Save the world

[RantinAn]

Hey look, its our local fundamentalist come tot he party once more dragging round his ancient ideology suited for proto industrial society.

Ignore him

[Ce6]

In fact I'll agree with you on another point. Puting taxes on wasteful/polluting things may not be the best way to go, it makes people mad. It's better to give incentives to do clean/effisient things. Of course the net result is much the same in the long run since taxes are paying for the incentives, but it's alot sneakier and people won't complain as much.

This reminded me of the bottle/can recycling program in the state of Michigan. A 10 cent deposit is paid for every soft drink bottle or can at time of purchase, but if you return the empty, you can get that back. Built in tax/incentive to get people to recycle.
California has apparently just implemented something similar starting this year, but I haven't looked into how it works yet, nor have I seen the large scale infrastructure in place as I remember in Michigan - almost every store you could buy soft drinks from would collect the empty containers and give a cash refund. I don't know when it began or how long it took to implement, but it's been up and running for as long as I can remember (at least 25+ years).
Compared to other states I have lived in since, I saw a lot less littering and a lot more recycling for those things for which people could easily get a reward.

[Wilmo]

yup, 5 cent or 7.5 cent or whatever "crv" (california refund value), woo, I havent really noticed all that much of a difference in people's conservation efforts; but whatevers

[Lulujayne]

Heh, amazingly, nay, incredibly, I am for once in complete agreement with Toawa

[Fnyunj]

Unfortunately, I'm a bit disturbed by the fact that, while half of the suggestions in this thread have been of the aforementioned grandiose social engineering, the other half have tended toward "assisted" population reduction.

I don't advocate "assisted" population reduction.

I'm simply saying that this is probably the inevitable solution. I'd love to see something else work. But my opinion of human nature being what it is, well, let's just say y'all are lucky aliens don't come and take over, and make me Viceroy of Earth. Well, anyway, that's about as likely as humans voluntarily controlling their own rate of consumption and reproduction.

To underscore this point;
I did a science experiment in High School. We loaded up a test-tube full of nutrient broth, and a yeast culture. Every day, we took a sample, and returned our tubes to the incubator. Every day, the number of yeast increased and increased. And after a couple of days, the alcohol concentration also increased. Now, I'm sure these yeast were all partying soon, and having a great time. After two weeks, the population peaked, and then our little party-yeasts ALL FUCKING DIED overnight.

Maybe a few were thinking about zero-point energy.

Maybe a few were submitting reports to the tabloids about their friends who had been abducted by aliens.

Maybe a few were drawing up plans for escaping their test-tube and colonizing others to ensure the species' survival. Ah - if only they could get the funding!

And I'm sure there were others who were campaigning loudly against unbridled consumption of agar, and subsequent willy-nilly dumping of waste alcohol wherever it was convenient. And I'm sure those people were broadly ignored. (otherwise the yeast might still be alive today?)

The lesson?
Human beings are no smarter than single-celled non-photosynthesizing plants, when it comes down to it.

I fail to see the similarity between Free Market capitalism and the Nile Floods. Please explain.

It's a force of nature. It is to be mastered by mutual dedicated effort, for mutual benefit. Not unleashed. If you unleash a natural force, well, you could try to live in harmony with it, but inevitably, you'll have to sacrifice the primary thing that makes us human, that separates us from the animals: mastery of the forces of nature.

Free Market. Free Flood Waters.

The Internet may disagree with you on the control point.

Tell that to, well, anyone who tries to send a photo taken on their camera phone, across the cell phone network. That's what the Internet will be like once the Telecom Monopolies bribe enough lawmakers to do away with Net Neutrality. They will block or degrade any traffic they like. Based on it's content, based on who it's coming from, based on how much money they think they can make by imposing an artificial "bandwidth" scarcity.

And those who don't fall prey to Net Neutrality, well - they're already being eavesdropped, recorded, filed, and otherwise violated.

It has proven quite active and vocal on any number of subjects, with almost innumerable viewpoints, and a spectacularly low barrier of entry,

. . . for now. It really depends on how you define the word "Terrorist". Or "Pirate". Look at all the copyright-based takedown noticies for youtube. That's just recent. How about the decimation of an entire industry, P2P file sharing. From the days of Napster in 1995, to now?

unlike TV or Radio... Whose barriers largely artificial anyway. Our TV and Radio stations do not operate in a Free Market.

Neither to web servers. Do you know who controls domain name registrations? Yes, the barrier to entry is low, compared to going to the FCC for the very limited "namespace" (frequency availability) for the FCC.

But it's being very quickly bought up - . A PUBLIC resource, created entirely by public research funds, our tax money, to go to private ownership for private profit. You may not realize it now, but you already have their collar around your neck. In some countries, they've got nice thick chains attached to the collars already. China. Pakistan. Saudi Arabia. Ironically, Russia is one of the last free places on the net, and they've already begun to dismantle that - AllOfMP3.com.

Don't mistake this as advocacy for piracy or copyright violation.

