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Is Climate Change Just A Lot Of Hot Air?

bcglorf says...

@newtboy,

I also noticed my point on CO2 forcing was missed earlier in thread still, I'll try one last time to express this.

In 1900 CO2 concentrations were under 300ppm, today they are nearly 400ppm. Climate model estimates place the impact of that extra 100ppm of CO2 as increasing the TOA energy imbalance by 3W/m-2. Observations of TOA energy imbalance are well agreed that the net imbalance is 0.5W/m-2. That means that natural processes(likely largely the 0.8C warming we've already had) have already cancelled out 2.5W/m-2 of that 3W/m-2. That is to say, 83% of the impact of increased CO2 concentrations has already been balanced out to date. How long it takes to get that all the way to 100% is part of the problems that climate models are trying to solve, but regrettably it's tied to TOA energy so models still don't have a great deal of veracity yet on that for us. Still, it's reason for a lot less gloom and doom than so many are calling for.

Is Climate Change Just A Lot Of Hot Air?

bcglorf says...

@newtboy

#1 and #2, fine, if you won't go there to read it's now pasted in full for you:
Arctic tundra soils serve as potentially important but poorly understood sinks of atmospheric methane (CH4), a powerful greenhouse gas1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Numerical simulations project a net increase in methane consumption in soils in high northern latitudes as a consequence of warming in the past few decades3, 6. Advances have been made in quantifying hotspots of methane emissions in Arctic wetlands7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, but the drivers, magnitude, timing and location of methane consumption rates in High Arctic ecosystems are unclear. Here, we present measurements of rates of methane consumption in different vegetation types within the Zackenberg Valley in northeast Greenland over a full growing season. Field measurements show methane uptake in all non-water-saturated landforms studied, with seasonal averages of − 8.3 ± 3.7 μmol CH4 m−2 h−1 in dry tundra and − 3.1 ± 1.6 μmol CH4 m−2 h−1 in moist tundra. The fluxes were sensitive to temperature, with methane uptake increasing with increasing temperatures. We extrapolate our measurements and published measurements from wetlands with the help of remote-sensing land-cover classification using nine Landsat scenes. We conclude that the ice-free area of northeast Greenland acts as a net sink of atmospheric methane, and suggest that this sink will probably be enhanced under future warmer climatic conditions.

#3, regardless of if it make's sense to you, and regardless of if it means a 10C warming by 2100, the IPCC scientists collaborative summary says it anyways. If you want to claim otherwise it's you opposing the science to make things seem worse than they are, not me.

#4, To tell them those things would sound like this. The IPCC current best estimates from climate models project 2100 to be 1.5C warmer than 2000. This has already resulted in 2000 being 0.8C warmer than 1900. Summer arctic sea ice extent has retreating significantly is the biggest current impact. By 2100 it is deemed extremely unlikely that the Greenland and Antarctic iccesheets will have meaningfully reduced and there is medium confidence that the warming will actually expand Antarctic ice cover owing to increased precipitation from the region. That's the results and expectations to be passed on from the 5th report from an international collaboration of scientists. Whether that fits your world view or not doesn't matter to the scientific evidence those views are founded on and supported by.

You said the ocean's may be unfishable in 20 years, and the best support you came up with was a news article quote claiming that by 2040 most of the Arctic would be too acidic for Shell forming fish. Cherry picked by the news article that also earlier noted that was dependent on CO2 concentrations exceeding 1000ppm in 2100, and even that some forms of plankton under study actually faired better in higher acidity in some case. In a news article that also noted that the uneven distribution of acidity makes predicting the effects very challenging. If news articles count as evidence I then want to claim we'll have working fusion power to convert to in 5 years time from Lockheed Martin. I'll agree with your news post on one count, the world they talk about, where CO2 emissions continue accelerating year on year, even by 2100, is bad. It's also a bit hard to fathom with electric cars just around the corner, and if not solar and wind, fusion sometime before then too, that we'll still be using anywhere near today's emissions let alone still accelerating our use.

by 2025 it's estimated that 2/3 of people worldwide will live in a water shortage.
And you link to a blog, and a blog that provides exactly zero references to any scientific sources for the claim. Better yet, even the blog does NOT claim that the access to water will be limited because of climate change, the blog even mentions multiple times how other forms of pollution are destroying huge amounts of fresh water(again with zero attributions).

