"The past 400 years of steady growth show that the economy is far from a zero sum game."
You are not looking at a big enough picture. Sure the economy has grown in the last 400 years but it has done so at the expense of natural resources.
There is less oil in the world then there was 400 years ago, less trees, less clean air, less clean water, less minerals in the ground, less fish, less fertile soil, less plants, less animals.
As I said economy is the act of turning natural resources into money. We took oil, trees, water, soil, plants and animals and turned them into money.
Please don't look to the logging industry as some sort of a paragon of capitalistic virtue. They are notorious for overlogging privately held lands and then screaming and throwing fits to get access to public lands. There is nothing more socialistic then logging where private companies get the US govt ot buidl roads for them on public land just so that they can go ahead grab the trees and sell them. BTW the vast majority of the trees replanted are done on the taxpayers dime by the forrest service.
Logging is one the most subsidized industries in America.
Trees are a renewable resource, private logging companies should be able to log their privately held lands for eternity without ever having to touch a tree that's on public lands. But they don't look further ahead then a quarter or two and cut their own trees faster then they can grow back.
Right after 9/11 all air traffic was halted int he US for three days. During those days there was a measurable difference in the diurnal temprature variations due to lack of contrails.
There is no question that human activity effects the atmosphere.
If global warming is happening and it's bad then we should change our behavior to minimize or reverse the effect even if we are not the cause of it.
Some science relies on deductive logic some science relies on inductive reasoning derived from observation.
The fact that you and crighton would lump global warming and little green men shows how little you both understand sciences like biology and meteorology.
Global warming is a theory which is undergoing testing as we speak. Hundreds of scientists are working to either prove it or disprove it. To lump these people with UFO nuts is just insane and insulting.
"I've never understood either the greens or the far right. Why can't I have cheap energy, a high standard of living, and a clean environment?"
Because there is no such thing as free lunch and there is not an infinate amount of anything in the world.
Like it or not the economy is nothing more then converting natural resources into money. Natural resources are finite therefore it's a zero sum game.
Even productivity (which at first glance seems infinate) requires humans who eat, shit and need to be sheltered and machinery which requires materials and energy.
"The above scenario, while I know you meant it as a cartoon rather than a serious possibility, better describes the attitude toward labor under Chinese socialism ("there will always be more") than it does the attitude of any capitalist I've met."
Alas I have heard this exact argument more then once on tv and right here on slashdot. Most hardcore capitalists eventually point to the fact the cost of materials is cheaper to indicate that there are no supply problems.
"Besides which, imperfect as they are, market-centric systems cannot afford to ignore future supplies of whatever they're dealing in, from oil to 30lb bond printer paper."
ALmost nobody looks further ahead then a year or two. When we are down to two years worth of trees we are in big trouble.
Did Adam Smith ever talk of trees or clean water? No he did not. It simply did not occur to him that we might one day run out of either substance.
"it's that capitalism assumes scarce resources with imperfect but real fungibility (and inevitable but minimizable tradeoffs) which makes money-based exchanges the least friction-bound way to allocate them."
Not quite true. Capitalism measures the rate at which natural materials are extracted but not the rate at which they are restored. In other words capitalism has no way of measuring sustainibility until it's too late. Let me illustrate with an example.
Let's say that G.W decided that trees cause pollution and ordered all forests logged. The market would be flooded with wood and the price of wood would drop down to nothing. At that point a capitalism would say "the price of wood keeps decreasing so that must mean there are more trees in the world, in fact I predict that in 6 months there will be infinate amount of trees in the world". You see these kinds of arguments all the time "the price of such and such is going down so there must not be a shortage". They are measuring the rate of extraction not long term sustainability.
I once saw Milton Friedman talking about pollution with Charlie Rose and he said "if my shirt gets dirty from pollution then I can sue the factory" (something to that effect). It never occured to him that pollution might cause a deformed baby or cancer. To him pollution means getting his brooks brothers suit cleaned more often.
"What was certainly unfair is (If I remember correctly) that SA refused to let him respond for about a year, and even then only let him use one page, when a rebuttle to his rebuttle was many pages and in the same issue. "
Well he wrote an entire book espousing his point of view I don't think he needs a few pages in scientific american to further explain his position do you? What else does he have to say that's not in his book or his web site? I find it weird that scientific american only allocated a few pages to rebut a book that was hundreds of pages long.
"Crichton claims that the public believes in things like Global Warming and Nuclear Winter for the same reasons that it believes in little green men."
