Creating a More Sustainable and Greener Way of Living
April 1st, 2009
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Right now, we as humans, have a choice to make: Keep doing things the old way that got us into an enviornmental mess or start changing how we live, how society works and the basics of human behavior and social dynamics. It’s clear that the planet is in truely dire straights. With global warming getting worse every day and nuclear waste piling up, it’s clear that doomsday is right around the corner. Unless, of course, we change.
What does this change mean? It means no more use of energy in non-essential ways, with a focus on effeciency. We have to stop living shameful lives of travel and entertainment and go back to small communal living, where local trade and modest living will lead to happiness. We must stop lusting for things like big screen televisions, shopping malls, automobiles, airliners, spacecraft, science laboratories, hospitals other energy hungry items. Living naturally means living in harmony with the earth so that our lives make the earth healthy. In turn, we can trust the earth to make us healthy.
Most modern diseases are due to artificial things. Organic agriculture and organic living can rid us of these bad chemicals, bad radiation and bad emotions that poison the world around us and our bodies.
Make the right choice!
Here’s a video I made about this important issue:
This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 8:05 pm and is filed under Agriculture, Announcements, Bad Science, Culture, Enviornment, Good Science, Not Even Wrong, Nuclear, Obfuscation, Politics, Website, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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April 1st, 2009 at 9:07 pm
This would be a funny April Fools post if it wasn’t so bloody representative of how the deluded think.
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April 1st, 2009 at 9:28 pm
I didn’t see Ricks face on the youtube video immediately and I’d read the first few lines thinking wait what? I love April fools.
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April 1st, 2009 at 9:28 pm
DV82XL said:
…didn’t say “RickRoll’d” before you even start the video.
Kinda gives it away.
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April 1st, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Well we could always forget everything we have learned:
http://www.synearth.net/
for the last 5000 years or so.
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April 1st, 2009 at 10:04 pm
You mean 6000 right? Because the earth is only 6000 years old?
April fools!
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April 2nd, 2009 at 7:48 am
Of course that lifestyle would be sustainable, it only needs a few decades of transition in which the world population will be reduced by at least 95%, then the diseases and malnutition will more or less autoregulate that issue.
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April 2nd, 2009 at 11:33 am
Well, I realize that you are joking, but I did like the opening and I like the tone which I feel is a little more positive. Good april fools joke though!
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April 2nd, 2009 at 9:52 pm
The sad thing is that this is really not that much off of what I have seen. If this had been on another site I wouldn’t have been surprised for it not to be a joke at all.
Bruce said:
Funny, because I see it as the absolute opposite. The message is that the world is facing doomsday due to polution and global warming (which it isn’t) and that we are all about to die. The only way to prevent this is to change how society operates and how people behave. That’s impossible. There are things basic to human behavior that just don’t change. They would never evolve in one generation or even several.
Besides that, I don’t think that you even could change some things, like how could you change the desire to consume and to have more? That is a trait that is beneficial to the individual so it won’t evolve away. If you created a society where everyone worked to conserve and only take what they needed then anyone who broke from that would imediately have a leg up on everyone else and benefit by not adhering to that norm and therefore be more successful. That makes the concept collapse, even if you could force it to happen.
How is it hopeful to abandon technology and go to the “simple” way, anyway? If there were a choice between seeing the world in an epic state of disaster with rising seas and storms and melting ice caps versus going back to the mud huts of our past, I’d be hard pressed to choose which one is better.
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April 5th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Gordon said: The message is that the world is facing doomsday due to polution and global warming (which it isn’t) and that we are all about to die.
TW-> No we have a few years left, but we are facing very difficult times if we don’t change our ways and do so soon. We have consumed over 50% of the Earth’s petroleum in a little over 100 years. There will be no easy and cheap replacement. We never made the oil, we didn’t produce it. It was artificially cheap because all we did was stick a straw in the ground and suck it up. We are also facing a water crisis. And 90% of modern food is made of oil. You do the math.
Gordon-> The only way to prevent this is to change how society operates and how people behave.
TW-> Absolutely right !!!
Gordon-> That’s impossible. There are things basic to human behavior that just don’t change. They would never evolve in one generation or even several. Besides that, I don’t think that you even could change some things, like how could you change the desire to consume and to have more?
TW-> Wrong. Human behavior changes by physiological evolution and by cognitive evolution. Human behavior is enormously influenced by what humans think and believe. A change in your beliefs will change your behavior.
Our behavior is also highly responsive to our environment. When the big box stores are full of things to consume and we all have disposable income in our pockets, we consume. When the big box stores are empty, and we have no disposable income in our pockets, we won’t consume. When we are hungry, thirsty and cold, our behavior will change. Unfortunately, the change will not be for the best, unless we solve our problems.
