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On January 14 2014 06:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
In a nutshell there's a black box between Marxist / Communist (if there's a preferred label let me know) economic theories and actual economic production that ties everything together and makes the economy work in the real world. My suspicion is that the black box is, ultimately, a totalitarian regime and until I hear a plausible alternative I'm sticking to my suspicion.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/iLzY9L7.png)
Jonny's nutshell
input
a vague collection of theories. system
a black box, by definition we can not reason about its contents. output
the actual economic production that ties everything together and make the economy work in the real world.
theorem
if and only if the vague collection of theories are "marxist / communist theories", then the black box is a totalitarian regime and that's why "marxist / communist theories" won't work. proof
until a plausible (see Jonny's law of plausability) alternative is heard for what's inside this black box that you can't reason about the contents of, this theorem holds. this concludes the proof.
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On January 14 2014 20:48 nunez wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 06:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
In a nutshell there's a black box between Marxist / Communist (if there's a preferred label let me know) economic theories and actual economic production that ties everything together and makes the economy work in the real world. My suspicion is that the black box is, ultimately, a totalitarian regime and until I hear a plausible alternative I'm sticking to my suspicion.
Jonny's nutshellinput
a vague collection of theories. system
a black box, by definition we can not reason about its contents. output
the actual economic production that ties everything together and make the economy work in the real world.
theorem
if and only if the vague collection of theories are "marxist / communist theories", then the black box is a totalitarian regime and that's why "marxist / communist theories" won't work. proof
until a plausible (see Jonny's law of plausability) alternative is heard for what's inside this black box that you can't reason about the contents of, this theorem holds. this concludes the proof.
Haha brilliant. It's the same scheme I actually make for my student when I talk about the firm in microeconomics. In the beginning, there was no justification for the existence of the firm (since the market is the most efficient, why the need to create a collectivity to product ?) and the firm was "a black box" when you add input and where output came out.
Of course transaction costs changed everything but that's another subject. Jonny don't know shit about Marxism, but well.
On January 14 2014 12:06 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 10:55 xDaunt wrote:On January 14 2014 10:46 mcc wrote:On January 14 2014 10:33 xDaunt wrote:On January 14 2014 09:28 mcc wrote:On January 14 2014 06:30 xDaunt wrote:On January 14 2014 06:18 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 06:15 xDaunt wrote:On January 14 2014 06:10 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 06:07 xDaunt wrote:
[quote]
What really matters more in this instance? The logical reality or the statistical reality?
The statistical reality is that the sample size is way too small, lacks control groups and can largely be explained by outside factors. Are you really trying to use a half dozen examples without any context to prove a point? I guess you're willing to give National Socialism another go, too, then? If they said "we'll do it without the xenophobia, the invading Poland, the persecution of minorities and the creation of a dictatorship" then I wouldn't go "well, I heard you say it and all sounds are lies". Now maybe some of those things are intrinsically linked to national socialism but the traits of Stalinism are not intrinsically linked to communism, indeed they generally predate communist rule. I'm just talking off-the-cuff here, but it seems to me that inherent to any communist regime is a need to disregard the rule of law (the "revolution") so as to effect communist policy on the rubble of the previous system. How else do you get a communist redistribution of wealth and power without trampling the rights of those at the top (and the middle, and pretty much everyone else to one degree or another, but I digress...)? I know that it's rather cute to say that "absolute power corrupts absolutely," but there is no communism without the wielding of that absolute power that stretches beyond the confines of traditional law. The inherent danger there is obvious. That is because you also confuse communism with part of the movement. Many communists do not argue for violent revolution. Many communist parties participate in democratic process as constructive participants. The fact that you do not know does not mean that it does not exist. And if you change the rule of law by democratic process of changing the constitution there is no reason why nationalization and redistribution would necessitate breaking the rule of law or violence. I'm aware that there are some communists who prefer to work through democratic channels to attain their goals. I just don't see them ever getting that far any time in the near future without a hefty dosage of abuse of power. At some point communism requires an abolition of the traditional western concept of property rights. That isn't going to happen peacefully. That is completely another matter and rather subjective judgement. The point is that there is nothing violent or "evil" in the goals and ideas of communists in general. That cannot be said for fascists and especially not for nazis. There you have things that are inherent to the ideology that cannot be taken away without it stopping being nazism or fascism. You could maybe get the obviously ugly parts out of the way, but they are both based on tribalism and thus have inherent issues involved in it. When the means of implementing communism are functionally inseparable from the exercise of "evil" as I have pointed out, it can't be said that communism is inherently benign. Uncoincidentally, history has proven me right so far. Kwark focuses too much on the "autocratic" nature of Stalinism and Maoism, that was, admittedly, an aspect of the cultures from which they sprung. The real problem with Stalinism and other manifestations of communism in the historical record (excepting somewhat Cuba) is that they were all designed to compete with capitalism for the manufacture of things. Mao and Stalin actually succeeded somewhat on that end. Both totally revamped their industrial economies, willfully bringing both countries out of agriculture-based peasant societies, Maoism especially. The autocratic structure is not only a byproduct of the culture, but out of the necessity to try and compete militarily and economically with a capitalist system that has a huge head start in the development of capital. Unfortunately production per se does not correlate very well with the standard metric of economic success. Compare Germany at the turn of the 20th century to Britain. Germany was growing its production and trade capacity for real things at 6x the rate of Britain, and yet was barely making a dent in the economic GDP gap between the two countries. Capital owners in Germany fortunately found a use for all that production with the coming of WWI but sadly lost whatever lead they had hoped to gain by losing the war in devastating fashion. Likewise in China and the USSR, simply expanding production per se, implementing modern industrial techniques, and the like, did not help them close the gap in terms of sheer capital accumulation with the west. You have the fall of the USSR eventually, and China adopting a mixed command/liberal economy in order to compete. You do at least have to hand it to Mao for sparking the fastest economic growth and development the world has ever seen, even if his successors eventually decided to switch to a mixed system in order to continue accumulating capital at supra-Western rates. Any "new" communism would have to abandon the unsustainable constant growth paradigm. People like jonny are deluded into thinking that constant growth can be maintained, and so don't understand why anyone would want to vote/adopt/work for a "communist" politics.
The core problem is that Marxism was never a theory of the state or a theory on how to govern. It was a militant theory, engaged in a scientific critic of "the capital" with a relatively incomplete plan on "what to do after the revolution". The only book, written by Marx, that actually talk about the after is more a polemic than a real program (The Critic of the Gotha Program). Add to that the fact that Marx only finished the first book of the capital (which was a critic of the classical economy). Jonny is ridiculous because if there is one thing that actually define Marxism it is the refusal of the "black box" and the definite decision, from Marx, to take seriously reality in all its form, leading him to explain economy with politics and politics with economy.
In France, there are different type of marxist : there are the "Marxism" (linked to communist party), the "Marxologues" (the ones that read Marx, are far leftist, but are against the communist party) and finally the "Marxians" (people who consider Marx as one of the most brilliant mind but are not leftist - most of them are free marketists). Just that should lead anyone into understanding that "Marxism" is not a clear theory, it's a cosmos.
