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Sanya12364 Posts
On November 23 2009 11:05 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote:tax rate, swiss is lower? not really if you look at this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_Taxes_By_Country.svgUSA and switzerland is right next to each other, but in this graph the social taxes one pays every month is not taken in (~10%), these are the annual taxes. but the "general" taxes are not the biggest fuckup in switzerland its the flatrate taxes. "Unemployment insurance - US has it!" Guess what, switzerland has it too, since 1884 USA has it since 1932, sorry but you lose. "mandatory insurance" what do you think were those 100$ I pay every month I was talking about? whole switzerland has it vs 1 state in the USA? again, you lose. also you dont know shit about all the regulatory instances we have which makes our capitalistic system different. stuff like the LSVA which encourgaes train transportation of transit goods. thats a socialstic law that is punishing the egoistig nosy stinky trucks. switzerland is acutally very open in terms of market and politics generally, we make business with iran and usa the same. we dance on every party, and i dont like that either, but what is the point? can you tell me the relevance that has? P.S. im half an italian too, and a quarter norwegian, wanna rant on those systems to? wouldnt be of any relevance either, but maybe you would like, huh?
You do realize Switzerland is the size of Massachusetts right? I lose? Really please try to instituted the same system over the entire Euro zone before you claim that some how US has lost.
The US has its highway system. Public funded. Free. Socialism at work right? It's one of those socialist policies promoting your so called "nosy stinky trucks."
Whatever is rotten in the US isn't a lack of socialism.
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sorry, but you're wrong on that one. My brother shared a lot of stuff from me with others I aint got a problem with that. I give away my last cig I give away my last papes, I can understand if thats hard to grasp, but thats how I was raised. I always shared all I had with others, maybe because my other brother (older) never wanted to share shit with me so I wanted to do it different than him.
exactly, you are a very generous person, but that is you, not some faceless bureaucrat. I do not want some government bureaucrat deciding who gets my money. So what if the person is a drug junkie or a do-nothin, they still get your money.
sry, new here, no more triple posting
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page 1: climate emails
page 2: climate fraud
page 3: climate change
page 4: more climate change
page 5: climate conspiracy
page 6: capitalism and climate change
page 7: switzerland vs USA
page 8: socialism vs capitalism
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On November 23 2009 11:17 TanGeng wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2009 11:05 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote:tax rate, swiss is lower? not really if you look at this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_Taxes_By_Country.svgUSA and switzerland is right next to each other, but in this graph the social taxes one pays every month is not taken in (~10%), these are the annual taxes. but the "general" taxes are not the biggest fuckup in switzerland its the flatrate taxes. "Unemployment insurance - US has it!" Guess what, switzerland has it too, since 1884 USA has it since 1932, sorry but you lose. "mandatory insurance" what do you think were those 100$ I pay every month I was talking about? whole switzerland has it vs 1 state in the USA? again, you lose. also you dont know shit about all the regulatory instances we have which makes our capitalistic system different. stuff like the LSVA which encourgaes train transportation of transit goods. thats a socialstic law that is punishing the egoistig nosy stinky trucks. switzerland is acutally very open in terms of market and politics generally, we make business with iran and usa the same. we dance on every party, and i dont like that either, but what is the point? can you tell me the relevance that has? P.S. im half an italian too, and a quarter norwegian, wanna rant on those systems to? wouldnt be of any relevance either, but maybe you would like, huh? You do realize Switzerland is the size of Massachusetts right? I lose? Really please try to instituted the same system over the entire Euro zone before you claim that some how US has lost. The US has its highway system. Public funded. Free. Socialism at work right? It's one of those socialist policies promoting your so called "nosy stinky trucks." Whatever is rotten in the US isn't a lack of socialism.
massachusetts is not the entire USA, thats what counts. we have different "states" too with different systems to some degree but manditory insurance is all arround switzerland. as I said, USA and switzerland are systemwise very similar, the french part is way more socialistic than the german or italian part f.e. its just the absolute size that is different.
wow, the USA has something socialistic? is it good? do you layk?
but again, why is it relevant weather the country I live in is more social than your country? Yes, switzerland is very capitalisitc, so? does that change the fact that the USA is more capitalistic? does it change that both are over capitalistic?
