Not saying there shouldn’t be regulations, but people need to understand what they are asking for to become aware of the pitfalls. In the case of politicians, a real free press (i.e. a competitive one that isn’t monopolized) would and should spotlight corruption. It’s all owned by the same interests more or less in the states. The bias is incredible.
Monopolies are unavoidable without room to grow. The rise of the alternative media on the net has really made a difference in this era of enclave politics.
So what we need is regulation to stop self-destruction and much more transparency. I don’t think these corporate interests will allow either to happen. Letting small businesses grow (especially with governments stepping in as creditors) seems to help balance the scales like we are seeing in the UK now because the Conservatives here aren’t completely insane, just realistic.
Tbh, it’s the U.S. refusing to evolve. They are perfectly fine with the existence of an underclass despite globalization gutting the country of work, and think a service based economy can last forever somehow. You can only balance that with a reset (and a return of competitive growth) or more government and they aren’t doing either really, but the government is completely taken over by corporate interests. Shrink the power of government more that serve those interests and you’ll see less of that problem.
A return to competitive growth - but what would we be growing? GDP doesn’t equate to well being. Growing industry has the problem of environmental degradation - and will continue to do so, so long as its more profitable to exploit the environment. To fix the current problems its going to take a deduction of growth, rather than an increase of it. Less people, less resources being consumed, and unfortunately less freedom to do what we what with the environment. That’s the unfortunate reality of the limits of a finite planet.
People talk about sustainable growth - but what is sustainable growth? When we’ve already reached the limits of the planet’s capacity to grow civilisation unless we start lowering the amount of resources that each individual can consume. So there’s a dilemma there, one which I don’t see how competitive growth can resolve.
I’m with you on educating people, freeing up the media etc. Social media has really helped the Occupy movement. It also needs to be done at the source, e.g. through children’s education, teaching them to think critically.
Markets reinvent themselves and find new things to sell. Monopolies always kill competition, so even if there is a market for something like cleaner energy, our corporate friends will make that more trouble than it is worth.
By growth, I mean as in the west actually produces and makes something it can sell to the rest of the world that it needs. I am sure we can think of many things. The U.S. could sell more food to the world and more efficient cars etc.
All I am saying is the west is going to have to reinvent itself into something more modern and cleaner otherwise we’re finished. The math doesn’t lie. I wish it did, but people who think this can last forever are dreaming.
There is a lot of room to adapt but the status quo is slowing things down.
I am not totally optimistic about the green wave, I just realise its coming both as an opportunity for change, its supported in leadershipeducation and abused as an opportunity to trick people (look my new poisonous product is so much greener now , because it uses up less energy by using extreme toxic ingredients etc). In every progress is potential , that is all and it is coming.
personally, I think there should be simply a program which enables people outside of the economic powerhouses to return to their original balanced life , protected by the international army against corporate soldiers. In many cases people cannot care for the protection of the environment (aka their foodsource) because big ships and oil pipes ruin and empty their resources, so instead of starving to death, they simply take what is left, try to aquire a little bit of money and either simply or survive or take all the families aquired money to send their children into better education.
it seems simple to me. use the military power not for oilwars, but protect local food resources. give them different digestable food as long as the water and forestareas need protection, bomb ships that break the limits of fishing into the ground (and take all the money of all the ceo’s , should scare them enough), and soon it should be working out in many regions.
We in europe simply burn up much of our food, because the market here cant even consume all of it. so we have more food here, then we have people. so why reduce people here ?? I dont see any sense in that.
It might be right for some africans or asians here and there, but many times their food is not enough because oil pipes flood their fields and watersources or our boats take away their food. To be burned here.
As long as you have a usual market, you will have a lot of wasted food, because we dont need everyday fish, no we need 2000 different types of it, from all of the world. I have seen potatoes from arabic countries here. in germany. we have more then enough potatoes. its a joke.
so yeah, agreed, government works for corporate interests.