Really? What an odd claim to make. There is lots of evidence for global warming and many studies have been done on it. Maybe the evidence is not conclusive but it exists and is widespread.
Lumping global warming with little green men seems like the stupidest thing I have heard in a long time.
BTW over 90% of americans believe in god. If that's not a failure of science to act as a candle in the dark I don't know what is.
"Lomborg's book has 2 930 footnotes which allows you to fact check every single assertion that he makes. I've never seen that level of detail from the environmentalist movement and I speak as someone who has read more than just their pamphlets."
Are they disputing the individual facts or the conclusions drawn from those facts? Is it possible that the facts he footnoted have been found to be questionable upon further review?
I remember reading that many of the facts he talked about were from flawed studies, maybe that's the problem. Did he knowingly choose the studies that advanced his pet theory while ignoring studies that might raise doubt? If so then he deserves to be rebuked don't you think?
"I call myself an environmentalist and I'm certainly concerned about the possibility of a human effect on climate change, but the more the issue gets turned into a matter of theology they may not be questioned, the more skeptical I get about the whole thing. "
In this case there are billons of dollars at stake. If global warming is real then entire industries will have to change the way they function. None of these people want to spend one more dime then they have to so its in their interest to turn this issue into a theological/idelogical war.
It is inevitable that the global warming issue will be turned into a matter theology. In a way it strikes at the soft underbelly of the theory of capitalism. That being the environmental impact of large scale economic growth. The founders of capitalism never took into account the impact of their theories would have on the global environment because they presumed there would be an infinate aount of trees, energy, clean water, air etc.
The stakes are huge and the war will be bloody however it is also inevitable. This war will be fought whether we like it not. Nobody knows who is going to win but there will be many losers. As in any war however the truth will be the first casualty.
"The sales/marketing people made quite a large mention about the SCO suit making it sound like a forgone conclusion that Linux would be dead in a matter of months."
that's pretty typical MS FUD mongering. According to them Novell, Apple, and Borland etc have all been 6 months away from death for years now.
I wonder how anybody takes anything MS says seriously anymore.
"If IBM sells you Linux, and indemifies you against a lawsuit (insuring that you won't be out the money,) then why doesn't this guy?"
IBM does not do that. HP and MS offer indemnity but only against one particular kind of lawsuit from one particular company regarding one particular thing. Here is the best part. Their imdemnity only covers the cost of the OS. Yes you read that right.
"If this guy is so certain that no lawsuit will ever happen, or stick, then why does he refuse to put that in writing?"
He should. He should say that if SCO ever sues them he will give them back the cost of the OS just like HP and MS. In this case the CIO is a retard so he will sign it. It's easy to fool retarted CIOs like that and he should definately take advantage of the retard and milk him like the cash cow that he is. Just give him a free OS. If SCO sues him then reimburse him the zero dollars.
"I'm not saying the hotel chain is right or wrong, I'm just pointing out what their thinking might just be."
I am saying they are wrong. More then that I am saying they are incapable of running a business because they don't know how to assess risk. I want their names so I can make sure I don't have any of their stock.
No they can't. The best they can get is some sort of indemnity against a particular lawsuit from SCO but that's it. They can't get insurance that IBM will sue them or that I will sue them.
"2: Upon hearing, in response to 'will you guarentee that we won't be sued,' such a negative response, what would YOU think?"
I would think that I am dealing with an idiot. That's why I want the name of the hotel chain. their CIO is a total and absolute idiot. This guy thinks that he can get a guarantee that he won't be sued.
Ask a friend. Go to the local linux users group and ask a stranger.
One of the reasons Linux is so much fun to use is the community. Your local linux user group will not only provide you a CD they will install and configure it for you too.
Not only will you get a "free" operating system you'll make some friends too.
Slashdot Mirror
It's still insulting and ignorant.
"The past 400 years of steady growth show that the economy is far from a zero sum game."
You are not looking at a big enough picture. Sure the economy has grown in the last 400 years but it has done so at the expense of natural resources.
There is less oil in the world then there was 400 years ago, less trees, less clean air, less clean water, less minerals in the ground, less fish, less fertile soil, less plants, less animals.
As I said economy is the act of turning natural resources into money. We took oil, trees, water, soil, plants and animals and turned them into money.
