I agree with you that the single distributor model is unfair. But your anti-government ranting is off base. It is, in fact, the people of the state of Georgia who have decided to distribute beer this way. Your beef is with the people of Georgia not with the institution of government. Governments allow us to do things collectively that are impossible for individuals to accomplish and unprofitable for corporations to invest in (transportation, fire and police protection, justice, etc.) These are necessary things for a functioning society. Government (ostensibly) is the process by which the people express their will for a workable society. Most government is, however, currently broken due to neglect, misplaced animosity (you do realize you oppose your own power when you oppose government, right), and corporate meddling.
But, as a scientist, I am severely disappointed when other scientists (let alone journalists or Greenpeace) take an unfinished scientific debate and use it to propose sweeping changes in our lives...
Are you sure you're a scientist? Most scientific theories are continually debated and the debates are never finished. There will never be certainty on this issue. That's the nature of scientific theories. Playing the uncertainty card is the tactic of corporate spin-meisters who are content to drag this issue out while they continue to sell our future livelihood away.
What is certain, though, is that we are changing the composition of our atmosphere. There's no uncertainty about that. The effects of those atmospheric changes are up for debate, so maybe in the meantime we should try not to experiment on the only atmosphere we have.
Here's my plan: Take a big wire, put one end in the cold past, and the other end in the hot future....
Whoa! You just invented the Trans-Temporal Atmospheric Sterling Engine. Once you begin construction, I'm going to follow the wire that leads to the past and patent the idea. Unless...you've already laid the wire that leads to the future and you knew I was going to post this so you've already patented it. Damn you!
All those stocks, bonds, and commercial real estate holdings, are the rich using their wealth in ways that create jobs for people in a sustainable way.
Less and less sustainable as the majority of the people (the economy's circulatory system) have less and less wealth to drive the economy. When people don't spend the wealthy don't invest. That's the achiles heel of supply-side trickle-down economics.
What's more -- a large difference between the wealthy and the rest of us is like a large voltage difference in a pair of conductors. The greater the difference, the more extreme the spark. I can feel the hair starting to rise now. Better build more prisons and stronger gates on those gated communities.
And what if they got there by rigging the system and pulling the strings of their political puppets?
Leftist ideology holds axiomatically that one can only obtain more property than another through "greed" and "exploitation".
So? What's that have to do with me or anything I said? Excuse me while I clean up some of this straw from that man you were pounding on there.
...what if those 90% control only that little because they are varying degrees of deadbeats and losers?
You can't possibly believe that 90% of the people in the wealthiest nation (by far) in the world are deadbeats and losers. Oh, man. You've got to be kidding on that one. Way to appeal to the common man. Are you running for office or something?
Perhaps these people are not as smart and hard-working as the people above them, so they are rewarded with a smaller piece of the pie.
You need to go back and reread my argument on that one. These 9% control more than twice as much wealth than the bottom 90%. If you combine the top 1% with the second 9% you get the top 10% controlling 83% of the wealth -- highly concentrated at the top of that 10%.
We already know that Leftists want to transfer stuff from those who have earned it to those who have not. Too bad we have those pesky property rights in the way, right?
There's that straw man again. But you're neglecting the fact that what's underway right now is a vast transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top. Those who have wealth are finding more and more ways to strip mine the populace for the bits of gold in their pockets. They use their political puppets to rig the deck in their favor.
Don't forget that all capital comes from labor. If the people at the top are getting wealthier then that means the people doing the labor are getting proportionately less reward for that labor. (That can be seen in the higher productivity statistics the government is measuring - higher productivity means more product for equal or lesser labor cost.) When people realize they're not getting a fair deal in the labor/capital equation they will start to demand more. This has happened before. It was the reason for the labor wars in the 1920's and 30's. People in a society must believe they're getting a fair shake or the whole game falls apart. A stable society is essential for wealth to grow. If the wealthy want to continue to be wealthy, they would be wise to invest in a stable and just society. Without that, wealth will have no value.
No they weren't! DUH!! How thick is your skull? It's not illegal for an accounting firm to play "find the money" for a corporation that instructs it to do so. It's not illegal for the same firm to provide accounting services and auditing to a corporation. It should be -- it used to be -- but it isn't now. The glories of deregulation.
Arthur Anderson was found guilty of obstruction of justice because they shredded documents related to the Enron case after the shit hit the fan. Yes, obstruction of justice is illegal and, yes, they were punished for that. But conflict of interest is still legal and it still encourages accounting firms to help corporations cheat. And it's still funny that you called the accounting firms "independant."
Oh? So how come the richest 5% pay, what is it, 40% of all income taxes?
