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Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby dohboi » Tue 30 Jul 2019, 22:13:56

Just a data point that may problematize the Mouse Eutopia concept--that humans can't handle surplus:

"...the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world.

Nevertheless, it is the world's second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products (after the United States), owing to its fertile soil, mild climate, and intensive agriculture...

...thirteenth-highest per capita income globally...

The Netherlands ranks among the highest in international indexes of press freedom,[19] economic freedom,[20] human development, and quality of life, as well as happiness..."

(from wiki netherlands page)
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby Tanada » Wed 31 Jul 2019, 09:14:50

Netherlands also owns the biggest port in Europe. Ag Products from a good third of the continent are exported through Rotterdam. Their tiny geographic footprint doesn't row all that food they are exporting and saying it does juts makes the reporter look silly.

This is like when Californians claim to be the top agriculture state in the USA. They are speaking in terms of the luxury foods they grow earning beau coup cash flow, not in terms of calories produced per capita. On a calories per capita basis Iowa or North Dakota growing corn or wheat respectively with low state populations are by far greater contributors to the world food market in terms of basic calories. The bread those Californian vegans spread their Organic Almond Butter on grow in the low population ag states, not California, and ultimately they contribute the bulk of calories Californians eat.

Similarly Rotterdam, Holland, exports billions of calories of food, but that food is not grown in tiny crowded Holland.
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby asg70 » Wed 31 Jul 2019, 11:11:41

Europe's golden age seems to be collapsing anyway now thanks to unrestricted immigration.

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Wed 31 Jul 2019, 13:30:06

Tanada wrote:Netherlands also owns the biggest port in Europe. Ag Products from a good third of the continent are exported through Rotterdam. Their tiny geographic footprint doesn't [g]row all that food they are exporting and saying it does juts makes the reporter look silly.

...

Similarly Rotterdam, Holland, exports billions of calories of food, but that food is not grown in tiny crowded Holland.

(Blue text making my presumptive correction of "row" to "grow", mine).

And that's a good point. It's one thing to state that a lot of goods move through a port. It's quite another to claim that means the country the port is in is "exporting" all that food, because that clearly (in this context) is implying the country is producing that food.

Maybe we need more precise terms for things like "exports" to avoid such confusion -- or more likely we need more honest and informed economic reporters. Given the quality and trajectory of "professional" journalism (even in major publications) in the internet era, somehow, I don't think such reporting is going to improve on balance, over time.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Wed 31 Jul 2019, 13:34:18

asg70 wrote:Europe's golden age seems to be collapsing anyway now thanks to unrestricted immigration.

I suppose since the US has refused to learn about first world medical insurance realities from Western Europe (or the first world generally), we'll ALSO fail to notice the issues of unrestricted regulation.

You'd THINK that since humans are much smarter than, say bacteria, that we would do a better job of noticing disastrous policy implications and making course corrections -- IMO.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby dohboi » Wed 31 Jul 2019, 22:27:43

Yes, some of those ag exports are throughput from other countries, but it's less than a third of the total:

The Dutch agricultural sector booked yet another export record in 2017, the national statistics office CBS said on Friday. Exports totalled €92bn last year, making the Netherlands the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world after the US. US agricultural exports were put at $1.8bn in 2016. Not all the exports were produced in the Netherlands, however. Some €25.5bn of the total was in the form of re-exports from other countries.


That still leaves 66.5 billion Euros of their own home grown ag products that they exported. Nothing to sneeze at.

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/01/t ... -after-us/

The basic point stands that, contrary to the implications of the Mouse Eutopia model (to the extent that I understand it or that it is even a coherently constructed argument), The Netherlands, in spite of being geographically small, very densely populated, and flush with so much excess produced withing and coming through their borders, exhibits very high levels of happiness and is among the topmost rated countries of the world on most measures of human well being...
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby Tanada » Wed 31 Jul 2019, 22:59:10

dohboi wrote:Yes, some of those ag exports are throughput from other countries, but it's less than a third of the total:

The Dutch agricultural sector booked yet another export record in 2017, the national statistics office CBS said on Friday. Exports totalled €92bn last year, making the Netherlands the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world after the US. US agricultural exports were put at $1.8bn in 2016. Not all the exports were produced in the Netherlands, however. Some €25.5bn of the total was in the form of re-exports from other countries.


