes the system to adapt to restore equilibrium.
Listen to Bruce Lee... Understand what it is to be water. To flow.
The issue with trying to control fossil fuel consumption is that it fills a need. That need exists. It is a sucking vacuum that will draw solutions to it and will do so in the most cost efficient manner it can find.
For example... that might mean off shoring all production to Asia if you make it too expensive to make things in the West. Very simple to do that. Totally bypasses all the environmental laws instantly. Anything that makes production in the US more expensive then somewhere else will just result in off shoring.
That principle carries over to everything else. A major mistake environmental activists keep making is fucking with prices and expecting the system to not change the way it does things to reduce costs. They think the system will just choose the path they decide rather then keep looking.
Your solutions must be cost neutral or very nearly cost neutral or must be cheaper then existing models.
Or you will have set yourself up as an obstacle. And life will find a way.
You might not like that anymore then the people liked getting eaten by dinosaurs in that movie. But the dinosaurs don't care what you want. They want what they want and you can't really stop them without destroying everything.
If you want to keep the system active and you really have no choice here... then you're going to have to play the game. Learn the rules or lose.
You can't regulate it without attempting to decrypt people's messages which is evidence of trying to read them which is politically unsustainable.
They get away with this because few know about it and everyone thinks their information is left alone for one reason or another. The instant mom and pop start getting pushed around by g-men for talking to their grand children on an encrypted voice chat... the game is up.
The politics are already at the breaking point. There is only so much they can get away with here.
I am aware of it... Did you think I thought only the french did this or this was the first time something like this had ever happened in the history of the world?
It needs to be restated every time it happens so that more people see the hypocrisy and so that when some idiots do not they are dealt with by everyone.
It requires nothing. It is itself. If you want to present a counter argument you need to present evidence of SOMETHING. Without that you have an argument based on nothing which is an argument based on nothing.
Millennials are not in charge. Wait until that happens before you judge.
In any case, not all Millennials are hipsters etc. Just as not all boomers were hippies. If you want to attack someone, then be specific to what you're talking about. Rail against hipster activist douchebags. Don't attack all millennials..
Don't be naive. The IT man's loyalties lie with the man that pays him. Just like everyone else.
How many other professions fuck over their coworkers on command? The only exception I can think of is doctors... and only under special circumstances... typically they'll fuck you over on command just like everyone else.
The IT man is nothing special in this context. He's another employee executing a command.
Since when does offending delicate little snow flakes like you make anything I've said wrong?
I pointed out that there is overwhelming correlation between environmental activism and economic affluence.
I pointed out that if one is to sustain environmental activism one must sustain economic affluence.
I pointed out that were one to threaten the economic affluence of environmental activists they would very rapidly stop their environmental activism in most cases and direct their efforts to restoring that affluence.
I finally pointed out that it is of little wonder that so many activists do not grasp the nature of their activism because most of them are quite affluent... and the more rabid they are the more affluent they tend to be which distances them further from the consequences of naive activism.
This isn't being an asshole. This is telling you how it is. Toughen up, kitten.
Slashdot Mirror
... a prison sentence. It is one thing to express your opinion. It another to attack other people and physically restrain them from doing what they have every right to do.
What is more, these cabbies should have their licenses threatened. A cab license is not a right.
you don't control that system. That system is pretty much exclusively controlled by your cellphone carrier. As such, the average person would never be told anything and as a result the average user is unaware of it.
We're talking about private encryption.
If you want to have that discussion, we have to keep the discussion to issues where YOU encrypt things. Your cellphone calls obviously don't count since your carrier encrypts the calls not you.
There are several VOIP apps for phones that do client side encryption. Is the FBI shutting any of that down? No they are not.
So... I'm right.
As to regulation saying who can and who cannot use encryption, it isn't politically possible. The backlash would be unsurvivable. The instant they try to micromanage everyone on that basis their ability to sustain that in law will evaporate.
