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How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

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How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 12 Jul 2019, 08:34:51

How Socialism Works: Part One — A Primer for Green New Dealers
The grass isn’t always greener on the Green New Deal’s side.
By Dov Fischer

For the millennial generation and those on campus, your campus professors have taught you that injustice is endemic in America and that you do not deserve the benefits of the college education that the homeless do not enjoy. You feel bad and guilty that you got to attend college, that your parents and you have lived more comfortably than have your liberal Democrat parents’ servants and housekeepers, gardeners and pool cleaners, and the custodians who clean your dormitories. You feel guilty that ‘The Rich” have billions of dollars while others reside on the streets, in the subways, or at freeway exits. You feel guilty that you enjoy American citizenship while others born outside are denied. That you have access to campus healthcare while others do not. That Betsy Ross sewed a flag for you when you can’t even sew a button.

Despite what you have been taught, conservatives also care deeply about the poor, the orphaned, the widowed, the oppressed. For us, rather than virtue-signaling our concern or taking money from others to fabricate half-baked responses, we recognize that there is but one certain road out of poverty for able-bodied people: the road of accepting personal responsibility for one’s situation and engaging in self-help. When you give someone a welfare handout and food stamps, you help them until the cash soon runs out. But when you create conditions that enable such people to obtain employment and to work gainfully, you help them and their future generations for life, even as you imbue them with dignity.

On its face, socialism sounds so fair, especially in its latest iteration, the “Green New Deal”: To each according to his or her need — and why not? Equality of results. Equality of incomes. As a bonus, an end to climate change and cows farting. Let us briefly look more closely.

Energy, Fossil Fuels, and Cow Farts

United States corporations, driven by profit-greed and by knowing that their profits will increase by giving consumers exactly what people actually want, have undertaken greatly to reduce fossil-fuel emissions and reliance on dirty energy. By contrast, no amount of rules imposed on American energy production can or will impact energy production outside this country, such as in high-polluting China and India. India is home to thirteen of the world’s twenty most-polluted cities, and it pollutes even more than China does. More than one million people die prematurely every year because of India’s increasingly dirty air quality. Thus, in 2017 the United States reduced its carbon emissions by 0.5 percent in a year that our economy grew by 3 percent, as shale oil and gas transitioned us away from coal to cleaner energy. (Imagine how much more we could reduce if people would only stop exhaling carbon dioxide!) Meanwhile, China produces 28 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. And India is the world’s third largest carbon emitter, having increased its emissions by 93 million metric tons in 2017 — an increase more than twice the amount of emissions that the United States reduced. In other words, no regulating of American energy production will impact the greater worldwide impact of carbon emissions, but if we stifle our cleaner energy production here by enacting restrictive laws, we simply force people to purchase more energy from overseas sources who produce theirs in filth.

By coercing whole energy industries to close, America would be displacing as many as two million workers who work directly in those industries and in associated roles supporting them. Perhaps your parents would lose work — and then who would have the money to pay the $60,000 tuition and dorm fees that support your Identity Studies professors? You see, when the oil industry is reduced, so are the businesses that produce their pumps, their signs. Truckers are put out of work. Those convenience stores close down if the gas stations do. The people at those cash registers lose their work. And so it goes with clean natural gas and with any industry that closes down. That seems quite a thing to advocate, given that it would not help a wink in the greater global atmosphere.

The impact on car and air travel would be devastating. High-speed rail, which California has proven to be an impracticable option for the modern era, cannot access Europe, Africa, or other continents outside the Americas, and even would leave Hawaii, Alaska, and most of South America unreachable. That would wipe out tourist industries and aspects of international commerce, and it even would impact supplies at the grocery. We need trucks for transporting low-cow-fart vegetables from Iowa farms to your food store. Likewise, efforts to stop people from raising cattle here will not stop meat-eating. Rather, people will buy their meat from farting cows in Argentina. Wherever the cow farts, the air blows it to the next continent over. Isn’t that the whole idea of “global warming”? Global? Americans will figure out where and how to get meat if Kansas and Texas beef is banned. The cost of importing beef will increase those horrid carbon emissions that worry you so, even as we purchase from countries that do not have our clean-air standards.