What, you think that's fair? You're leaving out some important information regarding those elite individuals. The numbers I have indicate that the richest 1% control more than 47% of the wealth in this country. That's more than the entire bottom 90% combined who control only 17%. Ninety percent of people in this country control only seventeen percent of the wealth while the top one percent controls almost half. Think about that for a second. What's more, the next nine percent of the wealthiest people control more than 35 percent of the wealth. That's still more than double what the bottom 90 percent controls. (Source, where's yours?)
So if the richest five percent are paying 40% of the taxes, they're getting off cheap.
Why the hell should we change the rules? Arthur Anderson broke the rules, and they were punished. The existing rules were sufficient. Just because somebody breaks the rules doesn't mean they need to be changed.
OK. If you insist on being naive and dense... Arthur Anderson was not only providing auditing services for Enron. They were also providing other financial services and consulting. This is a conflict of interest in that it encouraged them to hide information from Enron's board of directors that indicated Enron was cheating. The more squirrelly Enron's books became, the more money AA made by helping them hide it. (Not that Enron's board would have done anything anyway -- they were just as crooked.)
Nothing has been done about this conflict. Auditing firms are still allowed to provide other financial services that they then turn around and audit. That's what needs to be changed, Pollyanna.
Most citizens' financial information is already known by the government. Working people pay taxes through paycheck withholding. The only ones who can cheat on their taxes in any significant way are corporations who are basically on the honor system when it comes to paying taxes these days. That's who this kind of system is designed to detect. Don't believe the hype. Working people are being ripped off by corporate tax cheats. The tax burden is being shifted to the middle and upper-middle classes while the elites get off scott free.
I merely say that given what they have chosen, I can approximate how they value the environment relative to consumer goods.
You can do nothing of the sort. As I pointed out, the price of those consumer goods does not accurately reflect the cost that their production has on the environment. If those costs are not included then the consumer can't accurately weigh the value of that product versus his survival on the planet. This cost is not only invisible to the consumer, it is consciously hidden by the manufacturer, wherever possible, so that the consumer can't weigh the true cost even if he was willing and able to perform the exhaustive research that would require. You're totally ignoring the effects of consumer ignorance and manufacturer mendacity on the market.
I want you to be honest with yourself. Everything you do or buy creates an implicit tradeoff between your desire for consumer goods and some degree of environmental degradation. EVERYTHING!
I can prove you wrong there with a simple example -- Wild Blackberries. I can buy those from a collector without causing environmental degradation. Driftwood is another example. There's no doubt in my mind, however, that most consumer goods I purchase produce some environmental degradation. I wish that wasn't so but I wasn't consulted when our economic system was created and I am forced to live within the system that others have created poorly. Unfortunately, I'm unable to weigh the true value of many of those goods due to the lack of accurate accounting of environmental costs in those products' prices. You are the one who is not being honest with yourself when you avert your eyes from the lack of the accurate inclusion of environmental costs in product pricing. If you want to go the hypocricy route, you'd better check your own.
And since you are reading/., it is clear that you purchase environmentally destroying electricity at the very least.
Believe me. I live in a coal-producing state. I've seen environmental destruction first-hand that you can't even imagine. It's part of what has shaped my beliefs. Coal production is the king of socializing it's costs onto a poor population while it takes its profits and runs away from any responsibility for the destruction it causes. I want electricity prices to accurately reflect those costs so that I, and everyone else purchasing it, will make choices based on accurate information. As things stand now, most electricity buyers have no idea what they are doing to appalachian people. It's hideous and disgusting and people laugh at them while they perpetuate the very causes of their misery. You should all be extremely ashamed of yourselves for treating US citizens as a third-world energy sacrifice colony.
As for myself, I do all I can to reduce my electricity usage. This post is being produced on a VIA EPIA platform which I chose precisely because it was the lowest power PC I could find through extensive research. Were electricity accurately priced, all PCs and all other electricity-consuming appliances would already be maximally energy efficient due to consumer demand and my research would have been unnecessary. Further, by inaccurately under-pricing coal, alternative forms of electricity production seem overpriced by comparison. This prevents them from gaining a foothold in the electricity market and further distorts supply and demand forces that would bring down their costs to where they wouldn't be so "alternative" anymore. Wind and solar power are getting cock-blocked by the market manipulation of greedy, environment-raping coal mining corporations and consumers don't see the true costs or consequences. Don't sit in your ivory tower lecturing me with your purist economic theories when you aren't making the effort to look below the surface to see what's really happening down here in the real world. My power to make choices is limited to the choices you and your brilliant elitist cronies force on me and everyone else who doesn't ply the ivory towers of corporate greed and power. So who's forcing choices on whom again?
So basically you believe that your ethical system should rule the day.
No, I believe that Earth's ethical system should rule the day. She's had a lot more practice running things than you or I have.
You live on a planet with 6+ billion other people and your beliefs and needs are not going to prevail over the rest of us -- especially those without jobs in developing countries.