On November 23 2009 11:23 Balentine wrote:Show nested quote +sorry, but you're wrong on that one. My brother shared a lot of stuff from me with others I aint got a problem with that. I give away my last cig I give away my last papes, I can understand if thats hard to grasp, but thats how I was raised. I always shared all I had with others, maybe because my other brother (older) never wanted to share shit with me so I wanted to do it different than him. exactly, you are a very generous person, but that is you, not some faceless bureaucrat. I do not want some government bureaucrat deciding who gets my money. So what if the person is a drug junkie or a do-nothin, they still get your money. sry, new here, no more triple posting
i have junkies as friends and also "do-nothings", have no problem with them taking my money. as I said, you dont want your money to go there, but thats because you're an egoist. if you are in such a situation you would also like someone to help you out of your drug addiction, you would like a place where you could get sober stuff instead of dirty street shit with ugly extenders in them. yes, there is like no way to prevent "do-nothings", but you have a fail rate anyway. I rather see my money go to such ppl than to some rich asses who could get even more money if they dont have to pay for such "do-nothings".
same is with that "green" shit. I dont care weather all of it is true or not, but i rather let "green" energy get my money than "noisy stinky trucks" :D
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On November 23 2009 11:29 WhiteNights wrote:
page 1: climate emails
page 2: climate fraud
page 3: climate change
page 4: more climate change
page 5: climate conspiracy
page 6: capitalism and climate change
page 7: switzerland vs USA
page 8: socialism vs capitalism
lol
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Sanya12364 Posts
On November 23 2009 11:29 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2009 11:17 TanGeng wrote:On November 23 2009 11:05 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote:tax rate, swiss is lower? not really if you look at this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_Taxes_By_Country.svgUSA and switzerland is right next to each other, but in this graph the social taxes one pays every month is not taken in (~10%), these are the annual taxes. but the "general" taxes are not the biggest fuckup in switzerland its the flatrate taxes. "Unemployment insurance - US has it!" Guess what, switzerland has it too, since 1884 USA has it since 1932, sorry but you lose. "mandatory insurance" what do you think were those 100$ I pay every month I was talking about? whole switzerland has it vs 1 state in the USA? again, you lose. also you dont know shit about all the regulatory instances we have which makes our capitalistic system different. stuff like the LSVA which encourgaes train transportation of transit goods. thats a socialstic law that is punishing the egoistig nosy stinky trucks. switzerland is acutally very open in terms of market and politics generally, we make business with iran and usa the same. we dance on every party, and i dont like that either, but what is the point? can you tell me the relevance that has? P.S. im half an italian too, and a quarter norwegian, wanna rant on those systems to? wouldnt be of any relevance either, but maybe you would like, huh? You do realize Switzerland is the size of Massachusetts right? I lose? Really please try to instituted the same system over the entire Euro zone before you claim that some how US has lost. The US has its highway system. Public funded. Free. Socialism at work right? It's one of those socialist policies promoting your so called "nosy stinky trucks." Whatever is rotten in the US isn't a lack of socialism. massachusetts is not the entire USA, thats what counts. we have different "states" too with different systems to some degree but manditory insurance is all arround switzerland. as I said, USA and switzerland are systemwise very similar, the french part is way more socialistic than the german or italian part f.e. its just the absolute size that is different. wow, the USA has something socialistic? is it good? do you layk? but again, why is it relevant weather the country I live in is more social than your country? Yes, switzerland is very capitalisitc, so? does that change the fact that the USA is more capitalistic? does it change that both are over capitalistic?
OMG. You can't think or you can't write. I don't know which one it is. That 300 million is much much greater than 9 million doesn't compute. Nor does the concept of scalability or granularity.
But we can end the discussion here. If you didn't want to talk about it, I don't know why you ranted on and on about US "capitalism" when you don't understand the issues one bit.
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On November 23 2009 10:36 synapse wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2009 10:30 Balentine wrote:
the point is, most forest fires burn in the summer, but are there more of them now than there were before? The same way there are stronger hurricanes rather than more hurricanes, there are larger forest fires rather than more forest fires. Good job proving your opposition's point.