Here's the IPCC best estimates for 2100 impacts regionally:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter14_FINAL.pdf

You'll find it's a largely mixed bag if you can be bothered to read what the actual scientists are predicting. Just bare in mind they regularly note that climate models still have a lot of challenges with accurate regional estimates. I guess your blogger isn't hindered by such problems though. If you don't want to bother I'll summarize for you and note they observe a mixed bag of increased precipitation in some regions, notably monsoons generally increasing, and other areas lowering, but it's all no higher than at medium confidences. But hey, why should uncertainty about 2100 prevent us from panicking today about more than half the world losing their drinking water in 10 years. I'll make you a deal, in ten years we can come back to this thread and see whether or not climate change has cause 2/3 of the world to lose their drinking water already or not. I'm pretty confident on this one.

Northern India/Southern China is nearly 100% dependent on glacial melt water, glaciers that have lost 50% in the last decade
Lost 50% since 2005? That'd be scary, oh wait, you heard that from the same blog you say? I've got a hunch maybe they aren't being straight with you...
Here are a pair of links I found in google scholar to scientific articles on the Himalaya's glaciers:
http://cires1.colorado.edu/~braup/himalaya/Science13Nov2009.pdf
I you can't be bothered to read:
Claims reported in the popular press that Siachin has shrunk as much as 50% are simply wrong, says Riana, whose report notes that the glacier has "not shown any remarkable retreat in the last 50 years" Which looks likely that your blogger found a popular press piece about that single glacier and then went off as though it were fact, and across the entire mountain range .

http://indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/glaciers%20and%20climate.pdf
Here's another article noting that since 1962 Himalayan glacier reduction is actually about 21%.

If you go back and read the IPCC links I gave earlier you can also find many of the regional rivers and glaciers in India/East China are very dependent on monsoons and will persist as long as monsoons do. Which the IPCC additionally notes are expected to, on the whole, actually increase through 2100 warming.

I've stated before up thread that things are warming and we are the major contribution, but merely differed from your position be also observing the best evidence science has for predictions isn't catastrophic. That is compounded by high uncertainties, notably that TOA energy levels are still not able to be predicted well. The good news there is the latest IPCC estimated temps exceed the observed trends of both temperature and TOA imbalance, so there's reason for optimism. That's obviously not license for recklessly carrying on our merry way, as I've noted a couple times already about roads away from emissions that we are going to adopt one way or another long before 2100.

Is Climate Change Just A Lot Of Hot Air?

bcglorf says...

@charliem,

Energy is absolutely a better measure and marker of climate change than temperature. I started there since the video did. In reality though, everything in climate change is solely about the energy balance at the Top Of Atmosphere. More TOA energy in and temps go up in the long term, less and temps go down. It's the very foundation of climate change.

The climate models that your links look to for projections of things like methane thresholds are based on modelled temperature predictions. The IPCC notes the following on the state of the art in climate models:
For instance, maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent the climate system from drifting to an unrealistic state. The Models used in this report almost universally contain adjustments to parameters in their treatment of clouds to fulfil this important constraint of the climate system (Watanabe et al., 2010; Donner et al., 2011; Gent et al., 2011; Golaz et al., 2011; Martin et al., 2011; Hazeleger et al., 2012; Mauritsen et al., 2012; Hourdin et al., 2013).
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter09_FINAL.pdf
It's in Box 9.1

So, climate models currently FAIL to predict TOA energy accurately and hand tuning is required for modelling temperatures into the known past in order to avoid unrealistic states because the TOA energy is wrong. Maybe we aught not panic just yet on extrapolations from that base. I'm not calling climate models garbage, rather they are a learning tool for climate processes and one lesson is that we have a long ways to go in understanding the central component of TOA energy balance. If you go to google scholar and lookup the references from the IPCC assertions you'll find that the modellers acknowledge that most models still either leak or create energy from nothing. As in, even conservation of energy is imperfect in them still.

Your cursory glance approach is a problem, the devil is in the details.