I mention these because they are examples of private, corporate control, of what should be a free and open public resource. You're beloved savior, the Internet - immune to the forces of tyranny. What a joke. The Internet makes automated tyranny on an industrial scale POSSIBLE. How else can they set up a server farm, programmed to do exactly what they want, completely devoid of any sense of ethics or human morals, to spy on hundreds of millions of people, filter their communications, and violate their rights to free speech and privacy? Only the Internet makes this even possible.

Again, the TV and Radio market is not free. The barriers to entry are kept artificially high, with the government's help. The Internet is quite a bit freer a market, and it shows.

The Internet is quite a bit freer market. But it's getting less free day by day. And the nature of the Internet is such that it is actually easier to control thought than with previous technologies.

Remember Janet Jackson's Tit? So do 400 million people who complained about it to the FCC. No, wait, only 50 million people even SAW it. So 99% of the emails the FCC received was actually from an astroturf campaign from the group of religious wingnuts called "Focus on the Family". There's ample evidence that the FCC *knew* this at the very highest level. Yet they ruled on it anyway. And increased fines by an order of magnitude. And used the new rules to selectively harass certain entertainers who were more politically "expendable" in order to make an example of them. And where did people go for an alternative?

Satellite Radio. Not regulated.

But now, of course, the two major providers have merged. So there will only be one. But they don't call it a monopoly because supposedly there's still competition.

So what happens when Rupert Murdoch buys them too?

There's your "Free Market".

By which point we should be back to the "Upcoming Global Ice Age!" panic, if history is any guide.

Shorter Toawa: "some scientists 30 years ago came up with a theory that turned out to be wrong, therefore, all scientists are always wrong. Trust the Bible. Exxon is your friend!"

It is true that we can't produce enough oil to meet the demands of 6.7 billion people, and developed rates. However, that is not an overnight transition. Not by a longshot. And over the time from now till then, we'll have improved production, for more oil, improved energy sources, for an alternative, and more efficient usage of energy.

It's not strictly a production issue. It's a price issue. When production drops (as it inevitably will - the US was once the biggest producing nation in the world - but our oil productivity PEAKED in 1973. And as OPEC cut production to play hardball politics, America invested PLENTY into trying to increase production, to no avail. Hubbert's Peak theory was proven) - so when this happens worldwide, as Hubbert's theory predicts, alternatives will come on line, but current technology will not make cost-per-kilowatt-hour cheaper. So there will be a period of time while new technologies are developed and brought on line. And given the huge percentage of human population on this planet living in dire poverty, and the impact on both food production, and international trade, of the availability of cheap fossil fuels (for energy, transportation, production, and ESPECIALLY, the massive quantities of synthetic nitrogen-based fertilizers we currently use - it's unlikely that we'll be able to bring food production back up to a level where we can feed these people. I don't even want to think about the political upheavals that will accompany this. (hint: Last major famine - - Somalia. Last major headquarters for Al Qaeda terrorist network prior to Afghanistan = Somalia. Terrorists thrive as side-businesses to private religious charities. It's a fact. (ask any former IRA member, if you happen to be in Ireland. Or Chicago.)

Of course, we could soften the landing by investing up front. Hell, the political "left" (as opposed to the fascist "Communist" governments in countries like Cuba and the former Soviet Union), has been suggesting such a strategy since the 1970's. There's a strong link between our National Security, and our dependence on foreign petroleum. (ie. 80% of US troop deaths in Iraq are from Sunni (Wahhabist) radicals - mostly funded by wealthy Saudis. Ahem. And not, by the way, Shiites who may or may not be getting weapons and support from people who may or may not be operating in an official capacity by the Iranian government).

But the monied interests in the oil industry don't want that. So they installed the wonderful government we have today, and basically have had since the Reagan years. (But their influence has also been strong back as early as 1953, when the CIA deposed the democratically elected president in Iran, and replaced him with a dictator; the Shah - because President Mossedegh had the gall to nationalize the petroleum industry to keep foreign interests from plundering his people's national resources).

And rising oil prices will shift more attention to all three, by making drilling more profitable, by making it economically feasible to use other sources, and by giving incentive to use oil more efficiently.

True; Bush has (probably) unwittingly either flattened out Hubbert's peak, or drawn out the tail-end, by inhibiting the second-most oil-wealthy nation on the planet (Iraq) from producing damn near ANY oil since 2003. And who knows, maybe if he bombs Iran, their production will be taken off the market too, and we'll stretch that reserve out - so that we may not hit the actual Hubbert's peak for another 10-15 years. But by then, the US will not be in an economic position to compete with other national superpowers that are geographically closer for that oil (China, Russia). Bummer for us.

Good thing Bush has put us a trillion more in debt to China. . .

I agree with the market forces you talk about; higher oil prices will make it more feasible to invest in better technologies, more efficient use.

My point is - the lasseiz faire policies are going to end up causing the death by mass-starvation of hundreds of millions, possibly billions, while we try to play "catch up". Ever wonder how expensive rowboats were in New Orleans in early September of 2005? (again, that Free Markets, Floods analogy). We could have seen ahead and planned for this. But Greed is a terrible motivator for future planning. Greed motivates people to take what they can get NOW; fuck the future.

That is because, unfortunately, where most of them live are woefully under-developed, both socially and economically. There's no resumes because there are no jobs to be had. And more often than not, it's because the market is controlled by the government or militias, which keep all but the well-favored from gaining anything.

