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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
From a media perspective, by the time the balloon was reported it's likely they already decided to shoot it down. Would be really odd to tell everyone this then just let it slide....
Supposedly there's more balloons and under past administration too, so that would suggest to me that
it's not particularly a one time thing,
whatever it was doing; was useful and worthwhile.
Pass attempts were somewhat successful.
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So the last few pages have been picking this stupid fight about how a balloon proves that America has no spine, and trying desperately to save face, continuing to argue because anything is better than looking silly to other anonymous people on the Internet.
My takeaway from all this nonsense is this:
On February 05 2023 08:49 Djabanete wrote:
We’re going to look like a bunch of fools if we don’t send a weather balloon back at them immediately.
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Norway28747 Posts
On February 05 2023 00:57 KlaCkoN wrote:
In my opinion any talk to about revolutionary diversion from the status quo need to recon with the fact that the status quo is - by all metrics - pretty effing amazing. Especially so-called progressives (who presumably are into progress) at least ought to recognize that we live in the best time period in all of history as measured by human flourishing. Not since Homo Sapiens first diverged from primates has life been so effing good.
War and violence is at it's lowest point ever, starvation is down, literacy is up etc etc etc.
Humanity blew past the UN 2000-2015 Millennium development goals.
120 years ago British imperialists enforced such starvation in India that human flesh was sold in markets.
80 years ago German imperialists systematically rounded up millions of European Jews in order to murder them.
60 years ago Chinese revolutionaries murdered millions of people for wearing effing glasses.
On the scale of last century the wars and violence of today barely registers.
And for those of you who dont care about poor people - it's not like progress only happens elsewhere either. If the COVID19 pandemic had struck 20 years ago there would have been no mRNA vaccines. Number of hours spent on house work (which people systematically refer to as their least favourite activity) has plummeted across the west. Leisure time is up. After thousands of years of violently enforced misogyny it's seen as natural for women to make money.
If you had to chose to be born again and the only decision available to you was a date between 10.000 years ago and today, but you didnt know where, you didn't know your skin colour, your parents socioeconomic status, or your sex, the logical choice would be to be born today. Today is the best effing day in the history of humanity.
And things keep getting better!! All the trend lines point towards progress continuing.
The fact that we can identify problems is is not a sign of things being irretrievably broken, rather the kinds of problems we are identifying is a sign of how great things are. It's not 'Oh no we have wide scale starvation, violence, or child mortality' rather it's '50 years from now many people will have to move away from where they are currently living due to to a changing climate. Oh and here is a number of things we can work on right now in order to make this situation in the future better'.
The universe doesnt owe us any of this. There were 1000s of years of combined history when the living situation for average Joe barely improved at all, in both hierarchical and non-hierarchical societies. Anyone advocating for a radical change in how society is organized should imo have a very very well thought through explanation of how their new society will let us keep having the progress of the past 300 years, while also resolving problems greater than the ones we have solved over the past 20 years. Otherwise I personally would much much rather keep rate of progress we have right now and nibble at the edges. Maybe higher wealth taxes, maybe publicly supported housing projects etc.. As I see it the opportunity loss if your radical future doesn't work out is ginormous.
While I'm sympathetic to this post in many ways (I'm very familiar with Hans Rosling, as I have no doubt you are too), you're underselling the climate crisis - and the impact it already has. It's not just 'in 50 years, many people will have to move away from where they are currently living', it's 'right now at this very moment, hunger/starvation are up, not down'. Not just due to climate, sure, but it's a contributing factor, and one that promises to be present to a higher degree even if the Russia/Ukraine war comes to an end (which is another way life isn't necessarily rosier than it was 10-20 years ago, anyway.)
From the world food programme: A record 349 million people across 79 countries are facing acute food insecurity – up from 287 million in 2021. This constitutes a staggering rise of 200 million people compared to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. More than 900,000 people worldwide are fighting to survive in famine-like conditions. This is ten times more than five years ago, an alarmingly rapid increase. and The climate crisis is one of the leading causes of the steep rise in global hunger. Climate shocks destroy lives, crops and livelihoods, and undermine people’s ability to feed themselves. Hunger will spiral out of control if the world fails to take immediate climate action.
This is, for many, the driving force behind their revolutionary mindset: The belief that while capitalism/liberalism has delivered increased living standards around the world (not just the west), that a consumerist economy is very comfortable, the way this has been achieved has been thoroughly unsustainable, and now, we must thus focus on achieving a more just distribution of goods rather than expecting that we can continue to produce more and more. Capitalism increases living standards through increasing the total output, not caring much about distribution, under the logic that it doesn't matter if differences increase as long as the bottom also experiences an improvement in absolute terms. I'm actually on board with that argument - except: The damage inflicted upon nature, the environment and the climate by our current level of consumption is widely agreed to be entirely unsustainable, and something that does call for radical change.
I entirely agree that the current period (arguably, up to a few years ago) has been the best period ever to be alive. But I'm not at all sold on the idea that the next 30 years will be as good as the past 30 years were, and there's a looming danger that the 30 years after that are going to be notably worse.
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On February 06 2023 13:29 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2023 00:57 KlaCkoN wrote:
In my opinion any talk to about revolutionary diversion from the status quo need to recon with the fact that the status quo is - by all metrics - pretty effing amazing. Especially so-called progressives (who presumably are into progress) at least ought to recognize that we live in the best time period in all of history as measured by human flourishing. Not since Homo Sapiens first diverged from primates has life been so effing good.
War and violence is at it's lowest point ever, starvation is down, literacy is up etc etc etc.
Humanity blew past the UN 2000-2015 Millennium development goals.
120 years ago British imperialists enforced such starvation in India that human flesh was sold in markets.