But you would have yourbeliefs prevail over those of us who would prefer not to live in our own filth. Our environment is a common resource. When you decide to trade it away to make a buck you're making a decision that takes away my right and ability to live free from wallowing in filth. You might be able to afford to temporarily buy your way to a place above all of it, but like all pyramid schemes, those at the bottom get screwed. Your crocodile tears for "those without jobs in developing countries" don't cover your disrespect for their cultures and ways of life. Chasing the almighty dollar may not be their choice but you would force it on them. The happiest faces seem to be on those who live farthest from industrialized society -- the deepest furrows on those condemned to work for pennies supporting your wasteful, consumer-driven lifestyle.
Economic thinking is one way of trying to decide where the optimal tradeoff between the environment and other goods lies. It is based on measuring the willingness of human beings to give up environmental quality for other things they also desire.
That's where our thinking diverges. What other goods could possibly be worth trading away our life-support system. How much money would you take to have someone hold you under water for fifteen minutes? There's just no trade off value that makes sense. We just don't realize yet that our current system doesn't make sense for the same reason. It's a fools trade made with Mephistopheles.
There are other ethical systems where fish, say, have rights, but these systems are not well accepted by either the legal system or by most other people.
You've apparently misunderstood my analogy. It wasn't a call for fish rights. We are the fish and the water in the analogy is the global environment we share.
And remember, (as per the title of this thread) everything carries a cost.
Yes, exactly! And my point was that we are not currently accounting for or paying that cost. We're dumping the cost onto poor countries and on all of our descendants.
Your demands for a perfect environment will cost millions of people their livelihood.They're not my demands, they are nature's. Enforcement is unavoidable. Make no mistake about it. She works on a longer time scale than we do so we think we're getting away with it currently. And your demands (or your "economy" as it may be) will cost millions of people their lives. The "fish" in my earlier example can't trade away his water for more food or a better rock to hide in or a better mate. The "water" is an non-negotiable requirement. What good will those things do him if his life is unsustainable? What good will your SUV or your McMansion be when the atmosphere is unhealthy to breathe and global food production can't keep up with demand? Out-of-sight-Out-of-mind is a poor type of economy. The bill will eventually come due.
6+ billion people cannot live on this planet the way you want them to. Nor should they be forced to anymore than you should be forced to completely give up your desires for environmental quality.
But you would force me and the other six billion people to completely give up the only environment we have that is capable of supporting us so that you can continue your short-sighted, greedy, mad rush for consumer goods and monetary power. It's so odd, and I guess symptomatic, that you could see my view as a desire to force my beliefs on others when I would like to see the natural conditions that created us and our
You have missed the point. You are one of those who highly values environmental goods.
No, you have missed the point. Please explain to me what environmental "goods" are. I'm afraid I don't recognize our common environment as a "good" to be traded as a commodity in a market-based system.
Take the example of the fish. Water is his environment. To the fish, water is a constant and must remain a constant. It can't be tampered with or the fish dies. He can't start altering it without reducing his ability to survive and thrive. We also depend on our environment to survive and thrive so our environment can't be degraded without threatening the quality of life for everyone.
Or how about body parts. Which body parts could we trade away for economic gain? How much would you take for your arm? What about your heart?
There's no tradeoff to be made. Earth's environment is a constant requirement. Cold economic calculations don't apply to some things. You're suffering from the hammer-and-nail mentality. When the only tool you have is economics, every problem looks like an economic one. You're going to have to step out of your economist shoes to understand me here.
First, since few environmental goods are traded in marketplaces, it is hard to get the required price/quantity data that would enable us to measure the demand curves for environmental goods(*) and, thus, the cost or amount of compensation individuals would require in order to tolerate a given quantity of environmental degradation.
The fallacy in this kind of reasoning is in trying to force an economic model onto a natural system -- trying to convert a healthy environment into a marketable commodity with some monetary value so that we can trade it away for money, the value of which can be determined through market forces.
It's a difficult problem because looking at the environment through a pair of economists glasses causes distorted vision. Sending a bill to a manufacturer that compensates for some amount of environmental destruction is looking at the problem backwards. The proper way is to set strict environmental protections that don't allow the destruction in the first place and then the manufacturer will have to produce his goods in ways that are responsible and sustainable. Those costs are easily determined and easy to factor into product pricing. The added benefit is that every generation that follows such a responsible generation will thank us for giving them a working economy and ecology. The way we are going now, neither is sustainable. We're stealing from our descendants.
Significantly, I'm not aware of any other country or major organization (companies, NGOs, etc) that have made a serious go at tri-partite leadership ever since.
What about the US? Legislative / Judicial / Executive I'm with you on the "unstable" part, though.:)
I mean, think about this, how many of these plastics have found their way into things like Ventilators, internal defibrillators, external defibrillators like the LifePak series that is so prevalant on ambulances and in hospitals world wide?