That is not Free Market capitalism. It is not a Free Market when your competitors can burn your shop or kill your workers or chop off competitors' hands with impunity. Why bother trying to set up any kind of business when you could be killed for it? That's why the unemployment rate, as you've cited, is 90%; because in many places, trying to form a business without getting killed in the process is a Herculean task. And that's not even beginning to touch the continuing problem of forced labor. That's most definitely not the Free Market.

Once those areas actually start developing, they will need plenty of resumes.

What must be done to get these areas to actually start developing?

The one thing we've had and exploited in the West: ready access to cheap energy. Well, here's the rub: there IS no more cheap energy. Whether we get it again in the future, is a matter of technology. And technology is a function of prosperity. If you don't get cheap energy, you don't get propserity. If you don't get prosperity, you don't get technology. And without technology (or oil) you don't get cheap energy. (and even with just technology, there may actually BE no way to get cheap energy - we're actually just HOPING for some magical cheap-solar or wind technology, or a safe way to use nuclear power without risking negligent operators poisoning your neighborhood with plutonium dust for 10,000 years, or without risking wackjobs like Kim Jong Il from bunging together a nuclear device or seven).

It's kind of a catch-22, and it took human civilization tens of thousands of years to discover petroleum to give us the jump-start to a post-industrial economy that might actually be capable of developing out of a dependence on petroleum. But to say that we can have no will to actually pursue that goal without greed and profit - well that's very disheartening. But probably unfortunately true.

The point to oil independence is to free ourselves from this cycle of greed, artificial scarcity, and deprivation. You can't use greed to free yourself from greed.

How are these third world countries going to "jump start" themselves - if they are not already sitting on a vast pool of oil, that hasn't already been shipped to the west out from under them - profits from which, limited to a very few?

It's not quite dead yet; I saw an interesting article on a new nano-scale lithium ion battery with quite an impressive charge profile, with suggestions that it could be the basis for better hybrids or even all-electric cars.

There's also some very encouraging research on new ultracapacitors (also using buzzword-compliant "nano technology"). We'll have to see if that pans out. It's impressive on paper, but they've only manufactured the material, not an actual working capacitor.

Unfortunately, the first generation of electric cars really weren't all that great; as is usually the case with the first generation of any new technology. My understanding of the ultimate demise of the car was over safety concerns. They were recalled because parts would not be available to properly maintain them, and the company did not want to open itself up to liability lawsuits. But despite the paranoid rhetoric, the electric car is not "dead," and there is no grand conspiracy trying to keep it down. Though I would be interested in how, specifically, the "Free Market Fundamentalist nutbags" fought against the electric car.

The "safety concerns" were manufactured by the folks at the Heritage Foundation, and disseminated through the media via the usual routes. True; if you're in a subcompact two-seater, and collide with an SUV, out of sheer geometry (not even mass) you're bound to get the worse end of the deal. But the GM Impact, and most modern (mid-1990's) subcompacts, designed with crumple zones, airbags, etc. are far safer, both statistically, and from a physics standpoint, than the mid-1970's subcompacts that were cited in the one study that was used to spread this misinformation (it was a big news item back in the 1994-1997 time-frame). Of course, real safety experts decried this study as flawed and out of date. But FauxNews gave air time to the industry executives, lobbyists, and paid shills. Not the real safety experts. So most Americans bought into this misconception.

Another example is how the Republicans fought hard over 30 years through the 1970's, 1980's, and 1990's, and still today, to roll back or preserve special loopholes in EPA milage standards for "light trucks" - so that small business owners (like construction workers) who owned a pickup truck weren't unfairly "punished" for having a job that required a gas-guzzler of a vehicle.

Well, these loopholes translated to a warped market, that created incentives for people who didn't NEED a pickup truck, to buy a new class of vehicle that emerged in the late 1980's called an "SUV" - which was big enough to fit into the classification of "light truck" - and yet, still had all the comforts of a family commuter car. This had predictable results: The SUV-craze you see to day. Made even WORSE in the last 5 years through special tax breaks for "light trucks". I don't know the details, but I'm told that it is actually very easy to justify that if you drive your truck to your job, you can consider yourself a small business owner, and your truck is a business expense - and it's possible; COMMON even, to effectively get the government to buy you a truck for up to $30,000 that you would otherwise have paid in tax. Worse-still, is the flexible-fuel loophole. In Arizona, there are dealerships who will weld-in an aftermarket propane tank, label your truck a "flexible fuel vehicle" (supposedly as an incentive for people to use clean-burning alternatives) - and you get a tax-refund on the purchase to the tune of something like $5000.

These examples are actually good arguments for why Government Regulation, as a solution to environmental concerns, can be a bad thing: Bad Faith Execution. However, it's usually not the Democrats who fight tooth-and-nail for these exclusions and loopholes. And it's usually Republicans - when they're in the Executive office (President) - in charge of ENFORCING our nations laws, who are lax, or often completely negligent in such enforcement. Which amounts to an unfair marketplace punishment for businesses who voluntarily comply. (I'm not going to get into digging up statistics on Bush's record of enforcing things like: employment of illegal immigrants, mine safety, and polluting industries).

