ramora wrote: "Laughing a lot around here today! Your laughing probably caused you to ignore my question: who is going to pay for your "more efficient capitalism that will allow for things we cannot conceptualize"? Also, do you think the majority of the population will agree with the changes necessary to implement your more efficient capitalism? (Of course you could just force them to do whatever you want with your army but that would not be very democratic would it?)" RW wrote: I'm going to raise money, through non-profit and for profit business dealings, to pay for things. The intelligent people of the world are of a mutual understanding about the flaws in the system. The rest of people, the masses, simply need a few television ads, repeatedly played over the period of a decade, to convince them all to support my ideas.
"not a single intelligent reply am I to believe that I am as great as I think I am. Surely I must be. And you children haven't even the insight to learn from my hard won witticisms. You should see my art. Too bad you're not intelligent enough to know good from bad. I'm one of the best artists in the world, and I'm only a sophmore. My time is coming and it's going to be fun." your not nearly as smart as you think you are.you wrote: "and consume on average 8 trees per year- the irrovacable environmental damage that capitalism has created and is creating, " had you done a little research you would have known that there are more trees in america now than there were 50 years ago. The total amount of large-tree standing timber in the US has increased by 30% since 1950. US forestlands covered 732 million acres in 1920; today they cover 747 million acres. http://www.conservativemonitor.com/news/2002012.shtml
Need I repeat myself. Projection - unconscious transfer of inner mental life: the unconscious ascription of a personal thought, feeling, or impulse to somebody else, especially a thought or feeling considered undesirable
Oh, Oh, I know what we can call this new ism... Startrekism. *All I ask for is a credit in the back of the history books.
I usually don't reply to things I see here, but this is too tempting..... First, what is this doing in the Economics forum; this is more related to philosophy than actual economics. You have not said a single statement on how to impliment your utopian society. How will you alter our current system to fit your ideals without SERIOUSLY harming the lives of millions of others? Which brings me to my second point. You seem to be a "tree-hugger." While there is nothing wrong with being environmentally conscience, your extreme opinions drastically effect millions of workers in this country. In Oregon, hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs to layoffs in the timber industry. Cutbacks in harvesting has single-handedly decimated the economy of the southwestern corner of the state. I suppose you're anti-car also. What will happen to those employed by the motor industry? Here are a couple of parting thoughts: 1. Houses are made from wood. If dead trees are bad, what do you expect will provide productivity stimulus to jumpstart the economy? 2. If true capitalism is bad, then the most obvious answer is communism (either free-market or government-market). Where's the personal incentive to actively participate in an economy when you can give a less than full effort and recieve the same benefits? Capitalism rewards effort. Anything less than capitalism errodes personal incentive. It seems you have too much time on your hands. Perhaps you should go re-recall your governor. Regardless, I await your mildly witty (yet eloquently written) retort. All of them have been amusing so far. This time, instead of mindless fluff and dull insults, try to address REAL ECONOMIC ISSUES with your utopian model. P.S. If you have a hard time finding old-growth timber, take a drive north. There is plenty in northern California and throughout Oregon, including Portland.
Loggers, they can die for all I care. Houses can be built out of mud, concrete, purified trash. And cars need to have better emissions filters. My utopian society will begin with implementing sustainable earth practices, such as not dumping sewage into the ocean but recycling it. Not packaging our organic goods in non-recyclable snazzy plastic wrappers. Basically my utopia will reduce waste in every area of life. I want healthy materials and waste management programs. I'm well aware of where one can find redwoods and aware of where they once were abundant. The California sequoia was throughout the entire state and now can only be found in large quantities up "north" or in small tourist parks known as state parks, and colloquial campgrounds. In my opinion, our system of governance, this nation of capitalism, isn't efficient enough to continue operating in the current way forever. Do you think it is? Don't you think something is wrong when 2/3 of Americans (and soon to copied by Europeans) are overweight and 1/3 of that 2/3 is obese?
that capitalism in America is inefficeint (capitalism is a glutton). What are our goals as human beings? Evolution depends on sustaining our resources, yet we aren't sustaining our resources. The solution is simple: environmental responsibilty will come to fruition one way or another; either because of an environmental calamity-which will include economic collapses, and the death of millions- or by being cautious and taking preventive steps against an environmental calamity. Preventive steps taken to protect our resources are in every prudent investor's best interests. I cannot feel sorry for the few losses created by stoping logging production. In my opinion, no one has a right to make such permanent decisions such as wiping out entire ecosystems. Such activity really makes me sick. I don't know how someone, such as yourself, doesn't feel as enraged as I do. Nature belongs to everybody. Not a few rapacious, and artless jerks with their names on deeds. And the best way to protect the forests is to buy them outright. I have too much time on my hands; you have no idea.