Then think about the people who lived in the areas where those manufacturing plants dump their wastes who contracted hideous diseases from them and needed these kinds of devices but had no access to them because they're typically in poor countries without advanced health care or environmental regulations. The argument gets a little more complicated when you think about the unseen and unheard people of the world. It's immoral to just dismiss them.
...everything carries a cost, including radical environmentalism.
As does radical industrialism. Polluting the planet willy-nilly just so someone can make a buck has a huge cost but, unfortunately, that cost is not included in the price of the manufactured goods. The manufacturer has thus found a way to privatize the profits while he socializes the cost. It's one of the ways that our form of capitalism has become distorted from a sustainable form of capitalism. All costs should be included in the price of the product or it's not really capitalism.
If they have access to OUR jobs, then give me access to THEIR cost of living
Don't worry. It's coming. Mostly because when you have access to a low cost of living you also will be entrenched in a low standard of living. We're on a race to the bottom, in case you can't see it for the cheerleading coming from the corporate media. Society is splitting between the CEOs and the slave labor. Which group will you be in? Hurrah! "Free trade" for everybody!
You're analyzing things way too much. The meaning of life defies analysis. We don't know what life is all about and, more than likely, it's not about anything. It just is.
Just take it all in while you still can. Breathe deeply. Be kind to others so that they may enjoy life without oppression. Be respectful of the life you have and the life in which we're all immersed.
It's a short trip. Living according to a script written by religious fanatics is wasting it.
The dogma even becomes dangerous when we use it (as humans have always done) to identify enemies and turn our wrath on "the other" or "the evil-doers" when what we're really doing is projecting our worst fears about ourselves onto others so that we may purge them by destroying the "evil" they represent. Being kind to others usually requires us stepping away from our organized religions.
God seems about the only answer that doesn't cause your head to go into meltdown.
Speak for your own head.
Why go jumping to a supernatural conclusion just because you don't understand something? Our not-too-distant ancestors once explained why water fell from the sky by attributing it to supernatural powers. Now we know about evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. It's not solid thinking to just throw your hands up and say "God did it." What evidence do you have that God did it? What evidence do you have that God even exists? Why devote your life to something that exhibits absolutely no evidence of anything whatsoever? All you have is a book that provides a carrot-and-stick afterlife approach to behavioral modification. Why not behave well in this life just because it's a good and responsible thing to do? Why do people need to be threatened by a vengeful God before they behave well? Why is most of today's worst behavior done in God's name? It's time for us to evolve or die.
Interestingly, Douglas Adams actually did some writing for Monty Python, collaborating with Graham Chapman. Later, he and Chapman did a short-lived (I think just one episode) series for the BBC. I can't remember the title, though...something about trees. Swinging from the Trees or something like that.
Do you want anybody who doesn't know things like this voting?
See? Right there is where you're losing touch with democracy.
It doesn't matter who I want to grant voting rights to. It doesn't matter who you want to grant voting rights to. It's not a democracy if you start letting one group of citizens decide that another group of fellow citizens is unqualified to cast their vote. It doesn't matter what criteria you use to segregate the "unqualified" voters.
You might believe that people who aren't well informed about current civic leaders and events are unqualified. Another person might believe that people who don't show compassion toward their fellow citizen are unqualified. Still another might believe that people who can't swim are unqualified, or who can't shoot a gun straight, or walk without assistance, or balance a checkbook, etc., etc. etc.
When you start believing that the other person's vote is an affront to the political process while your vote is the True and Virtuous vote then you're drifting toward fascism.
Do you thnik you should be required to take a test before getting your driver's license?
Absolutely -- but, then again, possessing a driver's license isn't exactly an inalienable right as is a person's right to vote.
Operating a voting machine isn't as bad as that, but it can be argued that it's damaging to the democratic system and therefore the country as a whole.
According to who's definition, though??? You're just not getting it. Your definition of "damaging to the democratic system" is someone else's inalienable right to cast a vote for the person they want to have represent them in a democratic government. Who are you to say their vote is "damaging" but your vote is just, true, and righteous. How would you like it if the people banded together and decided that those who think it's OK to strong-arm people from the voting booth because they couldn't pass some silly test shouldn't be allowed to vote. I actually think that has more merit because it would keep people with fascist tendencies from voting, but I still wouldn't want to see it implemented because it's undemocratic. Don't you understand how democracy works? It's not a democracy if we start pre-selecting the voters. I can't believe I even have to argue this point. It's really frightening to know there are people who have these kinds of beliefs.
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I agree with you that the single distributor model is unfair. But your anti-government ranting is off base. It is, in fact, the people of the state of Georgia who have decided to distribute beer this way. Your beef is with the people of Georgia not with the institution of government. Governments allow us to do things collectively that are impossible for individuals to accomplish and unprofitable for corporations to invest in (transportation, fire and police protection, justice, etc.) These are necessary things for a functioning society. Government (ostensibly) is the process by which the people express their will for a workable society. Most government is, however, currently broken due to neglect, misplaced animosity (you do realize you oppose your own power when you oppose government, right), and corporate meddling.
