In a perfect world, perhaps. This world is not perfect, and many people don't have the ability to 'plan', either financially or sexually. Your plan leaves anyone who does not plan perfectly for an unknown future on the streets and destitute. That's not the country we have decided we want to live in. If you do, there's always Somalia.
Your plan leaves us with millions of destitute elderly on the streets. Bad plan, that would NEVER work. Again, you expect people to plan for their future perfectly, and if they don't, fuck em. That's terrible, uncaring, non-thinking planning. They don't just disappear if they planned badly and are homeless, foodless, and hopeless, they show up on your driveway with a knife.
How about we just remove all corporate welfare, cut our military by 5%, and actually extend benefits for PEOPLE? The reduced costs in your plan would not even be noticed in the federal budget, not a single percent change, mine would be noticed. I think you believe that 'welfare' (social programs) is a major cost to the fed, it's simply NOT. On the other hand, it does save us billions by not having to deal with sick desperate homeless people by the millions. It's proven time and time again that taking care of them humanely costs far less than ignoring them until you can no longer ignore them.

This is getting old.
If production were simple, ie not requiring extra water and fertilizer, everyone who's hungry would farm, and there would be 'bush taca' (wild food) to gather and eat. You can't make a living stealing from subsistence farmers, you go hungry between farms that way.
I point out that historically you are wrong. I cite specific examples illustrating that you are wrong. Still you come back insisting that somehow men with guns can't starve people out who want to farm. That somehow the mass starvations under Stalin, Mao, and North Korea weren't even related to the mass theft at gunpoint of farm crops and land from farmers. You insist that it's not what is today stopping farmland from productivity in places like the DRC, Liberia, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, and many more. I give up.

the tech to replace oil and coal and gas exist today
But also
we can't get to the moon with NASA today, or get on a concord
I give up.

78% less glacier doesn't mean ...
I think those numbers are small, and it's likely that there will be less than 22% of glaciers left in 100 years
I cited the actual science from the IPCC with their own projections. You take the very, very worst of the multiple scenarios the IPCC run. Not content with that, you take the most extreme range of error within that extreme scenario. Not content with that, you then inject your PERSONAL BELIEF that even that position of science is likely to optimistic.

I give up. If you refuse to listen to fact and reason that's up to you. Just don't pretend your any better than the other side ignoring the actual science just from a different end of the spectrum.

I'm guess from you're tone your American, or at least only figure Americans are going to be reading? You note that 'we' can't get to the moon, while Chinese rovers navigate it's surface. You note with alarm what coastal Florida will face from sea level rise, and not an entire nation like Kiribati. When we look at a global problem we can't ignore technology just because it's Chinese, or focus so hard on Florida's coast we ignore an entire nation in peril.

Sea levels aren't going to be fine in 2099 and then rise a foot on the eve of 2100. They will continue to rise about 3mm annually, as they have already for the last 100 years.(on a more granular level slightly less than 3mm nearer 1900 and slightly more nearer 2100 but the point stands). Coastal land owners aren't merely going to see this coming. They've watched it happening for nearly 100 years already and managed to cope thus far. Cope is of course a bad word for building housing near the coast and at less than a foot above sea level. It's like how occupants at the base of active volcanoes 'cope' with the occasional eruption. All that is to say, the problem for homes built in such locations has always been a matter of when not if disaster will strike. The entire island nation of Kiribati is barely above sea level. It is one tsunami away from annihilation. Climate change though is, let me be brutally honest, a small part of the problem. A tsunami in 1914 would've annihilated Kiribati, as a tsunami today in 2014 would, as a tsunami in 2114 would. And we are talking annihilate in a way the 2004 tsunami never touched. I mean an island that's all uninhabited, cleared to the ground and brand new, albeit a bit smaller for the wear. That scenario is going to happen sooner or later, even if the planet were cooling for the next 100 years so let's be cautious about preaching it's salvation through prevention of climate change.