80 years ago German imperialists systematically rounded up millions of European Jews in order to murder them.
60 years ago Chinese revolutionaries murdered millions of people for wearing effing glasses.
On the scale of last century the wars and violence of today barely registers.
And for those of you who dont care about poor people - it's not like progress only happens elsewhere either. If the COVID19 pandemic had struck 20 years ago there would have been no mRNA vaccines. Number of hours spent on house work (which people systematically refer to as their least favourite activity) has plummeted across the west. Leisure time is up. After thousands of years of violently enforced misogyny it's seen as natural for women to make money.
If you had to chose to be born again and the only decision available to you was a date between 10.000 years ago and today, but you didnt know where, you didn't know your skin colour, your parents socioeconomic status, or your sex, the logical choice would be to be born today. Today is the best effing day in the history of humanity.
And things keep getting better!! All the trend lines point towards progress continuing.
The fact that we can identify problems is is not a sign of things being irretrievably broken, rather the kinds of problems we are identifying is a sign of how great things are. It's not 'Oh no we have wide scale starvation, violence, or child mortality' rather it's '50 years from now many people will have to move away from where they are currently living due to to a changing climate. Oh and here is a number of things we can work on right now in order to make this situation in the future better'.
The universe doesnt owe us any of this. There were 1000s of years of combined history when the living situation for average Joe barely improved at all, in both hierarchical and non-hierarchical societies. Anyone advocating for a radical change in how society is organized should imo have a very very well thought through explanation of how their new society will let us keep having the progress of the past 300 years, while also resolving problems greater than the ones we have solved over the past 20 years. Otherwise I personally would much much rather keep rate of progress we have right now and nibble at the edges. Maybe higher wealth taxes, maybe publicly supported housing projects etc.. As I see it the opportunity loss if your radical future doesn't work out is ginormous.
While I'm sympathetic to this post in many ways (I'm very familiar with Hans Rosling, as I have no doubt you are too), you're underselling the climate crisis - and the impact it already has. It's not just 'in 50 years, many people will have to move away from where they are currently living', it's 'right now at this very moment, hunger/starvation are up, not down'. Not just due to climate, sure, but it's a contributing factor, and one that promises to be present to a higher degree even if the Russia/Ukraine war comes to an end (which is another way life isn't necessarily rosier than it was 10-20 years ago, anyway.) From the world food programme: Show nested quote +A record 349 million people across 79 countries are facing acute food insecurity – up from 287 million in 2021. This constitutes a staggering rise of 200 million people compared to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. More than 900,000 people worldwide are fighting to survive in famine-like conditions. This is ten times more than five years ago, an alarmingly rapid increase. and Show nested quote +The climate crisis is one of the leading causes of the steep rise in global hunger. Climate shocks destroy lives, crops and livelihoods, and undermine people’s ability to feed themselves. Hunger will spiral out of control if the world fails to take immediate climate action. This is, for many, the driving force behind their revolutionary mindset: The belief that while capitalism/liberalism has delivered increased living standards around the world (not just the west), that a consumerist economy is very comfortable, the way this has been achieved has been thoroughly unsustainable, and now, we must thus focus on achieving a more just distribution of goods rather than expecting that we can continue to produce more and more. Capitalism increases living standards through increasing the total output, not caring much about distribution, under the logic that it doesn't matter if differences increase as long as the bottom also experiences an improvement in absolute terms. I'm actually on board with that argument - except: The damage inflicted upon nature, the environment and the climate by our current level of consumption is widely agreed to be entirely unsustainable, and something that does call for radical change. I entirely agree that the current period (arguably, up to a few years ago) has been the best period ever to be alive. But I'm not at all sold on the idea that the next 30 years will be as good as the past 30 years were, and there's a looming danger that the 30 years after that are going to be notably worse.
Those numbers you give, especially from pre-COVID, are a lot better than I would have guessed honestly. Only 90k were facing starvation in 2018? What’s that, like 0.001% of all people? You believe a different system can do even better than that but also with much fewer carbon emissions?
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Norway28747 Posts
The development from basically the 60s until very recently has been massively positive, there's no question about it. The question is to what degree this has been based around an unsustainable model that'll end up backfiring massively in the future. It's 900k now (a massive improvement from just 20 years ago even if it's also much worse than 4 years ago) - but those other 349 million are in a vulnerable position.
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On February 06 2023 16:19 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2023 13:29 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 05 2023 00:57 KlaCkoN wrote:
In my opinion any talk to about revolutionary diversion from the status quo need to recon with the fact that the status quo is - by all metrics - pretty effing amazing. Especially so-called progressives (who presumably are into progress) at least ought to recognize that we live in the best time period in all of history as measured by human flourishing. Not since Homo Sapiens first diverged from primates has life been so effing good.
War and violence is at it's lowest point ever, starvation is down, literacy is up etc etc etc.
Humanity blew past the UN 2000-2015 Millennium development goals.
120 years ago British imperialists enforced such starvation in India that human flesh was sold in markets.
80 years ago German imperialists systematically rounded up millions of European Jews in order to murder them.
60 years ago Chinese revolutionaries murdered millions of people for wearing effing glasses.
On the scale of last century the wars and violence of today barely registers.
And for those of you who dont care about poor people - it's not like progress only happens elsewhere either. If the COVID19 pandemic had struck 20 years ago there would have been no mRNA vaccines. Number of hours spent on house work (which people systematically refer to as their least favourite activity) has plummeted across the west. Leisure time is up. After thousands of years of violently enforced misogyny it's seen as natural for women to make money.
If you had to chose to be born again and the only decision available to you was a date between 10.000 years ago and today, but you didnt know where, you didn't know your skin colour, your parents socioeconomic status, or your sex, the logical choice would be to be born today. Today is the best effing day in the history of humanity.