But, they do it, because if they would not, they would not get money.
in less regulated countries , people get shot by pmc’s if they try to attain rights in western companies (poisoned soft drinks scandals in india f.e.), so that is not helping either.
it is rather simple. as long as you have this money system, you have the problem as a cultivated part of everything.
chinese offered the idea that we change currency into a represantation of the countries health.
this will also fail as long as you let companies go nuts in foreign countries, who are defenseless, because they will simply exploit those and act green in their “home”. In big companies , there is no real person really chargeable. the company itself is a person, with all the rights, but really barely any responsibilities.
this will be always a root of problem unless it is changed into somehting positive.
in the end , the nature of systems will always keep us troubled, its in its nature , and nature itself is a system : )
but after the harsh part, hey, pioneers in mycelia-science from the usa have some very valid ideas and are even in talk with bill gates.
its not all shoddy. just a very big heap of unsolved accumulated problems, which might be fatal for humanity. but I am very sure, nature will survive us in one way or the other.
Its just that we have to take really good care of it, if we dont want to loose companions in our size. microbacteria, virus, insects… they , as a general group, will for sure survive us, but maybe it will be very fierce , unpretty. unless we create a super sized black hole or something.
i sometimes wish we would just all agree that science should be the government and thinking head of culture. Take away the need to fund research and you will have the highest rate of solutions at hand, and what we need are solutions.
There is no escape back into a smaller world, pandora is open, to ignore what we have to learn is the biggest ignorance I think.
might be offtopic, but I think his life is an interesting study youtu.be/Fzg1CU8t9nw
So yeah, if I would have had the grades I would “simply” aim at science atm to change the world. Because I am not build like that, I simply try to tell the world … so uh, occupy as communication did its part.
Job growth is simply too slow. This will get worse.
Recent times pose a lot of moral questions, but the kind of globalisation we are seeing is a fairly new challenge to overcome. We’ve not quite reached the tipping point yet though.
It’s too profitable to be corrupt. It’s not as if we don’t have realistic solutions. We do. People are going to be slow to embrace them.
I’ve been preoccupied with a few things, so this post will act as a catch up…
How would having less government make cleaner energy more likely? If there was a profitable market for renewable energy, it would have taken off already. Or are you suggesting that the government is blocking the development of renewable energy somehow? If so, what legislation is doing so?
I don’t think more cars is the answer unless you can make them based on 100% renewable energy. We’ve basically reached peak oil already, and it’s very questionable whether electric cars are feasible on a large scale. Better to focus more on efficient ways of transporting people, e.g. increasing public transport such as rail. It needs to be looked at from a system level to find the most efficient strategy.
We already have enough food to feed the world’s population, it’s just a matter how it’s distributed. But how can the free market distribute it to those who need it? Poor nations don’t have the money for pay it, or at least any money they could pay isn’t going to bring much back into the US economy. The West tends to outsource work to poorer nations, but not the other way around.
[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]All I am saying is the west is going to have to reinvent itself into something more modern and cleaner otherwise we’re finished. The math doesn’t lie. I wish it did, but people who think this can last forever are dreaming.
There is a lot of room to adapt but the status quo is slowing things down.[/quote]
Absolutely, I just don’t see how the free market will help without a plan in place. Just letting markets play out naturally is a recipe for disaster.
[quote=“peregrine sprout”]so yeah, agreed, government works for corporate interests.
But, they do it, because if they would not, they would not get money.[/quote]
True. But even though governments are corrupt, if they do come up with policies for moving forward (such as regulating use of natural resources) we should support those policies. I think it’s important to vote based on policy. It’s a little that we can do within the existing system.
I agree with you there. The question is what system we move to and what the pathway to get from here to there is.
Is that the global happiness index or something different?
If there’s enough demand for something, someone will eventually supply it.
Take nuclear energy for example. It’s cleaner than non-renewable sources, but the resistance has been huge due to exaggerated concerns about safety. The status quo stands to gain from this so much that progress can be bribed away, especially with the added scaremongering.
So in order to make steps forward, we’d have to alleviate those concerns even more because it will reach a point sooner or later where the demand for this energy will increase. It’s the lesser of the evils really. Things have just been slowed down too much.