Stronger fires aren't caused by increased temperatures, they're caused by increased fuel loads. The more you 'fight' forest fires, the more fuel builds up and the hotter they'll burn.
Most forest fires don't burn hot or long enough to destroy old growth trees, but because of a national 'save the forest' policy, the USA has a bunch of very poorly kept, very flammable forests. When they go up, and they will, the fact that small trees have been allowed to grow in to the old growth range gives the fire an elevator to reach the old growth canopy, which massively accelerates the spread and intensity of the fire, and pretty much kills all of the trees which would have otherwise survived.
There's a lot more to it than that, but whatever, small version.
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On November 23 2009 11:37 TanGeng wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2009 11:29 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote:On November 23 2009 11:17 TanGeng wrote:On November 23 2009 11:05 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote:tax rate, swiss is lower? not really if you look at this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_Taxes_By_Country.svgUSA and switzerland is right next to each other, but in this graph the social taxes one pays every month is not taken in (~10%), these are the annual taxes. but the "general" taxes are not the biggest fuckup in switzerland its the flatrate taxes. "Unemployment insurance - US has it!" Guess what, switzerland has it too, since 1884 USA has it since 1932, sorry but you lose. "mandatory insurance" what do you think were those 100$ I pay every month I was talking about? whole switzerland has it vs 1 state in the USA? again, you lose. also you dont know shit about all the regulatory instances we have which makes our capitalistic system different. stuff like the LSVA which encourgaes train transportation of transit goods. thats a socialstic law that is punishing the egoistig nosy stinky trucks. switzerland is acutally very open in terms of market and politics generally, we make business with iran and usa the same. we dance on every party, and i dont like that either, but what is the point? can you tell me the relevance that has? P.S. im half an italian too, and a quarter norwegian, wanna rant on those systems to? wouldnt be of any relevance either, but maybe you would like, huh? You do realize Switzerland is the size of Massachusetts right? I lose? Really please try to instituted the same system over the entire Euro zone before you claim that some how US has lost. The US has its highway system. Public funded. Free. Socialism at work right? It's one of those socialist policies promoting your so called "nosy stinky trucks." Whatever is rotten in the US isn't a lack of socialism. massachusetts is not the entire USA, thats what counts. we have different "states" too with different systems to some degree but manditory insurance is all arround switzerland. as I said, USA and switzerland are systemwise very similar, the french part is way more socialistic than the german or italian part f.e. its just the absolute size that is different. wow, the USA has something socialistic? is it good? do you layk? but again, why is it relevant weather the country I live in is more social than your country? Yes, switzerland is very capitalisitc, so? does that change the fact that the USA is more capitalistic? does it change that both are over capitalistic? OMG. You can't think or you can't write. I don't know which one it is. That 300 million is much much greater than 9 million doesn't compute. Nor does the concept of scalability or granularity. But we can end the discussion here. If you didn't want to talk about it, I don't know why you ranted on and on about US "capitalism" when you don't understand the issues one bit.
I can think and I can write. Also the fact that the swiss and the US' system are very similar show that they can be compared very well, no matter if you like that or not. What you can not do, that is what YOU were doing, is compare a state (masachusetts) to a country. They have way different competencies. We have "Kantöne" as I already said, they have similar competencies than the states in the US. If I smoke weed in Zürich, I pay waaay less than in Grison (St.Moritz,Davos). The law is different between the "Kantöne" the taxes are different the schoolsystem is different. As I said, the systems are very similar.
I ranted on the capitalistic USA because its the capitalism that keeps on fucking up the environment. Money is often made on the back of the nature. Dont wanna pay for depollution? just throw it out in the forest, hey already saved some money, nice. Dont wana pay your developer for 2 years? simply take a rapidly developed system which wastes energy en masse, mooooney, ay need, nice, really. Need some different fuel? Bio fuel? No problem, just massacrate some ppl burn down the forest and plant some palm for oil or some suger pipe shit, cool capitalism fuck yeah! It's the ultimate drive for money im ranting on.