Similarly, the premise of retrofitting all homes and other American buildings would devastate homeowners, even as the total cost to the United States economy has been pegged in the tens of trillions. Yes, it would be sweet to see all the college buildings vacated and declared unfit for human occupation, and you would love that, also, if it just could be timed for a week or two before final exams. Your parents’ homes would have to be retrofitted, too. To pay for it — geez, you might have to get a job. Some New Green Deal, huh?

The country simply does not have anything near the kind of money to retrofit all houses, so it either would have to borrow the cash from China, Saudi Arabia, and other such dictatorial human-rights violators, who thus would own more and more of our country and its companies, or America would have to print more money, which would destroy the currency’s value, wiping out lifetime savings, retirement pensions, and devastating the middle class.

Let’s understand how that thing works, since the only thing they teach you in college about money is to focus on whose White-Privileged face shows up on the bills. You see, when “they” print more money, that does not really mean there is more value. Otherwise, the Government would be doing nothing but printing up more money. The thing is, the value remains the same. If a house costs $10,000 today, and tomorrow “they” print up so many gazillions of dollars that each and every person — even DACA! — ends up with ten times as much money as today, then we will have ten times as much money floating around, so the $10,000 house will now cost $100,000. You see, as more people have money flowing out of their pockets, the home-sellers will raise their prices to the amount that they now can get. The house still has the same value; it just costs ten times as much, but paid from money that has ten times less value. So houses go up ten times, and cars go up ten times — and your $125 course textbooks on Identity Studies now go up to $1,250. Really.

The thing is, while everything is going up ten times, and most people just keep up with the inflation, certain people get destroyed, like elderly people who no longer earn a living. They get Social Security, which is not enough, not even if it also goes up ten times, and they have their savings. But their savings does not go up ten times. It is what it is, with some modest interest. In other words, they get wiped out. That’s how socialism works: the rich get fabulously richer, and the poor end up homeless (like in California) or shot (like in parts of Chicago, St. Louis, and Baltimore).

Really crummy!

The Green New Deal will impose on you the burden of supporting your parents even though they have saved and invested all their lives to spare you that burden. As always, “The Rich” will shield their assets with creative currency strategies, moving cash assets out of America, converting them to real holdings, investing in commodities that the middle and lower economic classes cannot fathom without highly paid investment advisors whom they cannot afford. These are strategies that “The Rich” uniquely have mastered, and that is why they are among the relatively few who are “The Rich.”

In the end, the speed trains will not cross oceans, and tickets to ride in them on land will get so high that people will fly anyway. As fewer people ride the trains, the cost of each ticket will get higher because there are fewer riders to maintain the costs. And that will cause the train prices to get even higher.

The masses will not stop eating beef. It just will get more expensive. People are not going to retrofit their homes unless the government pays. If the government ever goes that far, “they” eventually will cut corners and costs with cheaper materials, as they did in England, where Really crummy!

The Green New Deal will impose on you the burden of supporting your parents even though they have saved and invested all their lives to spare you that burden. As always, “The Rich” will shield their assets with creative currency strategies, moving cash assets out of America, converting them to real holdings, investing in commodities that the middle and lower economic classes cannot fathom without highly paid investment advisors whom they cannot afford. These are strategies that “The Rich” uniquely have mastered, and that is why they are among the relatively few who are “The Rich.”

In the end, the speed trains will not cross oceans, and tickets to ride in them on land will get so high that people will fly anyway. As fewer people ride the trains, the cost of each ticket will get higher because there are fewer riders to maintain the costs. And that will cause the train prices to get even higher.

The masses will not stop eating beef. It just will get more expensive. People are not going to retrofit their homes unless the government pays. If the government ever goes that far, “they” eventually will cut corners and costs with cheaper materials, as they did in England, where where New Green retrofitting caused an unimaginably catastrophic residential fire.

That’s how the New Green Deal works for people who just want to promote goodness.


Original is at: https://spectator.org/how-socialism-works-part-one-a-primer-for-green-new-dealers/
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby Cog » Fri 12 Jul 2019, 09:10:06

Supply/demand will decide if "green" energy can or can not compete with "dirty" energy. To do otherwise is to invite misery and pain to all. I know the climate change doomers want that to pain to happen but most normal working people do not. After all the government knows what is best for you.