Here you ask for evidence?... It hasn't happened. The burden is rather on you to show that it will happen in the US. Not my burden to prove any wild ass thing you could come up with is not going to happen.
As to the argument being bullshit, I agree. I didn't make it though. That is your strawman.
try again. I will not respect a strawman argument. Start by making your own argument rather then telling me what mine is... it will help you to avoid that little fallacy.
Little boys have just as much right to an education as little girls
Laughable.
1. Europe just like the US has outsourced much of its production.
2. Much of european heavy industry is grandfathered and doesn't especially have to change anything. They after all got lots of carbon credits while new companies don't get them. Effectively all you did here was make it harder for new companies to compete with old industry. Palms were definitely well greased for that little trick.
As to making things more efficient, that is actually a good way of ACTUALLY solving the problem. So I grant you that is there but that is hardly a unique accomplishment. Every nation can make that claim including smokey china.
As to your controls on imports meeting certain standards. You import all sorts of things that were produced under the same conditions as every other market. Your imports come from the same smokey sweat shops everyone else gets their stuff. Do you have standards requiring the final product not be toxic? Sure... we have those as well. Doesn't mean the factory itself isn't toxic or that the process didn't pump lots of lovely CO2 into the air.
You've off shored just like the rest of the west. Don't kid yourself.
Of course he does. The point is to placate the dupes and keep the gravy flowing.
Think of all the money that has gone into AGW propoganda that could have instead been spent on funding research into superior solar power, biogas generators, superior supply chain systems, etc. You know... the stuff that will ACTUALLY make a difference.
They spend the money talking about doing something instead of funding the people that will actually do it. Politicians are not those that "do" they are those that "TALK" about doing or order the doing. But they do not "do" anything. And yet, despite so much needing to be done, how much has been squandered making such men rich? Look at the wealth that has flowed to Washington. It is currently the healthiest economy in the country. Rising property values. Booming businesses. And all of it sustained by legions of federal bureaucrats and politicians living it up on the national dime.
The solution to every problem so they say is to give those people more money. Why? What would they do with it? Buy more hookers and cocaine? Yachts? Because arguing they'll suddenly save the environment if they get enough money isn't credible. They don't spend the money they get on that.
Most of them don't even have a solution. They're saying "we have guns and prisons... so if anyone doesn't step into line they get some ratio of imprisoned and shot."
That isn't a solution. That is a threat.
Solving the problem requires developing technologies, industrial models, and energy supply chains that are competitive with existing systems while not causing the same issues.
One technology that could really help is biomass gasification. You can run cars on carbon neutral biomass. Grass, twigs, wood chips, wood pellets, trash, etc. Basically the Mr Fusion from Back to the Future. It exists and it works. You can see YouTube videos of people building these things in their backyards. There are a few people that have built them into their cars and drive around with a car powered by biomass. Think of all those people trying to come up with an efficient way to turn algae into oil. Waste of time because you can just grow ANYTHING, pelletize it in a standard pellet maker, and then burn it. Carbon neutral biomass engines. And we have the technology right now. They were first used extensively during WW2... mostly in europe because fuel was scarce. They have issues such as building up tar in parts of the engine. But that is more of a question of carefully controlling the fuel temperature etc.
And you don't need to actually burn the biomass in the car itself. You can simply produce biogas, store it in tanks, and then refuel cars/trucks/etc as needed at conventional gas stations.
That is one solution. In rural and agricultural environments this technology should be vastly superior to what they're currently doing. Which means making much of current mechanized agriculture carbon neutral. All the tractors and other farm equipment... carbon neutral. The farm itself... carbon neutral and in some cases entirely energy self sufficient.
Beyond that, shift 100 percent of green energy power plant funding to subsidies for private self generation. Solar and wind power are not like coal or nuclear power. They don't make sense in concentrations. They are defuse distributed energy sources. The most efficient means of collection is to distribute collection throughout suburbia and try to make rural and suburban communities as energy self sufficient as possible.