And things keep getting better!! All the trend lines point towards progress continuing.
The fact that we can identify problems is is not a sign of things being irretrievably broken, rather the kinds of problems we are identifying is a sign of how great things are. It's not 'Oh no we have wide scale starvation, violence, or child mortality' rather it's '50 years from now many people will have to move away from where they are currently living due to to a changing climate. Oh and here is a number of things we can work on right now in order to make this situation in the future better'.
The universe doesnt owe us any of this. There were 1000s of years of combined history when the living situation for average Joe barely improved at all, in both hierarchical and non-hierarchical societies. Anyone advocating for a radical change in how society is organized should imo have a very very well thought through explanation of how their new society will let us keep having the progress of the past 300 years, while also resolving problems greater than the ones we have solved over the past 20 years. Otherwise I personally would much much rather keep rate of progress we have right now and nibble at the edges. Maybe higher wealth taxes, maybe publicly supported housing projects etc.. As I see it the opportunity loss if your radical future doesn't work out is ginormous.
While I'm sympathetic to this post in many ways (I'm very familiar with Hans Rosling, as I have no doubt you are too), you're underselling the climate crisis - and the impact it already has. It's not just 'in 50 years, many people will have to move away from where they are currently living', it's 'right now at this very moment, hunger/starvation are up, not down'. Not just due to climate, sure, but it's a contributing factor, and one that promises to be present to a higher degree even if the Russia/Ukraine war comes to an end (which is another way life isn't necessarily rosier than it was 10-20 years ago, anyway.) From the world food programme: A record 349 million people across 79 countries are facing acute food insecurity – up from 287 million in 2021. This constitutes a staggering rise of 200 million people compared to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. More than 900,000 people worldwide are fighting to survive in famine-like conditions. This is ten times more than five years ago, an alarmingly rapid increase. and The climate crisis is one of the leading causes of the steep rise in global hunger. Climate shocks destroy lives, crops and livelihoods, and undermine people’s ability to feed themselves. Hunger will spiral out of control if the world fails to take immediate climate action. This is, for many, the driving force behind their revolutionary mindset: The belief that while capitalism/liberalism has delivered increased living standards around the world (not just the west), that a consumerist economy is very comfortable, the way this has been achieved has been thoroughly unsustainable, and now, we must thus focus on achieving a more just distribution of goods rather than expecting that we can continue to produce more and more. Capitalism increases living standards through increasing the total output, not caring much about distribution, under the logic that it doesn't matter if differences increase as long as the bottom also experiences an improvement in absolute terms. I'm actually on board with that argument - except: The damage inflicted upon nature, the environment and the climate by our current level of consumption is widely agreed to be entirely unsustainable, and something that does call for radical change. I entirely agree that the current period (arguably, up to a few years ago) has been the best period ever to be alive. But I'm not at all sold on the idea that the next 30 years will be as good as the past 30 years were, and there's a looming danger that the 30 years after that are going to be notably worse. Those numbers you give, especially from pre-COVID, are a lot better than I would have guessed honestly. Only 90k were facing starvation in 2018? What’s that, like 0.001% of all people? You believe a different system can do even better than that but also with much fewer carbon emissions?
900k, not 90k.
And that's ignoring the 350M people facing 'acute food insecurity', which is how they define being at risk of starvation (officially: "when a person's inability to consume adequate food puts their lives or livelihoods in immediate danger").
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On February 06 2023 17:20 Mikau313 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2023 16:19 BlackJack wrote:On February 06 2023 13:29 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 05 2023 00:57 KlaCkoN wrote:
In my opinion any talk to about revolutionary diversion from the status quo need to recon with the fact that the status quo is - by all metrics - pretty effing amazing. Especially so-called progressives (who presumably are into progress) at least ought to recognize that we live in the best time period in all of history as measured by human flourishing. Not since Homo Sapiens first diverged from primates has life been so effing good.
War and violence is at it's lowest point ever, starvation is down, literacy is up etc etc etc.
Humanity blew past the UN 2000-2015 Millennium development goals.
120 years ago British imperialists enforced such starvation in India that human flesh was sold in markets.
80 years ago German imperialists systematically rounded up millions of European Jews in order to murder them.
60 years ago Chinese revolutionaries murdered millions of people for wearing effing glasses.
On the scale of last century the wars and violence of today barely registers.
And for those of you who dont care about poor people - it's not like progress only happens elsewhere either. If the COVID19 pandemic had struck 20 years ago there would have been no mRNA vaccines. Number of hours spent on house work (which people systematically refer to as their least favourite activity) has plummeted across the west. Leisure time is up. After thousands of years of violently enforced misogyny it's seen as natural for women to make money.
If you had to chose to be born again and the only decision available to you was a date between 10.000 years ago and today, but you didnt know where, you didn't know your skin colour, your parents socioeconomic status, or your sex, the logical choice would be to be born today. Today is the best effing day in the history of humanity.
And things keep getting better!! All the trend lines point towards progress continuing.
The fact that we can identify problems is is not a sign of things being irretrievably broken, rather the kinds of problems we are identifying is a sign of how great things are. It's not 'Oh no we have wide scale starvation, violence, or child mortality' rather it's '50 years from now many people will have to move away from where they are currently living due to to a changing climate. Oh and here is a number of things we can work on right now in order to make this situation in the future better'.
