Not really. It's just stealing from the normal force which the Earth would exert against your feet anyway. So the Earth pushes back less against you (because it's the tiles doing the pushing) and the energy difference is harnessed by the tiles and converted to electrochemical energy. The force you exert on the ground is mg (mass times gravity). That doesn't change if you're standing on a concrete tile or if you're standing on a spring. The work to compress the spring is being done by gravity not you. You're just the mass.
Assange needs a pardon - after all he only exists because mainstream media has given up on the whole "investigative journalism" thing to keep government honest. He doesn't steal secrets, he just publishes leaks. It's ridiculous to blame the messenger. But Snowden and Manning - not going to happen. While I know Snowden says he's a whistleblower and to some extent this is true - there is blowing the whistle and there is chucking a stick of dynamite in a gunpowder factory. I doubt he'll ever be pardoned if only for the fact that politicians will never willingly sacrifice a handy scapegoat.
computers are so smart... we must all believe the computer!
How about - algorithm sorts scientists according to what the programmer thought was most relevant.
On the other hand when a criminal uses the trans-canada highway to make a get-away in a red minivan it doesn't make sense to say that people in red minivans can never use the highway again.
Prove that it dropped because of price and not because of education about the perils of smoking. When I was a kid everyone (including myself) smoked. I quit because I had a heart attack (at 28), not because I couldn't afford it. It was expensive, but I still paid it.
Same thing in latin america. When you leave the city, almost every country peasant has his own still, or buys from his neighbor. Taxation works in theory. On paper people just cheat, so it looks like sales have fallen but they're just bypassing your data channel. Just like narcotics. The percentage of a country's population that uses drugs is around 3%. Making them legal or illegal has NO IMPACT on this figure.
However, you also have a pretty nihilist attitude on this
Not really. Humans tend to think punitively. How can I make people obey. Force them. Punish them. I'd like to think the other way. What if somehow we could figure out how to reward those who choose to abstain from breeding. Reward them either with status, wealth, privilege or a combination of all. Then our collective need - reducing our population footprint - can be addressed in a morally acceptable way. Don't punish people for having kids with fines or mandatory sterilization or worse - like has been tried in the past. Educate people as to why it's necessary to reduce our vast numbers and then reward those who willingly make this sacrifice. I think it's possible but it requires a rethink of our priorities as a society.
Then you only need to ratchet up the taxes until they are meaningful.
Easily said. But THEN you need guys to make sure people are paying their taxes and not cheating. And you need guys with guns to enforce compliance. And you need jails and consequences for those who were caught.... etc etc. There are ALWAYS hidden economic costs.
I argue for investing on the other end. Instead of imposing tax and dictating what people are "allowed" to do, you could EDUCATE people so they understand WHY they shouldn't do it. But of course this is a long term project that delivers results in generations and only if it's done properly and consistently. Taxes pretend to deliver immediate results, but don't. They deliver tax cheats, smuggling, etc.
There won't be complaints, there will be gang warfare. If you make something prohibitively expensive it's just as effective as outright banning it. Look at what happened with cigarette taxes. All of a sudden you have people stealing container-loads of cigarettes, counterfeit cigarettes, people killing each other for cigarettes. When I was a kid and a carton of cigarettes was under $5, this didn't happen.
Except economists deal with graphs and numbers. Oh their science claims to be about "aggregate human behavior" but they are far removed from humanity. Tax is an imposition. There is the assumption that laws and taxes are inviolable and complied with. Understanding human nature tells us that taxes encourage people to cheat and avoid. So while an economist might argue for taxation, someone who understands actual people would argue for EDUCATION (or even indoctrination). Better to convince people WHY something is necessary than to pretend you can enforce people to "comply".
If no one were allowed to profit from making garbage, no one would waste time selling it.
True. But this would require re-working the economic models of our societies and re-educating our consumers. For example how can you have a society that discourages innovation (via a patent system) and yet penalizes less sophisticated products? If I make the best widgets and tomorrow you come out with a way to make better widgets then you have just put me out of business if you don't allow me to immediately upgrade my process and improve my widgets - since my product is now an inferior product.
