US Politics Mega-thread - Page 965

YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) -- Global warming is driving humanity toward a whole new level of many risks, a United Nations scientific panel reports, warning that the wild climate ride has only just begun.

"Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change," Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chairman Rajendra Pachauri said in a Monday news conference.

Twenty-first century disasters such as killer heat waves in Europe, wildfires in the United States, droughts in Australia and deadly flooding in Mozambique, Thailand and Pakistan highlight how vulnerable humanity is to extreme weather, says a massive new report from a Nobel Prize-winning group of scientists released early Monday. The dangers are going to worsen as the climate changes even more, the report's authors said.

"We're all sitting ducks," Princeton University professor Michael Oppenheimer, one of the main authors of the 32-volume report, said in an interview.

After several days of late-night wrangling, more than 100 governments unanimously approved the scientist-written 49-page summary -- which is aimed at world political leaders. The summary mentions the word "risk" an average of about 5 1/2 times per page.

"Changes are occurring rapidly and they are sort of building up that risk," said the overall lead author of the report, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science in California.

These risks are both big and small, according to the report. They are now and in the future. They hit farmers and big cities. Some places will have too much water, some not enough, including drinking water. Other risks mentioned in the report involve the price and availability of food, and to a lesser and more qualified extent some diseases, financial costs and even world peace.

On March 31 2014 12:24 Introvert wrote:
TBH I read the article as soon as it came out, but not since.

That edit was supposed to be a side thing to the main point of conversation, whcih apparently no one wants to talk about anymore.

If you think the article is bad then it's bad, it wasn't really want I was talking about, so I don't care to change topics.

On March 31 2014 12:38 IgnE wrote:


Well let's start with this little gem of yours, completely fallacious: "Humans want to own things, so they always develop in a such a way that "wealth" is concentrated."

That is just wrong on so many levels. One counterexample is wealth distributions in indigenous tribes, such as in Papua New Guinea. But it does show where your and other conservatives' heads are at. You've bought in so totally to the post-war McCarthy era celebratory narrative of capitalism that you cannot conceive of a society that was both 1) set up so as not to reward wealth accumulation and 2) culturally inclined not to reward greed and avarice.

On March 31 2014 12:31 Nyxisto wrote:


Evidence that the Republicans are eroding Americas social net? What about: Cutting footstamps, trying to cut unemployment benefits, tax cuts(which have empirically been linked to higher inequality( http://www.nber.org/papers/w19075 )), deregulation in favor of employers and trying to dismantle labour unions?(which basically is the most unfederal, organic form of empowering employees and thus should be in the 'republican spirit'?)

On March 31 2014 12:57 oneofthem wrote:
hoarding and stratification as a basic human desire is ok to accept. doesn't mean it's right though, and basic or w/e does not mean unchangeable. identifying it as a factor in the development of certain social trends is already a first step towards tackling its excesses.

On March 31 2014 12:31 Nyxisto wrote:


Evidence that the Republicans are eroding Americas social net? What about: Cutting footstamps, trying to cut unemployment benefits, tax cuts(which have empirically been linked to higher inequality( http://www.nber.org/papers/w19075 )), deregulation in favor of employers and trying to dismantle labour unions?(which basically is the most unfederal, organic form of empowering employees and thus should be in the 'republican spirit'?)

On March 31 2014 13:01 Introvert wrote:


I don't find "inequailty" inherently evil.

Also: if you identify stratification as something "basic" in the philosophical sense, then by definition it is unchangeable, or else you cease to be that thing.

On March 31 2014 13:01 Introvert wrote:


I don't find "inequailty" inherently evil.

Also: if you identify stratification as something "basic" in the philosophical sense, then by definition it is unchangeable, or else you cease to be that thing.

On March 31 2014 13:11 oneofthem wrote:

wat?

we are talking about traits of biological organisms not concepts. there's no philosophical sense of a human that is relevant to this discussion. basic or w/e here merely means a common trait, and humans have all sorts of common traits that warrant governance and organization against, education to mold etc. we have laws and shit to mold behavior, and sometimes going to extreme degrees.


btw if you take hoarding and stratification to be features in a modeling of society, you get bad results. it should then be imperative to correct against these things.

http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~ekalnay/pubs/2014-03-18-handy1-paper-draft-safa-motesharrei-rivas-kalnay.pdf

On March 31 2014 13:23 Introvert wrote:


I disagree. There is a philosophical sense, and it's related to the biological. Humanity is wired a certain way, and what the left generally wants is incompatible with it. I'm not advocating that we should all be in the Lockean "state of nature" but that, as I've said before, we try to use human traits instead of suppress them.

But if you think inequality is simply wrong then there isn't much more to discuss.

On March 31 2014 13:29 GreenHorizons wrote:


So you're really just arguing for not suppressing some very specific traits while suppressing other ones. Given that the 'evidence' of your insistence that these traits are inherent is pretty speculative if not non-existent your argument is quickly falling apart.

On March 31 2014 13:01 Introvert wrote:


I don't find "inequailty" inherently evil.