What I'm asking you for the third time now is: What the fuck does it matter where I come from when I dislike the overcapitalistic system the USA is running? why dont you rant on italy? im more italian than swiss after all.
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Sanya12364 Posts
On November 23 2009 12:03 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote:
I can think and I can write. Also the fact that the swiss and the US' system are very similar show that they can be compared very well, no matter if you like that or not. What you can not do, that is what YOU were doing, is compare a state (masachusetts) to a country. They have way different competencies. We have "Kantöne" as I already said, they have similar competencies than the states in the US. If I smoke weed in Zürich, I pay waaay less than in Grison (St.Moritz,Davos). The law is different between the "Kantöne" the taxes are different the schoolsystem is different. As I said, the systems are very similar.
OMG you're comparing Zurich, a city, to all of Massachusetts. It's laughable.
The reasonable comparison is Boston, a city, inside Massachusetts. You think "Kantöne" are equivalent to state?? Here they would be municipal and local governments - not states. School systems, zoning, drug enforcement, that's on the municipal level.
This discussion is just ridiculous.
On November 23 2009 12:03 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote:
What I'm asking you for the third time now is: What the fuck does it matter where I come from when I dislike the overcapitalistic system the USA is running? why dont you rant on italy? im more italian than swiss after all.
I was just trying to make sure if you understood what you were taking about. But it is abundantly clear that you have no idea what you are talking about. I don't need need to hear you rant about anything. You provide nothing of credible substance or relevance to the discussion.
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wow you question weather i know what im talking about and you say Zürich is a city? dude Zürich is only the capitol city of Zürich.
But yeah, if im so wrong with the state comparison, why dont you tell me the difference? Btw, we have municipal level of law differencies too, but they have way not as much competency as a "Kanton". please, instead of telling me what a no brainer I am make sure that you dont embarass yourself with showing me how little you know about switzerland which YOU are ranting on.
I'm a graduated Electrical Engineer, this includes classes in "energy management", it includes also energetic efficiency classes, i was also educated on toxic problems along with electronic goods. So I saw and still see how much shit is done "cheap" and energetic inefficient because its easier to make money that way. I have also graduated from an economics/information technology "middle school" (i guess thats college) so i have quite some economical background too.
but yeah, rather keep on questioning my credibility because i refuse to throw away my comparision because the USA has 300million ppl and switzerland like 8million. It doesnt matter that the system is very similar just a lot smaller, no not at all.
but if you want another source that clearly lists the very similar structures of the USA and switzerland, read here http://www.amcham.ch/publications/downloads/20090226_US_USA and Switzerland_leaflet_DE.pdf its in german, but its only page 4 of 4 anyway so its not that hard for you to translate.
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On November 23 2009 11:26 WhiteNights wrote:
page 1: climate emails
page 2: climate fraud
page 3: climate change
page 4: more climate change
page 5: climate conspiracy
page 6: capitalism and climate change
page 7: switzerland vs USA
page 8: socialism vs capitalism
Fucking hilarious.
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On November 23 2009 12:52 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote:wow you question weather i know what im talking about and you say Zürich is a city? dude Zürich is only the capitol city of Zürich. But yeah, if im so wrong with the state comparison, why dont you tell me the difference? Btw, we have municipal level of law differencies too, but they have way not as much competency as a "Kanton". please, instead of telling me what a no brainer I am make sure that you dont embarass yourself with showing me how little you know about switzerland which YOU are ranting on. I'm a graduated Electrical Engineer, this includes classes in "energy management", it includes also energetic efficiency classes, i was also educated on toxic problems along with electronic goods. So I saw and still see how much shit is done "cheap" and energetic inefficient because its easier to make money that way. I have also graduated from an economics/information technology "middle school" (i guess thats college) so i have quite some economical background too. but yeah, rather keep on questioning my credibility because i refuse to throw away my comparision because the USA has 300million ppl and switzerland like 8million. It doesnt matter that the system is very similar just a lot smaller, no not at all. but if you want another source that clearly lists the very similar structures of the USA and switzerland, read here http://www.amcham.ch/publications/downloads/20090226_US_USA and Switzerland_leaflet_DE.pdf its in german, but its only page 4 of 4 anyway so its not that hard for you to translate.