Gordon said-> Consumption is a trait that is beneficial to the individual so it won’t evolve away. If you created a society where everyone worked to conserve and only take what they needed then anyone who broke from that would immediately have a leg up on everyone else and benefit by not adhering to that norm and therefore be more successful. That makes the concept collapse, even if you could force it to happen.
TW-> Over-consuming will not be beneficial in a responsible society. It will earn you the disrespect of your peers, and then their anger. In an intelligent responsible society, you will be judged mentally ill. You will be contained, and rehabilitated. Behavior that injures others is not permitted.
Gordon said-> How is it hopeful to abandon technology and go to the “simple” way, anyway?
TW-> Here you are right and wrong. We don’t want to abandon technology. Technology is KNOWING embedded in Matter-Energy. In other word, these are our tools. Knowing is ever growing, because humans have memory. We pass what we learned earlier to those who live later. When we embed our knowing into matter-energy artifacts, we create tools. With ever growing knowing we create every more powerful tools.
Do you think the kids today walk around with iPhones because they are smarter than Albert Einstein? No they are not smarter, they are only later.
We do want to go the simple way, meaning the efficient way. As Buckminster Fuller said, We need to choose the dymaxion way. Doing the most with the least. Efficiency!
Gorden-> If there were a choice between seeing the world in an epic state of disaster with rising seas and storms and melting ice caps versus going back to the mud huts of our past, I’d be hard pressed to choose which one is better.
TW-> We need to find the third alternative. We need to think our way out of this Crisis. How do we avoid rising seas, storms, melting ice caps, without returning to primitive mud huts. Are we smart enough using all the knowing and technology developed over our entire human history to create a new world that works for everyone, including the plants and animals. And, that further protects and respects the finite planet that 7+ billion of us now inhabit.
I think we are smart enough. I think that if we use all the collective KNOWING and TECHNOLOGY created by all the human minds that have every lived, and IF we WORK TOGETHER.
It will be easy.
_
Timothy Wilken
http://www.SynEARTH.net
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April 5th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Timothy Wilken said:
If it were easy we would already be doing the things we should now. History teaches that far from being flexible and proactive on major issues, humanity has a tendency to wait until our faces are being rubbed into the problem.
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April 5th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
DV82XL said:
Yes, you are correct. But don’t you think our faces are being rubbed into the problem. Why are talking about here. And, this is only one of thousands of blogs where the the problem is being discussed. Every day more and more humans are waking up. But still billions are asleep. That will change as our obsolete Capitalistic “Profit Seeking” Market System fails. Soon everyone will know that the Emperor has no clothes.
But even so, my statement that “it will be easy” was conditional. I wrote: IF we use all the collective KNOWING and TECHNOLOGY created by all the human minds that have ever livied, and IF we WORK TOGETHER, then it will be easy.
Those are big IFs. Not because our task is difficult, but because most of humanity is still asleep, assuming Big Government and Big Business will take care of them.
Those of us who are awake and thinking will need to educate our friends and family, and we need to lead our fellow humans towards sanity and survival.
Best,
Timothy Wilken
http://www.SynEARTH.net
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April 5th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Timothy Wilken said:
Unfortunately when I look at the ecological record of those places that threw off the chains of Capitalism last century, and went to a command economy where everything was supposed to be planned, I can’t say that they have anything to teach us our anyone else about how to manage the environment. In fact in general, Eastern Europe, Russia, and China have raped their natural resources with an indifference that would make an nineteenth-century robber baron blush.
But in the end the solutions will come from the marketplace, not some central committee.
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April 6th, 2009 at 12:09 am
Timothy, with all due respect, we have NOT consumed “50% of the world’s oil.” That’s absurd and flies in the face of pretty much every URR estimate out there. An average of URR estimates shows around 3.7 Gb. Unless you buy into what is essentially lying on the part of Campbell et al, URR average have doubled since around the 1990s. That’s hardly the “OMG HALF GONE” BS that you’re pandering here.
And you arguing for a society where everyone scorns anyone who dares to consumer more than some arbitrary limit is absolutely absurd. How does that society decide who gets to consume how much? Who sets the limits? Do we have it democratically set, or do we bow to the whims of a philosopher-king of an Aristotelian bent?
You also say disposable income as if it’s a bad thing. Having disposable income is a GOOD thing. It gives you freedom of choice.
It’s funny how ultimately so much of the far left eco-thought amounts to top-down thinking that subverts choice and scorns free will as some sort of evil.
But I just had to weigh in mostly on the “50% gone” comment when it comes to oil. Not even remotely close. But hey, why bother with facts when you can instead put up scary “thresholds” instead?
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April 6th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Calm down Ari, there no need to get so aggressive over it. People being overly aggressive instead of having a rational conversation are the reason we don’t get anywhere.
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April 6th, 2009 at 1:21 am
Ari said:
Dear Ari,
What is your criteria for the truth? Do you agree that the Minds at the Oil Drum are expert?