That leaves urban centers and really nuclear power is the most reasonable source of power for urban populations. Yes, old power plants from the 60s are occasionally a problem. But that is hardly a reason to discontinue the use of nuclear power. It is rather an argument to not build power plants like that in the future. Keep them small so that they can be shut down or decommissioned without requiring all the king's horses and all the king's men. And keep them modern. Understand that they're going to have a shelf life and when their number is up, decommissioned them so they can be replaced with something better. Eventually we should get the thorium reactors we're being promised. And then most of this won't matter anymore.
Probably the single biggest contributor to global pollution is the concept of planned obsolesce. The disposable society. We are constantly selling or throwing away things that are 90 percent identical to what we replace them with... why? Lack of modular construction and repairable design. Imagine if cars were never junked unless they suffered a major accident? What if instead they were simply progressively upgraded and modified. Tweaks to the engine. Tweaks to the suspension. Tweaks to the breaks. Tweaks to the electronics. Tweaks to the body. Do the same thing with everything from washing machines to cellphones. Everything modular. Associate modularity with environmental friendliness. Suddenly, instead of factories that have to replace everything everyone owns every 10 years, those same factories instead only have to produce the upgrades and repair parts to maintain what everyone owns. The amount of things we have build to keep everyone happy is reduced by a magnitude.
Think of all the environmentalists saying we hav
Encrypting information is not evidence of criminal intent and it is not possible to declare it so without collapsing the whole financial system to say nothing of dozens of other industries.
They are not outlawing encryption.
Period.
You are correct that they might try to outlaw strong encryption. However, enforcement would require that they audit the encryption which would require them actually trying to decrypt things on occasion. That isn't enforceable because it isn't politically sustainable.
As to controlling everyone with fear, how has that worked out in the P2P piracy struggle? Not at all? Okay... so the fear angle only works if you're actually prepared to nail EVERYONE or just about everyone. If it is just a couple people here and there then people play the odds.
What is more, the politics on this issue do not favor the NSA unless they can get people to stop talking about the NSA.
The NSA doesn't like people to know about them, know their capabilities, understand their mission, or generally be aware of them period. This whole thing puts a big spot light on them and keeps it on them. That dramatically undermines their ability to do anything. The current people running the NSA are at best political idiots. They have completely misunderstood public reactions to their activities.
Because they would enjoy no market advantage if they had to follow the same rules.
What is more, they don't have to comply with your rules under current trade law.
What is more, they have more tools to resist your actions then you have to impose them unless you engage in and win a trade war.
Look, bro... Asia has built its current economy on doing what we used to do in the west... cheaper. You take away their market advantage and their whole economy collapses. The jobs of literally billions of people are in the balance.
Do you honestly think they're going to cooperate with your idea? You're basically saying "If I ask really nice, they'll put a loaded gun in their mouths and pull the trigger... right guys?"
They won't. What they'll do first is patronize you. This is highly effective. Look at what china recently did to Obama. They agreed to all the carbon emissions reductions he asked for... with the condition that they monitor their own emissions with no official international oversight and they furthermore will be the final arbitor as to whether they are or are not in compliance.
Which means they could literally increase their emissions 1000 fold and still technically remain in compliance simply by saying they are in compliance.
This is precisely how Asia has been dealing with nitwit enviros in the west for a generation.
All you will ever accomplish is wasting peoples time, making some trust fund asshats feel like they're not asshats, and enrich people you have no control over at the expense of people that you do have control over. These actions are quite literally counter productive.
If you want to actually effect actual change in the real world that will not just be a shell game to delude idiots... then you're going to have to come up with methods to solve these problems that do not simply sweep it all under the rug.
This is not a job for politicians or community organizers. These people in this situation are less then useless. They bring no value to the table. If you want to solve it, you are going to need engineers and patience.
Beyond that, you're just sticking your thumb up your ass and singing show tunes.