And yet still, this is all just a rationing system. Resources are finite. Human expansion is infinite (or at least can theoretically reach the critical point where remaining resources per capita are simply no longer sufficient to sustain life). Rationing can help stretch out resources - as can technology. Slowing down the population growth rate can help us survive longer in time. But ultimately we are doomed as long as our growth rate is positive.
Heck we're doomed in all cases, but population is the more immediate problem. I don't care what the statistics say because statistics are political tools. I take a more empirical approach: When I was a kid there were almost 4 billion people in the world. Now we're closer to 8. You can argue percentages and rates and everything but reality is, we are doubling in size every 40 years or so. This is not sustainable. If we're affecting global temperature now and have been for some time according to AGW pundits, we won't be affecting it less in 40 years with 16 billion people. Taxes will not avoid the fact that people need to eat, people need to work, and people need to travel from A to B to do those things.
I realize I may not be the most effective communicator, and I am quite the cynic. Ultimately all our environmental problems are a consequence of our massive human population. Anything you propose is merely a rationing system, nothing more. Rationing does not solve problems therefore I hate seeing it portrayed as a solution. The ONLY solution is reducing the size of our population. There are ways to do that involuntarily at huge moral and ethical cost via war, hydraulic despotism, or just out and out murder. And there are ways to do it voluntarily and morally, through education - teaching people why it's important that many should abstain from breeding and encouraging them to abstain.
Unfortunately we live in a world where our leaders feel that investing in bombs and jet fighters is far more worthwhile in terms of return on investment than education. So for all you propose, and for all you complain - nothing is going to change - even under a rationing system.
And then you have conservative idiots who like to loathe over the poor masses and overpopulation but are against birth control and abortions because every sperm is sacred.
Except you're completely wrong. See - you're arguing with yourself, not me. You don't know me. First I don't loathe the poor. In fact I have probably done much more to help the poor than you have. I also live in Latin America where poverty is MUCH more serious and widespread. In the US poverty is not being able to buy things. In Latin America poverty is about not being able to eat.
And second, I am absolutely not against birth control (reading failure, I stated that have a vasectomy and limited the number of kids I have. My wife takes contraceptives. That's birth control.). As a physician I AM against abortion as a form of birth control, however I recognize that in some cases it is better to terminate a pregnancy than to allow it to reach term with horrendous malformations or tremendous health risk to the mother. I think there are times when abortion is justified but there is a huge moral risk if abortion is made "too easy" that it becomes a solution just because someone is too lazy to use a condom or take birth control pills. And I am an atheist - by the way. Whoops - see how wrong you can be?
It doesn't make it ok, but it makes it unrealistic to think that saying "why don't people just stop killing each other" will do anything at all. Heck, people know that they will go to jail or even be executed and they still do it. It's not that it's ok. It's you are wasting your time crying over spilled milk. I'm a cynical sob and a realist. I'm not going to pretend to be a better man than I am by saying impossible things.
We could build things to last and keep them longer.
That fixes a problem with GARBAGE. How will you magically build these durable things without producing CO2? You still need to build the factories that build these durable things, and build the things themselves. Plus entropy works against you - there's no such thing as a product that will last forever.
We could use more insulation so that we use less heating oil.
That insulation has to be manufactured. It has to be shipped to where you need it. It has to be installed.
While you are suggesting techniques that would "stretch" our resources if they were even possible, this merely postpones the problem. As long as the population growth rate remains POSITIVE, we are inevitably going to hit the wall one way or another. Since killing millions or even billions of people is not an acceptable solution to our morality (unless their invisible sky wizard says something offensive about our invisible sky wizard), this problem is one we are irreversibly stuck with no matter what we do - especially IF we have already crossed this mysterious threshold that sends our planet into an irreversible plunge into greenhouse mode.
Right now the primary driver is greed.