But, as a scientist, I am severely disappointed when other scientists (let alone journalists or Greenpeace) take an unfinished scientific debate and use it to propose sweeping changes in our lives...
Are you sure you're a scientist? Most scientific theories are continually debated and the debates are never finished. There will never be certainty on this issue. That's the nature of scientific theories. Playing the uncertainty card is the tactic of corporate spin-meisters who are content to drag this issue out while they continue to sell our future livelihood away.
What is certain, though, is that we are changing the composition of our atmosphere. There's no uncertainty about that. The effects of those atmospheric changes are up for debate, so maybe in the meantime we should try not to experiment on the only atmosphere we have.
Here's my plan: Take a big
wire, put one end in the cold past, and
the other end in the hot future....
Whoa! You just invented the Trans-Temporal Atmospheric Sterling Engine. Once you begin construction, I'm going to follow the wire that leads to the past and patent the idea. Unless...you've already laid the wire that leads to the future and you knew I was going to post this so you've already patented it. Damn you!
All those stocks, bonds, and commercial real estate holdings, are the rich using their wealth in ways that create jobs for people in a sustainable way.
Less and less sustainable as the majority of the people (the economy's circulatory system) have less and less wealth to drive the economy. When people don't spend the wealthy don't invest. That's the achiles heel of supply-side trickle-down economics.
What's more -- a large difference between the wealthy and the rest of us is like a large voltage difference in a pair of conductors. The greater the difference, the more extreme the spark. I can feel the hair starting to rise now. Better build more prisons and stronger gates on those gated communities.
What if they got there by earning it?
And what if they got there by rigging the system and pulling the strings of their political puppets?
Leftist ideology holds axiomatically that one can only obtain more property than another through "greed" and "exploitation".
So? What's that have to do with me or anything I said? Excuse me while I clean up some of this straw from that man you were pounding on there.
You can't possibly believe that 90% of the people in the wealthiest nation (by far) in the world are deadbeats and losers. Oh, man. You've got to be kidding on that one. Way to appeal to the common man. Are you running for office or something?
Perhaps these people are not as smart and hard-working as the people above them, so they are rewarded with a smaller piece of the pie.
You need to go back and reread my argument on that one. These 9% control more than twice as much wealth than the bottom 90%. If you combine the top 1% with the second 9% you get the top 10% controlling 83% of the wealth -- highly concentrated at the top of that 10%.
We already know that Leftists want to transfer stuff from those who have earned it to those who have not. Too bad we have those pesky property rights in the way, right?
There's that straw man again. But you're neglecting the fact that what's underway right now is a vast transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top. Those who have wealth are finding more and more ways to strip mine the populace for the bits of gold in their pockets. They use their political puppets to rig the deck in their favor.
Don't forget that all capital comes from labor. If the people at the top are getting wealthier then that means the people doing the labor are getting proportionately less reward for that labor. (That can be seen in the higher productivity statistics the government is measuring - higher productivity means more product for equal or lesser labor cost.) When people realize they're not getting a fair deal in the labor/capital equation they will start to demand more. This has happened before. It was the reason for the labor wars in the 1920's and 30's. People in a society must believe they're getting a fair shake or the whole game falls apart. A stable society is essential for wealth to grow. If the wealthy want to continue to be wealthy, they would be wise to invest in a stable and just society. Without that, wealth will have no value.
In other words, they were breaking the rules.
No they weren't! DUH!! How thick is your skull? It's not illegal for an accounting firm to play "find the money" for a corporation that instructs it to do so. It's not illegal for the same firm to provide accounting services and auditing to a corporation. It should be -- it used to be -- but it isn't now. The glories of deregulation.
Arthur Anderson was found guilty of obstruction of justice because they shredded documents related to the Enron case after the shit hit the fan. Yes, obstruction of justice is illegal and, yes, they were punished for that. But conflict of interest is still legal and it still encourages accounting firms to help corporations cheat. And it's still funny that you called the accounting firms "independant."
Oh? So how come the richest 5% pay, what is it, 40% of all income taxes?
What, you think that's fair? You're leaving out some important information regarding those elite individuals. The numbers I have indicate that the richest 1% control more than 47% of the wealth in this country. That's more than the entire bottom 90% combined who control only 17%. Ninety percent of people in this country control only seventeen percent of the wealth while the top one percent controls almost half. Think about that for a second. What's more, the next nine percent of the wealthiest people control more than 35 percent of the wealth. That's still more than double what the bottom 90 percent controls. (Source, where's yours?)