Your points on food production are, sorry, wrong. You are correct enough that local food growth is a big part of the problem. You are dead wrong that most, or even any appreciable amount is to blame on climate change now or in the future. All the African nations starving for want of local food production lack it for the same reason, violence and instability. From this point forward referenced as 'men with guns'. The people in Africa have, or at least had, the means to grow their own food. Despite your insistence that men with guns couldn't stop them from eating then, they still did and continue to. A farmer has to control his land for a whole year to plant, raise and harvest his crop or his livestock. Trouble is men with guns come by at harvest time and take everything. In places like the DRC or Somalia they rape the farmer's wife and daughters too. This has been going on for decades and decades, and it obviously doesn't take many years for the farmer to decide it's time to move their family, if they are lucky enough to still be alive. That is the population make up of all the refugee camps of starving people wanting for food. It's not a climate change problem, it's a people are horrible to each other problem. A different climate, better or worse growing conditions, is a tiny and hardly worth noting dent in the real problem.
CO@ emission restrictions do not equate to global economic downturn, they could just as easily mean global economic upturn as new tech is adopted and implemented.
I stated meaningful CO2 emission changes. That means changes that will sway us to less than 1 foot of sea level change by 2100 and corresponding temperatures. Those are massive and rapid reductions, and I'm sorry but that can not be an economic boon too. I'm completely confident that electric cars and alternative or fusion power will have almost entirely supplanted fossil fuel usage before 2100, and because they are good business. Pushing today though for massive emission reductions can only be accomplish be reducing global consumption. People don't like that, and they jump all over any excuse to go to war if it means lifting those reductions. That's just the terrible nature of our species.

As for glaciers, I did read the article. You'll notice it observed that increasing the spatial resolution of models changed the picture entirely? The IPCC noted this and updated their findings accordingly as well(page 242). The best guess by 2100 is better than 50% of the glaciers through the entire range remaining. The uncertainty range even includes a potential, though less likely GAIN of mass:
. Results for the Himalaya range between 2% gain and 29% loss to 2035; to 2100, the range of losses is 15 to 78% under RCP4.5. The modelmean loss to 2100 is 45% under RCP4.5 and 68% under RCP8.5 (medium confidence). It is virtually certain that these projections are more reliable than in earlier erroneous assessment (Cruz et al., 2007) of complete disappearance by 2035.

If you still want to insist Nepal will be without glaciers in 2100 please provide a source of your own or stop insisting on contradicting the science to make things scarier.

I think he has a point, I really do, however he's too dismissive of the whole problem. He claims there are 1.5 billion muslims in the world, and only a few countries are actually extremists. He mentions 3 in the video. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran. We know there are a few others (like Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc), but let's talk of these 3 only.

I actually added them up. The population in those 3 countries alone, is 300 million people. That's 20% of the 1,5 billion Reza Aslan mentioned.

At LEAST 20% of the muslims in the world are extremists (and this is a low number). This is not a fringe ideology for muslims. It is a big portion of them.

You fellas defending the cops need to think again.

You DO NOT SHOOT except to SAVE LIFE. I don't care if its Charlie Manson - if he's unarmed and surrendering in broad daylight YOU DO NOT SHOOT HIM.

Failure to respect this code leads to paranoia, violence, rage, hatred and TOTAL SOCIAL APOCALYPSE.

Ferguson will get back from the brink but only because of people who understand that.

Btw Norway has the most liberal, kindest, most forgiving judicial system in the world (AFAIK) and also the LOWEST REOFFENDNG AND CRIME RATES.

USA reoffending rate 85%. Incarceration rate highest outside of Somalia. So if the moral spiritual ethical stance is too lefty for you try BASIC FUCKING STRATEGY.

> "Sorry, once again you're completely wrong and making shit up."

No, you are wrong and making things up.

> "I never said any of that at all."

You never said any of what you wrote?

> "I challenge you to prove me wrong"

Yes, you are wrong.

> "D'OH!"

What's that all about? Homer Simpson or something?

> "I came back for more because you bold faced lied about me in a public
> thread"

Did not.