So anyways I translated it using a cheap translator (read, babelfish) and I came up with the following translation,
The sister republics American and the Swiss Politstrukturen • are similar itself → strong federal structures on both sides The Swiss Federal Constitution (1848) leans • to the American Federal Constitution (1787) on → clear separation from executive and legislation The two states have same moral concepts• → democracy, the freedom of the individual, Human rights and free-market economy UN of head offices in New York and Geneva• Both countries have an open society• → proportion of foreigners the USA: 14%, Switzerland: 23% Employers and innovation become in both • States capitalized → they occupy two point ranks in things global Competitive ability and innovation → they have one similarly liberal economics Legislation and engaged workers *
Which I reconstructed into this which made more sense:
American and Swiss republics are both very similar. They both have strong federal government, with both constitutions exemplifying clear separation of powers from the executive and legislative branches. They also believe in the same moral concepts, of liberty, democracy, human rights, and a free-market economy. UN head offices are in New York and Geneva. Both countries are open to foreigners, with both countries having a large number of alien residents. There are employers and innovative techniques in both, are both capitalist, and occupy similar ranks in terms of global competitive ability and innovation. They have similarly liberal economies in terms of legislation and workers that are able to work.
So you're entire argument is how the two countries are very similar. Okay. The list of similarities boils down to as follows:
-separation of powers
-liberty
-democracy
-human rights
-market economy
-open to immigrants
-participate in the market
-are both economically strong powers
Those are all bullshit similarities. I'm pretty sure most countries in Europe besides Switzerland have these characteristics, as does Canada, Japan, South Korea, and many other countries probably have these similarities nominally.
More importantly, your source is a pamphlet celebrating US-Swiss trade relations. Not exactly the most authoritative source on how similar these two countries are.
I'm interested to know what field of economics your background is in. Economics is quite a diverse field of study, especially because its more of a methodology rather than an interest in a specific kind of field. I'm assuming that as it was in what we consider to be "high school" (for the word college in French implies a high school level) which I can safely say gives very little background in what rigorous economics is. I am a second-year university student in economics, and despite really having a passion for it, studying it outside of school, etc., I can safely say that I have no idea how 99.5% of economics works. The only little bit I know is taken from the classes that I have taken, and what usually happens is I learn more and realize I know even less.
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On November 23 2009 13:00 lOvOlUNiMEDiA wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2009 11:26 WhiteNights wrote:
page 1: climate emails
page 2: climate fraud
page 3: climate change
page 4: more climate change
page 5: climate conspiracy
page 6: capitalism and climate change
page 7: switzerland vs USA
page 8: socialism vs capitalism Fucking hilarious.
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i was actually more pointing at the "federal independence" of the regions of switzerland. also the constitution which is very similar. similar liberal economic law. but yeah, i know its a gay propaganda comparison, but they point out some of the stuff i see similar and it was the best i could find quicky quick. f.e. Basel, a Kanton refused to take Guantanamo prisoners and they couldnt be forced by our federal executives to take em anyway, they are very independent just like a state in the US.
"Middle school" is not like highschool. I also was in "high school" before the middle school. My classes were business economy, like what types of companys are there what type of markets how to run a business, banking and investment. then accountancy, but only the basic stuff not to deep into interpreting business reports. political economics were much about money flow and regulatory organs (like finma which is financly watch stuff). later at university it was more about how to get your business running, how to get investors and how to manage your employees as many engineers work as managers later on. also some law classes which where close to the economy classes.
I once was very interessted in business (during middle school) watched a lot of business TV, read magazines, talked with my teacher, but the deeper i got into that the more i was disgusted by the dishonesty of this field.
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On November 23 2009 13:31 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote:
i was actually more pointing at the "federal independence" of the regions of switzerland. also the constitution which is very similar. similar liberal economic law. but yeah, i know its a gay propaganda comparison, but they point out some of the stuff i see similar and it was the best i could find quicky quick. f.e. Basel, a Kanton refused to take Guantanamo prisoners and they couldnt be forced by our federal executives to take em anyway, they are very independent just like a state in the US.