So if the richest five percent are paying 40% of the taxes, they're getting off cheap.
Why the hell should we change the rules? Arthur Anderson broke the rules, and they were punished. The existing rules were sufficient. Just because somebody breaks the rules doesn't mean they need to be changed.
OK. If you insist on being naive and dense...
Arthur Anderson was not only providing auditing services for Enron. They were also providing other financial services and consulting. This is a conflict of interest in that it encouraged them to hide information from Enron's board of directors that indicated Enron was cheating. The more squirrelly Enron's books became, the more money AA made by helping them hide it. (Not that Enron's board would have done anything anyway -- they were just as crooked.)
Nothing has been done about this conflict. Auditing firms are still allowed to provide other financial services that they then turn around and audit. That's what needs to be changed, Pollyanna.
Publically held corporations are required by law to have an independant accounting firm file their financial statements.
Hah! You said "independant accounting firm!" What a joke, dude. You don't really believe they're independent do you?
Look at what happened to Arthur Anderson after the Enron fiasco-...
And look how the rules changed after that happened. Oh, wait, they didn't change, did they? Sarbanes-Oxley? Give me a break.
Most citizens' financial information is already known by the government. Working people pay taxes through paycheck withholding. The only ones who can cheat on their taxes in any significant way are corporations who are basically on the honor system when it comes to paying taxes these days. That's who this kind of system is designed to detect. Don't believe the hype. Working people are being ripped off by corporate tax cheats. The tax burden is being shifted to the middle and upper-middle classes while the elites get off scott free.
I merely say that given what they have chosen, I can approximate how they value the environment relative to consumer goods.
You can do nothing of the sort. As I pointed out, the price of those consumer goods does not accurately reflect the cost that their production has on the environment. If those costs are not included then the consumer can't accurately weigh the value of that product versus his survival on the planet. This cost is not only invisible to the consumer, it is consciously hidden by the manufacturer, wherever possible, so that the consumer can't weigh the true cost even if he was willing and able to perform the exhaustive research that would require. You're totally ignoring the effects of consumer ignorance and manufacturer mendacity on the market.
I want you to be honest with yourself. Everything you do or buy creates an implicit tradeoff between your desire for consumer goods and some degree of environmental degradation. EVERYTHING!
I can prove you wrong there with a simple example -- Wild Blackberries. I can buy those from a collector without causing environmental degradation. Driftwood is another example. There's no doubt in my mind, however, that most consumer goods I purchase produce some environmental degradation. I wish that wasn't so but I wasn't consulted when our economic system was created and I am forced to live within the system that others have created poorly. Unfortunately, I'm unable to weigh the true value of many of those goods due to the lack of accurate accounting of environmental costs in those products' prices. You are the one who is not being honest with yourself when you avert your eyes from the lack of the accurate inclusion of environmental costs in product pricing. If you want to go the hypocricy route, you'd better check your own.
And since you are reading
Believe me. I live in a coal-producing state. I've seen environmental destruction first-hand that you can't even imagine. It's part of what has shaped my beliefs. Coal production is the king of socializing it's costs onto a poor population while it takes its profits and runs away from any responsibility for the destruction it causes. I want electricity prices to accurately reflect those costs so that I, and everyone else purchasing it, will make choices based on accurate information. As things stand now, most electricity buyers have no idea what they are doing to appalachian people. It's hideous and disgusting and people laugh at them while they perpetuate the very causes of their misery. You should all be extremely ashamed of yourselves for treating US citizens as a third-world energy sacrifice colony.
As for myself, I do all I can to reduce my electricity usage. This post is being produced on a VIA EPIA platform which I chose precisely because it was the lowest power PC I could find through extensive research. Were electricity accurately priced, all PCs and all other electricity-consuming appliances would already be maximally energy efficient due to consumer demand and my research would have been unnecessary. Further, by inaccurately under-pricing coal, alternative forms of electricity production seem overpriced by comparison. This prevents them from gaining a foothold in the electricity market and further distorts supply and demand forces that would bring down their costs to where they wouldn't be so "alternative" anymore. Wind and solar power are getting cock-blocked by the market manipulation of greedy, environment-raping coal mining corporations and consumers don't see the true costs or consequences. Don't sit in your ivory tower lecturing me with your purist economic theories when you aren't making the effort to look below the surface to see what's really happening down here in the real world. My power to make choices is limited to the choices you and your brilliant elitist cronies force on me and everyone else who doesn't ply the ivory towers of corporate greed and power. So who's forcing choices on whom again?
So basically you believe that your ethical system should rule the day.
No, I believe that Earth's ethical system should rule the day. She's had a lot more practice running things than you or I have.
You live on a planet with 6+ billion other people and your beliefs and needs are not going to prevail over the rest of us -- especially those without jobs in developing countries.