World oil production peaked in 2008 at 81.73 million barrels/day (mbd) shown in the chart below. This oil definition includes crude oil, lease condensate, oil sands and natural gas plant liquids. If natural gas plant liquids are excluded, then the production peak remains in 2008 but at 73.79 mbd. However, if oil sands are also excluded then crude oil and lease condensate production peaked in 2005 at 72.75 mbd.
Source: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5177
How about Matthew Simmons?
Source: http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=msspeeches
I don’t claim to be an expert on Peak Oil, but I have read and examined most of the literature since 2001.
See: http://solutions.synearth.net/stories/storyReader$8
I wish we could pretend that petroleum were unlimited, but this is bull ****. We live on a finite planet. Look at all the cars on the road tomorrow while you driving to work. What do you think they are burning? Where do you think that oil comes from?
Timothy Wilken said:
I am suggesting that promiscuous consumption injures those humans who have too little. The Earth is not a Gift to those who presently wield power in our culture. It is the basis for Life of all Plants, Animals and Humans who presently exist. It is finite. We must tread lightly on the Earth or most the present 7+ Billion of us will suffer Die Off!
Source: http://www.dieoff.org/
Timothy Wilken said:
I did not say that disposable income was a bad thing. I said that soon very few humans would have disposable income. Tell me that none of your friends have been laid off. Tell me that the company you work for is not feeling fear and reducing its expenditures. Tell me that there are no bank failures, no mortgage defaults, no bankruptcies.
Timothy Wilken said:
I am not left. I am not right. I am synergic. I am seeking win-win-win-win. I wish that you win. I wish that I win. I wish that community wins. And, I wish that the Earth wins.
Timothy Wilken said:
I am sorry if I ruffled your feathers. But if Humanity is to survive, we must base our decisions on the truth. Take a deeper look at the Peak Oil literature. Read everything. Seek the full truth. If you are wrong, you will forfeit your life, and the lives of your children.
How is it possible for 7+ Billion Humans to consume without limit on a finite planet? This blog says it is about science. Let us use the scientific method. Let us think carefully.
Best,
Timothy Wilken
http://www.SynEARTH.net/
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April 6th, 2009 at 1:43 am
WoodEngineer said:
Thanks Wood Engineer. You are correct. I am simply trying to effectively communicate.
Ari said:
Dear Ari,
What is your criteria for the truth? Do you agree that the Minds at the Oil Drum are expert? On March 17th, they published the following:
World oil production peaked in 2008 at 81.73 million barrels/day (mbd) shown in the chart below. This oil definition includes crude oil, lease condensate, oil sands and natural gas plant liquids. If natural gas plant liquids are excluded, then the production peak remains in 2008 but at 73.79 mbd. However, if oil sands are also excluded then crude oil and lease condensate production peaked in 2005 at 72.75 mbd.
Source: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5177
How about Matthew Simmons?
Source: http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=msspeeches
I don’t claim to be an expert on Peak Oil, but I have read and examined most of the literature since 2001.
See: http://solutions.synearth.net/stories/storyReader$8
I wish we could pretend that petroleum were unlimited, but this is bull ****. We live on a finite planet. Look at all the cars on the road tomorrow while you driving to work. What do you think they are burning? Where do you think that oil comes from?
Timothy Wilken said:
I am suggesting that promiscuous consumption injures those humans who have too little. The Earth is not a Gift to those who presently wield power in our culture. It is the basis for Life of all Plants, Animals and Humans who presently exist. It is finite. We must tread lightly on the Earth or most the present 7+ Billion of us will suffer Die Off!
Source: http://www.dieoff.org/
Timothy Wilken said:
I did not say that disposable income was a bad thing. I said that soon very few humans would have disposable income. Tell me that none of your friends have been laid off. Tell me that the company you work for is not feeling fear and reducing its expenditures. Tell me that there are no bank failures, no mortgage defaults, no bankruptcies.
Timothy Wilken said:
I am not left. I am not right. I am synergic. I am seeking win-win-win-win. I wish that you win. I wish that I win. I wish that community wins. And, I wish that the Earth wins.
Timothy Wilken said:
I am sorry if I ruffled your feathers. But if Humanity is to survive, we must base our decisions on the truth. Take a deeper look at the Peak Oil literature. Read everything. Seek the full truth. If you are wrong, you will forfeit your life, and the lives of your children.
How is it possible for 7+ Billion Humans to consume without limit on a finite planet? This blog says it is about science. Let us use the scientific method. Let us think carefully.
Best,
Timothy Wilken
http://www.SynEARTH.net/
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April 6th, 2009 at 2:10 am
WoodEngineer,
I don’t think my post was really all that “aggressive” outside of the last sort of snarky point about “scary thresholds.” I didn’t insult Timothy, I didn’t really goad him, and I certainly didn’t attack him. I challenged him to show us how his society would function and provided figures that are squarely different from his claim of 50%.