For exemple, you talk about the necessity for a far left movement to "abandon the unsustainable constant growth paradigm" but actually Marx himself in his 1844 Manuscript, already proposed a theory of the environment that refute the idea of productivism - the environment was "the inorganic body of Man" and as such needed protection.
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United States42786 Posts
On January 14 2014 16:55 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +Assuming that they keep the money the same place they keep the liability. If they separate the two then you're out of luck.
There's no place the company can put the money to keep it safe from a judge ordering them to hand it over. Unless it's in numbered accounts in some Kazakhstan bank and no one can prove that it is theirs. Show nested quote +That's something that annoys me about corporate personhood. The advocates of it explain that a corporation is, at its heart, a group of people acting collectively and therefore should be respected and protected under the law as if it's a person. And yet if a corporation does something criminal or negligent the shareholders, who have been established to collectively be the corporation, are not held accountable. Shareholders aren't held accountable because most of the time shareholders do not hold an active position of authority within the company and it would be a great miscarriage of justice to punish people for something they had no active part in. Shareholder authority is delegated to the board and shareholder authority usually doesn't extend much past "we can fire the board." Show nested quote +If your group is collectively negligent, or employ someone to be negligent on your behalf, you should be accountable. People would be far more involved in making sure their corporations acted responsibly in society if they didn't have all the rights and none of the accountability of the people involved. It's hardly fair to suggest that shareholders hire people to be negligent on their behalf when negligence occurs. Shareholders usually don't hire anyone except the board, and they hire them to increase their dividends and share price, not be negligent and have the government hit the company for millions or billions of dollars and have the value of their stock plummet. Let's say Wal-Mart commits some horrible crime, are you really suggesting 83-year old Mitzy Perkins from Creekbottom Junction, Iowa, who owns 100 shares of Wal-Mart stock, bears some responsibility? What did she or any shareholder do but buy stock? Mens rea, sir, you can't just throw it out the window because you feel like things would be better if you could spank people who had no actual connection to the crime. It is not likely that if you could, shareholders would become more vigilant in their oversight of the company. The more likely outcome of your suggestion would be that far fewer people would become shareholders, increasing the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. Which would, things being as they are, probably make it harder for successful punishment of wrongdoing. That's bad, right?
Cause it's not like you can have another shell company handle the storage for a nominal fee and then lease their services to the main company who then denies all responsibility in the case of a leak. Quit being so naive. If a company can create a legal barrier between its obligations and its assets it will.
The idea that you can be a shareholder in a business while not actively taking any responsibility for what the business does in your name is the problem I seek to address. It would not be a miscarriage of justice to hold people accountable for what their business does, just because they're negligent in running the thing doesn't mean they don't own it.
Yes, shareholders hire the board to increase their dividends or share price, not to act responsibly, ethically or in the long term interests of society. Well done, gold star. The reason they do this is because the arrangement allows them to act (because as we know the corporation really is just them, that's why it gets personhood) unethically and irresponsibly without ever having any repercussions. You've correctly identified that the shareholders don't give a shit about acting responsibly, and why would they, they're not accountable. So yes, if Mitzy Perkins is negligent and allowing criminal shit to happen in her name then yes, Mitzy Perkins bears a portion of the responsibility. That's what ownership entails. If you don't want to be responsible for something don't buy it, this should really be very obvious.
The practice of absentee shareholders pushing their boards to maximise dividends while offloading costs to the public and acting in criminal ways would be ended. Banks that irresponsibly lost the savings of their depositors only to declare bankrupt and require the state to reimburse all the deposits would be held accountable. They're absentee landlords who simultaneously grant an agent with their rights and deny any responsibility for what the agent does with those rights. And as for "but if we didn't allow them to reap the rewards of antisocial and irresponsible practices without ever being held to account then they wouldn't do it and the only shareholders would be the ones who actually care how it's run", yeah, that's pretty much the point.
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On January 14 2014 16:34 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 16:04 DeepElemBlues wrote:On January 14 2014 15:53 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 15:29 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 14:43 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:56 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 13:50 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:37 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 13:33 Roe wrote:because that's the wrong way of making regulations. are you saying this was the wrong deregulation? good to hear you agree. I'm saying that your one example is useless, because the opposite case is true for cars, and that's killed and hurt more than this water leak. "The wrong way of making regulation." What does that mean? What's the "right way'? All regulation has some sort of negative effect, because it stifles people and costs money. So CAFE really isn't different than any other regulation, it just costs human lives, while the well contaminated some water for a while. Glad to hear you don't like CAFE standards. Yeah I mean Freedom Industries tried hard to not poison the water...And now where's the accountability? Where's the responsibility? I'm not saying there should be no laws or no punishment, where did you get that idea? I didn't! Then we don't have a problem. Regulations (rules governing an activity) have nothing to do with accountability or responsibility, both of which I'm sure are coming to the company in question. I'm all for making people who cause damage to pay for it, unless the Federal Government forced said company into something. Those punishments are fine imo, if they are within reason. You're sure? I was trying to find the link/news feed about that, mind filling me in? Didn't Johnny do that? The appropriate officials are looking into it. This is the federal government we are talking about here, the only thing they try to do quickly is pass gun control. And I'm sure someone will sue. Let me put it this way- I don't think the guilty parties will get away scot free. And I seriously doubt the activity was unregulated. This has to do with chemicals used in the environment- from what I understand and know about chemicals in general, I'd bet these particular ones are highly regulated. I know fracking, drilling and refining certainly are regulated. The question then is whether or not they were required to have sufficient insurance to cover this kind of accident. Cause if not they've socialised the risk from it while privatising the gains. And if they don't it's a pretty safe bet that they will be required to pay the difference, there are procedures in place for apportioning blame and setting a money value to it for these kinds of things. Those procedures mostly consist of "how much the judge feels like bending over this company that fucked up." Because they always appeal the fine(s). Assuming that they keep the money the same place they keep the liability. If they separate the two then you're out of luck. That's something that annoys me about corporate personhood. The advocates of it explain that a corporation is, at its heart, a group of people acting collectively and therefore should be respected and protected under the law as if it's a person. And yet if a corporation does something criminal or negligent the shareholders, who have been established to collectively be the corporation, are not held accountable. If your group is collectively negligent, or employ someone to be negligent on your behalf, you should be accountable. People would be far more involved in making sure their corporations acted responsibly in society if they didn't have all the rights and none of the accountability of the people involved.
It's hard to collectively own an organization and have a lot of control over it. 1,000 shareholders can only be so involved in an operation before it turns into a mess.
Part of what society has learned over the years is that sometimes its good to share risk. Be that through the government, insurance, central banks or the courts, people are only liable for so much.
Also of note, if a corporation is too thinly capitalized, it becomes easier to pierce the corporate veil.
