Kristen wrote:
>>
>> I feel that the largest failing of most environmentalists is their
>> hostility to and ignorance of capitalism. This is simply the most
>> counter-productive view possible.
>
>I'd distinguish between capitalism per se and huge multinational
>corporate
>entities that have a life of their own. Corporatoins are given the
>legal
>rights of a citizen (like, to accumulate property/profit) but not the
>responsibilities. This is evil.
Wait a minute. A corporation can accumulate assets, but it is owned by
people and people make every single decision about what a corporation
does. Are you seriously proposing that the limited liability
corporation is inherently evil? This is one of the anti-globablization
sound bites that make no sense. All a corporation is is a group of
people who pool ownership of a enterprise. How is that evil?
Yes, I understand that any concentration of power can be harmful, and
that people often make selfish decisions that benefit themselves at the
expense of others. But what are you going to do to change that? If we
restrict private ownership of the means of production, then all that
does is shift power to the nomenklatura. How do you prevent the
government regulators from using their powers to benefit themselves?
Note that "money" is simply the system we use to allocate economic
resources. Just because the nomenklatura aren't compensated monetarily
doesn't mean that they aren't compensated.
>>
>> It seems we have all these critiques of capitalism, but no one can
>>come
>> up with a better solution. And this is why the environmentalists
are
>> eventually going to become authoritarian. Since they can't stand
how
>> things actually work, and they can't come up with a reasonable
>> alternative that most people would adopt voluntarily, they are going
>>to
>> have to use violence to change things.
>>
>
>welll when ecodisaster makes the world start falling apart, there's
>going
>to be violence. Like food riots maybe. Only a frew extremely fringe
>groups
>advocate using violence *now*.
>
Using governmental action to confiscate people's wealth is violence.
If you don't pay your taxes, the cops come and take it. If you fight
back, they shoot you. That is violence. If you are imagining shutting
down capitalism, there is no way to do that without violence. Round
the bourgeois up.
>to the extend that I do understand how things work...I think it sucks.
>WE could save the environment if it weren't for selfish rotten human
>nature getting in the way. Evolution drives u s to short planning
>horizons
>not the long ones needed for environmental protection.
Again, how is this the fault of capitalism? I think you have a valid
point...we have trouble recognizing problems that we didn't evolve for.
How is some other economic system going to eliminate or reduce human
selfishness? Socialists are just as selfish as the capitalists, in
fact more so. Do we find that publicly owned organizations have a
better environmental record than privately owned ones? I doubt it. In
fact, public organizations have a worse record, because the government
polices itself, a clear conflict of interest. So the government agency
dumps the toxic waste in back of the school near the playground to save
money, just like the capitalists. Who's going to stop them? Greed is
what motivates them. Perhaps not greed for cash money, but greed for
power, greed for control, greed for the right to have that corner
office, greed to decide who gets funded and who doesn't. Socialism
doesn't eliminate greed as a motive, it simply ignores it an sweeps it
under the rug.
>> Which of course means that most of their goals will never be
>>fulfilled,
>> since violence will be met with violence, and the environmentalists
>> will be discredited. I'm always astonished by how many
>>makes no sense to me. The first thing authoritarian governments do
is
>> to eliminate challanges to the government. As world history has
>>shown,
>> it really makes no difference what ideology authoritarian movements
>> have before the achieve power, they are all pretty much the same
>> afterwards.
>Are all laws authoritarian just because having to comply with them
>annoys
>you? or affects the bottom line of your business? And >by
"authoritarian"
>do you mean communist (no capitalism) or something like China, which
>gave
>up on Marxist ideology but is still totalitarian? (Hey, five year
>economic
>plans are better than three month ones. THey actually managed to
reduce
>their CO2 emissions, getting rid of t he coal burners in favor of
>cleaner
>(but stil fossil) natural gas...)
This is news to me. Last I heard China was expanding coal plants like
wildfire. China has huge coal deposits, very little oil and gas. They
are going to be using coal for at least another two or three
generations, depending on political developments. And yes, the longer
they continue to be a dictatorship, the longer they are going to have
state-sponsored environmental devastation. How can people complain
that the air is filthy if you get shot for complaining?
And how are five-year plans better than three-month plans? Look, long
range planning is over-rated. How can a company plan that far ahead
when they might not even exist next year? Better than long-range rigid
plans is flexibility, smarts, and opportunism.
Authoritarian simply means the lack of constitutional protection.
Maybe the dictator will play nice, but if you step out of line you get
squished. Here in the US and Europe we are free to say all sorts of
unkind things about the leaders without being afraid of being
disappeared.
>>
>> We cannot trade our freedom for environmental protection. Not
>>because
>> such a bargain might not be worth it, but because it will never
>>work.
>> We can have freedom and environmental protection, but the minute we
>> surrender our freedom for some other goal we find the we have lost
>>both.
>>
>
>"To hell with the planet, let me do what I want and so there!"
>
You completely missed my point. My point is that giving up our
freedoms to save the environment won't work. Why will our new masters
care that we want them to clean up the environment? Once we are
enslaved they can do whatever they want, which is their own personal
enrichment and security.
>I hope you live to be 500 years old so you will personally see the
>consequences of your actions. (Work on anti aging treatments now!)
Your
>descendants will not appreciate your attitude. Compromises (and the
>longer
>we put it off the MORE Painful it will be) will be necessary to avert
>catastrophe. You are free to commute solo in an SUV if you want to.
>Well
>then, pollution will choke us, global warming will ruin many
>agricultural
>areas and cause famines, new plagues will emerge, political chaos will
>cause hideous wars but you'll still have your "freedom."
And all because I drove an SUV. How does driving an inefficient car
cause famine, plague and political chaos? No. Perhaps you can't see
any way to save the environment without enslaving and impoverishing
humanity, but that's pretty short sighted. That's the short cut way.
"This problem is so severe that we have to suspend your rights!" And
when the problem is solved I'll get them back, right? Funny how that
never seems to happen.
As Dan said, what resources are we "using up"? OK, fossil fuels, yes
we are using them up. But, if we shouldn't use fossil fuels, then why
bother preserving them? What use are they if they aren't used? We
aren't running out of natural resources, our stocks of resources are
higher now than at any time in history. Pollution != lack of
resources.
>Until people >get
>sick of this horrible world and begin to curse your name. *HOW* can
>individual freedom be more important than the future of the entire
>planet,
>of whole generations yet unborn? I don't call that freedom. I call it
>selfishness.
>
>Kristin
Because without our freedoms, those generations yet unborn will be
slaves. Y'know, I have the strangely optimistic notion that we can
solve our problems *without* enslaving humanity, without discarding
political freedom, without discarding private property, without handing
over decision making to the government.
If we don't preserve capitalistic constitutional democracy then we
can't save the environment, since the dictators won't care about the
environment. Doesn't that make sense? Dictators can do whatever they
like, and they don't care about the environment. So if you want to
preserve the environment then work to preserve democracy.
Stop complaining about capitalism, or at least *try* to explain how
other economic systems would avoid the problems if capitalism. Explain
how government clerks and government workers will be more responsive
than corporate clerks and corporate workers. And if you still don't
like huge multinationals, then fine, I agree. But the answer is more
capitalism, not less. 20 small companies is better than 1 large one.
One engineer making one tiny improvement in the internal combustion
engine is worth 1000 activists and protestors and bureaucrats.
=====
Darryl
Think Galactically -- Act Terrestrially
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