> "Why have you continued to come back for more time and time again after at
> least 3 times stating you were 'bored'"

Because you are entertaining. You do get boring here and there, true, but stuff like the "move to Somalia" that's entertaining.

> "you didn't read most of my posts"

I read some of your replies, even if I don't take them seriously.

> "'done with this thread'"

Did I say that? (to paraphrase that cop, if Obama can say we are out of Iraq and then come back, why can't I?)

> "(proving you a liar)"

No, you're the liar.

> "I think most of those following this thread have seen which of us is wrong,
> angry, and frustrated, and it ain't me buddy."

I don't know who is or isn't following the thread, and I don't really care or know if anyone following cares. You obviously do, attention seeker that you are.

> "I feel the need to ask, did you get a number of good temporary tattoos
> before you got that 'diploma'? (It sure is seeming more and more like you got
> it from a Cracker Jack box, your complete lack of reading comprehension
> makes it seem unlikely you could have 'earned' one)"

This is the kind of ridiculous statement that makes you "funny." Keep it up.

I love the conservative ideal that the best government is no government, or mob rule. I'd love to drop these people off for a week in a country that actually works that way.. like Somalia. Not that they'd likely survive that week.

Yeah, Iraq was a virtual paradise under Saddam, what with the rape rooms, the training of terrorists, the gassing of Kurds, the execution of losing soccer players, the human shredding machines, and Somalia...the warlords were doing a great job feeding everyone equitably. Hitler had all those Jews in one or two places, too where they could be in an orchestra and live out the rest of their lives together with their families.

Aww, I thought this was going to be a parody at the start, but nope, just a young stupid person going through their political phase.

Related: http://videosift.com/video/Somalia-Libertarian-Paradise

Do enlighten me: How do you think "dominant corporation(s) or collusion thereof [will] strongarm retailers?" That simply won't happen. Rather, there will be fewer barriers to entry for other widget manufacturers to enter the market, either independently or working for competing "dominant" corporations when they discover that it's more profitable to not be "paid off" but to compete in the market instead.

A dominant corporation cannot buy every possible competitor. That's absurd. And there will always multiple "dominant" corporations, and not just one, or one and a number of "start-ups." Where there is Coke, there will be Pepsi. Where there is Apple, there will be Samsung. In a free market, monopolies and cartels cannot exist except in the very short term and at an eventual loss (unless they have the primary monopoly of the government to back them up).

If there are patents, there's no free market. A free market, by definition, must exclude all patent, trademark, copyright, and other such IP law. So, you may have picked the worst example.

Free markets without patents is not a problem at all. Not for the market and not for consumers. Companies may just be more careful about spies. They certainly wouldn't be incentivized (like they are now) to spend $millions just to hold patents on products that are never produced, only to corner the market and "strongarm" competitors (like they do now).

Companies like Bed, Bath & Beyond have been trying to price upstarts out of the market for years, decades even! And they're still not able to get rid of competitors! Same can be said about Walmart. Many stores other than Walmart sell TVs, even at higher prices, and remain competitive. Other stores sell linens besides BB&B. So, you have a distorted view of how markets actually work. No one corporation can monopolize the sale of any goods or services. That's just incorrect (unless the government helps them to do so). It just doesn't happen.

There's no such thing as a "natural monopoly." Name one. In Texas, for example, there are competing utility providers, and people can choose which energy service to use. This is in contrast to CA, where most of us are forced to "choose" PG&E over zero other alternatives.

"Restriction of information/prevention of rational, informed consumers"

I'm sorry, but anyone who has been involved in business knows this is complete horseshit. If you have a better product/service (the only way to outdo the competition), you will let the customers/market know right away.

And there's no scale at which markets collapse. The same forces of the market apply to big, small, and medium businesses. There is no arbitrary size for which these forces do not apply. And keep in mind that without government granted privileges, corporations would be much smaller than they are now, because competition would make it easier for competitors to participate, thereby forcing a re-allocation of resources to accommodate the market's demands.