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On January 14 2014 15:29 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 14:43 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:56 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 13:50 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:37 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 13:33 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:02 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 12:56 Roe wrote:so uhhh...is anyone talking about the company that poisoned the waters in west virginia to the point that 300 000 people didn't have water for 4 days (and expected to be several more)? How can people really believe this deregulation (or unregulation) actually improves quality of life or the economy? As over 300,000 people in West Virginia face a fourth day without water, state environmental officials are now estimating that as much as 7,500 gallons of a chemical used to process coal — Crude MCHM — may have spilled into the Elk River. That number is a substantial increase from early estimates of 2,000 to 5,000 gallons.
The chemical leak, first reported Thursday, was at a facility owned by Freedom Industries along the Elk River, just 1.5 miles upstream from a major intake used by the largest water utility in the state, West Virginia American Water.
At a press conference Saturday afternoon, Jeff McIntyre, president of West Virginia American Water Company, said that it would likely still be “several days” before tap water in the nine counties affected would be safe for anything besides flushing toilets.
The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention has set the standard of 1 part per million as a safe concentration of Crude MCHM in drinking water. Levels of the chemical must remain below this threshold for over 24 hours of testing before the water company can begin flushing the system.
At a press briefing Saturday evening, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s (D) office released the first results of the now round-the-clock water sampling efforts. While some tests are coming in below the safe threshold, the system is still far from clean. Eight out of 18 recent test results tested above 1 part per million. Some of the earliest tests showed concentrations as high as 3 parts per million.
“The reason the numbers are going down is we believe less of the material is getting into the water,” said Mike Dorsey, the chief of homeland security and emergency response at the State Department of Environmental Protection. “We have cut of the source of the leak, the tank. There is still material under the concrete and the soil. We’ve taken aggressive measures on the shore line below the site.”
A team from the Chemical Safety Board will arrive in West Virginia on Monday to begin the long process of assessing the cause of the spill. The CSB is an independent federal agency with the authority to investigate industrial chemical accidents. The agency issues recommendations for prevention of future accidents.
To date, FEMA has brought in 1.4 million liters of water for residents. An additional 1.6 million liters are expected to come in over the course of the weekend.
The New York Times reported Saturday that at least 122 people have gone to local hospitals complaining of nausea, vomiting, and skin and eye irritation. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/12/3151421/fourth-day-water-west-virginia/ CAFE standards lead to smaller cars that are less safe, meaning more people die. They also increase prices. How can anyone say increasing regulation improves the quality of life or the economy? http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/296998/cafe-standards-kill-deroy-murdockI even have a partisan source, too!  because that's the wrong way of making regulations. are you saying this was the wrong deregulation? good to hear you agree. I'm saying that your one example is useless, because the opposite case is true for cars, and that's killed and hurt more than this water leak. "The wrong way of making regulation." What does that mean? What's the "right way'? All regulation has some sort of negative effect, because it stifles people and costs money. So CAFE really isn't different than any other regulation, it just costs human lives, while the well contaminated some water for a while. Glad to hear you don't like CAFE standards. Yeah I mean Freedom Industries tried hard to not poison the water...And now where's the accountability? Where's the responsibility? I'm not saying there should be no laws or no punishment, where did you get that idea? I didn't! Then we don't have a problem. Regulations (rules governing an activity) have nothing to do with accountability or responsibility, both of which I'm sure are coming to the company in question. I'm all for making people who cause damage to pay for it, unless the Federal Government forced said company into something. Those punishments are fine imo, if they are within reason. You're sure? I was trying to find the link/news feed about that, mind filling me in? Didn't Johnny do that? The appropriate officials are looking into it. This is the federal government we are talking about here, the only thing they try to do quickly is pass gun control. And I'm sure someone will sue. Let me put it this way- I don't think the guilty parties will get away scot free. And I seriously doubt the activity was unregulated. This has to do with chemicals used in the environment- from what I understand and know about chemicals in general, I'd bet these particular ones are highly regulated. I know fracking, drilling and refining certainly are regulated.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303819704579317062273564766?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303819704579317062273564766.html
The storage facility owned by Freedom Industries Inc. on the banks of the Elk River was subject to almost no state and local monitoring, interviews and records show. The industrial chemical that leaked into the river, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, isn't closely tracked by federal programs. A state regulator had said earlier that, before last week's spill, environmental inspectors hadn't visited the site since 1991.
Yeah, it wasn't regulated. Saying 'I'm sure the authorities will get to it (now let's get back to this discussion of Marxism and the public discourse should get back to some Chris Christie scandal)' is weak and you should realize that.
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I'm a bit at loss how one can think of a society that wouldn't have wealth accumulation as its goal as utopian. I mean, as economist are wont to remind us with their oh-so-brilliant graphics (I had basically the same in my "Introduction to economics for the mathematically gifted" course as I like to call it, I'm not inventing it) ;
![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BdjfaVFIEAA57jn.png)
It seems such a society might have existed in the past you know...
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On January 15 2014 00:00 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 15:29 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 14:43 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:56 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 13:50 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:37 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 13:33 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:02 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 12:56 Roe wrote:so uhhh...is anyone talking about the company that poisoned the waters in west virginia to the point that 300 000 people didn't have water for 4 days (and expected to be several more)? How can people really believe this deregulation (or unregulation) actually improves quality of life or the economy? As over 300,000 people in West Virginia face a fourth day without water, state environmental officials are now estimating that as much as 7,500 gallons of a chemical used to process coal — Crude MCHM — may have spilled into the Elk River. That number is a substantial increase from early estimates of 2,000 to 5,000 gallons.
The chemical leak, first reported Thursday, was at a facility owned by Freedom Industries along the Elk River, just 1.5 miles upstream from a major intake used by the largest water utility in the state, West Virginia American Water.
At a press conference Saturday afternoon, Jeff McIntyre, president of West Virginia American Water Company, said that it would likely still be “several days” before tap water in the nine counties affected would be safe for anything besides flushing toilets.
The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention has set the standard of 1 part per million as a safe concentration of Crude MCHM in drinking water. Levels of the chemical must remain below this threshold for over 24 hours of testing before the water company can begin flushing the system.
At a press briefing Saturday evening, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s (D) office released the first results of the now round-the-clock water sampling efforts. While some tests are coming in below the safe threshold, the system is still far from clean. Eight out of 18 recent test results tested above 1 part per million. Some of the earliest tests showed concentrations as high as 3 parts per million.
“The reason the numbers are going down is we believe less of the material is getting into the water,” said Mike Dorsey, the chief of homeland security and emergency response at the State Department of Environmental Protection. “We have cut of the source of the leak, the tank. There is still material under the concrete and the soil. We’ve taken aggressive measures on the shore line below the site.”
A team from the Chemical Safety Board will arrive in West Virginia on Monday to begin the long process of assessing the cause of the spill. The CSB is an independent federal agency with the authority to investigate industrial chemical accidents. The agency issues recommendations for prevention of future accidents.
To date, FEMA has brought in 1.4 million liters of water for residents. An additional 1.6 million liters are expected to come in over the course of the weekend.