Good article KJ.
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 12 Jul 2019, 10:38:05

Speaking for myself I don’t “want” that pain to happen, I just recognize that it is inevitable and if it happens sooner the aggregate pain will be less.

Think of it like going on a diet. It’s not really something you sign up for because you enjoy the process, you do it because you suspect not doing it will bring a worse future.
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 12 Jul 2019, 12:09:58

Newfie, does that mean what I think it means, which is that you favor forcing people to use much more expensive "green" energy sources instead of relatively inexpensive fossil fuels?

This country of course has large reserves of oil, gas, and coal. During the Obama administration, the Clean Power Plan caused a bunch of existing US coal plants to convert to dual-fuel capability with natural gas and coal. We were well on the way to cleaner air. However, we still dug as much dirty coal as before, and sold it on world energy markets, mainly to China - where it got burned in power plants without emissions controls.

Thus in the end, the CPP increased atmospheric pollution and did nothing whatsoever to reduce carbon emissions. Pardon me but I don't see how anything the USA does will reduce total FF use, other than an outright ban on oil/gas/coal production, including energy exports. That potentiallly reduces the 15% of global carbon emissions from this country, not the 28% produced by #1 polluter China, or the 47% produced by the rest of the world. But ending FF use will of course also devastate our economy.

It seems too high a price, unless other countries also curtail FF use. The Paris Accords prove that voluntary reductions don't do anything - FF usage has increased every year since then.
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby gollum » Fri 12 Jul 2019, 13:13:40

Cog wrote:Supply/demand will decide if "green" energy can or can not compete with "dirty" energy. To do otherwise is to invite misery and pain to all. I know the climate change doomers want that to pain to happen but most normal working people do not. After all the government knows what is best for you.

Good article KJ.

At some point in time renewable will be economical, that's a certainty. The real question is how do we prepare for that time.
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Fri 12 Jul 2019, 14:30:44

gollum wrote:
Cog wrote:Supply/demand will decide if "green" energy can or can not compete with "dirty" energy. To do otherwise is to invite misery and pain to all. I know the climate change doomers want that to pain to happen but most normal working people do not. After all the government knows what is best for you.

Good article KJ.

At some point in time renewable will be economical, that's a certainty. The real question is how do we prepare for that time.

And the trends show that at utility scale, some green tech. like wind is getting far more competitive already, for the newer tech.

The deniers will deny climate change is real and yell about bird strikes, etc. as wind gets to be more and more a threat to burning hydrocarbons for power, for example.

Or we could incent people to at least try to use less power, by pricing dirty power higher. We should at least try to strongly disincentivize stupid waste and pollution.

Why some clown who is not a farmer or distributing lots of goods needs to drive a giant pickup truck or SUV, getting 15 mpg instead of a midsized HEV getting 45+ mpg, and oh by the way, costing a LOT less to buy, is beyond me. (For farmers, certain contractors, etc. who actually NEED a heavy vehicle for their work, some sort of tax credit could be allowed, at least until BEV's can competently and cost competitively do the same sorts of jobs. And that could be quite a while before such vehicles are common and adequately supported by infrastructure, etc.)

So it doesn't have to be an all-or-none or all-at-once sort of solution. After all, both green and ICE technology, and green and fossil fuel power plants are all evolving in the face of competition, costs, etc.

So we do little, because politicians want to be elected and re-elected, and the problem grows worse. One thing that makes me very angry at the dems is how they praise Obama for the US joining the Paris Climate Accords. As though a giant, political, can kick that does basically nothing is to be praised -- but only if it's a dem who helped do that.

In reality, they should be hooting and screeching at Obama, just like they do at Trump, re climate change. Because aside from the CAFE standards, where Obama gets good marks, the actions are similar re real climate change reform -- the rest is mainly just a difference in rhetoric. (And NO, I do NOT believe Trump is right on his rhetoric re climate change -- but in the end, it's results that matter).
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: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 12 Jul 2019, 16:02:57

KJ,

What it means is I view CC as a very serious threat to humanity, I strongly believe that CC alone has the capacity to reduce humanity to well under a billion people, maybe less.