Taxation stops small businesses from growing and even starting while the big corporations often pay hardly any because we apparently need their jobs, or they ship their money offshore which is not reinvested back into the economy.
So, in conclusion, I will assert that competition has not been allowed to happen. It’s by the very nature of business to maximize profits even if that means little investment into change.
[quote=“Solo”]I don’t think more cars is the answer unless you can make them based on 100% renewable energy. We’ve basically reached peak oil already, and it’s very questionable whether electric cars are feasible on a large scale. Better to focus more on efficient ways of transporting people, e.g. increasing public transport such as rail. It needs to be looked at from a system level to find the most efficient strategy.
We already have enough food to feed the world’s population, it’s just a matter how it’s distributed. But how can the free market distribute it to those who need it? Poor nations don’t have the money for pay it, or at least any money they could pay isn’t going to bring much back into the US economy. The West tends to outsource work to poorer nations, but not the other way around.[/quote]
Something will have to happen simply because the alternative to making no progress will kill us all. I don’t think people will want to live without cars though. They can at least be made more efficient.
Nuclear energy probably isn’t the best example, since it usage is quite controversial. Cleaner than coal, sure, but the risks are very real. My understanding is that it’s also a non renewable form of energy, since uranium is required to fuel the reactors, and uranium is a scarce resource. Considering that environmental organisations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are against nuclear energy that should make us pause for thought and not take resistance to nuclear as merely scaremongering. I’ll point you towards a Greenpeace article outlining some of their gripes with nuclear energy: greenpeace.org/new-zealand/e … -solution/
If so, that’s a problem with a particular tax system, rather than something intrinsically tied to taxes. Ideally, they should scale, so the poor pay very little, with the richer paying more to allow wealth redistribution, leading to a more equal society. A small business earning less should pay less taxes than a large business.
Earlier in the topic I cited Norway as a country that is highly taxed and yet seems to working out for businesses. I’ll point you to an article (warning, its long) which discusses how the system works over there: inc.com/magazine/20110201/in … alism.html
Indeed, something will have to happen. I’m in favour of multiple strategies. Work on electric cars while at the same time adding more public transport. Making more petroleum based cars is a bad idea from an environmental perspective; unfortunately it’s still whats currently profitable, so under the free market system that’s what will continue to be produced. There is absolutely no need for every family to own a car (or in some cases two or three cars); that’s an attitude we need to try and change.
If nuclear energy was 100% safe, would you be ok with it? You have to remember that in this era of anti-politics, any move that supports a rival world view will be shut down.
The truth is the current system is unsustainable. By that I mean it has no future. Eventually change will be forced whether people like it or not, so what will happen?
In this case, it’s the lesser of the two evils IMO. In the U.S. and U.K. we have nuclear missiles. They aren’t something you want to have, but for defense you simply have to have them. Ideally either something safer emerges, or there is going to be a massive downscaling of the population to make other methods of supplying energy sustainable. The math doesn’t lie.
I will side with the “moonshot” mentality and assert that anything is possible. If we can go to the moon, then we can meet energy demands without killing the planet.
[quote=“Solo”]If so, that’s a problem with a particular tax system, rather than something intrinsically tied to taxes. Ideally, they should scale, so the poor pay very little, with the richer paying more to allow wealth redistribution, leading to a more equal society. A small business earning less should pay less taxes than a large business.
Earlier in the topic I cited Norway as a country that is highly taxed and yet seems to working out for businesses. I’ll point you to an article (warning, its long) which discusses how the system works over there: inc.com/magazine/20110201/in … alism.html[/quote]
I agree. If large businesses pay their fair share and small ones don’t kill themselves to start up, then competition will be much more alive and kicking. Trying to avoid taxing the rich will only breed resentment and hurt the economy because little is being reinvested back into the system that made their wealth possible. That is really going to come back to haunt the states.
Agreed. I do favour choice, but here it should be more about necessity than owning something for the sake of it.