Looking at energy further from NASA's numbers also tells us that the net contribution to TOA energy trapping from the CO2 we've added in the last 100 years is about 3W/m-2 globally. The global TOA energy imbalance is about 0.5W/M-2. In other words, if we could magically remove all the CO2 we've added to the atmosphere, we'd suddenly have a global energy imbalance at TOA of -2.5W/M-2. That brings two things to mind.
1.The enormous energy imbalance you want to call a catastrophe is 0.5W/M-2, but merely rolling back to 1900 CO2 concentrations today would yield a negative energy imbalance 5 times as large.
2.Of the 3W/M-2 that our actions have pushed on the planet, natural factors(warming and other unknowns) have already balance out 2.5W/M-2 of the imbalance, today.

You also might wanna check how much energy is in the oceans on the whole. If you take the increase in energy as a percentage of OCH instead of straight joules you'll find the trend is << than 1% annually.

Climate Change - Veritasium

bcglorf says...

Kudos, I'd just like to really highlight two of the good points you make.

First, Tesla motors is huge. When I said electric cars, I didn't mention them by name but was thinking specifically of them. They have proven that electric cars are the future and are coming quickly.

The second is as Tyson pointed out, the most important metric is energy coming into the planet compared to energy going out. Temperatures fluctuate to many other variables. Particularly if the oceans are absorbing or releasing energy, temperatures as we experience them will shift on that and muddy the perception of what's actually happening to the overall planet's energy balance and long term change. In the late 80's we started measuring the energy in and out of the atmosphere with satellites. There was an observed increase between late 80's and late 90's in the energy imbalance. That means not only was more energy coming in than going out over that time, but the excess staying in was getting higher. With increasing CO2 emissions, that is exactly what we expect. An increased overall greenhouse effect should see the energy imbalance growing quite steadily as the effect gets stronger and stronger. Now, the IPCC's fifth assessment report has the the longer term data from those same and new satellites. The data shows that since 2001 there is strong agreement that the data shows NO TREND. That doesn't mean the energy in the planet hasn't been increasing. It means the rate of extra energy coming in hasn't gone up or down statistically since 2001. It means the overall greenhouse effect has been entirely stagnant for a little more than the last decade. Things are warming, but no faster than they were ten years ago.

I hope that's not to technical, but it paints a non-catastrophic picture. It also gives a superb metric to measure climate models against going forward. The models universally are projected on a steadily accelerating greenhouse effect as CO2 emissions rise. If the measured results of the last decade continue to not reflect that much longer, we have more reassessing to do. As noted in the IPCC, the effect of water vapor and clouds to increasing temperature is poorly modelled right now. If we are lucky the uncertainty of the sign on it as feedback is resolved to find it is a negative feedback. Meaning, as things warm, more clouds appear and reflect more energy back out. As things cool, less clouds appear and more energy comes in. And yeah, that's my own hope, and it is not the majority opinion within the scientific community as represented by the IPCC. They do acknowledge it as a possibility, but a less likely one. That said, the models they base that opinion on do not match the satellite energy measurements, and that one uncertainty would explain it rather well. My fingers are still crossed. More reasons for my optimism is the IPCC projections through 2100. If you look close, the actual temperature plotted against the projections has the actual following the very coolest of projections so far. Again, that lends hope that something like water vapor is either working for us, or not as badly against us as is currently modelled.

MilkmanDan said:

I used to be a pretty strong "doubter", if not a denier. I made a gradual shift away from that, but one strong instance of shift was when Neil Degrasse Tyson presented it as a (relatively) simple physics problem in his new Cosmos series. Before we started burning fossil fuels, x% of the sun's energy was reflected back into space. Now, with a higher concentration of CO2, x is a smaller number. That energy has to go somewhere, and at least some of that is going to be heat energy.

Still, I don't think that anything on the level of "average individual citizen/household of an industrial country" is really where anything needs to happen. Yes, collectively, normal people in their daily lives contribute to Climate Change. But the vast majority of us, even as a collective single unit, contribute less than industrial / government / infrastructure sources.

Fossil fuels have been a great source of energy that has massively contributed to global advances in the past century. BUT, although we didn't know it in the beginning, they have this associated cost/downside. Fossil fuels also have a weakness in that they are not by any means inexhaustible, and costs rise as that becomes more and more obvious. In turn, that tends to favor the status quo in terms of the hierarchy of industrial nations versus developing or 3rd world countries -- we've already got the money and infrastructure in place to use fossil fuels, developing countries can't afford the costs.

