|
CommieGIR posted:.....that was my point. In the face of climate change, power companies are still focused on short term profitable needs instead of urgent solutions and cutting out cheap energy solutions. Hey if we quit burning coal the CEO might only be able to afford a 12 bedroom house instead of a 14 bedroom one. THINK OF THE POOR CEOS! How can you expect an executive to survive without a car elevator?!?
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2015 13:28
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 6, 2024 12:11 |
|
|
That also depends on what you mean by "profitable." The problem with coal is that it's actually kind of expensive to clean it up. The issue is that it is not immediately expensive. The effects get felt later by people dealing with the pollution or paying to clean it up. It's cheap to burn coal if you ignore the other costs related. It does serious environmental damage that can gently caress up the profitability of other things.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2015 03:21
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:Yeah, that is the biggest issue: Its cheap RIGHT NOW, but its a mess in reality. It's incredibly difficult to explain that to people, though. "Those people down stream" don't exist. The corn industry is just another example; it's loving up the fishing industry in the Gulf of Mexico by washing nitrates down the river, but who cares? We need that loving corn. Power generation is the same. All the lead and mercury end up in the food supply but gently caress it. Drill, baby, drill! Burn everything!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2015 04:16
|
|
|
computer parts posted:Usually inertia. That and a handful of rich guys deciding they really, really like the coal profits they're getting and spend money making sure the coal money faucet stays on.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2015 06:45
|
|
|
Trabisnikof posted:What does that have anything to do with the fact that an invisible gas leak or a coal ash spill that's only directly affecting one (usually very poor) community doesn't make great news? Pollution and accidents caused by fossil fuels are so common they aren't newsworthy. Nuclear meltdowns are so rare they're extremely newsworthy. Think about the comparison between car crashes and plane crashes. Planes don't crash very often so every time they do it ends up on the news. Car crashes only end up on the news if they're exceptionally bad and even then it's pretty brief. But if a plane crashes nobody shuts the gently caress up about it. Same thing here; if a nuclear plant has problems it's all over the news for a long time but if there's another problem relating to a coal plant there's probably like a dozen of those already happening so nobody cares.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 26, 2015 10:02
|
|
|
TROIKA CURES GREEK posted:It's actually very difficult to switch over a workforce that big and completely reform an economy. What other industry are they going to move on to in coal country, exactly? What are their skills transferable to? Sorry, but this isn't civ 5- you don't just flip a switch and all your coal miners become nuclear engineers; in the real world you actually have to think a little bit. It also doesn't help that some of the regions coal mining is popular in are poverty-stricken hell holes desperate for anything at all that creates jobs. West Virginia comes to mind; the place is completely in the shitter economically so when coal says "hey let us wreck your state and we'll bring jobs" they say "OK." Now you have a bunch of people reliant on the coal industry that would like it very much if you didn't take their jobs away, thank you.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 26, 2015 22:30
|
|
|
BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:Up until now every post supported my primary point. With respect to coal miners, gently caress that job, I don't care. We shouldn't be concerned about that, we should have social welfare programs that allow anyone in a dead industry to transition into a productive and useful job, rather than propping up industries that are fundamentally detrimental to progress. I would hope that the US has enough compassion to allow support for labor, but failing that, it is better for the coal industry to die than to protect that subset of laborers, much like I don't shed tears for the military contractors who go out of business if we aren't in perpetual war. That would be communism. Take that poo poo to Russia. Oh wait you can't because communism failed there. The obvious answer is to keep on drilling.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 26, 2015 22:43
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:Its kind of difficult, since most of the towns are buried in niche communities that made their entire living off of the mine, and maybe some small mom and pop shops. Its not the first time this has happened, the Appalachia is covered in small, dead towns that dried up as soon as the coal mines left or the railroad stopped coming by. I'm from the heart of Oil Country and let me tell you this is pretty much spot on. The refineries, the wells, and the businesses all left and took the money with them. Some people were just too stubborn to leave; others were retired and just wanted to live quietly where they were until they died. Others couldn't afford to leave. Some managed to cling to some job or another but once the big oil corporations picked up and left the area was hosed. This is a common story of the