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Cog wrote:Vote nationalism not the dead end of communism and socialism.

Baha is a useful idiot for communist propaganda who they will willingly execute when his usefulness to the party is over.

I wonder if, when considering ultimate efficiency of infrastructure, capitalism is the best answer? Is it that the market delivers the best answer, or that it delivers a certain answer when every other answer is up to opinion as to whether it will work? Planning does work sometimes, as can be seen in the development of China.

At its core, I think the struggle to understand efficiency is related to locality, the immediacy of a thing to an individual. People get involved initially, when the problems can be more easily answered. People prove that they can understand most things, once they can see that they are possible. They get a handle on them, and pay enough attention to gather them into their collective understanding of what they are to them as people, as defined within a community. Infrastructure has next level stuff, though.

To be the most efficient doesn't require simply attending to basic principles. It requires deciding upon a point of view. The markets will decide upon that point of view in the absence of the people paying enough energy and attention to the decision. The markets may not come up with the same decision that the people would have, had they paid enough attention. The market's decision can even be at cross purposes to that of the people. However, the market's decision is more likely to work than, say, an idealized decision of the people.

When people look at the length of time it may take to see whether a plan will work, and they have a market based choice available to them, they are more likely to choose the market based choice because the expense is not just money, but time that can't be gotten back. They don't tend to say that they could very well suffer for most of their lives while various false starts are made at maximizing the renewable aspect of their energy grid, or alleviating traffic on their roads so that 40 or 50 years from now their country or city can operate at maximum efficiency.

If it's not going to show up in their lifetimes, most people will go with the market. Anything else would require them to know too much about too many things without having shown them that a thing is possible. It would require an understanding of life beyond the level of understanding of the Twentieth Century, which they have gotten used to. I wonder what the impact of handheld devices will have on that as the Twenty First Century develops? We've already seen the impact of those upon an election or two. I wonder what kind of impact those will have upon decision making concerning the direction of cities? What's going to happen when those decisions which people would otherwise leave up to the market can be influenced by such things?

evil - Everyone has the right to their fantasy. But it the same as I've said about masturbation: nothing at all wrong with it. Just as long as you don't start believing it's the real thing.

I don’t see “efficiency” much at work here in the USA or other Western countries. There is darn little “efficient” about our health care system, criminal justice (including the war on drugs), TSA (Thousands Standing Around), large city administrations including schools, mass transit or other civic works.

Mostly we are a make work society with elaborate forms of workfare to make everyone feel as contributors.

Newfie wrote:

Mostly we are a make work society with elaborate forms of workfare to make everyone feel as contributors.

Geez, If we could just admit this and pay folks to dance in the park and paint murals on walls we would be such a happier society.

Ibon wrote:

Newfie wrote:

Mostly we are a make work society with elaborate forms of workfare to make everyone feel as contributors.

Geez, If we could just admit this and pay folks to dance in the park and paint murals on walls we would be such a happier society.

Here we differ. Not everyone, in fact I would contend not MOST, would feel like contributing members of society if they were making art. Sure its great for the artistic people like perhaps you and I. But for Joe6P who is no more artistic in any fashion than a tree stump getting paid the same salary to pick up trash alongside the road or clear fire hazard underbrush from natural woodlands before it becomes a fire hazard would give the feeling of accomplishment and self worth work used to provide.

A free handout couched in terms of doing something useful has a psychological improvement effect. A pure handout for doing nothing just leads to greater anger and resentment.

2 Degrees Celsius is a pipe dream, but at least they were trying to make it happen up until "Our Dear Leader" pulled us out of the Paris Agreement. Any goal takes steps to achieve it. I liked Nordhaus's idea of the slices of the pie that added up to reduced carbon emissions, but lately we don't even hear that kind of thinking. We seem to be resigned to our fate. This month's California fires and last month's hurricanes might have woken some up, but they will go right back to sleep again when the fires have burned out. We are sleepwalking into a disaster...