All of this makes me think that 2 things need to happen:
A) Governments need to encourage the development of energy sources etc. that move us away from using fossil fuels. Tax breaks to Tesla Motors, tax incentives to buyers of solar cells for their homes, etc. etc.
B) If scientists/pundits/whoever really want people to stop using fossil fuels (or just cut down), they need to develop realistic alternatives. I'll bring up Tesla Motors again for deserving huge kudos in this area. Americans (and in general citizens of developed countries) have certain expectations about how a car should perform. Electric cars have traditionally been greatly inferior to a car burning fossil fuels in terms of living up to those expectations, but Tesla threw all that out the window and made a car that car people actually like to drive. It isn't just "vaguely functional if you really want to brag about how green you are", it is actually competitive with or superior to a gas-engine car for most users/consumers (some caveats for people who need to drive long distances in a single day).

We need to get more companies / inventors / whoever developing superior, functional alternatives to fossil fuel technologies. We need governments to encourage and enable those developments, NOT to cave to lobbyist pressure from big oil etc. and do the opposite. Prices will start high (like Tesla), but if you really are making a superior product, economy of scale will eventually kick in and normalize that out.

Outside of the consumer level, the same thing goes for actual power production. Even if we did nothing (which I would certainly not advocate), eventually scarcity and increased difficulty in obtaining fossil fuels (kinda sad that the past 2 decades of pointless wars 95% driven by oil haven't taught us this lesson yet, but there it is) will make the more "green" alternatives (solar, wind, tidal, nuclear, whatever) more economically practical. That tipping point will be when we see the real change begin.

Darren Wilson Speaks Publicly For The First Time

dannym3141 says...

You remind me of David Mitchell on "Would I Lie to You?" when he pointed out that often people will think that something sounds so out-of-place and rehearsed that it inevitably has to be true.

Do you perhaps think that might be something you're doing? Would this shit really be satisfactory, based on your logic, to a grieving family? He wasn't a saint, neither are you, neither am i... but no one deserves to die for that, especially at such a young age... none of us know who we are by that age.. he had not made the decisions that would shape his life yet. Who does it benefit to have the rehearsed official police story relayed to us by the only man who could explain what really happened? It's more of a slap in the face to the family, is my point.

I tell you what i'd want if i was American - not to have to fear the American police. Because at this point it doesn't even matter if Darren was "rightfully killed" - because the arse-covering propaganda had already started; which is an admission to racism by way of feeling guilty.

And that SHOULD be enough for Americans to demand change - i.e. not every cop should be carrying a gun, because quite clearly not everyone is capable of knowing when to use it. But if it isn't enough, there's Trayvon Martin too. And another, and another, and another.

This isn't a one-off thing, so don't try to suggest that people should judge the video independently of the track history of American police which is to kill young black men, hurting the communities and individuals that they are designed to protect.

At the very least, the protection system is not working for the black community and needs fixing. At the most, there is a tendency towards racism and wild-west-justice in the American police, and that's not just a problem for black people.

P.S. American prison statistics for black people is a serious indictment of how black people are not treated equally in the eyes of the law. Who is really going to try and argue that black people are naturally, statistically more likely to be criminals to the tune of the prison imbalance? There is absolutely no way i am buying into that. The prison statistics remind me of this John Oliver video, perhaps police are being "fair" and stop/searching black people exactly as much as they do white people.. but that is an imbalance because they are not exactly 50% of the population.

(For the record: 60% of all prisoners are black but only 25% of total population. Incarceration at six times that of white people. 12% of the drug-using population are black, but account for 40% arrested for drugs and 60% in prison for drugs. Taken from the NAACP website, i've got to assume they're right. Don't get me started on antiquated drugs policies, or the history of slavery's affect on money/power in the modern world - meaning crimes committed in boardrooms and government go unpunished - let's not forget white leaders have led this world to the brink of complete collapse and we're not out of the woods - but let's stick to the issue.)

charliem said:

Adrenaline has a very strong impact on memory storage. If you have it surging through your veins during memory creation, those memories become extremely easy to access, and far clearer than otherwise mundane events in your life. This is part of the reason that war vets have such a hard time with PTSD and flashbacks.

I dont doubt this guys words...he would have had to have gone over this story a hundred times to his superiors and with the grand jury case, of course it is rehearsed...what do you want? To hear him speaking to someone directly after the incident?

Doubt - How Deniers Win

bcglorf says...