Please don't look to the logging industry as some sort of a paragon of capitalistic virtue. They are notorious for overlogging privately held lands and then screaming and throwing fits to get access to public lands. There is nothing more socialistic then logging where private companies get the US govt ot buidl roads for them on public land just so that they can go ahead grab the trees and sell them. BTW the vast majority of the trees replanted are done on the taxpayers dime by the forrest service.
Logging is one the most subsidized industries in America.
Trees are a renewable resource, private logging companies should be able to log their privately held lands for eternity without ever having to touch a tree that's on public lands. But they don't look further ahead then a quarter or two and cut their own trees faster then they can grow back.
Can you disprove that the stars are made of discarded polyester socks scientifically? Please use imperical facts and tests.
Ah I see. If some publication is wrong at least once they can never be right again.
Right after 9/11 all air traffic was halted int he US for three days. During those days there was a measurable difference in the diurnal temprature variations due to lack of contrails.
There is no question that human activity effects the atmosphere.
If global warming is happening and it's bad then we should change our behavior to minimize or reverse the effect even if we are not the cause of it.
Some science relies on deductive logic some science relies on inductive reasoning derived from observation.
The fact that you and crighton would lump global warming and little green men shows how little you both understand sciences like biology and meteorology.
Global warming is a theory which is undergoing testing as we speak. Hundreds of scientists are working to either prove it or disprove it. To lump these people with UFO nuts is just insane and insulting.
"I've never understood either the greens or the far right. Why can't I have cheap energy, a high standard of living, and a clean environment?"
Because there is no such thing as free lunch and there is not an infinate amount of anything in the world.
Like it or not the economy is nothing more then converting natural resources into money. Natural resources are finite therefore it's a zero sum game.
Even productivity (which at first glance seems infinate) requires humans who eat, shit and need to be sheltered and machinery which requires materials and energy.
"(Who's G.W.?)"
George W. Bush.
"The above scenario, while I know you meant it as a cartoon rather than a serious possibility, better describes the attitude toward labor under Chinese socialism ("there will always be more") than it does the attitude of any capitalist I've met."
Alas I have heard this exact argument more then once on tv and right here on slashdot. Most hardcore capitalists eventually point to the fact the cost of materials is cheaper to indicate that there are no supply problems.
"Besides which, imperfect as they are, market-centric systems cannot afford to ignore future supplies of whatever they're dealing in, from oil to 30lb bond printer paper."
ALmost nobody looks further ahead then a year or two. When we are down to two years worth of trees we are in big trouble.
Yea. Zero tolerance and all that.
Did Adam Smith ever talk of trees or clean water? No he did not. It simply did not occur to him that we might one day run out of either substance.
"it's that capitalism assumes scarce resources with imperfect but real fungibility (and inevitable but minimizable tradeoffs) which makes money-based exchanges the least friction-bound way to allocate them."
Not quite true. Capitalism measures the rate at which natural materials are extracted but not the rate at which they are restored. In other words capitalism has no way of measuring sustainibility until it's too late. Let me illustrate with an example.
Let's say that G.W decided that trees cause pollution and ordered all forests logged. The market would be flooded with wood and the price of wood would drop down to nothing. At that point a capitalism would say "the price of wood keeps decreasing so that must mean there are more trees in the world, in fact I predict that in 6 months there will be infinate amount of trees in the world". You see these kinds of arguments all the time "the price of such and such is going down so there must not be a shortage". They are measuring the rate of extraction not long term sustainability.
I once saw Milton Friedman talking about pollution with Charlie Rose and he said "if my shirt gets dirty from pollution then I can sue the factory" (something to that effect). It never occured to him that pollution might cause a deformed baby or cancer. To him pollution means getting his brooks brothers suit cleaned more often.
"What was certainly unfair is (If I remember correctly) that SA refused to let him respond for about a year, and even then only let him use one page, when a rebuttle to his rebuttle was many pages and in the same issue. "
Well he wrote an entire book espousing his point of view I don't think he needs a few pages in scientific american to further explain his position do you? What else does he have to say that's not in his book or his web site? I find it weird that scientific american only allocated a few pages to rebut a book that was hundreds of pages long.
"Crichton claims that the public believes in things like Global Warming and Nuclear Winter for the same reasons that it believes in little green men."
Really? What an odd claim to make. There is lots of evidence for global warming and many studies have been done on it. Maybe the evidence is not conclusive but it exists and is widespread.
Lumping global warming with little green men seems like the stupidest thing I have heard in a long time.
BTW over 90% of americans believe in god. If that's not a failure of science to act as a candle in the dark I don't know what is.