The New York Times reported Saturday that at least 122 people have gone to local hospitals complaining of nausea, vomiting, and skin and eye irritation. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/12/3151421/fourth-day-water-west-virginia/ CAFE standards lead to smaller cars that are less safe, meaning more people die. They also increase prices. How can anyone say increasing regulation improves the quality of life or the economy? http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/296998/cafe-standards-kill-deroy-murdockI even have a partisan source, too! because that's the wrong way of making regulations. are you saying this was the wrong deregulation? good to hear you agree. I'm saying that your one example is useless, because the opposite case is true for cars, and that's killed and hurt more than this water leak. "The wrong way of making regulation." What does that mean? What's the "right way'? All regulation has some sort of negative effect, because it stifles people and costs money. So CAFE really isn't different than any other regulation, it just costs human lives, while the well contaminated some water for a while. Glad to hear you don't like CAFE standards. Yeah I mean Freedom Industries tried hard to not poison the water...And now where's the accountability? Where's the responsibility? I'm not saying there should be no laws or no punishment, where did you get that idea? I didn't! Then we don't have a problem. Regulations (rules governing an activity) have nothing to do with accountability or responsibility, both of which I'm sure are coming to the company in question. I'm all for making people who cause damage to pay for it, unless the Federal Government forced said company into something. Those punishments are fine imo, if they are within reason. You're sure? I was trying to find the link/news feed about that, mind filling me in? Didn't Johnny do that? The appropriate officials are looking into it. This is the federal government we are talking about here, the only thing they try to do quickly is pass gun control. And I'm sure someone will sue. Let me put it this way- I don't think the guilty parties will get away scot free. And I seriously doubt the activity was unregulated. This has to do with chemicals used in the environment- from what I understand and know about chemicals in general, I'd bet these particular ones are highly regulated. I know fracking, drilling and refining certainly are regulated. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303819704579317062273564766?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303819704579317062273564766.htmlShow nested quote +The storage facility owned by Freedom Industries Inc. on the banks of the Elk River was subject to almost no state and local monitoring, interviews and records show. The industrial chemical that leaked into the river, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, isn't closely tracked by federal programs. A state regulator had said earlier that, before last week's spill, environmental inspectors hadn't visited the site since 1991. Yeah, it wasn't regulated. Saying 'I'm sure the authorities will get to it (now let's get back to this discussion of Marxism and the public discourse should get back to some Chris Christie scandal)' is weak and you should realize that.
While I don't think it was completely unregulated (ex. MSDS sheets required), it seems to have fallen into a regulatory black hole. The CDC apparently didn't even know what the substance was or what affect it would have on people.
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On January 14 2014 16:04 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 15:53 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 15:29 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 14:43 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:56 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 13:50 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:37 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 13:33 Roe wrote:because that's the wrong way of making regulations. are you saying this was the wrong deregulation? good to hear you agree. I'm saying that your one example is useless, because the opposite case is true for cars, and that's killed and hurt more than this water leak. "The wrong way of making regulation." What does that mean? What's the "right way'? All regulation has some sort of negative effect, because it stifles people and costs money. So CAFE really isn't different than any other regulation, it just costs human lives, while the well contaminated some water for a while. Glad to hear you don't like CAFE standards. Yeah I mean Freedom Industries tried hard to not poison the water...And now where's the accountability? Where's the responsibility? I'm not saying there should be no laws or no punishment, where did you get that idea? I didn't! Then we don't have a problem. Regulations (rules governing an activity) have nothing to do with accountability or responsibility, both of which I'm sure are coming to the company in question. I'm all for making people who cause damage to pay for it, unless the Federal Government forced said company into something. Those punishments are fine imo, if they are within reason. You're sure? I was trying to find the link/news feed about that, mind filling me in? Didn't Johnny do that? The appropriate officials are looking into it. This is the federal government we are talking about here, the only thing they try to do quickly is pass gun control. And I'm sure someone will sue. Let me put it this way- I don't think the guilty parties will get away scot free. And I seriously doubt the activity was unregulated. This has to do with chemicals used in the environment- from what I understand and know about chemicals in general, I'd bet these particular ones are highly regulated. I know fracking, drilling and refining certainly are regulated. The question then is whether or not they were required to have sufficient insurance to cover this kind of accident. Cause if not they've socialised the risk from it while privatising the gains. And if they don't it's a pretty safe bet that they will be required to pay the difference, there are procedures in place for apportioning blame and setting a money value to it for these kinds of things. Those procedures mostly consist of "how much the judge feels like bending over this company that fucked up." Because they always appeal the fine(s).
There is no way you can possibly measure all of the externalities that this type of spill causes and force the company to pay some amount to cover it. Great example within my own place of work; the Finance team I work with has 3 members out in Charleston, WV, where this spill occurred. Because of the spill, one of those team member's kids were left home from school yesterday. Because of that, she had to bring them to the grandparent's house and missed a conference call, which meant that someone here had to pick up the slack. When does my team member Karen get her check in the mail from Freedom Corporation or whatever it was called for having to perform extra work?
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Ugh! Responsibility is too hard, let's just give up
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Norway28674 Posts
On January 14 2014 12:31 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 12:29 IgnE wrote:On January 14 2014 12:27 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 14 2014 12:20 IgnE wrote:On January 14 2014 12:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 14 2014 12:06 IgnE wrote:On January 14 2014 10:55 xDaunt wrote:On January 14 2014 10:46 mcc wrote:On January 14 2014 10:33 xDaunt wrote:On January 14 2014 09:28 mcc wrote:
[quote]
That is because you also confuse communism with part of the movement. Many communists do not argue for violent revolution. Many communist parties participate in democratic process as constructive participants. The fact that you do not know does not mean that it does not exist.