That still leaves 66.5 billion Euros of their own home grown ag products that they exported. Nothing to sneeze at.

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/01/t ... -after-us/

The basic point stands that, contrary to the implications of the Mouse Eutopia model (to the extent that I understand it or that it is even a coherently constructed argument), The Netherlands, in spite of being geographically small, very densely populated, and flush with so much excess produced withing and coming through their borders, exhibits very high levels of happiness and is among the topmost rated countries of the world on most measures of human well being...


Sure, sure, when you play the numbers game you are in the California catagory. Cash crops and food crops are as different as night and day.
Horticulture, especially the growing of ornamental plants and flowers, is a major factor in Dutch agriculture. The Dutch export significant amounts of cut flowers and bulbs, and the nation is world-renowned for its tulips. About 75 percent of flowers are exported, and there has been dramatic growth in exports to the United Kingdom, Italy, and Russia. This amounts to some 9 billion flowers per year. Horticulture is conducted in both open fields and through the use of glass greenhouses. The Netherlands now contains over half of all of the greenhouses in Europe, and there is a total of 44,000 acres of flowers under cultivation. Over 3,000 companies are engaged in horticulture in the kingdom.

Read more: https://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/eco ... z5vJYwb6h5
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby dohboi » Wed 31 Jul 2019, 23:52:52

Yup, flowers and bulbs is the top ag export...not too surprising...it is Holland, after all :)

But doesn't that just reinforce the point that they have an enormous surplus of not just food but land to grow food on which instead is used to grow relatively frivolous flowers.

And yet, in the midst of all this excess and surplus, they have very low birth rates, have a very well functioning society, have high levels of life satisfaction...in short show none of the particularly fatal signs of societal decay that the Mouse Utopia model seems to suggest is inevitable with such excess. (But again, maybe I'm misunderstanding the model?)
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby Ibon » Thu 01 Aug 2019, 03:52:02

dohboi wrote:
And yet, in the midst of all this excess and surplus, they have very low birth rates, have a very well functioning society, have high levels of life satisfaction...in short show none of the particularly fatal signs of societal decay that the Mouse Utopia model seems to suggest is inevitable with such excess. (But again, maybe I'm misunderstanding the model?)


Flower Power .

Matthew 4:4: But he answered and said, it is written, Man shall not live by bread alone
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby tire » Thu 01 Aug 2019, 07:00:55

dohboi wrote:And yet, in the midst of all this excess and surplus, they have very low birth rates, have a very well functioning society, have high levels of life satisfaction..)


The benefit of low birth rate they destroy by importing mostly culturally incompatible muslims, which eventually will lead to a NOT very well functioning society and much lower level of life satisfaction. (you might wanna ask a working class native living in a conquered neighborhood how he feels about sending his blond daughter into a 90% muslim dominated school).
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby asg70 » Thu 01 Aug 2019, 09:14:27

One difference between the Netherlands and the US cultural track is that the Netherlands (up until now) has been less diverse. Homogeneous societies tend to be more united societies. I don't like this aspect of human nature, but it's true. The US is not an ideal melting pot. It's always to some degree balkanized and sectarian. I understand that this is a different thesis from the Mouse Utopia, but it does fall in line with aspects of boundaries. It could be that America discourages traditionalism in order to foster the melting pot, but the end result is more atomized hyper-individuality. These changes are coming to all of Europe and are a big source of upheaval such that quality of life scores done even recently may already be out of date. Europe is buckling under having to live by its liberal ethos while privately feeling uneasy about the damage to tradition. This is true across the board. As the world becomes globalized, all aspects of regional difference that evolved over thousands of years of geographic isolation suffer. Languages die. Old traditions die. You lose your sense of place and origin. Culture everywhere becomes subject to demographic shifts. Anywhere a people congregate en masse transforms that place and it's politically incorrect to push-back.