So, yes you most certainly "overstated" your case. All markets can be free, regardless of size. Whether it's a small farmer's market or Whole Foods. The same market forces apply. They all have to court voluntary customers through service, price, quality, etc. Again, anyone who has had to work with marketing will know this.

BTW, things like "price dumping" are circumvented all the time. Does Rolls Royce care that Hyundai sells cheaper cars? Does Mercedes care that a Prius is less expensive?

Target makes money because Walmart is cheaper, not in spite of it!
And everything Walmart sells, you'll find many other stores selling it, even though Walmart might sell it cheaper.
The local natural food store in my neighborhood sells, more or less, the same things as Whole Foods. None of your objections pose any real problems in the real world.

I don't see Walmart buying every other TV seller, or even trying to do this. Microsoft tried but, so what? They failed, because they could not buy every single competitor in the software world, could they?

Even in Somalia, to use @enoch's example, in the telecommunications industry (to pick one that saw growth), no one even remotely managed to do any of the things you say could happen. In 20 years, no corporation did any of these things. Why not?

Because they couldn't.

And did "dominant" corporations take over all small retailers and sellers? No way, not even close! They couldn't. Only regulations can really kill all small retailers (and they do it all the time). Your outrage is gravely misplaced. Do the countless bazaars and sellers of Turkey, India, or Thailand get taken over by "dominant" corporations?

Hint: No.

Only when government meddles, do the big corporations wipe out the little ones, and sometimes each other.

In any case, Coke will not eliminate Pepsi (or Sprite, or Dr. Pepper, or A&W), government or no government.

"it just sounds like a return to feudalism."

How so specifically? An agrarian culture based on farmland ownership?

It sounds to me that your imagination is getting the best of you. Creative, but not at all what I am describing. Somalia is a failed state, and a socialist failed state at that. However, as you know, things from medical services to life expectancy to infrastructure to child mortality to crime all dropped in the 20 years in which Somalia had no functioning government. Things got better not worse. Why do you think that is?

Saying a free market would be like Somalia is like saying that a government-regulated market would be like North Korea. There are other issues to consider.

Libertarianism does not posit that a free market automatically means a perfect or even a great society. But it does posit that a free market system will ease poverty, increase wealth, and ensure peace at a faster pace than a statist one. At whatever level a culture/society starts at, they will improve and be better off in a free market rather than under state rule. Somalia started off in a mess, caused by its failed state circumstances. You cannot seriously expect to go from one day to the next, eliminate the state, and expect that overnight all that damage will sort itself out just because now -- a day later -- there's no state. You have to rebuild and accumulate wealth over time. And Somalia did remarkably well considering the mess it started from.

A society like the US, which is much better off (for the time-being!), would improve even more, rather than deteriorate, with less or even no government. But of course, if a meteorite wipes out DC overnight, that does not mean overnight improvement. After all, the government has wiped out many private institutions that would need to be in place to take over from the government in providing the services they put out of business.

On the other hand, the road towards more state control (which you, strangely continue to support and defend) leads to more deterioration of the society/culture. The US is doing better because of all the capital it accumulated during the century in which it functioned under little government intervention with regards to its economic matters. That wealth has been badly squandered, and now Americans are living off what remains, slowly but surely bankrupting the country though more government interventions, currency inflations, needless war, bailouts, surveillance, ad infinitum.

But make no mistake: whatever wealth the US as a nation has came about though free exchange in commerce, and was not the result of government regulation. The more government interferes, the slower the growth, until now it has reached the point where there is no growth, only debt. (The Treasury should be renamed the Department of Debt, because it has no money, only debt -- just like a majority of Americans.)

In sum: Somalis are improving. Americans are not. Whoever you are, I assure you, you started off in a much better place than the average Somali did. But look at their rate of change!