I was by no means not rational. A bit forward, perhaps, but definitely rational. Then again, I don’t believe that we should keep the “nice nice gloves” on just to spare feelings. If someone is wrong then why is it so bad to point it out? If someone’s ideas need to be challenged, then so be it. That’s what one should expect if one makes extraordinary claims.
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April 6th, 2009 at 2:43 am
Ari said:
As somewhat of an expert on aggressive posts in this forum, I have to agree. Air’s remarks didn’t amount to any more than a ‘3′ on my ten-point scale.
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April 6th, 2009 at 3:17 am
but thats part of my point just because you don’t agree with someone does not mean they are wrong, even if the statistics he posted are incorrect it does not mean he is wrong with the point itself. Conflicting view points on these sorts of things are probably not going to be resolved because there isn’t necessarily a right answer.
And to counter your point that it wasn’t aggressive, I feel that depends what side of what fence you are on. If it wasn’t aggressive at the very least it was quite arrogant.
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April 6th, 2009 at 3:31 am
WoodEngineer said:
Political debate is a full contact sport. This is not a page given to discussions on 17th century literature, or the appreciation of South American wines, its a place where issues that are tinged with B.S. are exposed and raked thought the coals. There is going to be disagreement and it is going to be polarized, and sometimes it’s going to be harsh. I’m not going to respect the opinion of someone who is deluded and categorically wrong, that’s what this place is all about – exposing them.
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April 6th, 2009 at 3:39 am
Paging George Cary to the thread; paging George Cary to the thread – a Left wing fellow-traveler needs a reality check.
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April 6th, 2009 at 8:52 am
To be honest, I’m finding it hard to understand what Timothy’s saying, but here goes.
We’re not going to run out of raw materials (other than energy sources) because chemical elements (other than nuclear fuels) never don’t go away. The only way they will ever be lost to humanity is if they are either launched into space or allowed to subduct under a continent.
That leaves energy – nuclear fission is the obvious way to go, preferably breeder reactors (either fast reactors or thorium-cycle reactors). Fission would be sufficient to get the First World off fossil fuels and advancing the Third World to the First World’s standard of living, and is sustainable for at least thousands of years (or perhaps even for the remainder of our existence on Earth).
In the far future, there will also be fusion — it’s not as if fission won’t give us plenty of time in which to crack this formidable technical challenge!
Oh, and as for food being supposedly “made of oil” – I suspect this is talking about fertilizers, but there is nothing specific to oil (or more accurately natural gas, since that is the main fossil fuel used in practice for this application). What is needed to make ammonia (once you have ammonia, making other nitrogen fertilizers is trivial) is energy (which can be obtained from nuclear power).
Remember the Heroes of Telemark? The heavy water factory which they raided was a sideline at an ammonia plant powered by a hydroelectric dam. The only reason why fertilizers are currently made using fossil fuels is because it’s cheaper — we’d use other energy sources if fossil fuels became scarce.
Admittedly that’s one problem with our current form of capitalism – in the US at least, corporations are legally mandated to maximize their short term profits. Another example is that Thatcher privatized the UK electricity industry in the eighties, but because of the double-digit interest rates of the time, the industry fawned over quick-to-build natural gas plants, rather than nuclear power which is much better in the long term, but has a heavy up-front cost.
Another concern of mine is that the US government may have deliberately suppressed nuclear power (eg Clinton’s cancellation of the IFR), because since the end of Bretton-Woods the US dollar has been backed by oil. If the world stops using oil, the dollar will collapse.
Before I go, I’ll recommend the Sustainability FAQ.
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April 6th, 2009 at 11:53 am
I feel DV82LX is more pompus that Ari himself.
Gordon:
A great deal of food (and the additives to your food) are actually mined (phosphates and such) or are extracted during the oil refining process. Oil is the biggest problem to US long term goals as we don’t control it. Ethanol kinda sucks but could help ease the grip from oil…going pure electric from nuclear plants is obviously the best alternative and then using the oil that we do produce for everything where it can’t easily be replaced.
If like you say it’s so easy to switch to other methods of producing fertilizers think of what happens to the price of food…it skyrockets..not only are other fertilizers (so far) less effective but they are much more expensive.
I’m surprised to see you all backing capitalism so strongly..it’s a mess and always has been thanks to the corrupt. The only way to control it is to regulate it more..in which case it’s no longer capitalism and I for one am all for it. Capitalism seems to breed greedy bastards like Madoff and…well…everyone in Goldman Sachs.
As for the government…the checks and balances…gone…constitution…gone….it’s not the government it once was. The courts are ruled by the parties, the senate and house are ruled by the lobbyists and the president does what ever they want. Obama does seem to be trying to go towards me and Timothys way of thinking and I back him up with that. It can’t be any worse than the like 8 years were.
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April 6th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
WoodEngineer said:
Why thank-you Wood, I’m flattered you’d think so. It’s nice to know one’s efforts are getting the recognition they deserve.