But this is how the Free Market Fundamentalists have sabotaged things, with regard to the environmentalist cause, and new energy technology development. Of course, these are not the True Believers in the Free Market - which, when taken aside as a standalone ideology, does sound quite noble, on paper. But rather, the "Free Market Fundamentalists" are quite like other Religious Fundamentalists, who take a religion, and twist it's ideas around to meet their desires and wishes, and use it as a tool to twist others to their side. I mean - why would anybody be against the "Free Market"? Don't you like Freedom? Are you some kind of Commie? Just like the folks who burned witches. (or crosses). Don't you love Jesus? He died for your sins? you gonna be ungrateful?

From a certain point of view - a Free Market can be nice - but a Free Market is also a Theoretical Construct. Sort of a model, to simplify things to explain how transactions work on a massive scale. This model assumes many conditions. One condition is that consumers all have perfect information about goods or services they could buy. It assumes that nobody was ever lied to by a salesman. It also assumes that, in the market of labor, that people are as portable (and faceless) as money, and that if funds move to another geographic location, labor should be able to freely move there as well. It also assumes a perfect meritocracy in terms of employment and compensation. That Executive Staff don't serve on Boards of Directors at other companies, where their directors are executive staff, and happy to quid-pro-quo eachothers salaries to absurd levels.

It's dehumanizing. And the fact is - those at the "top" - with the money, and the economic clout, LOVE to insist that there's a Free Market. And that everyone else should live by that, and change themselves from a human being with a name, and an identity and loves and interests, and dislikes, and dreams, and turn themselves into a "unit of labor" - just so the numbers work out on paper. But ask these people to compete in a Free Market; and they're outraged!
(case-in-point; drug patents, in the US, keeping drug prices artificially high, to the point where many people actually die because they cannot afford these lifesaving drugs - so some actually purchase drugs in other countries, where they are offered cheaper - and yet the Free Market Fundamentalists lobby government to make this practice illegal, because it cuts into their profits. Oh - then they engineer some crap about it not being as safe, even though many of the drugs are made in the same factory. Hey Canadians! Are your drugs unsafe? Really? Here's what's unsafe. Taking half your blood pressure medical dosage, because you have to choose between that, and paying to keep your house from freezing in the winter. The person in that situation knows how much of a Free Market he's participating in!)

From that point of view - the fiction that there is such a thing in reality as a Free Market, that it's desirable, or even POSSIBLE to aspire to such a thing, is ridiculous on its face. The first guy who stole a hunk of meat out of another guy's cave and got away with it knows that.

The "Free Market" is as much of a scam as Scientology, or Hare Krishnas, or the Mooneys, or the 700-Club, or any other pseudo-religious con-job. It's not going to get you salvation any more than any others.

[Squirrel_enix]

all the world needs is love =3....if that fails then we can adapt, grow bannanas and coffee beans in alaska! ^^''

[Toawa]

Wow.. This is getting long...

To underscore this point;
I did a science experiment in High School. We loaded up a test-tube full of nutrient broth, and a yeast culture. Every day, we took a sample, and returned our tubes to the incubator. Every day, the number of yeast increased and increased. And after a couple of days, the alcohol concentration also increased. Now, I'm sure these yeast were all partying soon, and having a great time. After two weeks, the population peaked, and then our little party-yeasts ALL FUCKING DIED overnight.

Maybe a few were thinking about zero-point energy.

Maybe a few were submitting reports to the tabloids about their friends who had been abducted by aliens.

Maybe a few were drawing up plans for escaping their test-tube and colonizing others to ensure the species' survival. Ah - if only they could get the funding!

And I'm sure there were others who were campaigning loudly against unbridled consumption of agar, and subsequent willy-nilly dumping of waste alcohol wherever it was convenient. And I'm sure those people were broadly ignored. (otherwise the yeast might still be alive today?)

The lesson?
Human beings are no smarter than single-celled non-photosynthesizing plants, when it comes down to it.

This is definately in the running for the "Gross Oversimplification of the Millennium" award; to the point of being downright silly.

Of course they were going to die. I do not argue with your observations. But the fact is, they started life in a closed system, with a limited amount of resources (food) and tools (metabolic pathways to use that food). And its true that, barring any weird physics discoveries, we also exist in a closed system. But our system is several dozen orders of magnitude larger. And unlike yeast, we can create new "metabolic pathways" (energy sources), in the amount of time that we have left, which is quite a lot. Furthermore, in that experiment, the food (energy) source was the "limiting reagent" if you will. That is not the case with us; right now, our main limiting reagent is space. Our population will stabilize before our energy production ability runs out. Long before.

And given enough time and space, eventually you would have a yeast cell that figures out how to use alcohol instead of agar. Or maybe even one that figures out how to use light to turn alcohol back into agar. It's just that the time it takes to make those kinds of discoveries in the haphazard manner of evolution (evolution does not learn from its failures; we absolutely do. Maybe not all the time, but more often then evolution) is far longer than the small (and it is small) amount of starting energy that they were given.

I fail to see the similarity between Free Market capitalism and the Nile Floods. Please explain.