The universe doesnt owe us any of this. There were 1000s of years of combined history when the living situation for average Joe barely improved at all, in both hierarchical and non-hierarchical societies. Anyone advocating for a radical change in how society is organized should imo have a very very well thought through explanation of how their new society will let us keep having the progress of the past 300 years, while also resolving problems greater than the ones we have solved over the past 20 years. Otherwise I personally would much much rather keep rate of progress we have right now and nibble at the edges. Maybe higher wealth taxes, maybe publicly supported housing projects etc.. As I see it the opportunity loss if your radical future doesn't work out is ginormous.
While I'm sympathetic to this post in many ways (I'm very familiar with Hans Rosling, as I have no doubt you are too), you're underselling the climate crisis - and the impact it already has. It's not just 'in 50 years, many people will have to move away from where they are currently living', it's 'right now at this very moment, hunger/starvation are up, not down'. Not just due to climate, sure, but it's a contributing factor, and one that promises to be present to a higher degree even if the Russia/Ukraine war comes to an end (which is another way life isn't necessarily rosier than it was 10-20 years ago, anyway.) From the world food programme: A record 349 million people across 79 countries are facing acute food insecurity – up from 287 million in 2021. This constitutes a staggering rise of 200 million people compared to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. More than 900,000 people worldwide are fighting to survive in famine-like conditions. This is ten times more than five years ago, an alarmingly rapid increase. and The climate crisis is one of the leading causes of the steep rise in global hunger. Climate shocks destroy lives, crops and livelihoods, and undermine people’s ability to feed themselves. Hunger will spiral out of control if the world fails to take immediate climate action. This is, for many, the driving force behind their revolutionary mindset: The belief that while capitalism/liberalism has delivered increased living standards around the world (not just the west), that a consumerist economy is very comfortable, the way this has been achieved has been thoroughly unsustainable, and now, we must thus focus on achieving a more just distribution of goods rather than expecting that we can continue to produce more and more. Capitalism increases living standards through increasing the total output, not caring much about distribution, under the logic that it doesn't matter if differences increase as long as the bottom also experiences an improvement in absolute terms. I'm actually on board with that argument - except: The damage inflicted upon nature, the environment and the climate by our current level of consumption is widely agreed to be entirely unsustainable, and something that does call for radical change. I entirely agree that the current period (arguably, up to a few years ago) has been the best period ever to be alive. But I'm not at all sold on the idea that the next 30 years will be as good as the past 30 years were, and there's a looming danger that the 30 years after that are going to be notably worse. Those numbers you give, especially from pre-COVID, are a lot better than I would have guessed honestly. Only 90k were facing starvation in 2018? What’s that, like 0.001% of all people? You believe a different system can do even better than that but also with much fewer carbon emissions? 900k, not 90k. And that's ignoring the 350M people facing 'acute food insecurity', which is how they define being at risk of starvation (officially: "when a person's inability to consume adequate food puts their lives or livelihoods in immediate danger").
900k, which is ten times more than it was 5 years ago. Or 90k in 2018, as I said in my post.
Also 350M facing acute food insecurity or 150M pre-pandemic is still lower than I would have guessed for that one also.
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On February 06 2023 19:19 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2023 17:20 Mikau313 wrote:On February 06 2023 16:19 BlackJack wrote:On February 06 2023 13:29 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 05 2023 00:57 KlaCkoN wrote:
In my opinion any talk to about revolutionary diversion from the status quo need to recon with the fact that the status quo is - by all metrics - pretty effing amazing. Especially so-called progressives (who presumably are into progress) at least ought to recognize that we live in the best time period in all of history as measured by human flourishing. Not since Homo Sapiens first diverged from primates has life been so effing good.
War and violence is at it's lowest point ever, starvation is down, literacy is up etc etc etc.
Humanity blew past the UN 2000-2015 Millennium development goals.
120 years ago British imperialists enforced such starvation in India that human flesh was sold in markets.
80 years ago German imperialists systematically rounded up millions of European Jews in order to murder them.
60 years ago Chinese revolutionaries murdered millions of people for wearing effing glasses.
On the scale of last century the wars and violence of today barely registers.
And for those of you who dont care about poor people - it's not like progress only happens elsewhere either. If the COVID19 pandemic had struck 20 years ago there would have been no mRNA vaccines. Number of hours spent on house work (which people systematically refer to as their least favourite activity) has plummeted across the west. Leisure time is up. After thousands of years of violently enforced misogyny it's seen as natural for women to make money.
If you had to chose to be born again and the only decision available to you was a date between 10.000 years ago and today, but you didnt know where, you didn't know your skin colour, your parents socioeconomic status, or your sex, the logical choice would be to be born today. Today is the best effing day in the history of humanity.
And things keep getting better!! All the trend lines point towards progress continuing.
The fact that we can identify problems is is not a sign of things being irretrievably broken, rather the kinds of problems we are identifying is a sign of how great things are. It's not 'Oh no we have wide scale starvation, violence, or child mortality' rather it's '50 years from now many people will have to move away from where they are currently living due to to a changing climate. Oh and here is a number of things we can work on right now in order to make this situation in the future better'.
The universe doesnt owe us any of this. There were 1000s of years of combined history when the living situation for average Joe barely improved at all, in both hierarchical and non-hierarchical societies. Anyone advocating for a radical change in how society is organized should imo have a very very well thought through explanation of how their new society will let us keep having the progress of the past 300 years, while also resolving problems greater than the ones we have solved over the past 20 years. Otherwise I personally would much much rather keep rate of progress we have right now and nibble at the edges. Maybe higher wealth taxes, maybe publicly supported housing projects etc.. As I see it the opportunity loss if your radical future doesn't work out is ginormous.