And if you change the rule of law by democratic process of changing the constitution there is no reason why nationalization and redistribution would necessitate breaking the rule of law or violence. I'm aware that there are some communists who prefer to work through democratic channels to attain their goals. I just don't see them ever getting that far any time in the near future without a hefty dosage of abuse of power. At some point communism requires an abolition of the traditional western concept of property rights. That isn't going to happen peacefully. That is completely another matter and rather subjective judgement. The point is that there is nothing violent or "evil" in the goals and ideas of communists in general. That cannot be said for fascists and especially not for nazis. There you have things that are inherent to the ideology that cannot be taken away without it stopping being nazism or fascism. You could maybe get the obviously ugly parts out of the way, but they are both based on tribalism and thus have inherent issues involved in it. When the means of implementing communism are functionally inseparable from the exercise of "evil" as I have pointed out, it can't be said that communism is inherently benign. Uncoincidentally, history has proven me right so far. Kwark focuses too much on the "autocratic" nature of Stalinism and Maoism, that was, admittedly, an aspect of the cultures from which they sprung. The real problem with Stalinism and other manifestations of communism in the historical record (excepting somewhat Cuba) is that they were all designed to compete with capitalism for the manufacture of things. Mao and Stalin actually succeeded somewhat on that end. Both totally revamped their industrial economies, willfully bringing both countries out of agriculture-based peasant societies, Maoism especially. The autocratic structure is not only a byproduct of the culture, but out of the necessity to try and compete militarily and economically with a capitalist system that has a huge head start in the development of capital. Unfortunately production per se does not correlate very well with the standard metric of economic success. Compare Germany at the turn of the 20th century to Britain. Germany was growing its production and trade capacity for real things at 6x the rate of Britain, and yet was barely making a dent in the economic GDP gap between the two countries. Capital owners in Germany fortunately found a use for all that production with the coming of WWI but sadly lost whatever lead they had hoped to gain by losing the war in devastating fashion. Likewise in China and the USSR, simply expanding production per se, implementing modern industrial techniques, and the like, did not help them close the gap in terms of sheer capital accumulation with the west. You have the fall of the USSR eventually, and China adopting a mixed command/liberal economy in order to compete. You do at least have to hand it to Mao for sparking the fastest economic growth and development the world has ever seen, even if his successors eventually decided to switch to a mixed system in order to continue accumulating capital at supra-Western rates. Any "new" communism would have to abandon the unsustainable constant growth paradigm. People like jonny are deluded into thinking that constant growth can be maintained, and so don't understand why anyone would want to vote/adopt/work for a "communist" politics. Yeah the Great Leap Forward was a huge success. For someone who doesn't give a shit about the human costs of neoliberal capitalism and prides himself on his business acumen I'm surprised you can't admit Mao's limited successes. Mao was fantastic at suppressing dissidents and brainwashing China's youth. Happy? Oh I get it, the only freedom worth protecting is the right to a free market, and the only oppression that's not ok is that of the Communist Party. Yep, no brainwashing going on in the good old US of A. Mao destroyed China's economy and caused tens of millions to die. You're really defending the guy? '
I'm not defending Mao. cultural revolution and great leap forward were horrible.
Still though, life expectancy in china during mao's reign changed from 35 to 55 years. Literacy rates skyrocketed from 20% to 93%. And these change were accomplished for between 400 and 700 million people over a 35 year period of time. Even though many terrible mistakes were made, so many that I am not defending him as a whole despite these two amazing accomplishments, you don't have to pretend that everything he did was bad. It's very possible to be critical of Mao while actually recognizing that some good things happened - and largely because of policies he implemented.
I mean, I can hate all I want on LBJ for his actions surrounding vietnam, but that doesn't mean I have to ignore the good he did with the Civil Rights act. I strongly oppose Castro's imprisonment (and torture) of political dissidents, but I still think he did a lot of good in terms of education and healthcare..
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Norway28674 Posts
On January 14 2014 23:09 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 16:34 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 16:04 DeepElemBlues wrote:On January 14 2014 15:53 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 15:29 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 14:43 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:56 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 13:50 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:37 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 13:33 Roe wrote:
[quote]
because that's the wrong way of making regulations. are you saying this was the wrong deregulation? good to hear you agree. I'm saying that your one example is useless, because the opposite case is true for cars, and that's killed and hurt more than this water leak. "The wrong way of making regulation." What does that mean? What's the "right way'? All regulation has some sort of negative effect, because it stifles people and costs money. So CAFE really isn't different than any other regulation, it just costs human lives, while the well contaminated some water for a while. Glad to hear you don't like CAFE standards. Yeah I mean Freedom Industries tried hard to not poison the water...And now where's the accountability? Where's the responsibility? I'm not saying there should be no laws or no punishment, where did you get that idea? I didn't! Then we don't have a problem. Regulations (rules governing an activity) have nothing to do with accountability or responsibility, both of which I'm sure are coming to the company in question. I'm all for making people who cause damage to pay for it, unless the Federal Government forced said company into something. Those punishments are fine imo, if they are within reason. You're sure? I was trying to find the link/news feed about that, mind filling me in? Didn't Johnny do that? The appropriate officials are looking into it. This is the federal government we are talking about here, the only thing they try to do quickly is pass gun control. And I'm sure someone will sue. Let me put it this way- I don't think the guilty parties will get away scot free. And I seriously doubt the activity was unregulated. This has to do with chemicals used in the environment- from what I understand and know about chemicals in general, I'd bet these particular ones are highly regulated. I know fracking, drilling and refining certainly are regulated. The question then is whether or not they were required to have sufficient insurance to cover this kind of accident. Cause if not they've socialised the risk from it while privatising the gains. And if they don't it's a pretty safe bet that they will be required to pay the difference, there are procedures in place for apportioning blame and setting a money value to it for these kinds of things. Those procedures mostly consist of "how much the judge feels like bending over this company that fucked up." Because they always appeal the fine(s). Assuming that they keep the money the same place they keep the liability. If they separate the two then you're out of luck. That's something that annoys me about corporate personhood. The advocates of it explain that a corporation is, at its heart, a group of people acting collectively and therefore should be respected and protected under the law as if it's a person. And yet if a corporation does something criminal or negligent the shareholders, who have been established to collectively be the corporation, are not held accountable. If your group is collectively negligent, or employ someone to be negligent on your behalf, you should be accountable. People would be far more involved in making sure their corporations acted responsibly in society if they didn't have all the rights and none of the accountability of the people involved. It's hard to collectively own an organization and have a lot of control over it. 1,000 shareholders can only be so involved in an operation before it turns into a mess. Part of what society has learned over the years is that sometimes its good to share risk. Be that through the government, insurance, central banks or the courts, people are only liable for so much. Also of note, if a corporation is too thinly capitalized, it becomes easier to pierce the corporate veil.
It's fine if you want to socialize the risk for a corporation. But then you must also socialize the gains.
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On January 15 2014 01:33 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 12:31 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 14 2014 12:29 IgnE wrote:On January 14 2014 12:27 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 14 2014 12:20 IgnE wrote:On January 14 2014 12:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 14 2014 12:06 IgnE wrote:On January 14 2014 10:55 xDaunt wrote:On January 14 2014 10:46 mcc wrote:On January 14 2014 10:33 xDaunt wrote:
[quote]
I'm aware that there are some communists who prefer to work through democratic channels to attain their goals. I just don't see them ever getting that far any time in the near future without a hefty dosage of abuse of power. At some point communism requires an abolition of the traditional western concept of property rights. That isn't going to happen peacefully.