Far Lefties show up here all the time proselytizing about the evils of capitalism, and trying to sell us on a system that has, in practice, failed so miserably that it’s greatest adherents have abadonded it so totaly that they no longer even pay lib-service to the idea.
Not only has it been a total social and economic failure, but as I pointed up-thread, it has also shown that it is incapable of protecting the environment or managing natural resources. The condition of areas damaged by industrial waste in the ex Soviet Union and its satellite states, beggars the imagination, as does the destruction of land and water resources which in some cases are orders of magnitude greater than anything done in the capitalistic West.
I am no more bound to give this sort of thinking any more respect than I do the ideas of anti-vaccination posters, radiophobic posters, freaking out over antennas, or those claiming the U.S. government is setting up death camps for its own population. To be taken seriously, it takes more than rehearsing the standard polemics against capitalism, and wistful thinking about the need for humans to change their philosophy to a more collectivist point of view, and those that come here spouting that nonsense will get the treatment they deserve.
We have a couple of active hard-core left-wing folks that post regularly on these pages, (like George) who are looking for practical ways that they can apply their political stands in forming practical solutions, and they are always listened to, and taken seriously, even when the majority disagree, because they are looking to practical applications, not demanding that everyone fall into line behind them.
Finally based on his own writing here and on his own pages, Timothy Wilken strikes me as someone that can take care of himself in a debate.
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April 6th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
I think your quite deluded to be comparing a cry for social reform to the quack anti-vaccination people and the others you’ve listed. Theres a difference between hard science and opinions and that seems to get leaped over quite often. And here in the comment section all I’ve seen is opinion.
Why shouldn’t I back up Tim? I don’t know him personally but there are several here against him. I don’t know about you but I like to have support. I’m sure Tim can defend himself, hes doing a very good job.
I’m sick of the “left wing” “right wing” garbage it’s just a quick labeling that brings along many false stereotypes and a patronizing undertone.
You are very quick to dismiss everything we say and we aren’t asking you to get in line behind us. We simply ask that you think it over. However, I can see that it falls on deaf ears. You seem to want everything to stay the same…may I ask why? Don’t you want society to evolve? And even though you disagree, most nations seem to agree with us and are moving in our direction. So the argument seems to be moot.
As for the fact that some of the countries that attempted to construct the types of governments we would like to see have failed, they were almost always held by the corrupt and taken by force. They never wanted the real socialist style of government all they wanted was a way to control their people and stay in power none of them have been democratic in any way shape or form. They used socialism as religion before it has been used for thousands of years to control the masses.
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April 6th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
WoodEngineer said:
Doctrinaire Socialism is equivalent to these other delusions (and to religion I might add) and for the same reasons: they all fail to accept the fact that their initial premises are wrong. It’s just that simple.
The excuse that the system is fine, it was just corrupted by those in charge fails to see that a system that permits that to happen is in no way a good replacement for one that you are condemning. If I recall, one of the central criticisms of capitalism by the Left is that it allows the concentration of power in the hands of a few – if its replacement does the same thing, (because of what is obviously a systemic failure to prevent it) why is it superior? Not only is it not an improvement, it is substantially worse, as illistrated by its spectacular failures in the last century.
So I dismiss these ideas because they have been proven in practice not to work.
As for society evolving, one of the things that distinguishes capitalism, from other constructed, artificial sociopolitical systems, is that it is a result of social evolution. It did not spring whole from the mind of some individual or group of individuals attempting to design a society from the ground up base on their ideas of what is just and fair without any real appreciation of the nuances of individual or group psychology. Capitalism has grown and changed over time, and has certainly demonstrated more of the ability to learn from its mistakes, and recover from them than any other of the pretenders to its place.
As for asking me to think it over – what can I say – I come from a time where almost every young person had at least some sympathy for the tenets of socialism, and it was routinely deconstructed and endlessly discussed in coffee shops and pubs, where its apologists were required reading, and its eventual victory a given. I need no more thought on the matter – it was tried and it failed because in the end it was worse than what we have. The issue has been settled in the field by experimentation – it needs no further consideration.
It is not the solution now anymore than it was at the beginning of the last century, and if it is tried again, it will fail again.
Nor I might add while I am on the subject, is any effort to change human nature going to be effective. Those that blithely suggest that this is the road to utopia conveniently forget that Christianity has been trying to get humans to at the very least, live by the Great Commandment, of do unto others as you would be done by, for the past two thousand years with little real success, even when they could scare people into believing that they would suffer in Hell for eternity.
All efforts to mold people into some ideal state have failed. Why should I pay any attention to yet another cry that this is what must be done, when history shows real solutions come from those unfettered by the chains of some fixed ideology?