While I'm sympathetic to this post in many ways (I'm very familiar with Hans Rosling, as I have no doubt you are too), you're underselling the climate crisis - and the impact it already has. It's not just 'in 50 years, many people will have to move away from where they are currently living', it's 'right now at this very moment, hunger/starvation are up, not down'. Not just due to climate, sure, but it's a contributing factor, and one that promises to be present to a higher degree even if the Russia/Ukraine war comes to an end (which is another way life isn't necessarily rosier than it was 10-20 years ago, anyway.) From the world food programme: A record 349 million people across 79 countries are facing acute food insecurity – up from 287 million in 2021. This constitutes a staggering rise of 200 million people compared to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. More than 900,000 people worldwide are fighting to survive in famine-like conditions. This is ten times more than five years ago, an alarmingly rapid increase. and The climate crisis is one of the leading causes of the steep rise in global hunger. Climate shocks destroy lives, crops and livelihoods, and undermine people’s ability to feed themselves. Hunger will spiral out of control if the world fails to take immediate climate action. This is, for many, the driving force behind their revolutionary mindset: The belief that while capitalism/liberalism has delivered increased living standards around the world (not just the west), that a consumerist economy is very comfortable, the way this has been achieved has been thoroughly unsustainable, and now, we must thus focus on achieving a more just distribution of goods rather than expecting that we can continue to produce more and more. Capitalism increases living standards through increasing the total output, not caring much about distribution, under the logic that it doesn't matter if differences increase as long as the bottom also experiences an improvement in absolute terms. I'm actually on board with that argument - except: The damage inflicted upon nature, the environment and the climate by our current level of consumption is widely agreed to be entirely unsustainable, and something that does call for radical change. I entirely agree that the current period (arguably, up to a few years ago) has been the best period ever to be alive. But I'm not at all sold on the idea that the next 30 years will be as good as the past 30 years were, and there's a looming danger that the 30 years after that are going to be notably worse. Those numbers you give, especially from pre-COVID, are a lot better than I would have guessed honestly. Only 90k were facing starvation in 2018? What’s that, like 0.001% of all people? You believe a different system can do even better than that but also with much fewer carbon emissions? 900k, not 90k. And that's ignoring the 350M people facing 'acute food insecurity', which is how they define being at risk of starvation (officially: "when a person's inability to consume adequate food puts their lives or livelihoods in immediate danger"). 900k, which is ten times more than it was 5 years ago. Or 90k in 2018, as I said in my post. Also 350M facing acute food insecurity or 150M pre-pandemic is still lower than I would have guessed for that one also.
I don't think there is much point in taking annual numbers for something as variable as "risk of starvation". You should probably look at moving 5-year averages. And given the weird wrench covid threw into worldwide supply lines, I am not sure you should take post-2020 changes as any indication of a trend either upward or downward, unless we expect pandemics to be a recurring trend as well...
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On February 06 2023 19:54 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2023 19:19 BlackJack wrote:On February 06 2023 17:20 Mikau313 wrote:On February 06 2023 16:19 BlackJack wrote:On February 06 2023 13:29 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 05 2023 00:57 KlaCkoN wrote:
In my opinion any talk to about revolutionary diversion from the status quo need to recon with the fact that the status quo is - by all metrics - pretty effing amazing. Especially so-called progressives (who presumably are into progress) at least ought to recognize that we live in the best time period in all of history as measured by human flourishing. Not since Homo Sapiens first diverged from primates has life been so effing good.
War and violence is at it's lowest point ever, starvation is down, literacy is up etc etc etc.
Humanity blew past the UN 2000-2015 Millennium development goals.
120 years ago British imperialists enforced such starvation in India that human flesh was sold in markets.
80 years ago German imperialists systematically rounded up millions of European Jews in order to murder them.
60 years ago Chinese revolutionaries murdered millions of people for wearing effing glasses.
On the scale of last century the wars and violence of today barely registers.
And for those of you who dont care about poor people - it's not like progress only happens elsewhere either. If the COVID19 pandemic had struck 20 years ago there would have been no mRNA vaccines. Number of hours spent on house work (which people systematically refer to as their least favourite activity) has plummeted across the west. Leisure time is up. After thousands of years of violently enforced misogyny it's seen as natural for women to make money.
If you had to chose to be born again and the only decision available to you was a date between 10.000 years ago and today, but you didnt know where, you didn't know your skin colour, your parents socioeconomic status, or your sex, the logical choice would be to be born today. Today is the best effing day in the history of humanity.
And things keep getting better!! All the trend lines point towards progress continuing.
The fact that we can identify problems is is not a sign of things being irretrievably broken, rather the kinds of problems we are identifying is a sign of how great things are. It's not 'Oh no we have wide scale starvation, violence, or child mortality' rather it's '50 years from now many people will have to move away from where they are currently living due to to a changing climate. Oh and here is a number of things we can work on right now in order to make this situation in the future better'.
The universe doesnt owe us any of this. There were 1000s of years of combined history when the living situation for average Joe barely improved at all, in both hierarchical and non-hierarchical societies. Anyone advocating for a radical change in how society is organized should imo have a very very well thought through explanation of how their new society will let us keep having the progress of the past 300 years, while also resolving problems greater than the ones we have solved over the past 20 years. Otherwise I personally would much much rather keep rate of progress we have right now and nibble at the edges. Maybe higher wealth taxes, maybe publicly supported housing projects etc.. As I see it the opportunity loss if your radical future doesn't work out is ginormous.