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby Ibon » Thu 01 Aug 2019, 13:13:10

The degree to which you are aware that your traditions are under threat means you are still anchored to them. Economic or political forces may undermine them but the loss is still in your awareness. The problem in the USA is profoundly different. All the supposed traditions are just cartoons in peoples heads, not real. People are so easily manipulated when organic reality is replaced with fake concepts. Real civic engagement in your lical community? Not there anymore. Just a society untethered but not free.
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby tire » Thu 01 Aug 2019, 13:42:57

Ibon wrote:The degree to which you are aware that your traditions are under threat means you are still anchored to them. Economic or political forces may undermine them but the loss is still in your awareness. The problem in the USA is profoundly different. All the supposed traditions are just cartoons in peoples heads, not real. People are so easily manipulated when organic reality is replaced with fake concepts. Real civic engagement in your lical community? Not there anymore. Just a society untethered but not free.


If the tradition is in people head it's very much real. And the current onslaught on european heritage and traditons still present from back of the founding times of the US is one of the reason of the current political tension and general uneasiness of the nation.

Have you ever visited (or better lived) in small town america? You would be surprised by the amount of civic engagement. Something cities lack (but not only in america, all over the world). Cities provide anonymity but in response lack community engagement. And multiculturalism makes it worse.
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby dohboi » Thu 01 Aug 2019, 14:15:07

Tire seems to be just another tired old bigot...come here to join the many others on the site! :D

I live in an area that has a very large population of East Africans, mostly Muslims. We happily sent our daughter to schools that had majority or large percentages of Africans. No one I know in my area has any qualms about this. Typical lawn signs on Christian, Jewish, atheist, and wiccan lawns around here during that time of year proclaim "Have a Blessed Ramadan."

Back to The Netherlands, where my daughter happens to live, the largely white community closed off a street, set up a very long set of tables, and threw an iftar (evening meal during Ramadan) for their Muslim neighbors. I got the impression that this was not a rare thing.

I'm sure there are racists here and many other places, but that doesn't mean that it is the only or necessary response everywhere.
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby tire » Thu 01 Aug 2019, 14:39:48

dohboi wrote:I'm sure there are racists here and many other places, but that doesn't mean that it is the only or necessary response everywhere.


It's sad that lefties are quick in throwing the "racists" card. Kind of prevents any civilized discussion.
There are people who enjoy multiculturalism and there are people who don't. I hope you agree with me on that. The same way as some people like ice cream and some don't. Right? Not everybody likes the same things. It's sad that you label a whole group of people as "bad" just because their "likes' doesn't agree with yours.

No one I know in my area has any qualms about this.

Of course not, because the ones that have problem with it left long time ago, right? Because it's the West after all, you're not allowed to fight back, you have to suck it up, otherwise lefties get mad and throw the "racist" card.

that doesn't mean that it is the only or necessary response everywhere.

Of course not. Some people are happy in abandoning their traditions and heritage in favor of something new. And some people are happy in bending over backward to accommodate others.
I'm sure your happy muslims in the Netherlands did throw a Christmas party for their neighbors, right?
Right they did? Didn't they?

BTW: it's a long tradition that the Christmas story is told and performed in schools all over europe. Guess which group of people are complaining? And guess which group of people are bending over backward to accommodate the minority. You're smart, I'm sure you guessed correctly.
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby clif » Thu 01 Aug 2019, 17:41:56

are quick in throwing the "racists" card


Said the guy quick in throwing the lefties card .....

In other words tire has just hit his very own pot kettle moment here
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby Ibon » Thu 01 Aug 2019, 17:46:07

tire wrote:
Have you ever visited (or better lived) in small town america? You would be surprised by the amount of civic engagement. Something cities lack (but not only in america, all over the world). Cities provide anonymity but in response lack community engagement. And multiculturalism makes it worse.


Grew up on a farm in Lancaster Co. Pennsylvania, lived in Salina Kansas for 3 years. Went to an Ag school.

Read the early writings from the late 18th century by a Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, on the strength of American civic engagement:

https://demmelearning.com/learning-blog ... ivic-life/

When the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in 1831, he was impressed with the level of civic engagement he saw among the American people. In his book, Democracy in America, Tocqueville often mentions his respect for the political activeness of the average American citizen. Tocqueville understood that America is designed to work best when her citizens are involved on the community level.