It's a force of nature. It is to be mastered by mutual dedicated effort, for mutual benefit. Not unleashed. If you unleash a natural force, well, you could try to live in harmony with it, but inevitably, you'll have to sacrifice the primary thing that makes us human, that separates us from the animals: mastery of the forces of nature.

Free Market. Free Flood Waters.

Perhaps; just as the river is dammed for electric power. The problem is right now, in almost all places, the river is not being dammed for power, it's being completely frozen! You're worried about the free people in a Free Market doing too much, so you don't want risk letting them do anything freely.

A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

The Internet may disagree with you on the control point.

Tell that to, well, anyone who tries to send a photo taken on their camera phone, across the cell phone network. That's what the Internet will be like once the Telecom Monopolies bribe enough lawmakers to do away with Net Neutrality. They will block or degrade any traffic they like. Based on it's content, based on who it's coming from, based on how much money they think they can make by imposing an artificial "bandwidth" scarcity.

Again, that is not a Free Market. In a Free Market, the government support that allowed the large telecoms to hold so much power, would not be there. They wouldn't be able to (legally) stop anyone from setting up their own competing network. You might say that it's impossible for an individual to set up a competing network, and that may be so; but if the telecoms are really abusing their position as you believe, there would be quite a lot of individuals who want an alternative, and they would band together and have the resources to make a competitor.

That's Capitalism in action!

It has proven quite active and vocal on any number of subjects, with almost innumerable viewpoints, and a spectacularly low barrier of entry,

. . . for now. It really depends on how you define the word "Terrorist". Or "Pirate". Look at all the copyright-based takedown noticies for youtube. That's just recent. How about the decimation of an entire industry, P2P file sharing. From the days of Napster in 1995, to now?

Again, caused by government sticking its nose into cracks where it's not needed.

unlike TV or Radio... Whose barriers largely artificial anyway. Our TV and Radio stations do not operate in a Free Market.

Neither to web servers. Do you know who controls domain name registrations? Yes, the barrier to entry is low, compared to going to the FCC for the very limited "namespace" (frequency availability) for the FCC.

But it's being very quickly bought up - . A PUBLIC resource, created entirely by public research funds, our tax money, to go to private ownership for private profit. You may not realize it now, but you already have their collar around your neck. In some countries, they've got nice thick chains attached to the collars already. China. Pakistan. Saudi Arabia. Ironically, Russia is one of the last free places on the net, and they've already begun to dismantle that - AllOfMP3.com.

The research was public, and is public. Anyone can use it; you want an internet? Go to W3C; you have all the protocols you could want. The network has been private for all but maybe its earliest life. The internet is not a utility any more than cell phone service is. About the only public monetary link to the modern internet is land and tax breaks given to the telecos that built it out; a practice that I'm not entirely comfortable with anyway.

For domain registration; there are parallel domain systems. If the main DNS becomes abusive, other DNS systems will take over. And I didn't say it was immune, but remember, it is not the Internet that oppresses, it is governments, or people with (explicit or implicit) government backing. It is always people. The Free Market has safeguards against such activity, embodied in competition and the free flow of labor. Unfortunately, it's hard to see it in action because so many places stop it from happening.

And I would point out that China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc., were never been beacons of human rights to begin with. I realize that they do excercise control over the networks in their country, and always have. I'll admit, years ago, I was optimistic about the Internet's chance to help open some eyes, which hasn't happened to the degree that some expected, but still, it's not a failing of the network itself, it's a failing of those countries.

And don't mistake Russia's situation with any great respect for freedom. The only reason that AllOfMP3 survived is because, until recently, the Russian government simply didn't care what they did. They had bigger things to worry about. Now that it's hampering their entry into the WTO, now they do care.

Don't mistake this as advocacy for piracy or copyright violation.

I mention these because they are examples of private, corporate control, of what should be a free and open public resource. You're beloved savior, the Internet - immune to the forces of tyranny. What a joke. The Internet makes automated tyranny on an industrial scale POSSIBLE. How else can they set up a server farm, programmed to do exactly what they want, completely devoid of any sense of ethics or human morals, to spy on hundreds of millions of people, filter their communications, and violate their rights to free speech and privacy? Only the Internet makes this even possible.

Yeah; it makes that possible. But the internet has also brought more minds into research that pushes back; cryptography research, for instance. It's has brought and will bring far more good than evil.

Again, the TV and Radio market is not free. The barriers to entry are kept artificially high, with the government's help. The Internet is quite a bit freer a market, and it shows.

The Internet is quite a bit freer market. But it's getting less free day by day. And the nature of the Internet is such that it is actually easier to control thought than with previous technologies.

Remember Janet Jackson's Tit? So do 400 million people who complained about it to the FCC. No, wait, only 50 million people even SAW it. So 99% of the emails the FCC received was actually from an astroturf campaign from the group of religious wingnuts called "Focus on the Family". There's ample evidence that the FCC *knew* this at the very highest level. Yet they ruled on it anyway. And increased fines by an order of magnitude. And used the new rules to selectively harass certain entertainers who were more politically "expendable" in order to make an example of them. And where did people go for an alternative?