That is completely another matter and rather subjective judgement. The point is that there is nothing violent or "evil" in the goals and ideas of communists in general. That cannot be said for fascists and especially not for nazis. There you have things that are inherent to the ideology that cannot be taken away without it stopping being nazism or fascism. You could maybe get the obviously ugly parts out of the way, but they are both based on tribalism and thus have inherent issues involved in it. When the means of implementing communism are functionally inseparable from the exercise of "evil" as I have pointed out, it can't be said that communism is inherently benign. Uncoincidentally, history has proven me right so far. Kwark focuses too much on the "autocratic" nature of Stalinism and Maoism, that was, admittedly, an aspect of the cultures from which they sprung. The real problem with Stalinism and other manifestations of communism in the historical record (excepting somewhat Cuba) is that they were all designed to compete with capitalism for the manufacture of things. Mao and Stalin actually succeeded somewhat on that end. Both totally revamped their industrial economies, willfully bringing both countries out of agriculture-based peasant societies, Maoism especially. The autocratic structure is not only a byproduct of the culture, but out of the necessity to try and compete militarily and economically with a capitalist system that has a huge head start in the development of capital. Unfortunately production per se does not correlate very well with the standard metric of economic success. Compare Germany at the turn of the 20th century to Britain. Germany was growing its production and trade capacity for real things at 6x the rate of Britain, and yet was barely making a dent in the economic GDP gap between the two countries. Capital owners in Germany fortunately found a use for all that production with the coming of WWI but sadly lost whatever lead they had hoped to gain by losing the war in devastating fashion. Likewise in China and the USSR, simply expanding production per se, implementing modern industrial techniques, and the like, did not help them close the gap in terms of sheer capital accumulation with the west. You have the fall of the USSR eventually, and China adopting a mixed command/liberal economy in order to compete. You do at least have to hand it to Mao for sparking the fastest economic growth and development the world has ever seen, even if his successors eventually decided to switch to a mixed system in order to continue accumulating capital at supra-Western rates. Any "new" communism would have to abandon the unsustainable constant growth paradigm. People like jonny are deluded into thinking that constant growth can be maintained, and so don't understand why anyone would want to vote/adopt/work for a "communist" politics. Yeah the Great Leap Forward was a huge success. For someone who doesn't give a shit about the human costs of neoliberal capitalism and prides himself on his business acumen I'm surprised you can't admit Mao's limited successes. Mao was fantastic at suppressing dissidents and brainwashing China's youth. Happy? Oh I get it, the only freedom worth protecting is the right to a free market, and the only oppression that's not ok is that of the Communist Party. Yep, no brainwashing going on in the good old US of A. Mao destroyed China's economy and caused tens of millions to die. You're really defending the guy? ' I'm not defending Mao. cultural revolution and great leap forward were horrible. Still though, life expectancy in china during mao's reign changed from 35 to 55 years. Literacy rates skyrocketed from 20% to 93%. And these change were accomplished for between 400 and 700 million people over a 35 year period of time. Even though many terrible mistakes were made, so many that I am not defending him as a whole despite these two amazing accomplishments, you don't have to pretend that everything he did was bad. It's very possible to be critical of Mao while actually recognizing that some good things happened - and largely because of policies he implemented. I mean, I can hate all I want on LBJ for his actions surrounding vietnam, but that doesn't mean I have to ignore the good he did with the Civil Rights act. I strongly oppose Castro's imprisonment (and torture) of political prisoners, but I still think he did a lot of good in terms of education and healthcare..
As I said in another post there were people other than Mao involved in China's development. They may deserve some credit for the successes.
Comparatively, other Asian countries had successes too. So mass death wasn't some necessary tradeoff for development. Let's not set the bar too low here.
On January 15 2014 01:49 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 23:09 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 14 2014 16:34 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 16:04 DeepElemBlues wrote:On January 14 2014 15:53 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 15:29 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 14:43 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:56 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 13:50 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:37 Introvert wrote:
[quote]
I'm saying that your one example is useless, because the opposite case is true for cars, and that's killed and hurt more than this water leak. "The wrong way of making regulation." What does that mean? What's the "right way'? All regulation has some sort of negative effect, because it stifles people and costs money. So CAFE really isn't different than any other regulation, it just costs human lives, while the well contaminated some water for a while.
Glad to hear you don't like CAFE standards.
[quote]
I'm not saying there should be no laws or no punishment, where did you get that idea? I didn't! Then we don't have a problem. Regulations (rules governing an activity) have nothing to do with accountability or responsibility, both of which I'm sure are coming to the company in question. I'm all for making people who cause damage to pay for it, unless the Federal Government forced said company into something. Those punishments are fine imo, if they are within reason. You're sure? I was trying to find the link/news feed about that, mind filling me in? Didn't Johnny do that? The appropriate officials are looking into it. This is the federal government we are talking about here, the only thing they try to do quickly is pass gun control. And I'm sure someone will sue. Let me put it this way- I don't think the guilty parties will get away scot free. And I seriously doubt the activity was unregulated. This has to do with chemicals used in the environment- from what I understand and know about chemicals in general, I'd bet these particular ones are highly regulated. I know fracking, drilling and refining certainly are regulated. The question then is whether or not they were required to have sufficient insurance to cover this kind of accident. Cause if not they've socialised the risk from it while privatising the gains. And if they don't it's a pretty safe bet that they will be required to pay the difference, there are procedures in place for apportioning blame and setting a money value to it for these kinds of things. Those procedures mostly consist of "how much the judge feels like bending over this company that fucked up." Because they always appeal the fine(s). Assuming that they keep the money the same place they keep the liability. If they separate the two then you're out of luck. That's something that annoys me about corporate personhood. The advocates of it explain that a corporation is, at its heart, a group of people acting collectively and therefore should be respected and protected under the law as if it's a person. And yet if a corporation does something criminal or negligent the shareholders, who have been established to collectively be the corporation, are not held accountable. If your group is collectively negligent, or employ someone to be negligent on your behalf, you should be accountable. People would be far more involved in making sure their corporations acted responsibly in society if they didn't have all the rights and none of the accountability of the people involved. It's hard to collectively own an organization and have a lot of control over it. 1,000 shareholders can only be so involved in an operation before it turns into a mess. Part of what society has learned over the years is that sometimes its good to share risk. Be that through the government, insurance, central banks or the courts, people are only liable for so much. Also of note, if a corporation is too thinly capitalized, it becomes easier to pierce the corporate veil. It's fine if you want to socialize the risk for a corporation. But then you must also socialize the gains. OK, sure. So no problem then?
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On January 14 2014 21:52 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 20:48 nunez wrote:On January 14 2014 06:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
In a nutshell there's a black box between Marxist / Communist (if there's a preferred label let me know) economic theories and actual economic production that ties everything together and makes the economy work in the real world. My suspicion is that the black box is, ultimately, a totalitarian regime and until I hear a plausible alternative I'm sticking to my suspicion.
