>> ^Peroxide:

If you cut out all the back and forth rhetoric that inevitably spews between oil(and gas) corporations and communities who want clean air and water and a future, it all comes down to neoclassical economics' false dichotomy.
Corporations (and left and right wing politicians who over romanticize the free market) will tell citizens,
"you can either have:
a) a strong economy, or
b) a clean environment."
and
they
will
insist
we
can't
have
both.

In Canada for the last couple elections people have been scare mongered by this false dichotomy.
I tell you, there is a sustainable economy, there is a sustainable future: dare to dream. Let's all grow the f ck up and build the new economy that defies the bullshit neoclassical economic lies that have been entrenched in our culture. They will tell you the choice is between a job or cancer. Fuck. that. shit.
It's time for the next industrial revolution, the green revolution, I'm in. Change your light bulbs, then change your leaders.


absolutely, this short term thinking they want us to buy in to is nonsense and is ruining everything for future generations.

If you cut out all the back and forth rhetoric that inevitably spews between oil(and gas) corporations and communities who want clean air and water and a future, it all comes down to neoclassical economics' false dichotomy.

Corporations (and left and right wing politicians who over romanticize the free market) will tell citizens,

"you can either have:
a) a strong economy, or
b) a clean environment."

and
they
will
insist
we
can't
have
both.


In Canada for the last couple elections people have been scare mongered by this false dichotomy.

I tell you, there is a sustainable economy, there is a sustainable future: dare to dream. Let's all grow the f*ck up and build the new economy that defies the bullshit neoclassical economic lies that have been entrenched in our culture. They will tell you the choice is between a job or cancer. Fuck. that. shit.

It's time for the next industrial revolution, the green revolution, I'm in. Change your light bulbs, then change your leaders.

>> ^Ornthoron:

It seems to me that Ron Paul is so enamoured with the concept of freedom that he believes it should extend to selling unhealthy food. There is simply no good reason to sell unpasteurized milk. Having a food and drugs administration that makes sure foodstuffs on sale do not cause serious infectuous diseases is hardly impinging on anyone's freedom. If Ron Paul cannot distinguish the two, I must call into question his judgment on what constitutes freedom for the layman and consumer, and what constitutes freedom for producers to sell dangerous products.


This to me seems to be the central failing of libertarianism. They believe in freedom for everyone and they seem to believe that companies have the same rights as individuals. Time and again, we have seen that corporations cannot be trusted when there is a profit motive. The industrial revolution was about as deregulated as it can get, and all it produced was some of the most appalling working conditions ever.

Nor do I share their ridiculous faith in the market to fix these kinda things. It simply doesn't work. Company x produces products in an unethical way, company y doesn't so it's products cost more, despite being essentially the same end result. People buy xs products because they simply can't afford ys. Regulation for these kinda things creates a level playing field.

Ironically, in this particular case, I'm actually in favour of allowing unpasteurised milk to be sold as long as it is clearly labelled as such. But again, that's kinda the point. You cannot simply apply some arbitrary principle to everything. Even in things we hold sacred, such as free speech, judgements must be made (yelling fire in a theatre and so on).

Tags for this video have been changed from 'bike, ride, trials, skill, movie, Industrial Revolutions, Danny Macaskill' to 'bike, ride, trials, skill, movie, Industrial Revolutions, Danny Macaskill, ironworks' - edited by calvados

This is the kind of thing that just totally blows my mind someone would actually say. Dude, we tried a private only education system already in our history. It resulted in the majority of our population being illiterate. The vast majority of people received no formal education whatsoever. A universal public education system was instituted after the industrial revolution that was compulsory, and it transformed society in the US unquestioningly for the better.

The problem isn't the "public" in "public education"; it's "education". And much of it isn't due to gov't interference. It's insistence by society to inadequately fund it. It's mistrusting and undervaluing education and learning in general (regardless of the educational institution). It's exponentially higher concern for assessing what little is learned instead of helping people actually learn and think critically.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Fedgov has zero Constitutional authority to "educate" anyone. If it got out of the education racket I imagine children would still be educated, just more efficiently and for FAR less money.

We've already got a global air conditioning system, it's called the hydrological cycle. It was working pretty darned well until we started screwing with its essential components, chopping down and burning the trees that were storing the sun's heat, converting the land to agriculture whose stored energy we're only releasing by eating the food produced. Add to that the industrial revolution, now we're burning fossil fuels, containing sun's energy stored from millions of years ago.

Much of the desert we see today was once forest. If you consider that fact, this is where the potential for terraforming really hits home. Restart the hydrological cycle in areas where we've destroyed it through deforestation, use technologies like seawater greenhouses on a wide scale, use them to grow food and forest, then we're starting to solve the problem.