"Middle school" is not like highschool. I also was in "high school" before the middle school. My classes were business economy, like what types of companys are there what type of markets how to run a business, banking and investment. then accountancy, but only the basic stuff not to deep into interpreting business reports. political economics were much about money flow and regulatory organs (like finma which is financly watch stuff). later at university it was more about how to get your business running, how to get investors and how to manage your employees as many engineers work as managers later on.
It seems that that's more to do with what we would call "finance" rather than "economics." While similar, they are two very distinct things in function that often unfortunately get confused. My dad actually was an electrical engineer who became a manager, and he actually did an MBA (which is based off of financial accounting). Yet even with the MBA, he still can't help me with first-year economics problems. It's simply because there's a difference in the two fields that's very easy to confuse because you often hear "economists" talking about finance.
I guess the best way to differentiate the two is that: finance is the study of running a business, whereas economics is the study of how people respond to a situation of limited resources (such as money) and changes in "costs."
While some businesses may be rather unscrupulous in their activities (the polluting factory archetype comes to mind), one cannot presume that governments would not damage the environment either. For instance, the Great Leap Forward, the industrialization plan by Mao, as well as "war communism," brought forth by Lenin, were both massive, government sponsored, environmental disasters. Economists have argued about the environment, and nobody really knows what's the right answer to deal with this factor. Some people say that by letting people "own" everything you could actually improve the environment (aka "tragedy of the commons." What some game theorists have discerned, in fact, is that regardless of whoever owns the property rights, the most effective solution to remedy pollution will always be chosen. It's not an inherent flaw of capitalism that pollution itself exists-however, it is a sort of "market failure" that some economists attempt to find means to remedy. But market failure does not need to rely on capitalism to occur-a market could be a person's own choices, or a government's choices.
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ok then the political economy is the thing you would call economy and business economy is finance. yeah Business Administration wont really help you in that field.
i gotta agree with you that governments fucked up big time in environmental aspects. Its not primarly companys fucking up the nature but the egoists. A government can be very egoistic to, no question. I just see the egoism much more from companys, because all they care about is having a good business report at the end of the year. money money money, thats all they are about.
The big problem I see, is that if a person owns something (capitalistic system) he can do whatever he wants with it. If this person is about keeping the nature alive it will be all fine, but if this person is just about making money he can fuck it all up. With that extra money he made on the back of nature he can buy even more land and fuck up more and more and more. If you have "common land" everyone watches that noone is fucking it up because its everyones property. In some parts of south america such "common land" was taken away from the ppl, they were killed or expelled so oil palms could be planted and some rich ass companys could make even more money fucking up all the land (colombia that is).
In switzerland we have NGOs which regulate such companys to some degree. They can force the companys to make less parking area and better public traffic and such stuff. These NGOs are hated a lot by companys as they delay a lot of buildings which costs money and companys dont like anything that costs money.
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On November 23 2009 14:08 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote:
ok then the political economy is the thing you would call economy and business economy is finance. yeah Business Administration wont really help you in that field.
i gotta agree with you that governments fucked up big time in environmental aspects. Its not primarly companys fucking up the nature but the egoists. A government can be very egoistic to, no question. I just see the egoism much more from companys, because all they care about is having a good business report at the end of the year. money money money, thats all they are about.
The big problem I see, is that if a person owns something (capitalistic system) he can do whatever he wants with it. If this person is about keeping the nature alive it will be all fine, but if this person is just about making money he can fuck it all up. With that extra money he made on the back of nature he can buy even more land and fuck up more and more and more. If you have "common land" everyone watches that noone is fucking it up because its everyones property. In some parts of south america such "common land" was taken away from the ppl, they were killed or expelled so oil palms could be planted and some rich ass companys could make even more money fucking up all the land (colombia that is).
In switzerland we have NGOs which regulate such companys to some degree. They can force the companys to make less parking area and better public traffic and such stuff. These NGOs are hated a lot by companys as they delay a lot of buildings which costs money and companys dont like anything that costs money.