Therefore I advocate well considered steps to reduce the impact of climate change and the misery it will bring upon humanity.
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Sat 13 Jul 2019, 02:00:40

Newfie, I understand your position. However I believe that human overpopulation, with the accompanying environmental destruction, is threat #1.

In fact, for the long term health of the planetary scale environment, the world population needs to decline and then remain below the 1 billion humans figure you quoted.

I'm with Ibon on this one: we need to hand on for the ride and embrace CC as a means of salvation for the species. That is true whether or not you are in favor of human colonies off the Earth's surface in space.
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby Cog » Sat 13 Jul 2019, 05:14:59

We had a thread on AOC's Green New Deal. It turns out it was not created to address climate change at all but to achieve societal change since it was crammed full of social justice nonsense. It is simply a vehicle for government to put its finger on the scale and control every aspect of your life. Most climate change environmentalists simply won't be honest about what they really want to achieve. Its pure socialism at its core.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/aoc ... te-change/

AOC’s Chief of Staff Admits the Green New Deal Is Not about Climate Change

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti admitted recently that the true motivation behind introducing the Green New Deal is to overhaul the “entire economy.”

Chakrabarti said that addressing climate change was not Ocasio-Cortez’s top priority in proposing the Green New Deal during a meeting with Washington governor Jay Inslee.

“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” Chakrabarti said to Inslee’s climate director, Sam Ricketts, according to a Washington Post reporter who attended the meeting for a profile published Wednesday.

“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,” he added.


The Green New Deal, proposed earlier this year by Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey (D., Mass.), would transition the U.S. economy entirely away from fossil fuels within ten years while simultaneously providing a federal jobs and healthcare guarantee. It would also, according to its proponents, advance “social, economic, racial, regional and gender-based justice and equality and cooperative and public ownership.”
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby gollum » Sat 13 Jul 2019, 05:31:45

Cog wrote:We had a thread on AOC's Green New Deal. It turns out it was not created to address climate change at all but to achieve societal change since it was crammed full of social justice nonsense. It is simply a vehicle for government to put its finger on the scale and control every aspect of your life. Most climate change environmentalists simply won't be honest about what they really want to achieve. Its pure socialism at its core.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/aoc ... te-change/

AOC’s Chief of Staff Admits the Green New Deal Is Not about Climate Change

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti admitted recently that the true motivation behind introducing the Green New Deal is to overhaul the “entire economy.”

Chakrabarti said that addressing climate change was not Ocasio-Cortez’s top priority in proposing the Green New Deal during a meeting with Washington governor Jay Inslee.

“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” Chakrabarti said to Inslee’s climate director, Sam Ricketts, according to a Washington Post reporter who attended the meeting for a profile published Wednesday.

“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,” he added.


The Green New Deal, proposed earlier this year by Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey (D., Mass.), would transition the U.S. economy entirely away from fossil fuels within ten years while simultaneously providing a federal jobs and healthcare guarantee. It would also, according to its proponents, advance “social, economic, racial, regional and gender-based justice and equality and cooperative and public ownership.”


Yeah they lost me at the point when they promised ever increasing amounts of free shit at the same time they promised to use less resources. The two ideas are totally incompatible. Peak oil and climate change are coming and almost no government will survive it because lies and empty promises can only be covered for so long.
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby ralfy » Sat 13 Jul 2019, 06:36:40

The catch is limits to growth.
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 13 Jul 2019, 07:40:28

KaiserJeep wrote:Newfie, I understand your position. However I believe that human overpopulation, with the accompanying environmental destruction, is threat #1.

In fact, for the long term health of the planetary scale environment, the world population needs to decline and then remain below the 1 billion humans figure you quoted.

I'm with Ibon on this one: we need to hand on for the ride and embrace CC as a means of salvation for the species. That is true whether or not you are in favor of human colonies off the Earth's surface in space.


KJ,

Completely agree over population is our biggest problem.
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 13 Jul 2019, 07:45:02

Cog,

Yes I agree GND was designed to push a social agenda. It probably pushed CC legislation back 10 years.

The GND discredits those that tried to sell it to us. It does not disprove CC or make any less of a menace.

We need to be careful to keep the liars separate from the truth. Liars will use the truth to further their goal. The truth is the truth, period.
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 13 Jul 2019, 07:45:53

ralfy wrote:The catch is limits to growth.