While I'm sympathetic to this post in many ways (I'm very familiar with Hans Rosling, as I have no doubt you are too), you're underselling the climate crisis - and the impact it already has. It's not just 'in 50 years, many people will have to move away from where they are currently living', it's 'right now at this very moment, hunger/starvation are up, not down'. Not just due to climate, sure, but it's a contributing factor, and one that promises to be present to a higher degree even if the Russia/Ukraine war comes to an end (which is another way life isn't necessarily rosier than it was 10-20 years ago, anyway.) From the world food programme: A record 349 million people across 79 countries are facing acute food insecurity – up from 287 million in 2021. This constitutes a staggering rise of 200 million people compared to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. More than 900,000 people worldwide are fighting to survive in famine-like conditions. This is ten times more than five years ago, an alarmingly rapid increase. and The climate crisis is one of the leading causes of the steep rise in global hunger. Climate shocks destroy lives, crops and livelihoods, and undermine people’s ability to feed themselves. Hunger will spiral out of control if the world fails to take immediate climate action. This is, for many, the driving force behind their revolutionary mindset: The belief that while capitalism/liberalism has delivered increased living standards around the world (not just the west), that a consumerist economy is very comfortable, the way this has been achieved has been thoroughly unsustainable, and now, we must thus focus on achieving a more just distribution of goods rather than expecting that we can continue to produce more and more. Capitalism increases living standards through increasing the total output, not caring much about distribution, under the logic that it doesn't matter if differences increase as long as the bottom also experiences an improvement in absolute terms. I'm actually on board with that argument - except: The damage inflicted upon nature, the environment and the climate by our current level of consumption is widely agreed to be entirely unsustainable, and something that does call for radical change. I entirely agree that the current period (arguably, up to a few years ago) has been the best period ever to be alive. But I'm not at all sold on the idea that the next 30 years will be as good as the past 30 years were, and there's a looming danger that the 30 years after that are going to be notably worse. Those numbers you give, especially from pre-COVID, are a lot better than I would have guessed honestly. Only 90k were facing starvation in 2018? What’s that, like 0.001% of all people? You believe a different system can do even better than that but also with much fewer carbon emissions? 900k, not 90k. And that's ignoring the 350M people facing 'acute food insecurity', which is how they define being at risk of starvation (officially: "when a person's inability to consume adequate food puts their lives or livelihoods in immediate danger"). 900k, which is ten times more than it was 5 years ago. Or 90k in 2018, as I said in my post. Also 350M facing acute food insecurity or 150M pre-pandemic is still lower than I would have guessed for that one also. I don't think there is much point in taking annual numbers for something as variable as "risk of starvation". You should probably look at moving 5-year averages. And given the weird wrench covid threw into worldwide supply lines, I am not sure you should take post-2020 changes as any indication of a trend either upward or downward, unless we expect pandemics to be a recurring trend as well...
I agree, I’m just using the numbers I had in front of me
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On February 06 2023 19:54 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2023 19:19 BlackJack wrote:On February 06 2023 17:20 Mikau313 wrote:On February 06 2023 16:19 BlackJack wrote:On February 06 2023 13:29 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 05 2023 00:57 KlaCkoN wrote:
In my opinion any talk to about revolutionary diversion from the status quo need to recon with the fact that the status quo is - by all metrics - pretty effing amazing. Especially so-called progressives (who presumably are into progress) at least ought to recognize that we live in the best time period in all of history as measured by human flourishing. Not since Homo Sapiens first diverged from primates has life been so effing good.
War and violence is at it's lowest point ever, starvation is down, literacy is up etc etc etc.
Humanity blew past the UN 2000-2015 Millennium development goals.
120 years ago British imperialists enforced such starvation in India that human flesh was sold in markets.
80 years ago German imperialists systematically rounded up millions of European Jews in order to murder them.
60 years ago Chinese revolutionaries murdered millions of people for wearing effing glasses.
On the scale of last century the wars and violence of today barely registers.
And for those of you who dont care about poor people - it's not like progress only happens elsewhere either. If the COVID19 pandemic had struck 20 years ago there would have been no mRNA vaccines. Number of hours spent on house work (which people systematically refer to as their least favourite activity) has plummeted across the west. Leisure time is up. After thousands of years of violently enforced misogyny it's seen as natural for women to make money.
If you had to chose to be born again and the only decision available to you was a date between 10.000 years ago and today, but you didnt know where, you didn't know your skin colour, your parents socioeconomic status, or your sex, the logical choice would be to be born today. Today is the best effing day in the history of humanity.
And things keep getting better!! All the trend lines point towards progress continuing.
The fact that we can identify problems is is not a sign of things being irretrievably broken, rather the kinds of problems we are identifying is a sign of how great things are. It's not 'Oh no we have wide scale starvation, violence, or child mortality' rather it's '50 years from now many people will have to move away from where they are currently living due to to a changing climate. Oh and here is a number of things we can work on right now in order to make this situation in the future better'.
The universe doesnt owe us any of this. There were 1000s of years of combined history when the living situation for average Joe barely improved at all, in both hierarchical and non-hierarchical societies. Anyone advocating for a radical change in how society is organized should imo have a very very well thought through explanation of how their new society will let us keep having the progress of the past 300 years, while also resolving problems greater than the ones we have solved over the past 20 years. Otherwise I personally would much much rather keep rate of progress we have right now and nibble at the edges. Maybe higher wealth taxes, maybe publicly supported housing projects etc.. As I see it the opportunity loss if your radical future doesn't work out is ginormous.