Jonny's nutshellinput
a vague collection of theories. system
a black box, by definition we can not reason about its contents. output
the actual economic production that ties everything together and make the economy work in the real world.
theorem
if and only if the vague collection of theories are "marxist / communist theories", then the black box is a totalitarian regime and that's why "marxist / communist theories" won't work. proof
until a plausible (see Jonny's law of plausability) alternative is heard for what's inside this black box that you can't reason about the contents of, this theorem holds. this concludes the proof. Haha brilliant. It's the same scheme I actually make for my student when I talk about the firm in microeconomics. In the beginning, there was no justification for the existence of the firm (since the market is the most efficient, why the need to create a collectivity to product ?) and the firm was "a black box" when you add input and where output came out. Of course transaction costs changed everything but that's another subject. Jonny don't know shit about Marxism, but well. Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 12:06 IgnE wrote:On January 14 2014 10:55 xDaunt wrote:On January 14 2014 10:46 mcc wrote:On January 14 2014 10:33 xDaunt wrote:On January 14 2014 09:28 mcc wrote:On January 14 2014 06:30 xDaunt wrote:On January 14 2014 06:18 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 06:15 xDaunt wrote:On January 14 2014 06:10 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
The statistical reality is that the sample size is way too small, lacks control groups and can largely be explained by outside factors. Are you really trying to use a half dozen examples without any context to prove a point? I guess you're willing to give National Socialism another go, too, then? If they said "we'll do it without the xenophobia, the invading Poland, the persecution of minorities and the creation of a dictatorship" then I wouldn't go "well, I heard you say it and all sounds are lies". Now maybe some of those things are intrinsically linked to national socialism but the traits of Stalinism are not intrinsically linked to communism, indeed they generally predate communist rule. I'm just talking off-the-cuff here, but it seems to me that inherent to any communist regime is a need to disregard the rule of law (the "revolution") so as to effect communist policy on the rubble of the previous system. How else do you get a communist redistribution of wealth and power without trampling the rights of those at the top (and the middle, and pretty much everyone else to one degree or another, but I digress...)? I know that it's rather cute to say that "absolute power corrupts absolutely," but there is no communism without the wielding of that absolute power that stretches beyond the confines of traditional law. The inherent danger there is obvious. That is because you also confuse communism with part of the movement. Many communists do not argue for violent revolution. Many communist parties participate in democratic process as constructive participants. The fact that you do not know does not mean that it does not exist. And if you change the rule of law by democratic process of changing the constitution there is no reason why nationalization and redistribution would necessitate breaking the rule of law or violence. I'm aware that there are some communists who prefer to work through democratic channels to attain their goals. I just don't see them ever getting that far any time in the near future without a hefty dosage of abuse of power. At some point communism requires an abolition of the traditional western concept of property rights. That isn't going to happen peacefully. That is completely another matter and rather subjective judgement. The point is that there is nothing violent or "evil" in the goals and ideas of communists in general. That cannot be said for fascists and especially not for nazis. There you have things that are inherent to the ideology that cannot be taken away without it stopping being nazism or fascism. You could maybe get the obviously ugly parts out of the way, but they are both based on tribalism and thus have inherent issues involved in it. When the means of implementing communism are functionally inseparable from the exercise of "evil" as I have pointed out, it can't be said that communism is inherently benign. Uncoincidentally, history has proven me right so far. Kwark focuses too much on the "autocratic" nature of Stalinism and Maoism, that was, admittedly, an aspect of the cultures from which they sprung. The real problem with Stalinism and other manifestations of communism in the historical record (excepting somewhat Cuba) is that they were all designed to compete with capitalism for the manufacture of things. Mao and Stalin actually succeeded somewhat on that end. Both totally revamped their industrial economies, willfully bringing both countries out of agriculture-based peasant societies, Maoism especially. The autocratic structure is not only a byproduct of the culture, but out of the necessity to try and compete militarily and economically with a capitalist system that has a huge head start in the development of capital. Unfortunately production per se does not correlate very well with the standard metric of economic success. Compare Germany at the turn of the 20th century to Britain. Germany was growing its production and trade capacity for real things at 6x the rate of Britain, and yet was barely making a dent in the economic GDP gap between the two countries. Capital owners in Germany fortunately found a use for all that production with the coming of WWI but sadly lost whatever lead they had hoped to gain by losing the war in devastating fashion. Likewise in China and the USSR, simply expanding production per se, implementing modern industrial techniques, and the like, did not help them close the gap in terms of sheer capital accumulation with the west. You have the fall of the USSR eventually, and China adopting a mixed command/liberal economy in order to compete. You do at least have to hand it to Mao for sparking the fastest economic growth and development the world has ever seen, even if his successors eventually decided to switch to a mixed system in order to continue accumulating capital at supra-Western rates. Any "new" communism would have to abandon the unsustainable constant growth paradigm. People like jonny are deluded into thinking that constant growth can be maintained, and so don't understand why anyone would want to vote/adopt/work for a "communist" politics. The core problem is that Marxism was never a theory of the state or a theory on how to govern. It was a militant theory, engaged in a scientific critic of "the capital" with a relatively incomplete plan on "what to do after the revolution". The only book, written by Marx, that actually talk about the after is more a polemic than a real program (The Critic of the Gotha Program). Add to that the fact that Marx only finished the first book of the capital (which was a critic of the classical economy). Jonny is ridiculous because if there is one thing that actually define Marxism it is the refusal of the "black box" and the definite decision, from Marx, to take seriously reality in all its form, leading him to explain economy with politics and politics with economy. In France, there are different type of marxist : there are the "Marxism" (linked to communist party), the "Marxologues" (the ones that read Marx, are far leftist, but are against the communist party) and finally the "Marxians" (people who consider Marx as one of the most brilliant mind but are not leftist - most of them are free marketists). Just that should lead anyone into understanding that "Marxism" is not a clear theory, it's a cosmos. For exemple, you talk about the necessity for a far left movement to "abandon the unsustainable constant growth paradigm" but actually Marx himself in his 1844 Manuscript, already proposed a theory of the environment that refute the idea of productivism - the environment was "the inorganic body of Man" and as such needed protection.
I never meant to imply that I thought Marx didn't consider sustainability/environment issues. My point was that whatever Marx said about it, Stalinism could not be said to have cared much about those issues, and that any desirable "Marxist" system would have to incorporate such concerns.
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I didn't wanted to make new thread *maybe isn't threadworthy),
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In internet land Lil Kim seems to die as often as Bill Cosby and Day9.
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I like how the account was created 5 days ago and the message is in all caps. Looks very legit.
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On January 15 2014 00:00 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 15:29 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 14:43 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:56 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 13:50 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:37 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 13:33 Roe wrote:On January 14 2014 13:02 Introvert wrote:On January 14 2014 12:56 Roe wrote:so uhhh...is anyone talking about the company that poisoned the waters in west virginia to the point that 300 000 people didn't have water for 4 days (and expected to be several more)? How can people really believe this deregulation (or unregulation) actually improves quality of life or the economy? As over 300,000 people in West Virginia face a fourth day without water, state environmental officials are now estimating that as much as 7,500 gallons of a chemical used to process coal — Crude MCHM — may have spilled into the Elk River. That number is a substantial increase from early estimates of 2,000 to 5,000 gallons.
The chemical leak, first reported Thursday, was at a facility owned by Freedom Industries along the Elk River, just 1.5 miles upstream from a major intake used by the largest water utility in the state, West Virginia American Water.
At a press conference Saturday afternoon, Jeff McIntyre, president of West Virginia American Water Company, said that it would likely still be “several days” before tap water in the nine counties affected would be safe for anything besides flushing toilets.