Rust Belt. Look at a place like Pittsburgh. The steel industry left and the city was very harshly dicked over in the process. The response to the working class asking "well what are we going to do?" was "who cares? That's your problem not mine." The county I'm originally from ended up with desperate people doing desperate things. Seemed I couldn't go a week without hearing "so and so got picked up for drug dealing/running." Sometimes it was "again." And what could they do, really? There aren't a lot of jobs. Those that do exist pay complete garbage and the companies that are hiring will exploit the hell out of you because they can. Forcing people to work off the clock, paying minimum wage with no benefits and no raises ever, union busting...all that crap. But what can you do? You got kids to feed, yo and if you get fired you don't get unemployment. Oh and it's an at will employment state by the way so that means they can fire you for any drat reason they please.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2015 20:02
|
|
|
achillesforever6 posted:Yeah Pittsburgh was hosed once the mills closed in the 70s and it took until the 90s for the city to reinvent itself by going into the medical,high tech, and educational industries. And it still isn't doing all that well. But then the rest of the state is completely and utterly in the shitter so Pittsburgh doing better than "loving awful" says a lot. Funny thing is governor Corbett was all like "Imma get voters some jobs, voters like jobs" and ended up with one of the absolute worst recovery rates after the financial meltdown in the nation. He basically did some favors for Shell which got a few jobs but not all that many. Really he seemed to want to buddy up close to the oil industry which is currently loving hated in the state. Fracking isn't all that popular either but it's all over and here to stay, apparently. In any case he was all "fossil fuels, gently caress yeah!" while blaming the unemployed for being unemployed and cutting their benefits. All told Pennsylvania is about all you need to look at to get an idea of how awful the fossil fuel industry is. They'll suck everything dry then leave and be all like "welp, gotta go, good luck not starving to death" to the people that actually did the work. Now the state is dealing with the leftovers. Read about what coal mining does some time. Acid mine drainage is a massive problem in a lot of areas. You end up with streams that are literally orange and entirely devoid of life because so much acid runs into them. But hey man, jobs!!!!! The really interesting thing about Corbett is that he's the first governor in the history of the state to fail at getting reelected.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2015 21:17
|
|
|
Freakazoid_ posted:I would say Monsanto and GMOs are inseparable at this point. I know GMOs could be used for good, but they're currently being used for bad and we need to address that first, even if it means hampering GMOs for a while. That's the biggest problem, really; Monsanto is an evil, awful company. There's no arguing that but when you mention GMOs they're what everybody automatically thinks of. It's also a ridiculous argument to say "all GMOs are bad" because humans have been genetically modifying things since we figured out selective breeding. Sure, genetic modification could be used in nasty ways or to make new weapons but really that's true of like...everything. "This can be weaponized" is a poor reason to ban something entirely. Should we test stuff, make sure it's safe, and put some regulations in place to prevent awful things from happening? Sure. But ending GMOs entirely? That's just dumb.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 1, 2016 15:37
|
|
|
Evil_Greven posted:The thing is that we could replace a lot of modern conveniences with alternative ones that work just as well - or better. You can actually build houses that maintain good internal temperatures with loving dirt.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 1, 2016 18:37
|
|
|
parcs posted:If you look back far enough it is pretty obvious that more food = more babies. One of the biggest reasons that we're seeing fewer children is because birth control exists now. Humans love to gently caress and want to do it even if there isn't enough food to feed all the babies. The other thing is that the reproductive strategy of humans has been changing. In the past it was "hump a lot, poo poo out a dozen babies, hope a few of them survive." Now the strategy is increasingly "have fewer babies, give them good medical care, invest in their future, set them up to succeed." Humans are also not morons and understand we're overpopulating ourselves. There's a lot to it but it isn't that the standard of living is declining. If you go purely on food Americans should be having the most children as our caloric availability is the highest in the world. But we aren't. Our birth rate is actually kind of low. In fact a lot of the Western world, despite being quite wealthy and prosperous, is actually below the rate of replacement.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2016 17:23
|
|
|
Salt Fish posted:I am categorically NOT against GMO technologies but people asked what the issues were with them and I think that the supporters of GMOs should just say "yes those are issues but they're worth it" instead of putting themselves in the insane position of arguing that GMOs don't reduce crop diversity. The thing I always like to point out is that genetic modification is just another tool in humanity's box. You can murder somebody with a hammer but that doesn't mean hammers are inherently bad and should never have been invented. There's bad applications of genetic modification and there are good ones.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2016 05:18