Also: if you identify stratification as something "basic" in the philosophical sense, then by definition it is unchangeable, or else you cease to be that thing.

On March 31 2014 14:03 oneofthem wrote:
wats teh philosophical sense of an atom guys. it's indivisible!

lets just go with that for a thousand years

You don't find inequality inherently evil because you seem to hold onto a narrow individualist worldview, that views people as ultimately responsible for their own actions and possessing a radical kind of free will that is separate from circumstance but somehow governed by something you might call "character" or moral essence.

If you viewed things from a situationist perspective, in which human beings are rooted in a dynamic environment that affects and is affected by human choices, then you might view things differently. Human beings and their decisions are heavily influenced by environment, but even what might be considered the fundamental core of who a person is, is mostly decided by chance. No one asks to be born, let alone born where and when and how and as who they are born as.

The argument against inequality roughly comes down to which worldview you find to be more persuasive, which you find more descriptive of the reality you find yourself in. Are you holding onto antiquated views about the nature of mind and man, rooted in a dualistic conception of free will tied to an immaterial soul? Or do you appreciate the messy material reality of man, rooted in a tangible world, governed by physical processes? Inequality is immoral because we should be striving to create a world where everyone has access to the most freedom to realize his or her self. This must take into account that, regardless of what you think about free will, no one chooses to be born where, or when, or how, or who they are. Obviously equality in every dimension is not the goal. But the outrageous inequality seen today, at such vast scales, is grossly immoral by almost any moral accounting, since no one is responsible for their birth circumstance. The advantages accrued to certain individuals, born in poverty, are nowhere near the advantages accrued by other individuals, who happened to be born in first world countries. Participating in a capitalistic system that perpetuates these circumstances is a form of violence committed against those who are being chewed up in capitalism's satanic mill.

On March 31 2014 14:55 Introvert wrote:


So? I could be wrong. So far, attempts at forced equality have failed. You go with the best you have. You could be wrong too, so I'm not sure what your statement is supposed to say.



First: I actually hold to a mixed view, but one that leans towards the individual. I would be something closer to an anarchist or libertarian if I viewed things as you say I do. Humans as social creatures are influenced by their culture, but not exclusively. But I do view people as ultimately responsible for the large majority of their choices and circumstances. Just because it is hard to come out from poverty doesn't make wealth evil.

Those tribal societies you mentioned are perfect examples of what I mean, which could be why you dropped it. They are oh-so-equal there. But I am willing to bet you wouldn't trade places with one of them. All the poor in China are pretty equal, too!

I think it an equally large folly to believe that some all knowing power could "fix" the bad circumstances without doing untold damage to the rights of people (I view people as holding rights as individuals, and not as groups, generally.) Moreover, I don't think it could succeed at all. There is no reason to think we would be where we are (in terms of relative wealth, knowledge, and advancing culture) if we viewed things the way you would view them. you would spend so much time enforcing the myriad of rules and general "inequality" you would have time for nothing else. Men are imperfect, so the more concentrated power you give them, the more imperfect the system will be.

So no system is perfect, but I say take advantage of how people behave, instead of trying to force change on them. And capitalism has made more people better off than any other system, in terms of overall wealth (again, I don't value equailtiy nearly as much as you do.)

And I'm not defending the crony, power hungry government we have now. I just think that attempts at equality are far more likely to end up in this way then they are to result in the equality filled utopia you wish for. I think history bears this out as true, as well. So i'm not the strict idealist- that's you. All you have to go on are untested ideas. You spend so much time blasting the current system we have now, but you never talk at length about what you would do- because you have no examples to draw from. I am not the one sitting in a high tower dreaming. Let me know how you would deal with the "human condition" then we can start instituting your ideas.

On March 31 2014 15:19 IgnE wrote:


The "all the poor in China are pretty equal too!" argument is really stupid. The choices are not: typical college-educated American life or poor worker at Foxconn. Nor are poor Chinese wage slaves a requirement to sustain my lifestyle in particular. You would do everyone a favor, including yourself, if you stopped using this stupid argument.

Your more general argument implicitly assumes that the way capitalism has worked in the United States for the last 60 or 70 years is how it can continue to work throughout the rest of the world. That is, that Chinese tech workers and Bengladeshi garment workers can eventually rise to an American level of wealth and consumption. To anyone who has analyzed modern capitalism in any meaningful way, that is, by engaging with its critics, this is an obvious falsehood.

On March 31 2014 15:29 Introvert wrote:


Yea, I just thought I would throw that in for fun.

But you are doing it again- focusing on one aspect you don't like while ignoring everything else and failing to propose an alternative.

We've already tread this ground before- but I don't find capitalism intrinsically explotative.

Your ideas have no feasible method of implementation, yet you ignore the good that has come out of what we have because inequality is apparently one of the worst evils there is.

On March 31 2014 16:03 IgnE wrote:


No, I'm sorry I can't describe an alternative to the dominant world economic system in a post on an internet forum. The problem is that you don't care to look. Worker cooperatives would be a good place to start.

Capitalism is intrinsically exploitative. That's just a fact. You don't have to feel one or the other about it.