Assuming you are not living in a hippy commune in the woods somewhere (and you're not, because you're using a computer and connected to the internet) you are guilty of that very same greed. Greed for the convenience of modern life. It's easy to blame it all on "the corporations" or "the 1%", but in reality we are to blame. You. Me. Each and every one of us. After all, if no one bought the products, no one would waste time selling them...
I realize this. I have two children with my first wife. My second wife chose not to have any which is fine because I got a vasectomy after the birth of my second anyway. I always felt I was entitled to replacement - a child for each parent, but that more kids was unreasonable in a modern technological world - and expensive to boot. So between my first and second marriages I've had below replacement value of children, on average.
But there are people who feel that it's not a problem or worse, that it's some sort of divine mandate to have as many children as they possibly can. Worldwide the global population is still exploding especially in the poorer countries. And unfortunately politicians panic, for very selfish reasons, when they see their country's fertility rates plummet (as is normal as high socio-economic development is attained). This doesn't work when you're running deficits and trying desperately to grow your tax base to make up shortfalls. So you import foreigners from poor countries to breed and keep your fertility rate HIGH. And then you complain about all the pollution, and how water has to be rationed because the water table is disappearing, etc...
Slowing down population growth only postpones the inevitable. It does not avoid it. IF global warming is anthropogenic then it is a direct function of population size. The more people there are, the more goods have to be produced, the more land has to be farmed, the more pollution is created. But there is only ONE way to reduce population size in anything less than a period of thousands of years. Any volunteers?
I like the depth of your argument. You made a couple interesting points. I'm so glad you wasted electricity and increased global warming to let us all know your point of view... Which is exactly the whole point. IF global warming is anthropogenic - WE ARE FUCKED. Sticking a carbon tax is like putting a toll on a toilet at a bar and expecting that people will stop peeing.
Let's push the true cost of our ignorance down to our kids and our kid's kids.
We've been doing this since the dawn of time. Why are you acting shocked? Besides, if this is such a concern to you do us all a favor and remove yourself and your offspring from this planet.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really. It's just stealing from the normal force which the Earth would exert against your feet anyway. So the Earth pushes back less against you (because it's the tiles doing the pushing) and the energy difference is harnessed by the tiles and converted to electrochemical energy. The force you exert on the ground is mg (mass times gravity). That doesn't change if you're standing on a concrete tile or if you're standing on a spring. The work to compress the spring is being done by gravity not you. You're just the mass.
And I mock the German police if people are running around with explosives. Way to miss the point.
And divorce lawyers.
It's not arbitrary it's becau
Assange needs a pardon - after all he only exists because mainstream media has given up on the whole "investigative journalism" thing to keep government honest. He doesn't steal secrets, he just publishes leaks. It's ridiculous to blame the messenger. But Snowden and Manning - not going to happen. While I know Snowden says he's a whistleblower and to some extent this is true - there is blowing the whistle and there is chucking a stick of dynamite in a gunpowder factory. I doubt he'll ever be pardoned if only for the fact that politicians will never willingly sacrifice a handy scapegoat.
computers are so smart... we must all believe the computer! How about - algorithm sorts scientists according to what the programmer thought was most relevant.
On the other hand when a criminal uses the trans-canada highway to make a get-away in a red minivan it doesn't make sense to say that people in red minivans can never use the highway again.
Prove that it dropped because of price and not because of education about the perils of smoking. When I was a kid everyone (including myself) smoked. I quit because I had a heart attack (at 28), not because I couldn't afford it. It was expensive, but I still paid it.
Same thing in latin america. When you leave the city, almost every country peasant has his own still, or buys from his neighbor. Taxation works in theory. On paper people just cheat, so it looks like sales have fallen but they're just bypassing your data channel. Just like narcotics. The percentage of a country's population that uses drugs is around 3%. Making them legal or illegal has NO IMPACT on this figure.
However, you also have a pretty nihilist attitude on this
Not really. Humans tend to think punitively. How can I make people obey. Force them. Punish them. I'd like to think the other way. What if somehow we could figure out how to reward those who choose to abstain from breeding. Reward them either with status, wealth, privilege or a combination of all. Then our collective need - reducing our population footprint - can be addressed in a morally acceptable way. Don't punish people for having kids with fines or mandatory sterilization or worse - like has been tried in the past. Educate people as to why it's necessary to reduce our vast numbers and then reward those who willingly make this sacrifice. I think it's possible but it requires a rethink of our priorities as a society.