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April 6th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Not one country that has actually moved to socialism has gone there with good intentions. Most of them have arisen through military coups and haven’t been democratic in any way shape or form…in fact most of them were actually communist, even though they referred to themselves as socialists. The socialist/capitalist hybrid governments are doing fine (essentially all of Europe) and Europe has had a long time for it’s governments to evolve forward.
The American government DID spring forth from the ideologies of a select few…in fact capitalism by definition is planned based on a central ideology. The American system is actually a market economy..it stopped being capitalist when the government began intervening heavily. The US and everyone else is heading towards market socialism and if they aren’t heading there then they are already there.
If capitalism is going to be viable for the long term it needs to be heavily regulated and then it is no longer capitalism.
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April 6th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
WoodEngineer said:
I had forgoten that when faced with any historical facts they did not like the Left defaults to revisionism in an attempt to dodge criticism. I see the method is still in use today.
You have said nothing here to counter the points I made above. If socialism can only succeed if the culture has the right values, then the same hold true for any other sociopolitical system making the point a tautology. Its like saying a Benign Dictatorship would be the perfect system if only sufficiently benign people would become dictators – true but trivial.
BTW Capitalism long predates the rise of the American System or the U.S. itself and the fact that it can incorporate new ideas and structural changes is what I meant by evolving. That’s why we don’t have laissez-faire capitalism anymore. Nevertheless we still have a system in which wealth, and the means of producing wealth, are privately owned.
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April 6th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
WoodEngineer said:
I’ve said before that although I consider myself very pro-capitalism, I am not a purist in so far as a belief that there must be zero government intervention, zero social programs, zero regulation etc etc.
There are circumstances where there are necessities or where it is important to limit certain activities or encourage others. In this case there a need for regulation. Above all else, regulation should be tasked with assuring no deceptive or unfair practices are used to defraud others.
In general I think it’s an issue of how the problem is approached. The first question that should be asked is “Do we really need regulation here?” It should be realized that regulations or intervention is not something you use unless you have to. The second question is “How do we accomplish what is necessary while using as little intervention as possible?”
Subsidies should always be used sparingly and only when absolutely necessary to accomplish something that can’t be done otherwise. There may be a few examples of this, like maintaining an industry that is normally not always competitive but would be a necessity in some circumstances. For example, one could make a good case that it would be appropriate to subsidize munition manufacturing if failure to do so would leave the US dependent on forign countries for munitions. That would represent an unacceptable stratigic loss.
When it comes to the system as a whole, the government’s job is to maintain an enviornment conducive to doing buisiness. What this comes down to is good national security, a stable monetary system, enforcement of contracts, prosecution of fraud, providing independent confirmation of product quality and safety claims etc.
Another important thing to bare in mind is that the simpler and more straight forward regulations and laws are the more difficult it is to find loopholes and technicalities in them. We should not be looking to impose more regulations on companies but better regulations. This is absolutely critical.
The ironic thing is that despite ignorant people blaming “capitalism” and “greed” for the current economic problems the government is ultimately the one who got much of this started. The affordable housing tax credit caused massive damage. It’s a direct subsidy that encourages companies to buy up sub prime loans. There has been horrible overissuance of bonds, bad regulation of markets that explicitly has allowed desceptive securities trading etc etc.
Timothy Wilken said:
The Oil Drum? That’s a joke right?
Timothy Wilken said:
It doesn’t matter whether oil is unlimited or not. Of course it’s not unlimited, but so what? It’s not like we haven’t been here before. We used to get oil from whales. We started running out of them. Did humanity fall apart? Mass dieoff? No, we found alternate energy sources which turned out to be better. Petrolium might seem bad, but it beats whale oil any day.
Timothy Wilken said:
most of it we didn’t make. But I think a lot of people at SASOL would disagree with the statement overall….
Timothy Wilken said:
How do you figure that? Petroleum is NOT used to make fertilizer, despite this claim being made frequently.
Timothy Wilken said:
No.. you’re confusing the individual with the collective. Lets say that we have a group of people and most of them are always doing what they believe will benefit society. Then there are a few who do what they think will benefit themselves. Who gets furthest ahead? Obviously those acting for their own needs will.
Now I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be concerned about the greater good, and I certainly do try to do things to help out the community, but you can’t found a society on the principle that all people will work toward the betterment of the collective. It’s been tried. MANY MANY times.
Timothy Wilken said:
There are plenty of tree huggers who hate me for what I stand for and that’s never stopped me.
However the idea of a society in which doing something as evil as liking stuff or wanting more will get you judged mentally ill (clearly it’s not a mental illness) and then contained and rehabilitated.. That’s not even worth me arguing.. that is the kind of thing that episodes of “The Twilight Zone” are based on. It’s sickening anyone would even consider that tolerable, much less desirable.
Timothy Wilken said:
What’s your point? When Einstein wanted to send a text message he used Western Union and when he wanted to hear music he used a Victrola. Technology progresses, people still like to communicate and have entertainment, just as they did in Einstein’s times and just as they always have.