BINGO!!!

So simple yet so hard to get folks to understand.
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby Ibon » Sat 13 Jul 2019, 08:15:47

Entitlement has many ideological colors but all ideologies must bend to the will of the limits of growth.
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Sat 13 Jul 2019, 10:41:15

I agree with the above. Part Two of Rabbi Fischer's article on Socialism deals with Capitalism and how it creates wealth that benefits all economic strata. Taxes and entitlements are also discussed, along with the general and repeated failures of Socialism throughout the World. Since the content is somewhat different, I published that seperately as did he.
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby careinke » Mon 15 Jul 2019, 05:26:18

I'm not sure where the sustainable under one billion number came from, but I believe that number is well below what is possible. My guess would be closer to 9 billion while still be able to regenerate (fix), the earth with simple geoengineering and other natural practices.

On a related subject, my wife and I just saw a documentary Called "The biggest Little Farm." I highly recommend it, the photography alone makes it worth going and seeing on a big screen.

The movie documents a couple following their dream to make an "old fashion" farm in California starting in 2010 and the documentary ends in 2018. The Husband is also a professional photographer. They hire a designer, and then put a lot of infrastructure in.

Not once was the word Permaculture used in the movie, yet the entire farm followed permaculture principles. The lessons taught in this film will change your paradigm, I highly recommend it. Here is a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfDTM4JxHl8
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Mon 15 Jul 2019, 15:19:57

careinke wrote:I'm not sure where the sustainable under one billion number came from, but I believe that number is well below what is possible. My guess would be closer to 9 billion while still be able to regenerate (fix), the earth with simple geoengineering and other natural practices.

Well, that might be true theoretically, but how you (in the real world) actually GET 9 billion people (or even 7) to consistently live in a WAY that would allow the earth to regenerate makes this idea a non-starter, IMO.

If 9 billion is the max, then a number around 10% of that, to allow for lots of waste and stupidity, seems about right.

Of course, in the real world, lots of relatively educated people can see and agree that population is the, or at least A key issue. OTOH, try to discuss controlling that, and being called "Hitler" and worse soon occurs.

I'm afraid that Mother Nature might well end up doing the controlling re consequences, and people will then wish foresight, planning, and making do with less had been FAR more of a thing.

Ironically, I see a lot of retirees turning to a much reduced CO2 lifestyle by choice, which retirement makes a lot easier in several ways. Ironic, because, most likely, we'll be dead before the effects of climate change start to get REALLY serious enough to make people sit up and take notice en masse.

But it's hard to get people to take such issues seriously during their working and schooling years -- they don't have TIME for all that, is a frequent refrain.

...

And as an example, re the billions vs. billion number, I remember telling a right wing friend that I was using significant temperature moderation and clothing, fans, etc. as needed for comfort, to reduce my CO2 footprint. He rejoined, "That's really stupid. It won't make any difference. Almost no one ELSE is doing that!". "True, but it WOULD make a big difference if billions of people would do the same thing", I said.

"He's right", said his wife, and the topic changed to something else, like international travel plans for vacations. :roll:
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: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby lpetrich » Mon 15 Jul 2019, 18:19:08

Define "socialism".

Also, this sort of whining that "It will cost too much" is a coward's philosophy. It means that one ought to surrender to every bad thing that will ever happen, because it will cost too much to do anything else. Hostile nations? It costs too much to fight them, so one must surrender. Criminals? It costs too much to fight them, so one must surrender. Bad weather? It costs too much to protect oneself from it, so one must suffer it.

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, did President FDR announce that he will be letting Japan have Hawaii because it would cost too much to fight that nation? That trying to hold on to those islands will require doing a lot of socialism?
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Re: How Socialism Works: A Primer for Green New Dealers

Unread postby Plantagenet » Tue 16 Jul 2019, 20:37:55

lpetrich wrote:
After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, did President FDR announce that he will be letting Japan have Hawaii because it would cost too much to fight that nation? That trying to hold on to those islands will require doing a lot of socialism?


You know surprisingly little about history. As a result your political thinking is very muddled.

Roosevelt was very clear about the reasons the US was entering WWII. And contrary to your post, it wasn't to build socialism in Hawaii---it was about preserving and defending democracy.

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