I was referencing the ensemble models the IPCC used in their latest report. I'm largely assuming it includes the latest knowledge on the subject. To me the more encouraging thing is direct measurement of energy imbalance being available to measure models against. The truest measure of the overall greenhouse effect is just this. With it, so long as models accurately track and predict trends in the energy imbalance we can be confident they more or less have things right. That said, the IPCC notes there has been no trend in instrumental data since 2000. Models have been universally projecting a modest upward trend. This again gives hope and reason to believe the lower end projections are the more likely to be accurate. This correlates well with how the original 1990 projections have mapped to actual temp over the last 25 years too. All that is to say that scientifically those saying we should panic need as much slapping into place as those insisting nothing is happening at all.

newtboy said:

Do the models that you reference (that say it won't be disastrous by 2100) include methane? From everything I've read and seen reported, the methyl hydrates are already melting in the oceans, causing large releases of methane throughout the globe. Methane is a FAR worse greenhouse gas than CO2. What I've read is that, once that cycle gets going, it's self re-enforcing because the methane traps heat, heating the ocean, releasing more methane, trapping more heat, etc. It's hard for me to believe they are now predicting LESS warming by 2100 when the hydrates are already melting ahead of predictions....perhaps there's a part of the cycle I don't understand?

Her worst day at work

Colonel Sanders Explains Our Dire Overpopulation Problem

shveddy says...

@RedSky

20 billion was just an arbitrarily large number I chose to demonstrate that I think that the world would survive significant population growth beyond what we'll be dealing with in the near future.

The point of no return I was referring to is simply a point where we won't be able to get back to a place where we can sustain human population levels without significant environmental degradation and territorial disputes, among other challenges I'd prefer not to experience.

I do consider things like global warming, the fact that China is buying up land in Africa to feed its population, US foreign policy's competitive focus on securing cheap oil and the large scale destruction of rainforest to make way for single crop agriculture in Brasil to be symptoms of an imbalance in population vs. resources.

I'm not drawing the line at "everyone and stock up at the grocery store/pumps" type destruction before I take notice and preach caution. I think that defining that as a deadline would be irresponsible.

Again, I agree that we could theoretically mechanize the whole world in a way that grows the supply of resources and shares them equitably amongst an enormous human population, but that goes against the type of world I'd want to live in (excessive mechanization of natural resources) and the way human social systems typically work (equitable sharing).

There are various estimates on how much longer exponential human population growth will last, but it has certainly happened on a scale of centuries or decades - blips like baby boomers are just expected outliers within that trend.

But what's more important is that even if population levels peter off, it is consumption - which is the only statistic that really matters because it is the only negative effect of population increase - that will continue to increase exponentially as a greater proportion of the world's population begins to achieve first world living standards.

This is why free trade alone is not enough to solve problems. While it is likely to bring people out of poverty, raise education levels and increase human rights (all very good things), it will also continue to push our overall imprint on the planet in a more exponential direction than I'm comfortable with (one reason being the argument detailed in this video).

But of course I'm also uncomfortable with the prospect of any sort of forced population reduction mechanism, and I'm also uncomfortable with the notion of not raising people out of poverty.

So as I see it the only thing left to mitigate my fears is to place a primary emphasis on Education.

There's a million and one ways to do this: Everything from broad, effectual efforts like getting the Pope to get with the program and endorse contraceptives, to nearly insignificant efforts like arguing with people on the internet in hopes that you contribute some small part to a culture that places some significant emphasis on educating people about the importance of self control and restraint in every type of consumption - family size included.

Colonel Sanders Explains Our Dire Overpopulation Problem

RedSky says...

@gorillaman

The market dictates prices and the capacity to consume the current amount that we do. With more people affluent and more demand, the price of items will go up based on levels of scarcity. With less countries to outsource lower paid labour to, prices on the supply side will also rise.

Whatever we have will be shared based on wealth. It's the interests of fairly sharing resources that as many people as possible rise from poverty to match rich/middle income countries.

I don't know about his predictions, I was sourcing the data on the relation between birth rate and poverty.

Your range seems arbitrary and not supported by any data. Massively restricting population growth, if it were even possible in anything but a dictatorial state would create the same problems China will have in the coming years as I listed. If we let it plateau, as it's expected to, I don't see how the harm (of having to share more), outweighs the obvious problems of a large elderly/young imbalance.

Colonel Sanders Explains Our Dire Overpopulation Problem

RedSky says...