EDIT: Somalia also did not have a "free market" when it came to warlord gangs. Unless people had a choice as to which warlord to hire for protection or not, then that is not a free market when it comes to protection services. If allegiance to a particular warlord was voluntary, then you could more honestly make the claim that they had a "free market." Still, the situation is improving. And I think it would have improved faster had there not been the (UN-fueled) expectation of a future centralized government, had the UN not been financing groups towards this end, and had they not been incentivizing gangs to fight each other for position in a future "government."

There is nothing "free market" about forced conscription. I don't know why you would even say that.

I don't think anyone is calling them unstoppable. There is just, as you point out, an unwillingness to do so. Internally to each warlord's zone, there is the inability to do so. Across the African Union, well, the majority dislike the precedent of unseating dictators for war crimes, so they are unwilling to help. The rest of the world is sitting far away, and comfortable. Our war hawks out here refuse to go in because there is nothing in it for them. Our peacniks refuse to go in because war is bad, end of conversation.

The sad truth is there are very few people in the world who both care about the plight of such people AND are willing to endorse intervention.

Look no further than Somalia. The world powers decide to use military escorts to distribute aid to the country fairly. A few US marines get killed, and immediately EVERY world power pulls out and leaves things alone. To this day standard warlord manuals clearly state that in the case of UN peacekeepers or foreign intervention, shoot 2-3 of them and wait a week for them all to go home.

I hate to get on Bill Nye, and I agree with the need for more foreign aid even. I must protest non the less about war being a minor factor in poverty and related deaths. Blaming the millions that die of starvation and malnutrition in Africa on that alone is little different than saying that the millions who starved under Stalin and Mao could have been saved by foreign aid.

Even when there isn't active warfare in the most poverty ridden places of the world, there are warlords and criminals ruling the region through starvation and actively redirecting what little foreign aid there is to themselves and away from those that do not support them. Simply sending more food and money to places like Somalia or North Korea does nothing to help the people there, and if the aid is naively sent blind to whomever holds power it actually makes things WORSE by strengthening the very monsters responsible for the suffering. I'd like to believe our apathy here is the biggest problem as much as the next guy, but the reality is that there are also people local to the problem involved first hand in perpetuating and profiting from human suffering. If we refuse to admit that there are instances were 'aid' necessarily takes the form of shooting the bad guys then we are doomed to watching as the next genocide plays out, as we did for the Rwandan Tutsis, Iraqi Kurds and Shias and countless others.

Actually, 99% of human behavior is entirely anarchic. I make millions of large and small transactions with other humans on a daily basis which have absolutely zero government involvement, whatsoever. Billions of other people on the planet do the exact same thing. Daily. Government is a fiction by which some people live at the expense of everyone else.

Even Somalia, as you may have seen, grew and improved on almost all counts after the government collapsed, built more roads and infrastructure during its 20 years without government than it did with the government.

What we have now, with a centralized government, is (because people, let alone government, is far from omniscient) more of a "planned chaos," by which little to nothing is fully known as to the long term of effects of anything that the government imposes. At least, without government, we work within natural laws and an emergent order. Instead, what we have now is "positive laws" (imposed by governments) which regulate some people at the expense of the many, while benefiting a very few.

And I think you should learn your history before you suggest that "might-makes-right" argument has shaped the arc of civilization. One cannot make the honest case that government is not behind the worst, most egregious crimes against humanity known to man, with its ability to generate unlimited money to spend on mobilizing huge military empires so "the people's" proxy can drone foreigners to death, or lock them up in Guantanamo or anywhere else, or spy on all their communications, or make them all poor though inflation, or regulate their existence to the most minute detail, or provide them with bad healthcare or any number of other things that government can do.

Not me. I'm joining the billions of people throughout history (from the Puritans, to the American Revolutionaries, to the millions of emigrants via Ellis Island, to millions of refugees, to all those air lifted from Saigon, to all those Americans whose relatives fled from China, Korea, Vietnam, Iran, or anyplace where there's war, or famine, or economic devastation) who decided to opt out of government, and to voluntarily exit the charade.


"But, hey, if you like your government, you can keep it."