Unfortunately, the idea of tragedy of the commons completely refutes that idea.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/162/3859/1243
People would not try to "fuck up" land if it doesn't provide a profit for them. Besides, consider this scenario:
Suppose Dunder Mifflin Paper Company purchases a plot of trees. They proceed to raze all the trees in order to make as much profit as they can. However, there are three effects that will hurt them by doing so:
a) Firstly, they deplete the value of their own land. If this was their main intention of purchasing all the land, then they might as well just have not bought it and put it into a bank, instead.
b) Secondly, by razing all the trees, the trees will not grow back. Companies that use natural resources that are regeneratable (such as soil, trees, and whatnot) generally will not try and raze all the trees in an area. They will likely cut down something like 10% of the trees in a plot each year, as new trees that grow back will help to regenerate the cost of the investment.
c) Thirdly, they earn the ire of the environmental organizations and the general public. This could lead to boycotts, which would hurt their sales.
As you can see, there is no incentive for companies to do things like that generally speaking. More importantly, if somebody "owns" the Amazon forest, for instance, they have the power to stop people from cutting it through lawsuits.
Now the problem that is the big issue is global warming. Companies do not have strong incentives to curb pollution, because they do not feel the effects of it immediately. However, it tends to hurt everybody else. This is what we term an externality. This is where one solution is to have government or non-profits step in, as you have so explained through the NGOs. There are other, free-market solutions, but I digress, as this is one solution.
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I intend on reading this myself when I get time, but I'm just going to throw this out there for those who are interested. Henry George's work Progress and Poverty is on my reading list, and from what I hear, it has many interesting ideas in it. Anyone familiar with them and care to comment on them?
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As you can see, there is no incentive for companies to do things like that generally speaking.
And yet, here's what generally happens. Company A will enter Country B. Company A will receive logging rights or buy up land and clear cut the area that they have been assigned despite any stipulations against doing so. Parent Company X will then buy the assets of Company A, and A will be left to undergo bankruptcy and litigation as an empty shell corporation. The directors of A will then form Company C and go to Country D and repeat the same process.
This doesn't work in the first world because governments have far more resources to track down the X-A and X-C links, but in countries that are desperate for employers to come what's the big deal if a little bit of forest is cut down.
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I very well know about the three issues you explain which should a company not do it how I said they do it. But History tells us different, because if you have a forest and you raze all the trees you wont have anything anymore but you also dont invest any money in reforestation, so if it is cheaper to buy new land with good forest a capitalist will rather buy this new land and pull the same shit again than to reforest his old land (which he can sell again to a cow farmer or whatever). This is the "green liberal party" thinking, they say ecology is ok as long as you can economically profit. So they like cars who use little fuel because you save money because you need to buy less gaz.
i overflew the link you posted, as my brother (he is studying biology) told me about such stuff and i think i know what you mean. the problem i have with such papers is, that it handels us as animals. it assumes that we cannot break the primary instinct inside us. I personally think that we are on a very high intelectual level, we are able to develope ourself into a society that treats the nature well as a source of life and not as a bitch to fuck when we feel like doing so. This problem is imo not solvable with common regulatory organs such as money, punishment, access restriction but it has to be solved in a spiritual manner. Our problem is, that our development is almost only technically, socially we degenerate, we can only solve problems technically and lose spiritual tools. For example mariage (monogamy), its a spiritual tool to control sexual diseases, nowadays we solve that problem technically with condoms or the pill, but for the environmental problem, I dont see a technical solution.
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On November 23 2009 14:39 L wrote:Show nested quote +As you can see, there is no incentive for companies to do things like that generally speaking. And yet, here's what generally happens. Company A will enter Country B. Company A will receive logging rights or buy up land and clear cut the area that they have been assigned despite any stipulations against doing so. Parent Company X will then buy the assets of Company A, and A will be left to undergo bankruptcy and litigation as an empty shell corporation. The directors of A will then form Company C and go to Country D and repeat the same process. This doesn't work in the first world because governments have far more resources to track down the X-A and X-C links, but in countries that are desperate for employers to come what's the big deal if a little bit of forest is cut down.
Yes, this is true, but it's not like Company A/Company C isn't being backed or supported by its own country in anyway-many times the situation is caused by the government through a company (i.e. China). In this case, the negative incentive is usually overpowered by a government powered incentive.
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EPT