Of course, that's not exactly what she said...

[Wow, this sorta tumbled off topic but we'll see where it goes.]

      1.] Slavery bit

Declining profitability & the industrial revolution ended slavery.
Federal regulations were implemented later, mostly as political platforms.

If you're Britain, and the paid-workers of Brazil or Cuba can produce more sugarcane at lower prices compared to slave-workers.. which side of slavery would you support?

If you're an American plantation owner, how much money are you willing to waste rebuilding your business after every, rapidly increasing slave revolt?

If you're an American or European Labor Union supporter, are you going to buy sugar or textiles from companies that don't pay their workers?

[No, you might even start a petition to enact legislation.]

      2.] Regulation ≠ Improvement

You and @peggedbea seem to think I'm implying that oligarchs should be allowed off some magical leash called regulation.

What I should have articulated first, was the understanding that:
Regulation & incentive - sticks & carrots - work counter-intuitively, more often than not.

Think about it. Is it the people typing up the regulations or the management?
Is it the workers writing up the wage laws or the owners?

If you're a small business owner who you can't afford to pay your workers minimum wage, you're out of the game before you can even start.

Regulations are the Oligarchs best tool to maintain or expand their power.

Mostly because folks like you & Bea legitimize their authority thru your support of regulation as the best thing since sliced bread.

      Lastly

While I support truly free economic exchange, I also support single payer universal health care.

It's possible for them both to exist together at once.

The sooner more people are allowed into the market..
the sooner capitalist fundamentalist healthcare oligarchs will be overlooked because someone offers a better service.

[Again, are you gonna buy from the small, local owner whose minimum wage is slightly below your standards.

..Or the giant multinational conglomerate who uses Southeast Asian slave labor.]

These things tend to work themselves out.

Attempting to elicit obedience from the oligarch only causes problem for all of us you aren't powerful enough to game the system like they can.

Hence, why free economic exchange - yes even the darker side - is necessary for true liberty.



>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

http://videosift.com/video/Ber
nie-Sanders-slaps-down-Rand-Paul-Health-care-as-slavery?loadcomm=1#comment-1205705

When I speak of "God" to Christians, I usually speak to them in terms of a colloquial personal god, and sometimes I use the Einsteinian meaning of creation or nature. I find it bizarre, and frankly a bit misleading, to use it to mean their fundamental teachings and their effects. That's very bizarre indeed.

Quick point of information: it's not volunteerist society; it's voluntaryist society. I don't want you thinking I'm talking about people volunteering out of the goodness of their hearts to run some form of public works projects.

Just like your bizarre and revisionist definition of God, you're also following a bad trend of modern society to change the definitions of free markets to suit a political end; in your case, conflating free markets with the negative impacts of corporatists. When I point out the differences, you loudly profess that you don't care if you're painting the two with the same broad brush. That's where ignorance begins, dft. And ignorance isn't a moral high ground.

Free markets are as idealistic and utopian as freedom itself. There's no more an invisible deity that guides free people to make free choices than there's an invisible hand guiding their free exchanges.

1. Wait, wait, wait. I never said selfishness was a virtue while empathy and compassion was evil. Please don't put words in my mouth. That said, what assertions in favor of free markets require evidence? That they've helped humanity? I think you mean capitalism. There are loads of examples, dft. The entire industrialized revolution which lifted poorer generations out of poverty is a good place to start. Today live longer, healthier lives which is the result of capitalism. Even Karl Marx understood the necessity of capitalism in the betterment of human lives and saw it as an evolution.

2. Corporations are fair-weather. They enjoy regulated markets as long as they're regulated in a way that benefits them. Corporations hate competition, which is the cornerstone of free markets. There's absolutely zero connection between corporations and free markets (i.e., the free and voluntary exchange of people without coercion).

3. My view isn't "utopic"; it's the real definition. You speak here again about capitalism, which is dangerous, I agree. Corporations collude with government to use unilateral aggression in areas of the world that have plentiful natural resources. It's robbery. It's greed. And it's horrendous. And I stand in open opposition to it. But to me this is ultimately the failing of government and the centralized bank system, but that's a whole other conversation.

4. Meh.

5. Doesn't matter. If we have to change the definition of free markets, then so be it. We had to change the definition of liberal from it's original meaning to now embody anti-liberals like yourself.

6. Surely. But go back and read what you initially wrote. Comes off as alarmist and paranoid.

7. No. This was about government "implementing" reforms as being part of the free market. You're changing the criteria now. I would NOT agree that "taking power away from labor" is a principle of the free markets. Remember, free markets are voluntary exchanges between people without coercion.