The solution to overpopulation has always been poverty reduction:

http://videosift.com/video/TED-Hans-Rosling-on-Global-Population-Growth

What stabilises population growth is the birth rate being below the replacement rate (2.1). At 2009 it was 2.33, meaning the doom and gloom is almost completely unwarranted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#Replacement_rates

As far as the one child policy, it's unclear if it was necessary in light of China's growth and consequent poverty reduction which would have reduced it without any direct action. What's certain is that it's created a huge group of ageing workers currently approaching retirement with few children to take care of them.

By 2050, China will be roughly as bad as Japan, which has the largest elderly/young imbalance in the world currently. Which will weigh down pension systems, slow down policies towards growth and ironically keep population growth higher because of diverted spending.

Bernie Sanders tears into Walmart for corporate welfare

bobknight33 says...

It is the fault of government,

If the government did not freely hand out such vast amounts of aid then the people will not take the Walmart job unless it paid better.

Also if people do need more money then make yourself more valuable for you employer.

Robert Reight illustration is utter useless. In 57 you did not have a welfare state

To answer Sanders question, should the tax payers subsidize Wall Mart. The answer is NO. But that is not the taxpayers fault it is Big Goverment trying to be nice, fair, kind, the right thing to do... but in the end Big Government interferes with capitalism and causes such imbalances then blames capitalism.

Science teacher got surprising results from McDonald's diet.

Trancecoach says...

@JiggaJonson

You may not have said that people lack self-control, but the article you posted indicated as much; that when it comes to food portions, people have difficulty curbing their appetites, and it's simply not true -- and it's seems like a facile excuse for not taking responsibility for oneself.

No one I know who actually wants to lose weight "eats less and exercises" (and I would add "eat healthfully" to that, as well). In fact, I don't know anyone who eats healthfully and exercises regularly and appropriately who is "overweight." (If you know anyone, feel free to put them in touch with me.)

I don't want to get all technical here, but obviously someone who has moldy intestines, "leaky gut," fatty liver, and the resulting blood sugar imbalances may have a difficult time losing weight. And, by no means do I think eating McDonald's is a good idea for any health-conscious person, but individuals need to take some responsibility for educating themselves about their own health. This isn't McDonalds' responsibility.

And yeah, the low fat craze was a bad idea (as I frequently pointed out to many in the 90's), but that's what you get when you trust certain "authorities" to tell you what to do and how to live (especially when it comes from the government and its cronies at the AMA).

If you eat healthfully, your body will tell you when to eat and when to stop. Only a messed up metabolism encourages overeating. For example, the insulin-adrenailne roller-coaster will, of course, have an effect on a person's capacities for immediate self-control. This is why people who binge tend to do so on sweets, wheat, and other no-so-great "foods." Do you know anyone who binges on broccoli? I do not.

So I agree that you need knowledge of what to eat, and this is something that often varies from person to person as we all have different biochemistries, but there are common elements to what more likely agrees with most everyone's health.

(Disclaimer: I am not giving medical advice here, as I have not been licensed by the medical "authorities" to misinform you, but in case you want to know more about the reasons for obesity, I encourage you to check this out for more information: http://www.majidali.com/the1.htm)

Cops using unexpected level of force to arrest girl

Trancecoach says...

There is a flaw in your premise which suggests that somehow a capitalist system is susceptible to the "evils of man," but a "government" (no matter how limited) is not. Man is either evil or Man is not evil, regardless of the system in which Man functions. A system of government regulation can either be exploited or not, so a government imposed regulation thus becomes a mechanism for that manipulation.

Capitalism, by contrast, does not require the governmental oversight to impose the regulations that the market imposes upon itself. Such a system (despite the prevalent perception, of late) does not, in and of itself, generate the kinds of crony, kleptocratic monopolies that we have seen on the rise for the past 30+ years. That is, sadly, the effect of government -- the original monopoly -- whose regulations and hybridized (private/public) contractual agreements with the private sector create these imbalances and inequities throughout society. As far as I can tell, only the implicit competitions of the free market present the kinds of price restrictions that cannot be circumvented.