Yeah, they'll piss outside the the bathroom. Right next to the toll collector. You just don't know humans as well as I do.
Then you only need to ratchet up the taxes until they are meaningful.
Easily said. But THEN you need guys to make sure people are paying their taxes and not cheating. And you need guys with guns to enforce compliance. And you need jails and consequences for those who were caught.... etc etc. There are ALWAYS hidden economic costs.
I argue for investing on the other end. Instead of imposing tax and dictating what people are "allowed" to do, you could EDUCATE people so they understand WHY they shouldn't do it. But of course this is a long term project that delivers results in generations and only if it's done properly and consistently. Taxes pretend to deliver immediate results, but don't. They deliver tax cheats, smuggling, etc.
There won't be complaints, there will be gang warfare. If you make something prohibitively expensive it's just as effective as outright banning it. Look at what happened with cigarette taxes. All of a sudden you have people stealing container-loads of cigarettes, counterfeit cigarettes, people killing each other for cigarettes. When I was a kid and a carton of cigarettes was under $5, this didn't happen.
Except economists deal with graphs and numbers. Oh their science claims to be about "aggregate human behavior" but they are far removed from humanity. Tax is an imposition. There is the assumption that laws and taxes are inviolable and complied with. Understanding human nature tells us that taxes encourage people to cheat and avoid. So while an economist might argue for taxation, someone who understands actual people would argue for EDUCATION (or even indoctrination). Better to convince people WHY something is necessary than to pretend you can enforce people to "comply".
It's the internet. I have thick skin :)
If no one were allowed to profit from making garbage, no one would waste time selling it.
True. But this would require re-working the economic models of our societies and re-educating our consumers. For example how can you have a society that discourages innovation (via a patent system) and yet penalizes less sophisticated products? If I make the best widgets and tomorrow you come out with a way to make better widgets then you have just put me out of business if you don't allow me to immediately upgrade my process and improve my widgets - since my product is now an inferior product.
And yet still, this is all just a rationing system. Resources are finite. Human expansion is infinite (or at least can theoretically reach the critical point where remaining resources per capita are simply no longer sufficient to sustain life). Rationing can help stretch out resources - as can technology. Slowing down the population growth rate can help us survive longer in time. But ultimately we are doomed as long as our growth rate is positive.
Heck we're doomed in all cases, but population is the more immediate problem. I don't care what the statistics say because statistics are political tools. I take a more empirical approach: When I was a kid there were almost 4 billion people in the world. Now we're closer to 8. You can argue percentages and rates and everything but reality is, we are doubling in size every 40 years or so. This is not sustainable. If we're affecting global temperature now and have been for some time according to AGW pundits, we won't be affecting it less in 40 years with 16 billion people. Taxes will not avoid the fact that people need to eat, people need to work, and people need to travel from A to B to do those things.
Are those really the ones you intended to make?
I realize I may not be the most effective communicator, and I am quite the cynic. Ultimately all our environmental problems are a consequence of our massive human population. Anything you propose is merely a rationing system, nothing more. Rationing does not solve problems therefore I hate seeing it portrayed as a solution. The ONLY solution is reducing the size of our population. There are ways to do that involuntarily at huge moral and ethical cost via war, hydraulic despotism, or just out and out murder. And there are ways to do it voluntarily and morally, through education - teaching people why it's important that many should abstain from breeding and encouraging them to abstain.
Unfortunately we live in a world where our leaders feel that investing in bombs and jet fighters is far more worthwhile in terms of return on investment than education. So for all you propose, and for all you complain - nothing is going to change - even under a rationing system.
And then you have conservative idiots who like to loathe over the poor masses and overpopulation but are against birth control and abortions because every sperm is sacred.