8. I have no idea what you're getting at. This started with a comment about chaos where there's no taxation. Still irrelevant.

9. Hahaha. Talk about utopian! That's what we have today.

Nah, you don't need to purchase the book for me. I can do that myself. And, to be honest, I don't want to give you a reading assignment, because I doubt that will benefit our differences in world beliefs.

And I know you're more of a Social Democrat than a Docialist. Funny thing, the social democrat is disliked by both the Libertarians and the Marxists equally. Marxists tend to think Social Democrats perverted the socialist movement. Marxists and Libertarians (don't think the party) have a lot in common in terms of how they view human interactions and the evolution of human society. Tangent.

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
When I argue with Christians, I sometimes use the word God, which is occasionally confusing to them considering the fact that I don't believe in God. When I refer to God, I'm not really talking about God, but rather Biblical doctrine, it's real world effects and the words and attitudes of its adherents. Abstractly I don't object to an all knowing, all loving God that answers prayers and reunites you with your loved ones after death, but I do object to all the real world suffering and strife that seems to be done in the name of God. If you were to say, "it's not God's fault", you would be correct.

Similarly, when I speak of "free markets", I am not talking about your idealized utopic vision of a volunteerist sociecty, I am actually referring to market doctrine, it's real world effects and the words and attitudes of it's adherents. Abstractly I don't object to a volunteerist utopia. Abstractly I don't object to any utopia. The problem is that I don't believe in utopia - be it one with invisible hands or one with invisible deities. I do object to all the real world suffering and strife that seems to be done in the name of unfettered markets.

It's not the Free Market's fault.

1. Concepts do not have the capacity for thought or emotion, nor the ability to speak, so I agree with you that free markets do not state anything, however, it's adherents - Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand and yourself - in defense of free markets assert their affection for greed and selfishness, while cursing the evils of empathy, compassion and dogooderism. They never provide any evidence to support these assertions, and real world evidence seems to contradict these assertions.

2. I understand that corporatism has no place in your utopic vision of a free market, but that doesn't seem to stop corporations from bankrolling the free market movement. I'm not sure if corporations think they exist within the spirit of the free market or if they are just using the free market as a tool to manipulate people into supporting plutocracy. Either way, corporatism and the free market are in completely solidarity on subjects of taxes, deregulation, privatization and organized labor.

3. Again, I understand that violence and coercion have no place in your utopic vision, but in the real world, as illustrated in great detail in The Shock Doctrine, coercion and force seem to be the only reliable methods of forcing market principles of austerity on an unwilling public.

4. Again, I understand that concepts are not capable of promoting ideals, but adherents to free market ideology use anti-scientific arguments against climate change regulation. I would respect their arguments more if they were based on the principle that regulations should not be used, even in the face of environmental disaster. It wouldn't be a very persuasive argument, but at least it would have some integrity.

5. Write off corporatists and Republicans all you like, but they outnumber you by the billions. If you are all fighting for 'free markets', whose vision of the free market do you think will win the day? Probably not yours.

6. Keeping people from joining together is a time honored totalitarian tactic. I can cite you examples if you need them.

7. Would you agree that deregulation, privatization, taking power away from labor and lowering taxes are free market principals? Is there some reason why these principles should not function as you intend them to if they are implemented by force? Milton Friedman has lavished much praise on the free market reforms put in place by authoritarian regimes. Only one of you can be correct, and I'm siding with you on this one.

8. An unregulated market is an unregulated market is an unregulated market.

9. A better system: A balance of 'pro employee' socialism with 'pro employer' capitalism where free enterprise is allowed to thrive, but abuse of labor, the economy, the political system or the environment is not.

10. This is pretty much the same as 5, but I wanted to make it an even 10, so....

11. Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?


I know you said you didn't want to be spoonfed by a liberal, which I took to mean you don't want to read about "The Shock Doctrine" from the person who wrote "The Shock Doctrine". How's about a bargain, if you read the book, I'll promise to read something you care about of similar length. Freidman? Adam Smith? Selma Von Heyak? Whatever you want me to read, so long as it is a legit, important mainstream book. Also, I'd send you the book in the mail so you don't have to give your money to some pinko commie bitch, and I'll use my own cash to buy 'Road to Serfdom' or whatever it is you want me to read. It's only appropriate for the socialist* to give his book away, while purchasing the capitalist book.

Fair?