If it was 100% safe, or even a bit less than 100% safe, I would be okay with nuclear energy from a safety standpoint. Even wind power isn’t 100% safe, for what happens if a wind turbine isn’t properly maintained or built and collapses? It could kill those below it. Entirely possible. So 100% safety for anything is too idealistic, but what we should to do is aim for solutions that are unlikely to do significant harm if something goes wrong. Proponents of nuclear have a lot to prove in this area. The trouble is, with the free market system the aim is to produce energy as cheaply as possible, and thus safety suffers as the result. It’s the same with deep sea oil drilling and the Gulf of Mexico spill. I think it would be better to stay away from these dangerous solutions and stick with safer - and renewable - sources of energy.
Greenpeace exists as a proponent of the environment. If nuclear offered a solution to the impending environmental problems, Greenpeace should be all over that solution. I don’t deny that politics are involved here. Greenpeace has a long history of opposition to nuclear. Maybe not all of their reasons are good reasons. I’m just saying that, given all these reasons, and given the solid evidence we have of nuclear energy having devastating effects (Chernobyl, Fukushima), we should be hesitant before calling these claims exaggerated or scaremongering; they may very well be in the right.
If I understand you correctly, this as a dilemma between fossil fuels vs nuclear. But we have other options too: wind, wave, solar, and geothermal. Are these forms of power enough to maintain the Western way of life? Possibly not. That said, we may still be able to maintain the current world population at a “lower” quality of life. I put lower in quotes, because it really comes down to expectations. A local approach to producing food will become critical in a peak oil world, for example, but we might not get the same variety of foods that we get from importing them. We need more efficiency in the way we consume, as well as consuming less of things we don’t need, rather than simply looking for ways to continue to existing consumption pattern. That goes for everything that has an environmental impact, not just energy.
Perhaps, but don’t place all your hopes on that dream. Better to be prepared for a world of less energy consumption as that appears to be where things are heading. Nothing wrong with healthy optimism, but we have to be realistic too.
I think what will happen, at least in the west, is that energy demands will always be met somehow. The problem is growth is kept up if not by children then by immigration when what’s needed is self-sustainability, not constant expansion.
I don’t know if it’s going to happen. If the world could terraform Mars then it wouldn’t be a problem. You could grow within reason at sustainable rates. At the moment we are entering a time when the ratio of young to old has gone from 10:1 to 4/3:1. It will not last unless people want to live in the movie Logan’s Run.
Things will slow down a bit because there won’t be a choice. Joblessness is just too much as well because it’s cheaper to hire from abroad than train people at home. If that doesn’t change, the next London riots will burn down more than just a handful of buildings. We’ve created a lost generation, and I care more about them than than control freaks who want less people in the world. Control is the easy way out and solves nothing. Beating up the problem won’t solve it.
I will say one thing: this is a divisive issue. If people don’t learn how to come to together, and instead decide to shut the other side out, things will spiral out of control regardless, and that’s what I am seeing.
I will freely admit that I am not a fan of the politics of control, which is what a lot of these activist groups want. What I want is affordability. I.e. that if you can afford it, you are free to do it, then it becomes self-regulating (then people don’t have children they can’t afford etc).
Some things are simply necessary to guarantee that we have a future. It’s good that there are questions, then the focus can be on making energy sources safer. If there was no other choice, we’d be using more nuclear plants already, then they’d be forced to evolve. But there is just no demand for them, so far less is invested into it. That is an unfortunate fact.
I don’t like the fact that the U.S. needs a huge presence in the Middle East to guarantee a flow of oil. It should be self-sufficient, making that unnecessary, but the current status quo makes it necessary.
Quality of life is something we always have to fight for regardless of reality. Compared to, say, South America, we’re living in heaven at the moment. Considering how much the world has changed within the last 100 years, it’s safe to bet that it will keep changing thanks to the free flow of information especially. People keep assuming that things can’t change when they are wrong. History has proven them wrong.
Going to the moon was something people could only dream of doing. The problem with the west today is that people have gone from extreme to extreme. Multi-billion dollar corporations selling less for more and doing more with less is a disgusting thing to watch when you know that if competition were allowed to happen, we could do it better and would be happier working for less.
Some people want direct wealth redistribution but this robs people of an incentive to self-improve and kills them in the process. You want people to want to be successful.