The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention has set the standard of 1 part per million as a safe concentration of Crude MCHM in drinking water. Levels of the chemical must remain below this threshold for over 24 hours of testing before the water company can begin flushing the system.
At a press briefing Saturday evening, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s (D) office released the first results of the now round-the-clock water sampling efforts. While some tests are coming in below the safe threshold, the system is still far from clean. Eight out of 18 recent test results tested above 1 part per million. Some of the earliest tests showed concentrations as high as 3 parts per million.
“The reason the numbers are going down is we believe less of the material is getting into the water,” said Mike Dorsey, the chief of homeland security and emergency response at the State Department of Environmental Protection. “We have cut of the source of the leak, the tank. There is still material under the concrete and the soil. We’ve taken aggressive measures on the shore line below the site.”
A team from the Chemical Safety Board will arrive in West Virginia on Monday to begin the long process of assessing the cause of the spill. The CSB is an independent federal agency with the authority to investigate industrial chemical accidents. The agency issues recommendations for prevention of future accidents.
To date, FEMA has brought in 1.4 million liters of water for residents. An additional 1.6 million liters are expected to come in over the course of the weekend.
The New York Times reported Saturday that at least 122 people have gone to local hospitals complaining of nausea, vomiting, and skin and eye irritation. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/12/3151421/fourth-day-water-west-virginia/ CAFE standards lead to smaller cars that are less safe, meaning more people die. They also increase prices. How can anyone say increasing regulation improves the quality of life or the economy? http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/296998/cafe-standards-kill-deroy-murdockI even have a partisan source, too! because that's the wrong way of making regulations. are you saying this was the wrong deregulation? good to hear you agree. I'm saying that your one example is useless, because the opposite case is true for cars, and that's killed and hurt more than this water leak. "The wrong way of making regulation." What does that mean? What's the "right way'? All regulation has some sort of negative effect, because it stifles people and costs money. So CAFE really isn't different than any other regulation, it just costs human lives, while the well contaminated some water for a while. Glad to hear you don't like CAFE standards. Yeah I mean Freedom Industries tried hard to not poison the water...And now where's the accountability? Where's the responsibility? I'm not saying there should be no laws or no punishment, where did you get that idea? I didn't! Then we don't have a problem. Regulations (rules governing an activity) have nothing to do with accountability or responsibility, both of which I'm sure are coming to the company in question. I'm all for making people who cause damage to pay for it, unless the Federal Government forced said company into something. Those punishments are fine imo, if they are within reason. You're sure? I was trying to find the link/news feed about that, mind filling me in? Didn't Johnny do that? The appropriate officials are looking into it. This is the federal government we are talking about here, the only thing they try to do quickly is pass gun control. And I'm sure someone will sue. Let me put it this way- I don't think the guilty parties will get away scot free. And I seriously doubt the activity was unregulated. This has to do with chemicals used in the environment- from what I understand and know about chemicals in general, I'd bet these particular ones are highly regulated. I know fracking, drilling and refining certainly are regulated. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303819704579317062273564766?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303819704579317062273564766.htmlShow nested quote +The storage facility owned by Freedom Industries Inc. on the banks of the Elk River was subject to almost no state and local monitoring, interviews and records show. The industrial chemical that leaked into the river, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, isn't closely tracked by federal programs. A state regulator had said earlier that, before last week's spill, environmental inspectors hadn't visited the site since 1991. Yeah, it wasn't regulated. Saying 'I'm sure the authorities will get to it (now let's get back to this discussion of Marxism and the public discourse should get back to some Chris Christie scandal)' is weak and you should realize that.
I stand generally corrected. The regulation was less strict than I had imagined.
However, I would like to point out one thing and reiterate another-
First, the facility did have regulations to follow. It was not "unregulated." The article mentions several regulations and things that happened when Freedom took the site. They didn't just set up a tanker truck next to a river.
The article talks about how it is in "Chemical Valley." It was one of many such facilities in the area. Those are regulated too, just not as heavily as actual manufacturing plants. The only thing no one seems to know anything about is the chemical itself, which admittedly was a surprise to me. Here is the MSDS sheet. It doesn't have the exact same name, but scientists are wont to drop the "1" when it's unnecessary (as in this case, where the methanol group is on Carbon 1, and the Methyl is on Carbon 4. Anyone with a little training could look at that name and tell you what it looks like). As a matter of fact, the news articles arbitrarily separate the "methanol" from the rest of the molecule name. Slightly annoying.
Anyway.... I find the effect of the chemical to be largely irrelevant, what is important is proper storage.
Now, they did say the facility fell in some sort of in-between zone. But it was hardly unregulated. It wasn't a tank just sitting next to the water line, it breached a containment wall. Time will tell if the wall was up to code or not.
I simply do not think that this ONE example is enough to call for more control. Things fall through the cracks all the time.
If you are going to call for more regulation, you ought to show how the current ones were insufficient, and that more of them would have prevented this. Or even show from this one event, when viewed in context as a very rare event, that more time and money really needs to go into this. I don't see how this can be true. What would you have done? The only thing I can think of having it inspected before they got up and running.
So while I stand corrected (and quite frankly, surprised), I'm not convinced that more regulation would have changed anything. What I really want to know is how the containment wall failed. I haven't seen that mentioned anywhere. we don't know all the details.
Things just go wrong, this isn't some epidemic. This is the same BS we put up with in gun control. For every story about a mass killing, there are many stories of guns used in self-defense. But that's boring, so no one knows about them.
To bring this back to your very first post on the subject, I don't think ONE event is enough for you to make the comment you did. They will be held responsible, and no one died because the leak wasn't of some horribly deadly substance.
I actually find the Chris Christie thing stupid. I'd rather discuss the Supreme Court cases, but apparently that's boring or just too much work for everyone. Or maybe they don't want to talk about the abuse of the appointment clause. Who knows.
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![[image loading]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-BC112_0114br_G_20140114110203.jpg) Gov. Chris Christie was with the official who arranged the closure of local lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 11, 2013 — the third day of the closures, and well after they had triggered outrage from local officials beset by heavy traffic. It isn’t known what, if anything, Mr. Christie discussed with David Wildstein that day, when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey official was among the delegation of Mr. Christie’s representatives who welcomed him to the site of the World Trade Center for the commemoration of the 12th anniversary of the terrorist attacks there. Christie spokesman Colin Reed said, “Of course, Governor Christie attended the September 11th ceremony as he has done every year since he took office. He had numerous interactions with public officials that morning, including representatives of the Port Authority. They were all there for one reason – to pay tribute to the heroes of 9/11.” Mr. Wildstein did not respond to a request for comment through his attorney.
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It's funny how "I didn't know what the people who work for me did" has somehow become a viable excuse for people in leadership positions. Even if Christie didn't know what was going on (which seems highly unlikely) he's still responsible for what happens in his department. That's like the whole idea of people in charge, you have more power but you also are responsible if someone down the food chain screws up.
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Here's to hoping Christie being toast means we'll get another tea-party centered GOP primary in 2016. I'd love to see them try that again, lol.
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EPT