In all honesty, I think you'd get a lot out of the book. All of the dirty deeds are carried out by governments, corporations and Chicago based economists. None of it lives up to your ideal of a free market and all of it could be correctly defined as statism. It really makes sense of our foreign policy; which nations are chosen and why; why every president seems to have to have his own conflict... I'm officially anti-Libya now (I'm sure your happy to hear this) because the CIA is a recurring theme in all of these tales and they are usually the ones that teach strategic foreign allies how to torture, kill and disappear anyone who stands up to the despotic puppet of choice. The only negative you might get out of the book is seeing how closely Friedman works with the government, the right wing and despotic dictators. It's all cited and footnoted. If Chomsky were into some nasty shit, I wouldn't be happy about it, but I'd want to know.

Have a bitchen summer. - dft

*dft is not really a socialist. He wants a system that balances the rights of the worker with the rights of the boss.

In the way that Charlie Chaplin's film, Modern Times offered a *parody-ied insight into the implications of the industrial revolution, so too did I notice here some interesting (albeit absurd and exaggerated) considerations posited on the impact of digital culture, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, et. al. on our humanity. With every technology comes an incomparable cost.

>> ^hPOD:

>> ^criticalthud:
it's just so arrogant to think that "we" (scientists) are smarter than 4 billion years of evolution, and that we can make better plants. fuckballs. we know so little about this planet.
this seems to be a case of profit vs. common sense

I know what you mean...I think. Getting rid of polio, smallpox, and other such illnesses/diseases...damned stupid scientists. The world was a better place when children caught polio and died from it...right?
I know it's not directly linked to genetic manipulation of crops...but maybe these scientists aren't all "fuckballs", and some of the things they do, including certain genetic manipulations for food, help us more than then harm us.
After all...at the current population growth of the world, without genetic crops, even more of them would be starving to death...
I know...I know...people starving to death rules.


it's not that scientists are stupid (and fuckballs is just a term for "things are fucked", not directed at scientists or anyone in general), and quite clearly they've accomplished some amazing things, and the science behind gmo's is impressive as well. it's just that we're not as smart as we think we are, especially when we start messing around with genetics, and doing so with a profit motive in mind. We are barely getting to know this planet, meanwhile we're wiping out species of plant and animal life left and right.

As for starvation, the population growth of this planet is due to an industrial revolution fueled by oil, which is of limited quantity. Both rapid population expansion and fossil fuel consumption create a variety of negative consequences for the biosphere. You could accurately consider the human race to be an infestation of the planet. Yes GMO's can help feed such rapid population, but is this the correct course of action when you consider the biosphere as a whole? And are we really at that point where we think we are smarter than 4 billion years of evolution? We are upsetting the balance, and this will come back to bite us in the ass.

Given your bullet reply I will do likewise. (even though I think that turns our conversation into more of an argument, and I hate arguments)

I) Both sides had only mathematical constructs with a central notion of understanding behind the numbers. What I mean is, there was no NASA or anything to go look...there was only math. The Heliocentric model was exactly that, a (very) complex mathematical model (of exceptions) to explain the motion of the planets based on observed phenomena. Geocentrism had data as well, but lacked the cultural bias for it to be accepted as a valid view point. Which adds to my point, not detracts from it; as my point what theories get mocked or accepted has more to do with culture than premise.

A) I bet you didn't read the link I posted, and I can't blame you (Quine on a weekday and all!). But what I wrote was a hasty, and perhaps, oversimplified version of Quines waxing and waning on the politics of science. You can see examples of this today where scientists and large hang on the breath of the great intellectuals of the day, like Stephen Hawking. Or, how quickly Einstein is falling out of favor now that quantum doesn't quite add up. More than likely, within our lifetime, you will stop hearing about space time curves and it will be supplanted by some other thing. The main difference between planet orbits and the general laws of the universe are that you can go outside and look at the orbit (with a rocket). You can't go just "see" the laws of nature and therefore have no reason to thing Enstein was any more right about space time curves than of fundamental forces. You can explain, using Newtonian language and adapting its math, relativity and motion. The reason we don't has more to do with culture and self advocacy than evidence. And to the point, that still doesn't address the primary problem, that of which, the PEERS that review are under the influence of culture, they are the rose colored glasses to which I was referring all along.

B) See, I understand a bit of that. But ultimately that seems like an undersell to how life works on this planet. No doubt, change will bring hardship on certain species, but wouldn't also create new opportunities for others? A lack of snow on the tundra is bad for snow foxes...but good for regular foxes. Change is one thing life on this planet handles well...as for individual members their fates are less certain.