Anyone who is self-sufficient will survive whatever the future has in store for them. It’s quite ironic that the U.S. whose people pride themselves on being independent are so dependent on foreign oil.
We need a world where everyone can succeed without hurting others. That is an enemy to the politics of control.
The kind of reactionary world we see at the moment is actually very libertarian in how chaotic it is. No one stops until they trip over themselves. It makes me wonder if these people are high or something.
“Somehow” is not a plan of action or a solution. I wish it was, I really do.
That would only be a solution until Mars becomes overpopulated too, and the population is growing very fast. The core problem is that there are limits to growth; that is the issue that ties all these problems together.
As the workforce becomes more automated this may become less of a problem. We will need less people to actually do the labour. If retirement ages remain the same, then people can have longer retirements. The main problem is how the wealth is actually distributed. We have the resources to feed and house all of these people out of work, but who is going to pay for it? Not the 1% holding most of the wealth if they can get away with it.
Quite the opposite actually happens though. People in wealthy countries have fewer children, while the poor keep breeding. This may change as the poor are lifted out of poverty, but we need a plan for that. Also, being able to afford something doesn’t guarantee that the resources are actually there, since money has no true basis in the physical reality.
What do you mean by “no other choice”? There are always other options. We don’t have to consume as much as we do; it’s simply inefficiency.
It’s not so much that we’re saying that things can’t change, but that there needs to be a plan for that change. That’s the fundamental difference.
I think this is mistaken, as mentioned in the Norway example before. Also if you look at many of the great innovators in history, many were not motivated primarily by wealth. For example, Steve Jobs. He worked up until a few months before his death creating innovative new products when he had more wealth than he could ever use. He did it because he wanted to produce great products. Wouldn’t you rather have people who cared about improving our well being in some way running businesses than people who are just out to create more money?
We need to be clear here what we mean by control. Often the political landscape is polarised. Control vs freedom. Socialism vs capitalism. Left vs right. But a better way of looking at it is a political axis. Here’s one from Wikipedia:
There are not two positions, but four. Left and right might represent socialism and capitalism respectively, but there is another dimension, up and down. A Stalinist totalitarian society would be classed as left/socialist, but it was also authoritarian. Likewise, you could get capitalist societies on the right that offer very little true freedom other than to corporations and those on the top. Authoritarian societies can exist on the right too.
I think the moral philosopher John Stuart Mill said it best by saying that an action is permissible if it does not harm others. A libertarian can agree with this. If someone wants to smoke weed in the privacy of their own home (and doesn’t give it to little kids, etc), then that is not harming someone else. But if corporations are pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere or risking people’s lives with unsafe nuclear energy, then that clearly is harming someone, even though that harm is indirect. Or if the 1% is having a monopoly over the distribution of the world’s resources, while people are suffering in poverty, there is no question that harm is being done. In these cases, I don’t believe we can justify an unregulated free market, and I would support policy that intervenes. This way we give individuals the freedom they need to meet their basic needs, while limiting the freedom of those who harm others so that everyone’s freedoms can be retained; for when people’s basic needs are not met, then they cannot have freedom, just as person who lives in a society that allows murder has less freedom that one that has laws against it (freedom from murder). From this perspective, I am a Left-Libertarian.
No one will disagree with that, but it’s also up to people themselves to recognize those problems before they happen. If they want to run out of room and starve to death, they will have to take responsibility for it.
As the workforce becomes automated that will mean less demand for workers, and less demand for people themselves.
You see here’s the problem: efficiency. Why do we put efficiency before happiness? So some CEO can earn a 100 million dollar bonus that he reinvests in Communist China?
This is why the love of money is the root of all evil and the main driving force behind expansion (like how the Spanish invaded the new world for gold).
We agree on a flat tax. What we also have to agree on is a minimum wage everywhere in the world so that money is properly reinvested back into the system. That would mean no offshore hideouts and no tex exempt locations.
It’s not as simple as taxing people though, because you want everyone to become successful in their own way, even if they don’t become geniuses. Everyone can find somewhere to belong.