So your dispute is not with capitalism, but with unsustainable consumption of non-renewable resources, and excessive pollution (which obviously can occur under any political system)?Capitalism is singled out only because it is more economically efficient, and therefore results in more of the allegedly unsustainable consumption and pollution you describe? In which case, I would say - how do you know that the lower or negative economic growth that results would not be more damaging than the high consumption and pollution you seek to eliminate? And how do you know that going for even *higher* growth (by repealing economically restrictive regulation) would not result in even greater technological innovation that resulted in far more rapid adoption of sustainable energy sources, or much lower polluting industrial processes? And what makes your concern for the environment of greater importance than billions of other people's ability to earn a living wage or escape from poverty? Is preserving a nice forest or a rare species of frog really worth more than enabling people in the 3rd world to increase their life expectancy beyond 40, letting them reduce their working day from 14 hours of backbreaking agricultural labour in the sweltering sun to 8 hours in an air-conditioned office, allowing them to get an education so they can read and write, or increasing their wages to a less insulting fraction of those obtainable in the west? What we have here is basic difference in social and moral values. A relatively well-off person like yourself, who does not have to work their ass off to eke out a living, can afford the luxury of tree-hugging and ranting about the evils of capitalism. Most of the rest of the world is not so fortunate - capitalism and free markets are the only hope they've got of a better life. The last thing they want is some patronising westerner coming in and telling them they can't build any more factories because the lesser Amazonian tree frog might be inconvenienced. This bizarre morality of yours places the welfare of animals and plants above that of human beings, many of whom live in worse conditions than pampered pets in N America.
The trouble with capitalism is that it has lots of nasty side effects such as possible damage to the envirnment, etc.. Unfortunately all the alternatives tried so far are worse...
thank you for your concern and for the fun to read letter. To answer to you questions, regarding how do I know, is I obviously don't know. And yes, as I've stated, my choice over a forest than a bunch of pathetic loggers is an aesthetically concerned moral one. These same loggers have ended their own careers by massive deforestation projects. Basically they moved from area to area staying just long enough to completely extract every good piece of timber. Once an area was exhausted of its timber they would move on to another plot. Many paraistes of this world at least have the intelligence to sustain the life of their host. Loggers do not have such intelligence and so, they should die. Why would htey get any more compassion about job loss than the technology workers who lost thousands of jobs in the bay area. Why, because their logging towns are sentimentally considered to be micro-cultures. Let's consider these micro-cultures. I've met a few loggers in my days and these people were highklu uneducated, wrought with religiiousity and racist. Surely, there must be at least one logger with an IQ level over 120, but because the average is so low, and because average IQ level of people who think like me is over 120, I have a right to say, the loggers deaths would hardly be missed. But the deforstation of a forest will be missed. I do choose an endangered frog over a villiage, any day. I would choose an endangered bug over a villiage. And I like war, when war is fought safely with non-environmentally damaging weaponry. I don't know that if we all pulluted a little bit more it wouldn't spark a technological advancement that in the long run would reduce waste far more than before. But metaphorically, and usually, to exacerbate an illness with bleeding to drain the virus, it is more likely that the person will die than get better. As for the third worlders, if we didn't waste and gorge our selves- gorging being a form of waste- those cute little starving chilren who are more than likely going to grow up to be selfish jerks like their mothers and polluting fathers would have a better chance of becoming that filth which is the mass of humanity. A million dead to save an investment. That investment is to preserve the lives of the "enlightened" US citizens and our allies of other developed (civilized) lands. In order for the investment to thrive it may be that a hundred million less evolved people(creatures) must die. In order for the big picture, the evolution of humanity, to continue, the western world, and other large scale manufacturing countries, must realize that in order to contiue, our environment, the earth must be sustained.