"Lomborg's book has 2 930 footnotes which allows you to fact check every single assertion that he makes. I've never seen that level of detail from the environmentalist movement and I speak as someone who has read more than just their pamphlets."
Are they disputing the individual facts or the conclusions drawn from those facts? Is it possible that the facts he footnoted have been found to be questionable upon further review?
I remember reading that many of the facts he talked about were from flawed studies, maybe that's the problem. Did he knowingly choose the studies that advanced his pet theory while ignoring studies that might raise doubt? If so then he deserves to be rebuked don't you think?
"I call myself an environmentalist and I'm certainly concerned about the possibility of a human effect on climate change, but the more the issue gets turned into a matter of theology they may not be questioned, the more skeptical I get about the whole thing. "
In this case there are billons of dollars at stake. If global warming is real then entire industries will have to change the way they function. None of these people want to spend one more dime then they have to so its in their interest to turn this issue into a theological/idelogical war.
It is inevitable that the global warming issue will be turned into a matter theology. In a way it strikes at the soft underbelly of the theory of capitalism. That being the environmental impact of large scale economic growth. The founders of capitalism never took into account the impact of their theories would have on the global environment because they presumed there would be an infinate aount of trees, energy, clean water, air etc.
The stakes are huge and the war will be bloody however it is also inevitable. This war will be fought whether we like it not. Nobody knows who is going to win but there will be many losers. As in any war however the truth will be the first casualty.
There was an issue of scientific American where several respected scientists picked apart the book pointing out it's flaws is theory and conclusions.
It might be worth a read for people looking for more information on this subject.
"The sales/marketing people made quite a large mention about the SCO suit making it sound like a forgone conclusion that Linux would be dead in a matter of months."
that's pretty typical MS FUD mongering. According to them Novell, Apple, and Borland etc have all been 6 months away from death for years now.
I wonder how anybody takes anything MS says seriously anymore.
""If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, not in prison..." "
If I was Howard Dean I would answer "so". I mean really what difference does that make to me?
Does anybody know why they didn't implement something like LIDS?
"Filing a lawsuit is legal.. trying to extort money from clients and others with no firm legal standing other than 'we say its so' is not."
It's perfectly legal. These guys paid 10 million in legal fees you think they would do something illegal?
In the US the rich don't break laws. If they want to do something and it's illegal they get the laws changed to make it legal.
"If IBM sells you Linux, and indemifies you against a lawsuit (insuring that you won't be out the money,) then why doesn't this guy?"
IBM does not do that. HP and MS offer indemnity but only against one particular kind of lawsuit from one particular company regarding one particular thing. Here is the best part. Their imdemnity only covers the cost of the OS. Yes you read that right.
"If this guy is so certain that no lawsuit will ever happen, or stick, then why does he refuse to put that in writing?"
He should. He should say that if SCO ever sues them he will give them back the cost of the OS just like HP and MS. In this case the CIO is a retard so he will sign it. It's easy to fool retarted CIOs like that and he should definately take advantage of the retard and milk him like the cash cow that he is. Just give him a free OS. If SCO sues him then reimburse him the zero dollars.
"I'm not saying the hotel chain is right or wrong, I'm just pointing out what their thinking might just be."
I am saying they are wrong. More then that I am saying they are incapable of running a business because they don't know how to assess risk. I want their names so I can make sure I don't have any of their stock.
"When is a nice federal prosecutor going to knock on SCO's door and arrest someone?"
Never. Everything SCO is doing is 100% legal. That's the state of American Law today.
"1: They can. Just not from him."
No they can't. The best they can get is some sort of indemnity against a particular lawsuit from SCO but that's it. They can't get insurance that IBM will sue them or that I will sue them.
"2: Upon hearing, in response to 'will you guarentee that we won't be sued,' such a negative response, what would YOU think?"
I would think that I am dealing with an idiot. That's why I want the name of the hotel chain. their CIO is a total and absolute idiot. This guy thinks that he can get a guarantee that he won't be sued.
Please let me know the name of this company. I want to make sure I don't have any stock in a company whose management thinks that.
1) they can buy insurance against some random entity from suing them.
2) Is that uninformed about the SCO case.
A company run by people who are unable to routine risk assessment like this is already in big trouble if you ask me.
Ask a friend. Go to the local linux users group and ask a stranger.
One of the reasons Linux is so much fun to use is the community. Your local linux user group will not only provide you a CD they will install and configure it for you too.
Not only will you get a "free" operating system you'll make some friends too.