Note that capitalist competition does not mean a system of 'survival of the fittest' and it does not entail the strong surviving at the expense of the weak. In fact, the pattern seen throughout a competitive market is that of a "leader" challenged by a "second-place" (Coke then Pepsi), followed by a more distant third (other colas) and then a variety of many others (Sprite, 7-Up, A&W, etc.) Competition in capitalism differs considerably from that seen in the animal kingdom because humans, unlike animals, can increase the supply of what they need to survive, while animals cannot (with possible exceptions like bees making honey). In fact, capitalist competition does the opposite, it allows those who would otherwise not survive (because they cannot produce for themselves, or those too weak to compete) to survive by partaking in the market of increased supply. Even if those people are unable to hunt or farm for themselves, they can still feed themselves with the abundance of food produced by capitalist competition, which is a competition to produce more and better of whatever the market needs (with an accurate reflection of supply and demand in the price, which is very different from the kinds of "blind" economic calculations necessary in a centralized system of government). And to have such an abundance of production/supply, you need capital investment. There's no other alternative.

In any case, read the article I posted. Let me know what you think.

artician said:

I believe in Stateless society, but I don't believe in privatization under a capitalist system. We need to find a balance between profitability and equal compensation for provider and receiver.

There is a role for limited government, but I think it's limited to a nexus for regulation, and nothing more. Let everything else be privatized, but to a very limited extent. Honestly I really think that everything should be non-profit, but I don't actually know how to propose something that isn't leaning towards communism.

I will gladly read the essay you linked to tomorrow, but from my understanding of human nature and history, I don't think there is any way to balance a for-profit enterprise without succumbing to the evils of man.

Hummingbird Hawk Moth

Jon Stewart's 19 Tough Questions for Libertarians!

enoch says...

i dont pay taxes.
i refused ten years ago and have stuck with that path.
and its been sunshine and rainbows ever since....
ok..not really.my income is severely crippled due to me not paying taxes BUT goddamn does it make me feel good!

i do not pay taxes not to be a cheap ass but rather to protest a system that is so obviously rigged against me.(and you).

as for american libertarianism.
i will say they have the civil rights down.
i totally agree with their philosophy of personal liberty and right to do whatever you want as long as you aint stepping on another blokes shoes.

but when they start with the "free market" sermons i start to look at them as wide-eyed and innocent children.
do they not SEE whats going on?
free market?
what is this free market you speak of?
america is NOT a free market.
it is corporate socialism.
or welfare if you want to troll a bit.

go ahead and de-regulate corporate america.
see what happens.
better yet,just look at some african nations,or former soviet states.
guilded estates with private armies for the uber-wealthy and elite while the majority of the population live in either indentured servitude or total squalor.

i am noticing a disturbing trend here in america.its like they are preparing.
we have a government bought and paid for by corporate america,which does the corporations bidding.
the co-opting of the tea party and the crushing of occupy.
a massive surveillance operation.
militarized police forces across the country.
civil liberties made into mere "suggestions" and no longer inalienable.
executions of american citizens with no due process (bye bye habeas corpus).
a standing army that has been in place for over 60 years and a war on terror that will never end.

it is madness.

so i cannot blame my libertarian friends for calling for smaller government.
because the government has become TOO big and no longer is "for the people,by the people".
it serves its corporate masters.
which is why the "de-regulate" argument truly baffles me.

just as my liberal friends who wish to use the system to correct these imbalances.
what?
the system is utterly BROKEN.
we no longer have a functioning democracy!
why would you even suggest to use a system that threw us all overboard to lick the boots of their masters 30 yrs ago?
the mind..it boggles.

every political philosophy has its flaws.none are perfect.
libertarianism has some very good points while others are a bit...naive in my opinion.

for me the end result is this:
i do not trust power nor authority because i find them to be illegitimate until they prove themselves otherwise.
so i am suspicious when someone tries to force their authority on me based on arbitrary and subjective parameters.(like a cop,or judge or some rich dude).

i am a humanist by nature so my political philosophy flows from that birthplace.
i will never step on you to further my career nor take food out of your mouth.
corporate america has spread a propaganda campaign that is insidious.

capitalism is good.
greed is good.
dog eat dog world out there.
here,buy this,it will make you feel better.
wear that and you will be sexy.
you are lone wolf,against the world,drive this car you lone wolf and be a rebel.

its all bullshit.
human beings feel better when they are co-operating.
when they feel their life has purpose and that they are needed.
not by living in a perpetual 7 yr olds wet dream.

oh
my
god.
you fuckers got me ranting!
i hate you both......
/drops mic



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