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April 6th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
DV82XL I did attempt to rebuff your issues and I don’t intend on spelling it out anymore than the posts above.
As far as consuming goes, yes everyone likes to consume..the world right now needs the USA to consume..the problem is the USA no longer makes that much we’ve become a service economy…and even the services are moving out. Per person other countries consume far far less and don’t strive for lots and lots of worthless crap. I’m no tree hugger…I cut them down and turn them into your floors, houses, furniture, pharmacuticals, and most recently fuel. I like to consume as much as the next person but no one in the USA seems to live within their means…no one should have thousands of dollars of credit card debt..it’s INSANE…fiscal responsibility of the average American is appalling. The world needs Americans to consume right now…someone has to buy all the crap thats being made..which we actually finance through other countries, such as japan, china and the UK…in fact freaking Luxembourg owns over 87 BILLION dollars of our debt..nice. Theres no way that this level of spending can continue it’s completely unfinanceable..other countries don’t have this problem..you can keep touting success of capitalism if you must but America doesn’t belong to it’s citizens..it belongs to Americas allies and it’s enemies.
Chinas socialist/capitalist hybrid owns 750Billion dollars of our debt..they’ll probably get a very nice return on that investment.
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April 9th, 2009 at 7:58 am
The effective restoration of the global economy {and forward movement toward the preservation of the environment} could be initiated so simply, sensibly and responsibly………………. by following ‘Ten Commandments’ for Economic Revitalization.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5d5aa24e-23a4-11de-996a-00144feabdc0.html
Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Published: April 7 2009 20:02 | Last updated: April 7 2009 20:02
1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks – and hence the most fragile – become the biggest.
2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.
3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.
4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show “profits” while claiming to be “conservative”. Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.
5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity. Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. Such systems survive thanks to slack and redundancy; adding debt produces wild and dangerous gyrations and leaves no room for error. Capitalism cannot avoid fads and bubbles: equity bubbles (as in 2000) have proved to be mild; debt bubbles are vicious.
6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning . Complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. Citizens must be protected from themselves, from bankers selling them “hedging” products, and from gullible regulators who listen to economic theorists.
7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. Cascading rumours are a product of complex systems. Governments cannot stop the rumours. Simply, we need to be in a position to shrug off rumours, be robust in the face of them.
8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains. Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. The debt crisis is not a temporary problem, it is a structural one. We need rehab.
9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement. Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control).
10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs. Finally, this crisis cannot be fixed with makeshift repairs, no more than a boat with a rotten hull can be fixed with ad-hoc patches. We need to rebuild the hull with new (stronger) materials; we will have to remake the system before it does so itself. Let us move voluntarily into Capitalism 2.0 by helping what needs to be broken break on its own, converting debt into equity, marginalising the economics and business school establishments, shutting down the “Nobel” in economics, banning leveraged buyouts, putting bankers where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a world with fewer certainties.
Then we will see an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller companies, richer ecology, no leverage. A world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks and companies are born and die every day without making the news.
In other words, a place more resistant to black swans.
The writer is a veteran trader, a distinguished professor at New York University’s Polytechnic Institute and the author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
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April 9th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Steven Earl Salmony said:
While these are good points I doubt strongly that their implementation will be that simple. What we are going to see is yet another round of the endless ‘Hard Money’ vs ‘Soft Money’ debate that free market economies have struggled with of and on for several hundred years now. It’s been played out in several forms like the silver/gold bimetallism fight in the late 1800’s for example.
The issue is always going to be the same: hard money means stable economies that have slow growth – especially at the bottom – and governments don’t get (re)elected without the support of the lower income voters. Soft money economies mean job growth and more apparent wealth for the masses, at the risk of crashing if the growth stops for whatever other reason.
Finding a good balance has never been easy.
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April 9th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
WoodEngineer said:
You make some good points, but first on US national debt: the debt the US has held by forign countries is actually a pretty small portion of the debt. Most of it is held by the fed itself, which is a confusing situation. Of course the US holds a great deal of forign debt too. The national debt is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, assuming its of reasonable size and properly used. Debt is a tool of monitary policy and the issuance of bonds is a necessary way to allow the monitary supply to shrink and grow without impacting inflation too badly.
However, I will be the first to say that the debt of the US has become extremely excessive – far beyond what it should be. It’s got to be cut back badly. It is beyond the point of being higher than it should, it has mushroomed massively.
Now as far as consumer level debt and issuing of too much credit: In my opinion the market has a way of dealing with this. There is a natural system that helps keep over lending in check. If creditors offer a large amount of unsecured loans to high risk recipients, then many will end up not being able to pay them. They default on the payment and the bank gets burned, hit with a loss on each account.
That, in and of itself is incentive for banks to hold loans to higher standards, both in the form of credit cards, mortgages and other lending. If they don’t, they will suffer. Also, when credit is lent to high risk groups it is legitimate to expect high interest rates in order to compensate for the large proportion that will default.