I believe you'll find the group of wingnuts in question is actually called the "Parent's Television Council." FotF is an entirely different group of wingnuts, although I'm sure there is probably some common membership.
And of course the FCC ruled that way; there was too much press not to. It's called politics.

Satellite Radio. Not regulated.

But now, of course, the two major providers have merged. So there will only be one. But they don't call it a monopoly because supposedly there's still competition.

And you'll hate me for this, but I support the merger. Why? First of all, the two companies were in dire straits; the merger might mean that they don't both go out of business. One satellite company instead of none.

Now, everyone who is so conditioned to thing "monopoly==automatic bad" immediately assumes that the company will double rates or something along those lines. They'd be insane to do so, and they know it. They actually have very stiff competition on the customer side; with a little thing called "regular" radio... Do you know, those regular radio stations actually give their programs away, to anyone with a receiver? How can you beat that? The fact that the two satellite companies have customers shows that there must be a way, but they know full well that those customers could leave in a heartbeat if they wanted to. So no, the merger will not raise consumer prices.

But one thing it will do is lower the cost of programming. How? Simple. Instead of two companies fighting over who gets what programming, bidding off of each other, it's one company. If you want to get on satellite, you get their offer, take it or leave it. Howard Stern would not have gotten $100 million if there was only one satellite radio company. They move into a position of strength.

So what happens when Rupert Murdoch buys them too?

There's your "Free Market".

Nothing. Rupert Murdoch is not an idiot.

By which point we should be back to the "Upcoming Global Ice Age!" panic, if history is any guide.

Shorter Toawa: "some scientists 30 years ago came up with a theory that turned out to be wrong, therefore, all scientists are always wrong. Trust the Bible. Exxon is your friend!"

That's funny, I don't remember saying anything about the Bible.

It's not strictly a production issue. It's a price issue. When production drops (as it inevitably will - the US was once the biggest producing nation in the world - but our oil productivity PEAKED in 1973. And as OPEC cut production to play hardball politics, America invested PLENTY into trying to increase production, to no avail. Hubbert's Peak theory was proven) - so when this happens worldwide, as Hubbert's theory predicts, alternatives will come on line, but current technology will not make cost-per-kilowatt-hour cheaper. So there will be a period of time while new technologies are developed and brought on line. And given the huge percentage of human population on this planet living in dire poverty, and the impact on both food production, and international trade, of the availability of cheap fossil fuels (for energy, transportation, production, and ESPECIALLY, the massive quantities of synthetic nitrogen-based fertilizers we currently use - it's unlikely that we'll be able to bring food production back up to a level where we can feed these people. I don't even want to think about the political upheavals that will accompany this. (hint: Last major famine - - Somalia. Last major headquarters for Al Qaeda terrorist network prior to Afghanistan = Somalia. Terrorists thrive as side-businesses to private religious charities. It's a fact. (ask any former IRA member, if you happen to be in Ireland. Or Chicago.)

Those first two statements prove to me that you need to brush up on your macroeconomics. Production and price are intimately linked; you cannot separate them, and you definitely cannot say "It's not about production, it's about price." As for the oil crisis in 1973, the fact is, it takes time to build up oil production. From the moment you say, "I'm going to increase oil production" to the moment that the oil wells go online, could easily be 2-3 years. Officially, the oil embargo lasted about 7 months. Of course, it came at a time of world economic instability, so the shock caused many problems on its own; all of this means that the fact that we did not have an immedeate increase in production in response to the 1973 oil crisis, does not mean we've hit a production peak. If oil production has not risen since then, it is more because we don't actually let anyone drill anymore; not that there isn't any left. We know of several sources; we (or rather, the government) just won't let anyone drill them.

Of course, we could soften the landing by investing up front. Hell, the political "left" (as opposed to the fascist "Communist" governments in countries like Cuba and the former Soviet Union), has been suggesting such a strategy since the 1970's. There's a strong link between our National Security, and our dependence on foreign petroleum. (ie. 80% of US troop deaths in Iraq are from Sunni (Wahhabist) radicals - mostly funded by wealthy Saudis. Ahem. And not, by the way, Shiites who may or may not be getting weapons and support from people who may or may not be operating in an official capacity by the Iranian government).

Of course there's a link between our oil dependance and national security, and I'm as concerned about it as anyone. (Moreso, for most, I'd imagine). But the best short term (1-10 year) answer is more production at home, which has been consistently blocked by the government.

But the monied interests in the oil industry don't want that. So they installed the wonderful government we have today, and basically have had since the Reagan years. (But their influence has also been strong back as early as 1953, when the CIA deposed the democratically elected president in Iran, and replaced him with a dictator; the Shah - because President Mossedegh had the gall to nationalize the petroleum industry to keep foreign interests from plundering his people's national resources).

Please cite sources of these "monied interestes".

My point is - the lasseiz faire policies are going to end up causing the death by mass-starvation of hundreds of millions, possibly billions, while we try to play "catch up". Ever wonder how expensive rowboats were in New Orleans in early September of 2005? (again, that Free Markets, Floods analogy). We could have seen ahead and planned for this. But Greed is a terrible motivator for future planning. Greed motivates people to take what they can get NOW; fuck the future.