Not possible given the current trade treaties.
At best, you'll tax carbon in the US, trigger massive off shoring, and accomplish a net negative impact as the production is moved farther from the product markets requiring at the very least additional transport. In reality, foreign production tends to also have far worse environmental impacts for many reasons. Which just adds to the carbon debt.
You need to see the issues holistically rather then simply leaning on the crutch of coercive police power in a given country.
If the depth of your thinking on the issue goes no deeper then "I can order the police to shoot or arrest people that don't do what I say" then are you truly surprised if people like me judge such thinking to be naive, callow, and self defeating?
Think deeper. This is a game of chess... not tic tac toe. Chickens have been taught to play the latter... please think a few moves ahead here.
The tariff idea would require a complete negation of all our existing trade treaties. The WTO amongst others wouldn't tolerate it. You'd have to engage in a trade war with the entire planet.
Avoiding that would require convincing other member nations to write in an exemption for that action. And good luck getting that from any of the big players.
I'll be very clear then.
You're dealing with what are ultimately derivations of human nature on geopolitical scales.
These forces are nearly natural forces in their intensity, intractability, indifference to criticism, etc. They have their own rules they operate on. Like gravity, supply and demand doesn't care if you find something immoral or undesirable. If the demand is there then that sucking void is going to feed its need. Look at the war on drugs. How is that working out? Same thing. Supply and demand. People have drugs. Other people want drugs. The two call to each other until the one services the other. Same thing with energy. You cut off my supply of energy... I want energy... someone else has energy and they're willing to sell it to me. I will get what I want.
You cannot stop me. You can only make yourself an additional problem I have to deal with to get what I need.
You only solve this issue by making sure first and foremost that I get what I need. Try to starve me and you will either get bypassed or eaten in turn.
You say you don't have a cost neutral alternative?
I asked you to look into the raptor's eye. Don't think you're reasoning with another reasonable human being here. You are looking into the eye of something that is hungry, powerful, and clever. And if you do not understand how this creature works then you are not going to be able to control it. It will take what it wants without hesitation, pity, or remorse.
Fossil fuels service a need for energy. They are currently cheap, reliable, and abundant. When the raptor is hungry, it is going to seek out easy to kill prey that it finds tasty.
What you are suggesting is putting the raptor on a diet... feeding it less... and you probably want to feed it something else... maybe kale or something. The raptor is going to be hungry until it isn't. And the raptor is hungry for what it considers food... not what you consider food.
That is what you are reasoning with and are attempting to regulate. When you put up electrified fences, all you're doing is creating obstacles. The raptor doesn't respect these barriers. It simply sees them as puzzles it has to solve.
In regards to global warming, out sourcing instantly bypasses most environmental regulations. It renders irrelevant most of the rules. The raptor escapes and does what it wants.
Another good trick is bribing the gate keepers. You give the politicians a little bit of meat and they leave a little hole in the fence that lets the raptor out to do what it wants. In that case, all the regulation accomplishes is to give corrupt politicians ways to extort bribes. Nothing more in many cases.
If you want to fix the issue, then you need to appreciate that answers that do not answer the question are not answers at all.
Lazy and naive policy wonks keep thinking they can solve complicated problems with lazy hamfisted policies that mostly rely on government violence to compel compliance. Rather then solve the puzzle you are slaming jigsaw pieces into places they do not go. With enough force the cardboard can be ripped and any piece can fit anywhere. This is in many cases the logic of many government policies. "We have guns and prisons. They comply with what we say or we'll throw them in jail or shoot them." All you're doing is creating barriers. The dumb ones won't figure out how to get out. But the clever ones test the walls... tap tap tap scrape along the edges. They watch. They wait. And when their moment comes... they will be ready. They always have been.
I can think of many ways to improve the environment without causing ripples in the equilibrium. My solutions will not be attractive to the crypto marxists... but then they only see the environmental issues as a means to an end rather then an end unto themselves.