The degree to which agrarian communities still can hold to civic engagement is praiseworthy. The fact we still see some of this is a tribute to this legacy. It is severely eroded however by the death of small town America, the entrance of box stores, the fact that farmers have become indentured servants and no longer own their equipment or land, they are mortgaged to the hilt and it is the Ag companies and banks that control their fate. How many farmers who lost their farms and also lost their civic engagement and became part of the opiate addiction statistics. Do you even have an idea?

Just open your eyes and look at the death of rural America and what went along with this was the death of much of the civic engagement that Tocqueville talked about. The diners and community centers that were the meeting place for civic engagement have been replaced with Walmarts.

An old friend who had to give up her dairy farm summed it up quite well.... "My husband and I took on every job imaginable in town to earn extra income to try to save our farm. In a recent e-mail she confirmed that for many farmers the loss of cheap immigrant labor is just the latest nail in the coffin.

Her Mexican farm workers brought nostalgic memories; their hard physical labor, the family cohesiveness, their close community connection. They reminded her of how farmers used to be before they put on their ear phones and rode their giant air conditioned combines owned by banks.

I would challenge you Tire to get off the internet rhetoric bandwagon and really truely look deep into what ails agrarian America. Those politicians today who talk of representing small farmers and then spew their racist anti immigrant bullshit are NOT representing the best interest of American farmers.

Don't be duped. Wake up and think for yourself instead of regurgitating bullshit you read on the internet.
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby dohboi » Thu 01 Aug 2019, 19:39:30

You were certain that everyone with a "blond daughter" would be horrified to send their kid to a school with Muslims. You were wrong. And that was either projecting your own bigotry, or assuming widespread bigotry everywhere Muslims move in.

You sound very paranoid, and out of touch with most of the places where Muslims are actually making homes in the West and becoming part of our well-integrated communities.

And no one said anything about "abandoning their traditions." We still do all the Christian holiday shit to beat the band.

In my very urban setting, we have community lunches every week day, where people sit and talk for long hours over coffee, excellent soups, and various other dishes, that is when it's not sing along day, with a band of about 12 local musicians. We serve about 750 meals a week. The head chef is an Arab Jew. We meet in a Lutheran church (which the gay pastor want to expand into a mosque and synagogue), in the same building with a Muslim advocacy organization. We've also hosted iftar meals and prayer sessions.

It is the Christian (and Jewish, and Muslim, and Zoroastrian...) duty of the 'natives' to welcome those who are 'stranger in a strange land.' (Not the duty of the strangers to welcome the 'natives'--lol...what other absurdities are you going to dream up next, one wonders! :D ) This fundamental ethic runs deep in all these traditions and more. Those who oppose us as we great our new neighbors are the true anti-Christians. (The ethic, as a religious imperative, seems to have started with the Zoroastrian/Zarathustrians, in my limited reading on the matter.)

Perhaps you find all of this inconceivable. I don't know and don't care.
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby dohboi » Thu 01 Aug 2019, 19:45:58

And I second, third and fourth...everything Ibon says (as usual). And yes, The Netherlands is indeed the land of flower people.

https://www.curbed.com/2019/7/26/893096 ... roofs-bees
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Re: Are We Running the Mouse Utopia Experiment?

Unread postby asg70 » Thu 01 Aug 2019, 22:20:23

dohboi wrote:where my daughter happens to live, the largely white community closed off a street, set up a very long set of tables, and threw an iftar


Demographics is destiny in a democratic society. When the majority of the voting block is muslim, don't be surprised if some of the rights the left take for granted are gradually revoked.

dohboi wrote:out of touch with most of the places where Muslims are actually making homes in the West and becoming part of our well-integrated communities.


You mean like France?

Sweden?

Muslims don't manage diverse societies well. Look at Lebanon, for instance.

And so the saying goes:

“I, against my brothers. I and my brothers against my cousins. I and my brothers and my cousins against the world.”

You know, I come to a place like this, and I expect a less idealistic vision of humanity, considering that we're hurtling towards a malthusian catastrophe at full speed (not helped in the least by reckless muslim birthrates). But some people still cling to some fantasy kumbaya attitudes.
Last edited by asg70 on Thu 01 Aug 2019, 22:33:01, edited 2 times in total.

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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