Funny you should mention New Orleans; that was, by far, a failure of the local city government more than anything else. They had dozens of busses, which they could have used to move people out before they needed those rowboats, and yet they let them sit there to get flooded.

And please, do read "They Clapped." The author does a much better job discussing economics in disaster areas, and how the free market, "lasseiz faire" policies would likely have helped New Orleans like they would have helped North Carolina, had they been allowed to work.

That is because, unfortunately, where most of them live are woefully under-developed, both socially and economically. There's no resumes because there are no jobs to be had. And more often than not, it's because the market is controlled by the government or militias, which keep all but the well-favored from gaining anything.

That is not Free Market capitalism. It is not a Free Market when your competitors can burn your shop or kill your workers or chop off competitors' hands with impunity. Why bother trying to set up any kind of business when you could be killed for it? That's why the unemployment rate, as you've cited, is 90%; because in many places, trying to form a business without getting killed in the process is a Herculean task. And that's not even beginning to touch the continuing problem of forced labor. That's most definitely not the Free Market.

Once those areas actually start developing, they will need plenty of resumes.

What must be done to get these areas to actually start developing?

The one thing we've had and exploited in the West: ready access to cheap energy. Well, here's the rub: there IS no more cheap energy. Whether we get it again in the future, is a matter of technology. And technology is a function of prosperity. If you don't get cheap energy, you don't get propserity. If you don't get prosperity, you don't get technology. And without technology (or oil) you don't get cheap energy. (and even with just technology, there may actually BE no way to get cheap energy - we're actually just HOPING for some magical cheap-solar or wind technology, or a safe way to use nuclear power without risking negligent operators poisoning your neighborhood with plutonium dust for 10,000 years, or without risking wackjobs like Kim Jong Il from bunging together a nuclear device or seven).

Cheap energy is always helpful, but it is not the first and foremost thing that many of those countries need. I direct you to the article, "Why Poor Countries are Poor."

The point to oil independence is to free ourselves from this cycle of greed, artificial scarcity, and deprivation. You can't use greed to free yourself from greed.

Again, you need to brush up on your macroeconomics; this is not a case of "artificial scaricity." The Music Industry runs on artificial scarcity. The software industry runs on artificial scaricity. The whole "IP" industry runs on artificial scarcity. This is not a case of artificial scarcity; this is a case of actual scarcity.

It is true that many undeveloped countries are not particularly attractive to invenstors, but that's often because the governments of those countries are so corrupt that it becomes impossible do any business at all; you may think it cold hearted to not invest in a country where the people need you, but what good do you do by investing there, if all of your investments are confiscated by the government? Their people suffer, but your investment will not help because the government takes most of it; whereas you could find other countries, which also have people suffering, but where the government actually wants to help instead of extracting as much as possible. But again I reiterate, the problem in the former countries is not the Free Market, it is the lack of a Free Market.

It's not quite dead yet; I saw an interesting article on a new nano-scale lithium ion battery with quite an impressive charge profile, with suggestions that it could be the basis for better hybrids or even all-electric cars.

There's also some very encouraging research on new ultracapacitors (also using buzzword-compliant "nano technology"). We'll have to see if that pans out. It's impressive on paper, but they've only manufactured the material, not an actual working capacitor.

The "safety concerns" were manufactured by the folks at the Heritage Foundation, and disseminated through the media via the usual routes.

No, the "safety concerns" stemmed from the fact that GM would not be selling parts for the cars anymore; so if someone kept one, they would not be able to get replacement parts. Sure, they might be able to come up with a replacement, but if it failed and someone was hurt, GM was worried that they'd be help liable. (And in this country of jackpot justice, they'd be nuts if they weren't worried about liability.)

Worse-still, is the flexible-fuel loophole. In Arizona, there are dealerships who will weld-in an aftermarket propane tank, label your truck a "flexible fuel vehicle" (supposedly as an incentive for people to use clean-burning alternatives) - and you get a tax-refund on the purchase to the tune of something like $5000.

Yeah, that one is particularly egregious; but I'm of the opinion that the government shouldn't be giving tax breaks on anything; which balances out, because they shouldn't be putting taxes on specific goods or activities, either.

These examples are actually good arguments for why Government Regulation, as a solution to environmental concerns, can be a bad thing: Bad Faith Execution. However, it's usually not the Democrats who fight tooth-and-nail for these exclusions and loopholes. And it's usually Republicans - when they're in the Executive office (President) - in charge of ENFORCING our nations laws, who are lax, or often completely negligent in such enforcement. Which amounts to an unfair marketplace punishment for businesses who voluntarily comply. (I'm not going to get into digging up statistics on Bush's record of enforcing things like: employment of illegal immigrants, mine safety, and polluting industries).

Believe me, there are many conservatives who aren't fond of his handling of those, either.

But this is how the Free Market Fundamentalists have sabotaged things, with regard to the environmentalist cause, and new energy technology development. Of course, these are not the True Believers in the Free Market - which, when taken aside as a standalone ideology, does sound quite noble, on paper. But rather, the "Free Market Fundamentalists" are quite like other Religious Fundamentalists, who take a religion, and twist it's ideas around to meet their desires and wishes, and use it as a tool to twist others to their side. I mean - why would anybody be against the "Free Market"? Don't you like Freedom? Are you some kind of Commie? Just like the folks who burned witches. (or crosses). Don't you love Jesus? He died for your sins? you gonna be ungrateful?