While I'm sympathetic to this post in many ways (I'm very familiar with Hans Rosling, as I have no doubt you are too), you're underselling the climate crisis - and the impact it already has. It's not just 'in 50 years, many people will have to move away from where they are currently living', it's 'right now at this very moment, hunger/starvation are up, not down'. Not just due to climate, sure, but it's a contributing factor, and one that promises to be present to a higher degree even if the Russia/Ukraine war comes to an end (which is another way life isn't necessarily rosier than it was 10-20 years ago, anyway.) From the world food programme: A record 349 million people across 79 countries are facing acute food insecurity – up from 287 million in 2021. This constitutes a staggering rise of 200 million people compared to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. More than 900,000 people worldwide are fighting to survive in famine-like conditions. This is ten times more than five years ago, an alarmingly rapid increase. and The climate crisis is one of the leading causes of the steep rise in global hunger. Climate shocks destroy lives, crops and livelihoods, and undermine people’s ability to feed themselves. Hunger will spiral out of control if the world fails to take immediate climate action. This is, for many, the driving force behind their revolutionary mindset: The belief that while capitalism/liberalism has delivered increased living standards around the world (not just the west), that a consumerist economy is very comfortable, the way this has been achieved has been thoroughly unsustainable, and now, we must thus focus on achieving a more just distribution of goods rather than expecting that we can continue to produce more and more. Capitalism increases living standards through increasing the total output, not caring much about distribution, under the logic that it doesn't matter if differences increase as long as the bottom also experiences an improvement in absolute terms. I'm actually on board with that argument - except: The damage inflicted upon nature, the environment and the climate by our current level of consumption is widely agreed to be entirely unsustainable, and something that does call for radical change. I entirely agree that the current period (arguably, up to a few years ago) has been the best period ever to be alive. But I'm not at all sold on the idea that the next 30 years will be as good as the past 30 years were, and there's a looming danger that the 30 years after that are going to be notably worse. Those numbers you give, especially from pre-COVID, are a lot better than I would have guessed honestly. Only 90k were facing starvation in 2018? What’s that, like 0.001% of all people? You believe a different system can do even better than that but also with much fewer carbon emissions? 900k, not 90k. And that's ignoring the 350M people facing 'acute food insecurity', which is how they define being at risk of starvation (officially: "when a person's inability to consume adequate food puts their lives or livelihoods in immediate danger"). 900k, which is ten times more than it was 5 years ago. Or 90k in 2018, as I said in my post. Also 350M facing acute food insecurity or 150M pre-pandemic is still lower than I would have guessed for that one also. I don't think there is much point in taking annual numbers for something as variable as "risk of starvation". You should probably look at moving 5-year averages. And given the weird wrench covid threw into worldwide supply lines, I am not sure you should take post-2020 changes as any indication of a trend either upward or downward, unless we expect pandemics to be a recurring trend as well...
As long as animal agriculture stays where it is and cities keep getting larger, we should probably expect it tbh.
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Then i'm happy to report that animal handling in general has gotten better and the human population will soon stop growing.
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On February 07 2023 00:50 Velr wrote:
Then i'm happy to report that animal handling in general has gotten better and the human population will soon stop growing.
Gonna need a fat citation on that whole statement there.
According to both the World Economic Forum and Our World in Data, meat consumption has increased steadily over recent years - even if their handling has got a lot better (which needs serious citation - especially given that there's just not usable space for that many animals without major cramming) that's still just more breading ground for pathogens and more points of human-livestock contact.
As for your second statement:
UN projects population to increase to ~10.5 billion around 2100.
Another 2.5 billion is a lot of people - especially given that useable, liveable land is also decreasing with climate change, that's a huge increase in population density to come.
And this growth is projected to only really stop around 2080. Maybe you consider that "soon", but given the pace of climate change effects and just how little time we've been at these kinds of large populations, I really don't think it is.
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On February 07 2023 02:04 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2023 00:50 Velr wrote:
Then i'm happy to report that animal handling in general has gotten better and the human population will soon stop growing. Gonna need a fat citation on that whole statement there. According to both the World Economic Forum and Our World in Data, meat consumption has increased steadily over recent years - even if their handling has got a lot better (which needs serious citation - especially given that there's just not usable space for that many animals without major cramming) that's still just more breading ground for pathogens and more points of human-livestock contact. As for your second statement: UN projects population to increase to ~10.5 billion around 2100. Another 2.5 billion is a lot of people - especially given that useable, liveable land is also decreasing with climate change, that's a huge increase in population density to come. And this growth is projected to only really stop around 2080. Maybe you consider that "soon", but given the pace of climate change effects and just how little time we've been at these kinds of large populations, I really don't think it is.
I mean, there's a reason most pandemics start in Africa and (a part of) Asia. It isn't really rocket science. We need to adopt stricter rules concerning animals, or those newly populous countries will just keep on spawning tons of diseases every year.
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On February 06 2023 13:29 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2023 00:57 KlaCkoN wrote:
In my opinion any talk to about revolutionary diversion from the status quo need to recon with the fact that the status quo is - by all metrics - pretty effing amazing. Especially so-called progressives (who presumably are into progress) at least ought to recognize that we live in the best time period in all of history as measured by human flourishing. Not since Homo Sapiens first diverged from primates has life been so effing good.
War and violence is at it's lowest point ever, starvation is down, literacy is up etc etc etc.
Humanity blew past the UN 2000-2015 Millennium development goals.
120 years ago British imperialists enforced such starvation in India that human flesh was sold in markets.
80 years ago German imperialists systematically rounded up millions of European Jews in order to murder them.
60 years ago Chinese revolutionaries murdered millions of people for wearing effing glasses.
On the scale of last century the wars and violence of today barely registers.
And for those of you who dont care about poor people - it's not like progress only happens elsewhere either. If the COVID19 pandemic had struck 20 years ago there would have been no mRNA vaccines. Number of hours spent on house work (which people systematically refer to as their least favourite activity) has plummeted across the west. Leisure time is up. After thousands of years of violently enforced misogyny it's seen as natural for women to make money.
If you had to chose to be born again and the only decision available to you was a date between 10.000 years ago and today, but you didnt know where, you didn't know your skin colour, your parents socioeconomic status, or your sex, the logical choice would be to be born today. Today is the best effing day in the history of humanity.