But you would have your beliefs prevail over those of us who would prefer not to live in our own filth. Our environment is a common resource. When you decide to trade it away to make a buck you're making a decision that takes away my right and ability to live free from wallowing in filth. You might be able to afford to temporarily buy your way to a place above all of it, but like all pyramid schemes, those at the bottom get screwed. Your crocodile tears for "those without jobs in developing countries" don't cover your disrespect for their cultures and ways of life. Chasing the almighty dollar may not be their choice but you would force it on them. The happiest faces seem to be on those who live farthest from industrialized society -- the deepest furrows on those condemned to work for pennies supporting your wasteful, consumer-driven lifestyle.
Economic thinking is one way of trying to decide where the optimal tradeoff between the environment and other goods lies. It is based on measuring the willingness of human beings to give up environmental quality for other things they also desire.
That's where our thinking diverges. What other goods could possibly be worth trading away our life-support system. How much money would you take to have someone hold you under water for fifteen minutes? There's just no trade off value that makes sense. We just don't realize yet that our current system doesn't make sense for the same reason. It's a fools trade made with Mephistopheles.
There are other ethical systems where fish, say, have rights, but these systems are not well accepted by either the legal system or by most other people.
You've apparently misunderstood my analogy. It wasn't a call for fish rights. We are the fish and the water in the analogy is the global environment we share.
And remember, (as per the title of this thread) everything carries a cost.
Yes, exactly! And my point was that we are not currently accounting for or paying that cost. We're dumping the cost onto poor countries and on all of our descendants.
Your demands for a perfect environment will cost millions of people their livelihood.They're not my demands, they are nature's. Enforcement is unavoidable. Make no mistake about it. She works on a longer time scale than we do so we think we're getting away with it currently. And your demands (or your "economy" as it may be) will cost millions of people their lives. The "fish" in my earlier example can't trade away his water for more food or a better rock to hide in or a better mate. The "water" is an non-negotiable requirement. What good will those things do him if his life is unsustainable? What good will your SUV or your McMansion be when the atmosphere is unhealthy to breathe and global food production can't keep up with demand? Out-of-sight-Out-of-mind is a poor type of economy. The bill will eventually come due.
6+ billion people cannot live on this planet the way you want them to. Nor should they be forced to anymore than you should be forced to completely give up your desires for environmental quality.
But you would force me and the other six billion people to completely give up the only environment we have that is capable of supporting us so that you can continue your short-sighted, greedy, mad rush for consumer goods and monetary power. It's so odd, and I guess symptomatic, that you could see my view as a desire to force my beliefs on others when I would like to see the natural conditions that created us and our
You have missed the point. You are one of those who highly values environmental goods.
No, you have missed the point. Please explain to me what environmental "goods" are. I'm afraid I don't recognize our common environment as a "good" to be traded as a commodity in a market-based system.
Take the example of the fish. Water is his environment. To the fish, water is a constant and must remain a constant. It can't be tampered with or the fish dies. He can't start altering it without reducing his ability to survive and thrive. We also depend on our environment to survive and thrive so our environment can't be degraded without threatening the quality of life for everyone.
Or how about body parts. Which body parts could we trade away for economic gain? How much would you take for your arm? What about your heart?
There's no tradeoff to be made. Earth's environment is a constant requirement. Cold economic calculations don't apply to some things. You're suffering from the hammer-and-nail mentality.
When the only tool you have is economics, every problem looks like an economic one. You're going to have to step out of your economist shoes to understand me here.
First, since few environmental goods are traded in marketplaces, it is hard to get the required price/quantity data that would enable us to measure the demand curves for environmental goods(*) and, thus, the cost or amount of compensation individuals would require in order to tolerate a given quantity of environmental degradation.
The fallacy in this kind of reasoning is in trying to force an economic model onto a natural system -- trying to convert a healthy environment into a marketable commodity with some monetary value so that we can trade it away for money, the value of which can be determined through market forces.
It's a difficult problem because looking at the environment through a pair of economists glasses causes distorted vision. Sending a bill to a manufacturer that compensates for some amount of environmental destruction is looking at the problem backwards. The proper way is to set strict environmental protections that don't allow the destruction in the first place and then the manufacturer will have to produce his goods in ways that are responsible and sustainable. Those costs are easily determined and easy to factor into product pricing. The added benefit is that every generation that follows such a responsible generation will thank us for giving them a working economy and ecology. The way we are going now, neither is sustainable. We're stealing from our descendants.
Significantly, I'm not aware of any other country or major organization (companies, NGOs, etc) that have made a serious go at tri-partite leadership ever since.
What about the US?
Legislative / Judicial / Executive
I'm with you on the "unstable" part, though.
I mean, think about this, how many of these plastics have found their way into things like Ventilators, internal defibrillators, external defibrillators like the LifePak series that is so prevalant on ambulances and in hospitals world wide?