Retirement is another heated issue because if anyone wants to raise the age of retirement then people have to be healthier and live longer, and even though the potential for that is there, people will have to take personal responsibility for their health more. Eating healthily and cutting out smoking is a good place to start. Nevertheless, it’s simply not fair to expect younger people to shoulder the burden of the old, and we are heading towards a society where the old will equal the young (in the west anyway).
It can’t work.
Again though, why are you or I responsible for the mistakes of other people? There will be consequences for their actions if they don’t solve their own problems. If they want someone to step in and save them, then they will never save themselves. Apparently, it’s easier to be controlled than believe in personal responsibility.
Consumption will die down because people simply can’t afford it anymore. I can see it here already where people are weening themselves off this addiction to over-consumption. They simply don’t have a choice. If it help ends obesity then that’s a good start. My point is, people often do things because there is no other choice but when given a choice they might not see the benefits. You have to convince them why they have no choice. I’ll give you a good example: seatbelts. It took decades to put them into practice, because people’s behavior isn’t changed overnight. Until they became a part of the public consciousness, then law.
You wear them or you die.
It’s the same with many other things in life. We do it or we die. There is little room for compromise. You can only work with what you have. Like I said, I don’t like having nuclear missiles, but I’d rather guarantee freedom than live in the Soviet Union, which was a very real possibility not long ago.
People are living in the now too much when things change every day. I don’t doubt that there will be limits to what can be done, but either personal responsibility prevails, or we all go to hell. At the moment, we’re heading towards a soft tyranny at best. I can live with that as long as there is transparency and accountability and a protected democratic process.
People generally aren’t like that. If you reward failure, and don’t reward success, they will generally let themselves fail because it’s easier.
If people are deprived of a way up, they will resort to crime because they feel it’s the only way up and out to self-respect. You see that in any poverty stricken area.
Jobs is what you call an exception to the rule. But his business started in a different time.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to be successful and wanting to earn a living, nor is there anything wrong with wanting to earn more. You shouldn’t confuse the extreme greed of soulless corporations with individual ambition. Those corporatists don’t believe in wanting others to be successful either; they want it all for themselves.
[quote=“Solo”]We need to be clear here what we mean by control. Often the political landscape is polarised. Control vs freedom. Socialism vs capitalism. Left vs right. But a better way of looking at it is a political axis. Here’s one from Wikipedia:
There are not two positions, but four. Left and right might represent socialism and capitalism respectively, but there is another dimension, up and down. A Stalinist totalitarian society would be classed as left/socialist, but it was also authoritarian. Likewise, you could get capitalist societies on the right that offer very little true freedom other than to corporations and those on the top. Authoritarian societies can exist on the right too.
I think the moral philosopher John Stuart Mill said it best by saying that an action is permissible if it does not harm others. A libertarian can agree with this. If someone wants to smoke weed in the privacy of their own home (and doesn’t give it to little kids, etc), then that is not harming someone else. But if corporations are pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere or risking people’s lives with unsafe nuclear energy, then that clearly is harming someone, even though that harm is indirect. Or if the 1% is having a monopoly over the distribution of the world’s resources, while people are suffering in poverty, there is no question that harm is being done. In these cases, I don’t believe we can justify an unregulated free market, and I would support policy that intervenes. This way we give individuals the freedom they need to meet their basic needs, while limiting the freedom of those who harm others so that everyone’s freedoms can be retained; for when people’s basic needs are not met, then they cannot have freedom, just as person who lives in a society that allows murder has less freedom that one that has laws against it (freedom from murder). From this perspective, I am a Left-Libertarian.[/quote]
The problem is certain people have become above the law. In fact, they have become the law, and it needs to end. Unfortunately, we are fighting huge money. The likes of which very few can resist.
The irony is, England is now more of a Republic than the U.S. at the moment because we had nothing better to do than to try to solve our problems. A true free press really helps towards that end because there are no secrets. Of course, it’s far from perfect still. The people are generally liberal but with a dose of realism.
Edit: Laissez-faire economics are something you find embraced by libertarians. I have mixed feelings on that.