Revi wrote:2 Degrees Celsius is a pipe dream, but at least they were trying to make it happen up until "Our Dear Leader" pulled us out of the Paris Agreement. Any goal takes steps to achieve it. I liked Nordhaus's idea of the slices of the pie that added up to reduced carbon emissions, but lately we don't even hear that kind of thinking. We seem to be resigned to our fate. This month's California fires and last month's hurricanes might have woken some up, but they will go right back to sleep again when the fires have burned out. We are sleepwalking into a disaster...

Revi you need to accept the facts here. The Paris Accords were not doing diddly squat for climate change, they just gave political cover to posers who were PRETENDING to care. At least wadding them up and tossing them in the trash bin is an honest assessment of their real world value. Before you or anyone starts with the refrain of 'but it was a first step in the right direction' no, it was not. It was nothing but a political stunt. How many of these 'first steps' are we gonna proclaim anyhow? Kyoto, Copenhagen, Paris, half a dozen other major conferences and agreements. Put them all together and what do you get? The atmosphere today has or 50 ppmv more CO2 in it than it had when the Kyoto negotiations began. In point of fact the rate of increase has Accelerated SIGNIFICANTLY since 1990, not declined.

Plugging your ears and covering your eyes and placing all the blame on the R presidents is no more useful than any of these climate agreements has been in effect. We had a long stretch with the D heart throb president Obama in office and CO2 emission skyrocketed during his presidency. Pretending otherwise does the climate zero good.

ROCKMAN wrote:evil - Everyone has the right to their fantasy. But it the same as I've said about masturbation: nothing at all wrong with it. Just as long as you don't start believing it's the real thing.

I was thinking about this in relation to a Ted Talk I watched the other day. In the talk the speaker mentioned that trust had spread from local, to institutional, to now becoming distributed. It also made me recall a story I read on the BBC the other day, where two men were burned to death because a mob in a small Mexican town became convinced that they were child kidnappers and murderers. That crime had never happened. It was put up on Snapchat by an original fabricator, and shared so many times that the people believed it simply because it was there. Of course, two strange men who had come into town to buy building supplies must have done it. I guess the same story has actually been repeated many times all over the world. It says something about the unharnessed power of these kinds of online groups. That power is probably related to the distributed trust taking place today. Ironically, those real murders took place right in front of a police station.

Then I got to thinking, why can't online groups be used to arrive at decisions for which only the market seems applicable today? Isn't it the demands of the market which are so often cited as the reason why climate change can't be addressed? It's about how trust is moving to a distributed environment, over that of trusted institutions. The market is quite an institution in most activities for which it is the primary decision maker. When considering infrastructure, however, it is only a player, and not necessarily the dominant one. It depends upon the political consensus of the people how important the market will be. You might get toll roads, for example, in one place while another would never allow them. It isn't necessarily the case that people don't want to become involved over such decisions. It may be that there is currently no place for them to participate in the manner that best fits them. Maybe the only way they feel they currently have is to complain, not to contribute. As I said in my other post, the markets will arrive at a certain decision. By their nature markets figure those things out based upon the activity of the participants within them. But, when you have the ability of politics to drive decisions, markets don't describe the entire landscape of every infrastructure decision. They are something that a state or municipality can fall back on. They often make a decision in the absence of all input, when people don't participate, as in all they can do is complain.

Chat groups don't have to be about rumors. They can be about expressing ideas. They can actually address things like climate change as they define the meaning of certain words or phrases used within the discussion in a way that markets can't. They can be about arguing points and arriving at collective opinion. They can set a range of mulled over choices before the people. I can see them becoming involved in decisions over building projects that effect city life in the coming century. I can see them taking the place of markets in some situations, where because of consensus the people arrive at a certain decision that only considers the market as a secondary player. They can make the decision making process of the people more like that of a single mind, where a person goes through many types of thought, and runs through many counter poising ideas before they innovate an idea or opinion. Things have to be paid for, but decisions like these would be more like deciding for quality over some lower price option, which the market would be more likely to foist upon them.

They are saying probably 6 feet of sea level rise by 2100. Boston't Back Bay will be back!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... a68177fe92

Ibon wrote:

Newfie wrote:

Mostly we are a make work society with elaborate forms of workfare to make everyone feel as contributors.