As for consumers: If you take out too much in the way of loans and can’t pay them back, then you hurt yourself. You could lose your house, your car and any savings you have. You may be able to get things back together with bankruptcy and debt management plans, but it hurts. And it should hurt. If being in too much debt didn’t come back to bite you then there’d be no incentive to avoid it.
Now why this isn’t working
One of the big issues that stops this natural incentive toward reasonable lending is the government and the belief in entitlement. One thing is the “affordable housing tax credit” and other programs that go along with it. The government has been subsidizing subprime lending, creating laws that are designed to make subprime lending more acceptable or even hide it in securities and to encourage overlending. The government, in the form of the Fed has been doing the same thing. In order to encourage more high risk lending, the Fed itself has made money avaliable to institutions which have bad balance sheets and have risk loans. Fannie May and Freddie Mac are quasi-government programs, created by legislation to provide more lending.
Why on earth would the government do this?
It comes down to class warfare and the entitlement mentality. There has been the battle cry that “Everyone should have the opportunity to own their own home.” And that means that there has been a movement to make sure everyone can get a mortgage with favorable terms – even if they don’t really qualify for one.
The race card gets into this because, lets face it, minorities like blacks and hispanics are more likely to be in the lower class economically. So along they come and say “These big greedy banks descriminate on the poor and the miniorities. They’ll give the rich white guys loans but a poor black person can’t start their own buisiness because they can’t get as favorable a loan. They can’t buy their own home because they can’t get as generous a mortgage.”
Of course, it has nothing to do with race. The banks assess loan risk and credit qualifications based on a person’s finances and history of credit. A person with a good high paying job and an education is a lower risk for defaulting on a loan.
But this is where policies that encourage and subsidize subprime lending, overlending and bad credit practices come in. They demand that everyone be trusted to take out debt and say it’s wrong to assume that some people or groups won’t be able to handle it.
Well, guess what: When you entrust people with bad credit or no credit with large amounts of money they often don’t pay it back.
Quote Comment
April 12th, 2009 at 10:06 am
This comment was mistakenly placed in another thread.
Wonderful discussion. The ideas generated here appear vital to me. While I agree with everyone who says no one can predict the future, I also believe we can likely agree that if the human community keep doing precisely what we are doing now, we will keep getting what we are getting now.
One indication of faulty reasoning and extreme foolishness, I suppose, would be for us to believe that we can keep overconsuming, overproducing and overpopulating as we are doing now and somehow achieve different results from the ones in existence now.
If, for example, by doing “more of the same business-as-usual activities” that we are doing now, we could be leading our children down a “primrose path” to a recognizably horrendous fate of some unknowable kind, would reason and common sense not suggest a change in behavior?
We have self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe among us who are recommending to the children that all of us can live large and long; that we can conspicuously consume limited resources, pollute the frangible environment, overpopulate the finite planet and ravage the Earth……just the way they are insisting all of us do now. These arrogant and avaricious leaders are living examples of patently unsustainable lives and, yes, they take pride in their gigantic ecological ‘footprints’ and lifestyles based upon excessive consumption and unbridled hoarding. If our children were to keep doing what my not-so-great generation of elders are adamantly advocating and doing now, what is likely to become of them?
My growing sense of frustration results from a realization that remarkably clear, intellectually honest and morally courageous reports from so many responsible and duty-bound scientists show us that the Masters of the Universe are determined to deny what could somehow be real and not to speak publicly about what they believe to be true regarding the predicament in which the family of humanity finds itself in these early years of Century XXI. Even worse, their minions with leadership responsibilities and duties in environmental organizations have collusively been enjoined from speaking about whatsoever they believe to be true. As a consequence, a conspiracy of silence has been established among all these leaders and the absurdly enriched talking heads in the mass media who eschew intellectual honesty and moral courage in favor of reporting repetitively about whatsoever is politically convenient, economically expedient, socially agreeable and religiously tolerated.
The silence of so many leaders is deafening, while the duplicitous, disinformational chatter of the talking heads is morally outrageous. What is much worse, sad to say, is that the determination of these leaders and the talking heads to live large and long in such stupendously unsustainable ways — come what may for the children — is not only grossly irresponsible, it is a profound dereliction of their duty to warn, I believe.
Perhaps change is in the offing.
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February 19th, 2010 at 8:26 am
drbuzz0 said:
In the United States, blacks and Hispanics really WOULD have been able to afford to buy their own homes, were it not for restrictive zoning laws (specifically those involving minimum lot sizes). Of course such laws were probably the result of racist middle-class homeowners who didn’t want any ****s in THEIR suburbs.
Zoning laws are also responsible for the near-total car dependency of many neighborhoods, and should be abolished (except for ones needed to protect residents from noise or industrial pollution).
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