C) I disagree on 2 counts. One is my first example. Simply put, even if you idea treads water, it can be framed in such a way as to be demeaned of any value, regardless of merit. You can see this in media smear campaign stuff, if you can frame someone as a nut job, it will discredit them. For example, "The Industrial Revolution and its consequences" is a great read and has many, good observations....but is written by the uni bomber so not high on anyone's reading list. It isn't culturally acceptable to go...hey, the uni bomber is right, this is a problem! Same goes for here, it doesn't matter if it's 600 or 6000 scientists that disagree with the climate change model, if your ideas aren't popular, no one is going to be there to listen.

And second, you can't prove a negative. The only way the could prove that climate change isn't human caused is to completely understand the whole system and then point out how humans are trivial factors. In other words, they would have to be able to do the thing that no climatologist can claim, to know the whole truth about the weather and all its complexities. The burden of proof is actually on those making the claim, not the ones countering that claim. So really, the only thing they have to proof is nothing and just make the assertion that the doomsays math doesn't add up (and why). They just have to poke the holes in the boat in other words...which is what I think they are getting ostracized for. Get on board or get out kind of thing. But that is just an outsiders opinion.

@blankfist, a transcript of part of what he said:

The tea party movement is about saving the country from a mountain of debt that is devouring our country and I think could lead to chaos…

I think we stand on a precipice, we are encountering a day of reckoning…

We have a President who went to Copenhagen and appeared with Robert Mugabe, Hugo Chavez, and others — Evo Morales — to apologize for the industrial revolution. … These petty dictators say that to stop climate change it’s about ending capitalism.

Sounds like he wants people to be afraid to me...

>> ^LarsaruS:

I don't get the uncanny valley thing... there is nothing uncanny about it at all to me... are Westerners really that traumatized by the industrial revolution and the Luddites that all androids seem evil to us, or what?


Educate yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

It's got nothing to do with modernization or automation. It's all about making things that look "almost" human, but not human enough.

I don't get the uncanny valley thing... there is nothing uncanny about it at all to me... are Westerners really that traumatized by the industrial revolution and the Luddites that all androids seem evil to us, or what?

I'm about halfway though it, right where they give their "verdict" on their first question of "is the world getting any warmer".

Basically, everything they showed was a litany of cherry picked data points.

I was particularly disappointed when they started citing news reports in 2008 about how there might've been an increase in ice cover that year from 2007. 2007 was the warmest year in the entire historical record since they started directly measuring temperatures and keeping records.

They kinda give away their problem when they showed the level of solar radiation on top of the last century's temperature record and said the "correlation was high". Well, yeah, but if you look at that picture carefully, you notice that the temperatures start getting above it more and more often the longer you go forward.

Why? Because there's more CO2 in the air, so I'll see now what they say about CO2.

Oh my. I guess I'm not sure what the argument they tried to present really was. Some things they said:

• There's a really small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere
  
• Most of the CO2 in the atmosphere comes from natural sources
  
• CO2 makes plants grow more
  
• Nobody's ever proven that CO2 has ever increased temperatures (no supporting evidence or refutation of people who've claimed to have proven this, just the naked assertion)
  
• The only reason why anyone thinks global warming is real is because of a "dubious" computer program (no info given on why it's dubious, or what might be wrong with said program)
  

This doesn't disprove CO2's effect as a greenhouse gas. It suggests that maybe the Gaia hypothesis is right, and that plant growth will react to the increased CO2 and absorb it all to maintain it at present levels, but uh, we have data showing a sharp increase since the industrial revolution, and that would seem to disprove the idea that increased plant growth will keep CO2 in check.

Also, part of the global warming hypothesis is about deforestation -- it's not just that we're digging up fossilized hydrocarbons and releasing them into the atmosphere, it's that at the same time we're destroying the forests that would scrub excess CO2 from the atmosphere, which will destabilize the equilibrium even more than burning oil and coal would by themselves.

@Psychologic, in answer to your first question, here are the equations relating to the greenhouse effect. Those don't cover real-world situations, since it's assuming 100% IR opacity of the atmosphere, and it's not 100% in the real atmosphere.

Water vapor and clouds actually have two effects, one it increases the IR opacity of the atmosphere (warmer), but it also increases the albedo of the atmosphere (cooler).

I don't know what the measured/approximated values are that they plug in, but that's where the real climate science debate is right now, i.e. how much CO2 is too much? When will methane trapped under the ocean and under ice get released, knocking us permanently off equilibrium?

That's where the real debates are these days. Otherwise, it's like dft said, the only reason there isn't total consensus is because of a propaganda campaign perpetrated by oil and coal companies, and it gets repeated by people who have fantasies about punching hippies.