Then think about the people who lived in the areas where those manufacturing plants dump their wastes who contracted hideous diseases from them and needed these kinds of devices but had no access to them because they're typically in poor countries without advanced health care or environmental regulations. The argument gets a little more complicated when you think about the unseen and unheard people of the world. It's immoral to just dismiss them.
As does radical industrialism. Polluting the planet willy-nilly just so someone can make a buck has a huge cost but, unfortunately, that cost is not included in the price of the manufactured goods. The manufacturer has thus found a way to privatize the profits while he socializes the cost. It's one of the ways that our form of capitalism has become distorted from a sustainable form of capitalism. All costs should be included in the price of the product or it's not really capitalism.
If they have access to OUR jobs, then give me access to THEIR cost of living
Don't worry. It's coming. Mostly because when you have access to a low cost of living you also will be entrenched in a low standard of living. We're on a race to the bottom, in case you can't see it for the cheerleading coming from the corporate media. Society is splitting between the CEOs and the slave labor. Which group will you be in?
Hurrah! "Free trade" for everybody!
This is just another excuse for my neighbor who "loves animals" to not remove the half-inch layer of dirt from her windows.
Why do you care how much dirt is on your neighbor's window?
Are you the neighborhood cleanliness enforcer or the neighborhood peeping tom?
You're analyzing things way too much. The meaning of life defies analysis. We don't know what life is all about and, more than likely, it's not about anything. It just is.
Just take it all in while you still can. Breathe deeply. Be kind to others so that they may enjoy life without oppression. Be respectful of
the life you have and the life in which we're all immersed.
It's a short trip. Living according to a script written by religious fanatics is wasting it.
The dogma even becomes dangerous when we use it (as humans have always done) to identify enemies and turn our wrath on "the other" or "the evil-doers" when what we're really doing is projecting our worst fears about ourselves onto others so that we may purge them by destroying the "evil" they represent. Being kind to others usually requires us stepping away from our organized religions.
God seems about the only answer that doesn't cause your head to go into meltdown.
Speak for your own head.
Why go jumping to a supernatural conclusion just because you don't understand something? Our not-too-distant ancestors once explained why water fell from the sky by attributing it to supernatural powers. Now we know about evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. It's not solid thinking to just throw your hands up and say "God did it." What evidence do you have that God did it? What evidence do you have that God even exists? Why devote your life to something that exhibits absolutely no evidence of anything whatsoever? All you have is a book that provides a carrot-and-stick afterlife approach to behavioral modification. Why not behave well in this life just because it's a good and responsible thing to do? Why do people need to be threatened by a vengeful God before they behave well? Why is most of today's worst behavior done in God's name? It's time for us to evolve or die.
Interestingly, Douglas Adams actually did some writing for Monty Python, collaborating with Graham Chapman. Later, he and Chapman did a short-lived (I think just one episode) series for the BBC. I can't remember the title, though...something about trees. Swinging from the Trees or something like that.
Do you want anybody who doesn't know things like this voting?
See? Right there is where you're losing touch with democracy.
It doesn't matter who I want to grant voting rights to. It doesn't matter who you want to grant voting rights to. It's not a democracy if you start letting one group of citizens decide that another group of fellow citizens is unqualified to cast their vote. It doesn't matter what criteria you use to segregate the "unqualified" voters.
You might believe that people who aren't well informed about current civic leaders and events are unqualified. Another person might believe that people who don't show compassion toward their fellow citizen are unqualified. Still another might believe that people who can't swim are unqualified, or who can't shoot a gun straight, or walk without assistance, or balance a checkbook, etc., etc. etc.
When you start believing that the other person's vote is an affront to the political process while your vote is the True and Virtuous vote then you're drifting toward fascism.
A large proportion of Eskimos (Inuit, Inupiat, Yupik, Yuit, whatever) are Americans. Now, who was the asshat again?
Do you thnik you should be required to take a test before getting your driver's license?
Absolutely -- but, then again, possessing a driver's license isn't exactly an inalienable right as is a person's right to vote.
Operating a voting machine isn't as bad as that, but it can be argued that it's damaging to the democratic system and therefore the country as a whole.
According to who's definition, though???
You're just not getting it. Your definition of "damaging to the democratic system" is someone else's inalienable right to cast a vote for the person they want to have represent them in a democratic government. Who are you to say their vote is "damaging" but your vote is just, true, and righteous.
How would you like it if the people banded together and decided that those who think it's OK to strong-arm people from the voting booth because they couldn't pass some silly test shouldn't be allowed to vote. I actually think that has more merit because it would keep people with fascist tendencies from voting, but I still wouldn't want to see it implemented because it's undemocratic. Don't you understand how democracy works? It's not a democracy if we start pre-selecting the voters. I can't believe I even have to argue this point. It's really frightening to know there are people who have these kinds of beliefs.