For those that genuinely care... the solution is finding a solution for everyone. That includes the industries that feed and fuel us all. You have no solution if your first step is to fuck over the beating heart of our civilization.
Look into the raptor's eye through the tall grass by the pale moonlight and ask that question again.
Riiiight, because ignoring someone's whole argument and then focusing entirely on the last part where they called you a fucktwit proves you're not a fuckwit.
What a fuckwit.
... some idiot try to grab water like he's picking up a ball or something. Every time they squeeze, it just shoots through their fingers and they get nothing.
Capitalist economies are dynamic. They respond. Squeeze in one place and you create pressure that causes the system to adapt to restore equilibrium.
Listen to Bruce Lee... Understand what it is to be water. To flow.
The issue with trying to control fossil fuel consumption is that it fills a need. That need exists. It is a sucking vacuum that will draw solutions to it and will do so in the most cost efficient manner it can find.
For example... that might mean off shoring all production to Asia if you make it too expensive to make things in the West. Very simple to do that. Totally bypasses all the environmental laws instantly. Anything that makes production in the US more expensive then somewhere else will just result in off shoring.
That principle carries over to everything else. A major mistake environmental activists keep making is fucking with prices and expecting the system to not change the way it does things to reduce costs. They think the system will just choose the path they decide rather then keep looking.
Listen to Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Life will find a way. It will not be contained.
Your solutions must be cost neutral or very nearly cost neutral or must be cheaper then existing models.
Or you will have set yourself up as an obstacle. And life will find a way.
You might not like that anymore then the people liked getting eaten by dinosaurs in that movie. But the dinosaurs don't care what you want. They want what they want and you can't really stop them without destroying everything.
If you want to keep the system active and you really have no choice here... then you're going to have to play the game. Learn the rules or lose.
He looked tired and bored in the last Indy movie. He had better not do that again in the new Blade Runner movie.
You can't regulate it without attempting to decrypt people's messages which is evidence of trying to read them which is politically unsustainable.
They get away with this because few know about it and everyone thinks their information is left alone for one reason or another. The instant mom and pop start getting pushed around by g-men for talking to their grand children on an encrypted voice chat... the game is up.
The politics are already at the breaking point. There is only so much they can get away with here.
I am aware of it... Did you think I thought only the french did this or this was the first time something like this had ever happened in the history of the world?
The point remains... this is how it is.
It needs to be restated every time it happens so that more people see the hypocrisy and so that when some idiots do not they are dealt with by everyone.
It requires nothing. It is itself. If you want to present a counter argument you need to present evidence of SOMETHING. Without that you have an argument based on nothing which is an argument based on nothing.
Millennials are not in charge. Wait until that happens before you judge.
In any case, not all Millennials are hipsters etc. Just as not all boomers were hippies. If you want to attack someone, then be specific to what you're talking about. Rail against hipster activist douchebags. Don't attack all millennials..
Truth hurts. Suck it.
apparently it is okay now to just exclude france from any contract openly.
Thanks france.
Don't be naive. The IT man's loyalties lie with the man that pays him. Just like everyone else.
How many other professions fuck over their coworkers on command? The only exception I can think of is doctors... and only under special circumstances... typically they'll fuck you over on command just like everyone else.
The IT man is nothing special in this context. He's another employee executing a command.
Since when does offending delicate little snow flakes like you make anything I've said wrong?
I pointed out that there is overwhelming correlation between environmental activism and economic affluence.
I pointed out that if one is to sustain environmental activism one must sustain economic affluence.
I pointed out that were one to threaten the economic affluence of environmental activists they would very rapidly stop their environmental activism in most cases and direct their efforts to restoring that affluence.
I finally pointed out that it is of little wonder that so many activists do not grasp the nature of their activism because most of them are quite affluent... and the more rabid they are the more affluent they tend to be which distances them further from the consequences of naive activism.
This isn't being an asshole. This is telling you how it is. Toughen up, kitten.