Well, if I'm a Free Market Fundamentalist, then several of the posters here are Environmental Fundamentalists.

One condition is that consumers all have perfect information about goods or services they could buy. It assumes that nobody was ever lied to by a salesman. It also assumes that, in the market of labor, that people are as portable (and faceless) as money, and that if funds move to another geographic location, labor should be able to freely move there as well. It also assumes a perfect meritocracy in terms of employment and compensation.

It assumes no such things. In fact, it has mechanisms to deal with all of those contingencies:

Perfect Information: No, but it does assume that consumers will learn from their mistakes. But realistically, most consumers have enough information available to them that they can make a sufficiently good judgement (should they choose to).

Lied to by a salesman: You don't show from them again. You tell others not to shop from them. Either they shape up, or they get fired, or the store goes out of business.

Mobility: If staying in a particular location is worth more to you than making more money by moving, that's your choice. But the cold fact is, we do not owe people employment wherever they choose to live. Moving is a fact of life.

Employment: No, employment isn't a perfect meritocracy, but if a worker does not feel that they are being compensated enough, they are free to look for better work. If enough employees feel that way, the employer will shape up, or go out of business.

It's dehumanizing. And the fact is - those at the "top" - with the money, and the economic clout, LOVE to insist that there's a Free Market. And that everyone else should live by that, and change themselves from a human being with a name, and an identity and loves and interests, and dislikes, and dreams, and turn themselves into a "unit of labor" - just so the numbers work out on paper. But ask these people to compete in a Free Market; and they're outraged!
(case-in-point; drug patents, in the US, keeping drug prices artificially high, to the point where many people actually die because they cannot afford these lifesaving drugs - so some actually purchase drugs in other countries, where they are offered cheaper - and yet the Free Market Fundamentalists lobby government to make this practice illegal, because it cuts into their profits. Oh - then they engineer some crap about it not being as safe, even though many of the drugs are made in the same factory. Hey Canadians! Are your drugs unsafe? Really? Here's what's unsafe. Taking half your blood pressure medical dosage, because you have to choose between that, and paying to keep your house from freezing in the winter. The person in that situation knows how much of a Free Market he's participating in!)

It is true that happens; and believe me, you might not see it, but us Free Marketers don't like it any more than you do. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, at the "top", but I still believe that the Free Market is the best way. The problem is that there's a massive blob sitting on the Free Market, called Government, and it's clogging up many of the natural feedbacks that prevent the problems you describe. And it's true that many of people have learned to use that blob to their advantage; the trick is not to build a better blob, it's to unclog the system that its sitting on.

From that point of view - the fiction that there is such a thing in reality as a Free Market, that it's desirable, or even POSSIBLE to aspire to such a thing, is ridiculous on its face. The first guy who stole a hunk of meat out of another guy's cave and got away with it knows that.

And that's where Government should step in. It's not a Free Market when someone can steal or murder with impunity; we need people to prevent that. But between that and defense, that's enough. (I'm a minarchist, in that sense.)

[Detective Clem]

Shit... That's one hell of a post...

[Error of Logic]

This is one of the reasons I keep returning to this forum; regardless the reasons for which it was originally created, it is also an excellent place to get a real discussion of the most diverse matters. I know another, supposedly more 'general' forum where the same question only got some cheap jokes and even cheaper laughs. My sincere compliments to all the participants.

[Squidflakes]

Those first two statements prove to me that you need to brush up on your macroeconomics. Production and price are intimately linked; you cannot separate them, and you definitely cannot say "It's not about production, it's about price."

I would disagree. Where I used to work, that's all we did all day was separate price from production. Its called speculation, and when you move from a simple commodities market to a structured debt market, you've decoupled the real world from the financial world.

Oil prices a couple of years ago were a great example. Yes, supplies were lower and demand was higher, but the prices were FAR outside the curve for that level of production disparity. There was a perception of shortage, rather than a real shortage, and that pretty much broke production and price right apart.

Another example is diamonds. Diamonds are not rare. With the numbers that are mined, they don't even count as precious. However, diamonds are sold at ridiculous markups on the retail market because the biggest player in the diamond industry can control the prices from the mine to the market, and they spend most of their efforts trying to convince people that diamonds are precious. A neat little trick to prove this, try selling a diamond sometime.

[Toawa]

Those first two statements prove to me that you need to brush up on your macroeconomics. Production and price are intimately linked; you cannot separate them, and you definitely cannot say "It's not about production, it's about price."

I would disagree. Where I used to work, that's all we did all day was separate price from production. Its called speculation, and when you move from a simple commodities market to a structured debt market, you've decoupled the real world from the financial world.

Ok, I did forget about speculation. However, it does tend to be a relatively short term issue; either the market changes to meet the new price, or the price collapses down to the market. Either way, it generally happens fairly quickly (6 months-5 years). Over the long (multi-decade) term, price and production are linked.