Geez, If we could just admit this and pay folks to dance in the park and paint murals on walls we would be such a happier society.

Absolutely, and it’s not a new thing. Russell wrote about it in the 1930’s. And he suggested just as you say. The problem is we so, oh so desperately want to believe we are each special and doing GOOOOD for the tribe.

That fantasy had me by the short hairs for a long time. I’m now justifying my Slovenia retired existence as rebellion against the Empire.

Tanada wrote:

Ibon wrote:

Newfie wrote:

Mostly we are a make work society with elaborate forms of workfare to make everyone feel as contributors.

Geez, If we could just admit this and pay folks to dance in the park and paint murals on walls we would be such a happier society.

Here we differ. Not everyone, in fact I would contend not MOST, would feel like contributing members of society if they were making art. Sure its great for the artistic people like perhaps you and I. But for Joe6P who is no more artistic in any fashion than a tree stump getting paid the same salary to pick up trash alongside the road or clear fire hazard underbrush from natural woodlands before it becomes a fire hazard would give the feeling of accomplishment and self worth work used to provide.

A free handout couched in terms of doing something useful has a psychological improvement effect. A pure handout for doing nothing just leads to greater anger and resentment.

Very nice explanation Tanada. That’s exactly it.

Revi wrote:They are saying probably 6 feet of sea level rise by 2100. Boston't Back Bay will be back!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... a68177fe92

The cost of used sailboats keeps going down. It’s a buyers market. Just saying.

Revi wrote:2 Degrees Celsius is a pipe dream, but at least they were trying to make it happen up until "Our Dear Leader" pulled us out of the Paris Agreement. Any goal takes steps to achieve it. I liked Nordhaus's idea of the slices of the pie that added up to reduced carbon emissions, but lately we don't even hear that kind of thinking. We seem to be resigned to our fate. This month's California fires and last month's hurricanes might have woken some up, but they will go right back to sleep again when the fires have burned out. We are sleepwalking into a disaster...

The wedge plan has been around for nearly 15 years in various forms. None work for the same old reasons, populations continue to increase and more people use more energy and people don’t want to sacrifice today and tomorrow for nebulous “benefits” of preventing 2 degrees of warming 50 or 100 years in the future.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... on-wedges/

"Efficiency" is also known as "productivity," and for businesses usually involves increasing production and sales of goods and services. For a fraction of the world's population, markets are saturated. For most people who are not part of the middle class, it's not.

It looks like the only thing that will save us is Peak Oil. If there's a drop quick enough in the amount we use some of us might make it. Paradoxically the only thing that could keep us alive is a natural limit. We aren't smart enough to limit ourselves.

A deep global depression may buy some time, but I’m not sure.

Doom, doom, doom.



Nothing beats wallowing in doom.

Here is one group who we seems to “get it.”

https://xrebellion.org

And a good article from the Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -breakdown

It was a moment of the kind that changes lives. At a press conference held by climate activists Extinction Rebellion last week, two of us journalists pressed the organisers on whether their aims were realistic. They have called, for example, for UK carbon emissions to be reduced to net zero by 2025. Wouldn’t it be better, we asked, to pursue some intermediate aims?

A young woman called Lizia Woolf stepped forward. She hadn’t spoken before, but the passion, grief and fury of her response was utterly compelling. “What is it that you are asking me as a 20-year-old to face and to accept about my future and my life? … This is an emergency. We are facing extinction. When you ask questions like that, what is it you want me to feel?” We had no answer.

Revi wrote:It looks like the only thing that will save us is Peak Oil. If there's a drop quick enough in the amount we use some of us might make it. Paradoxically the only thing that could keep us alive is a natural limit. We aren't smart enough to limit ourselves.

That's what I thought we were on the verge of in 2008 but the oil industry surprised us by continuing to increase production. Climate change is becoming much more apparent than it was ten years ago but peak oil is still some years, possibly a good number of years, into the future. Peak oil will be too late to save us from a significant temperature increase.

The fantasy is that anyone outside this board cares about 2 degrees C.