Except you're completely wrong. See - you're arguing with yourself, not me. You don't know me. First I don't loathe the poor. In fact I have probably done much more to help the poor than you have. I also live in Latin America where poverty is MUCH more serious and widespread. In the US poverty is not being able to buy things. In Latin America poverty is about not being able to eat.
And second, I am absolutely not against birth control (reading failure, I stated that have a vasectomy and limited the number of kids I have. My wife takes contraceptives. That's birth control.). As a physician I AM against abortion as a form of birth control, however I recognize that in some cases it is better to terminate a pregnancy than to allow it to reach term with horrendous malformations or tremendous health risk to the mother. I think there are times when abortion is justified but there is a huge moral risk if abortion is made "too easy" that it becomes a solution just because someone is too lazy to use a condom or take birth control pills. And I am an atheist - by the way. Whoops - see how wrong you can be?
Do you feel better now?
It doesn't make it ok, but it makes it unrealistic to think that saying "why don't people just stop killing each other" will do anything at all. Heck, people know that they will go to jail or even be executed and they still do it. It's not that it's ok. It's you are wasting your time crying over spilled milk. I'm a cynical sob and a realist. I'm not going to pretend to be a better man than I am by saying impossible things.
We could build things to last and keep them longer.
That fixes a problem with GARBAGE. How will you magically build these durable things without producing CO2? You still need to build the factories that build these durable things, and build the things themselves. Plus entropy works against you - there's no such thing as a product that will last forever.
We could use more insulation so that we use less heating oil.
That insulation has to be manufactured. It has to be shipped to where you need it. It has to be installed.
While you are suggesting techniques that would "stretch" our resources if they were even possible, this merely postpones the problem. As long as the population growth rate remains POSITIVE, we are inevitably going to hit the wall one way or another. Since killing millions or even billions of people is not an acceptable solution to our morality (unless their invisible sky wizard says something offensive about our invisible sky wizard), this problem is one we are irreversibly stuck with no matter what we do - especially IF we have already crossed this mysterious threshold that sends our planet into an irreversible plunge into greenhouse mode.
Right now the primary driver is greed.
Assuming you are not living in a hippy commune in the woods somewhere (and you're not, because you're using a computer and connected to the internet) you are guilty of that very same greed. Greed for the convenience of modern life. It's easy to blame it all on "the corporations" or "the 1%", but in reality we are to blame. You. Me. Each and every one of us. After all, if no one bought the products, no one would waste time selling them...
I realize this. I have two children with my first wife. My second wife chose not to have any which is fine because I got a vasectomy after the birth of my second anyway. I always felt I was entitled to replacement - a child for each parent, but that more kids was unreasonable in a modern technological world - and expensive to boot. So between my first and second marriages I've had below replacement value of children, on average.
But there are people who feel that it's not a problem or worse, that it's some sort of divine mandate to have as many children as they possibly can. Worldwide the global population is still exploding especially in the poorer countries. And unfortunately politicians panic, for very selfish reasons, when they see their country's fertility rates plummet (as is normal as high socio-economic development is attained). This doesn't work when you're running deficits and trying desperately to grow your tax base to make up shortfalls. So you import foreigners from poor countries to breed and keep your fertility rate HIGH. And then you complain about all the pollution, and how water has to be rationed because the water table is disappearing, etc...
Slowing down population growth only postpones the inevitable. It does not avoid it. IF global warming is anthropogenic then it is a direct function of population size. The more people there are, the more goods have to be produced, the more land has to be farmed, the more pollution is created. But there is only ONE way to reduce population size in anything less than a period of thousands of years. Any volunteers?
I like the depth of your argument. You made a couple interesting points. I'm so glad you wasted electricity and increased global warming to let us all know your point of view... Which is exactly the whole point. IF global warming is anthropogenic - WE ARE FUCKED. Sticking a carbon tax is like putting a toll on a toilet at a bar and expecting that people will stop peeing.
Let's push the true cost of our ignorance down to our kids and our kid's kids.
We've been doing this since the dawn of time. Why are you acting shocked? Besides, if this is such a concern to you do us all a favor and remove yourself and your offspring from this planet.