And things keep getting better!! All the trend lines point towards progress continuing.
The fact that we can identify problems is is not a sign of things being irretrievably broken, rather the kinds of problems we are identifying is a sign of how great things are. It's not 'Oh no we have wide scale starvation, violence, or child mortality' rather it's '50 years from now many people will have to move away from where they are currently living due to to a changing climate. Oh and here is a number of things we can work on right now in order to make this situation in the future better'.
The universe doesnt owe us any of this. There were 1000s of years of combined history when the living situation for average Joe barely improved at all, in both hierarchical and non-hierarchical societies. Anyone advocating for a radical change in how society is organized should imo have a very very well thought through explanation of how their new society will let us keep having the progress of the past 300 years, while also resolving problems greater than the ones we have solved over the past 20 years. Otherwise I personally would much much rather keep rate of progress we have right now and nibble at the edges. Maybe higher wealth taxes, maybe publicly supported housing projects etc.. As I see it the opportunity loss if your radical future doesn't work out is ginormous.
While I'm sympathetic to this post in many ways (I'm very familiar with Hans Rosling, as I have no doubt you are too), you're underselling the climate crisis - and the impact it already has. It's not just 'in 50 years, many people will have to move away from where they are currently living', it's 'right now at this very moment, hunger/starvation are up, not down'. Not just due to climate, sure, but it's a contributing factor, and one that promises to be present to a higher degree even if the Russia/Ukraine war comes to an end (which is another way life isn't necessarily rosier than it was 10-20 years ago, anyway.) From the world food programme: Show nested quote +A record 349 million people across 79 countries are facing acute food insecurity – up from 287 million in 2021. This constitutes a staggering rise of 200 million people compared to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. More than 900,000 people worldwide are fighting to survive in famine-like conditions. This is ten times more than five years ago, an alarmingly rapid increase. and Show nested quote +The climate crisis is one of the leading causes of the steep rise in global hunger. Climate shocks destroy lives, crops and livelihoods, and undermine people’s ability to feed themselves. Hunger will spiral out of control if the world fails to take immediate climate action. This is, for many, the driving force behind their revolutionary mindset: The belief that while capitalism/liberalism has delivered increased living standards around the world (not just the west), that a consumerist economy is very comfortable, the way this has been achieved has been thoroughly unsustainable, and now, we must thus focus on achieving a more just distribution of goods rather than expecting that we can continue to produce more and more. Capitalism increases living standards through increasing the total output, not caring much about distribution, under the logic that it doesn't matter if differences increase as long as the bottom also experiences an improvement in absolute terms. I'm actually on board with that argument - except: The damage inflicted upon nature, the environment and the climate by our current level of consumption is widely agreed to be entirely unsustainable, and something that does call for radical change. I entirely agree that the current period (arguably, up to a few years ago) has been the best period ever to be alive. But I'm not at all sold on the idea that the next 30 years will be as good as the past 30 years were, and there's a looming danger that the 30 years after that are going to be notably worse.
Also underselling the human devastation capitalism has left in its wake. Capitalism requires wars, genocides, stealing billions of acres of land, stealing trillions of $'s in resources, slavery, and plenty of other atrocities against humanity. Capitalism wasn't so great for the countless innocent people in its path that it has and continues to displace, maim, and murder.
What I think people really struggle to wrap their heads around is that it's not done with little care to the distribution, it's done with the expressed intent of concentrating wealth into fewer hands. Soul crushing poverty isn't a bug, it's an inseparable feature of capitalism.
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Capitalism doesn't "require" any of those things, neither in theory or practice. It can and has existed both with and without those things
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On February 07 2023 06:01 Sbrubbles wrote:
Capitalism doesn't "require" any of those things, neither in theory or practice. It can and has existed both with and without those things What, from your perspective, is an example of capitalism without those things?
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On February 07 2023 06:28 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2023 06:01 Sbrubbles wrote:
Capitalism doesn't "require" any of those things, neither in theory or practice. It can and has existed both with and without those things What, from your perspective, is an example of capitalism without those things?
Why do you ask for an example of capitalism without those things? I said capitalism doesn't require those things, not that capitalism can't coexist with those things.
Capitalism requires a social class that owns the means of production, is separate from the working class and uses their ownership of their capital within a profit maximizing framework to make more capital. Wars, genocide and slavery, depending on the historical circumstances were supported and used by subsections of capitalists, but that doesn't make them "required".
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On February 07 2023 07:07 Sbrubbles wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2023 06:28 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 07 2023 06:01 Sbrubbles wrote:
Capitalism doesn't "require" any of those things, neither in theory or practice. It can and has existed both with and without those things What, from your perspective, is an example of capitalism without those things? Why do you ask for an example of capitalism without those things?
That's simple. You literally said "It [capitalism] has existed both with and without those things" so I asked for an example of it without. It seems you acknowledge that you don't have such an example. That you think capitalism could exist without those things is significantly different than saying it has.
I said capitalism doesn't require those things, not that capitalism can't coexist with those things.
Capitalism requires a social class that owns the means of production, is separate from the working class and uses their ownership of their capital within a profit maximizing framework to make more capital. Wars, genocide and slavery, depending on the historical circumstances were supported and used by subsections of capitalists, but that doesn't make them "required".
I'm saying having "a social class that owns the means of production, [that] is separate from the working class and uses their ownership of their capital within a profit maximizing framework to make more capital." requires the wars, genocides, stealing billions of acres of land, stealing trillions of $'s in resources, slavery, wealth concentration induced poverty, worker exploitation/abuse, and plenty of other atrocities against humanity as evidenced by every capitalist society in the world requiring them.
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EPT