|
|
|
Radbot posted:I gotta disagree here. I just replaced my 15 year old car with a new economy car - it's loving awesome. Please don't tell me that not having to wait by the side of the road for AAA doesn't bring me happiness. I think you completely missed the car point. A major issue is people replacing massive, inefficient vehicles very frequently; every few years or sometimes even every year. That and people owning more cars than people living in the household. Why do 3 people need 6 cars? They loving don't. Besides replacing a 15 year old car with a new, economic model actually makes sense. You're now using less fuel. Good for you. The issue is the short-term feely goodies from getting a new model. They don't last. You got that too when you bought a new car guaranteed but your lifestyle improved because you traded an old, worn out thing that did, in fact, need replaced with one that was newer and in better condition. The car industry keeps telling people to buy buy BUY BUY BUY!!!! Inefficiency doesn't matter THERE IS PROFIT TO MAKE!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2016 15:09
|
|
|
tmfool posted:So, obviously this is *not good* but I'm a bit simple and need a little clarification on all of this. I thought hitting the 2C mark was something we all figured we'd be blowing past in the coming decades, not...now? Does this mean we're all staring down the barrel of hopelessness in the next 10-20 years or something? And if so, how does one not feel suicidal? Yeah as far as global warming goes we're basically already far beyond the "welp, we're hosed" point. As for not suicidal well, I just remind myself that we still might gently caress off to space soon.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2016 02:58
|
|
|
drilldo squirt posted:Yeah, but how do you kill and prepare them? With a hammer and fire. Duh.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2016 19:28
|
|
|
Overflight posted:OK, so can someone please provide or point out to me a proper list of the kind of stuff that WOULD be necessary? I know answers might vary but I think it would put the minds of people like me at ease. My nightmare scenario, like I said, is one akin to Interstellar where everyone is pressured into becoming farmers and even technology and progress is a dirty word. One where everyone is forced to work 12 hours a day growing their own food until their backs give out and the rest of the community puts you down for being useless. One of the biggest issues is that capitalism, at its fundamental level, demands exponential growth, increased consumption across the board, and more more more MORE MORE MORE loving MORE nonstop. In capitalism "enough" does not exist. That right there is the fundamental problem. When climate people are talking about "cutting back" we're talking about ending that attitude. We all do not need to aspire to live in a huge house. How much living space does a single human need? Not all that much, all told. A place to sleep, a place to keep some possessions, a place to store and prepare food, a place to poo poo. You can do pretty well with a couple of rooms. Apartments are fine and you can share them. A typical two-bedroom apartment can easily, comfortably house two or three people but capitalism is demanding that you aspire to live in as big of a place as possible whether you need it or not. You get crap like people owning three houses but only living in one of them while not renting the other two. You get people living alone in 50 room mansions. That is wasteful but our capitalistic society says you should endeavor to acquire that. If you can afford to waste that much you have won so it's time to show it off. But you haven't won because there is somebody else that can afford to waste more. So you must get more just so you can waste it. People do not need to eat meat every meal but Americans typically do. Sausage for breakfast, a cheeseburger for lunch, a chicken for dinner. Meat is expensive, inefficient, and wasteful. It is, however, more profitable so capitalism tells us to eat as much meat as possible. Same with cars; buy a huge, impressive car. Buy a Big Metallic Wang, inefficiency be damned. Show it off, you've earned it. If you haven't earned it you are subhuman filth. Get back to work, pleb. Meanwhile much of the world does not have access to these things. Part of the problem is that a lot of the world looks at how Americans live and says "I want that, too." Americans overall are unwilling to cut back but it's basically impossible for the rest of the world to live the same way. The American Dream was always a pipe dream anyway; everybody gets a big house and a huge lawn? Impossible, now. Never was possible. Not enough living space, the roads all clog up with cars, the suburbs sprawl into the land used to produce food. Inefficient. Wasteful. Unsustainable. It is, however, profitable. Convincing everybody to aspire for that life makes people money. Developers get to build houses. The automobile industry gets to poo poo money into its owners' bank accounts. Real estate speculators and banks get to make money on the transactions. Fossil fuel companies get to post record profits every year. More houses, more cars, more gas, more profit, more more more more more, now now now now now now. The CEO wants a boat to keep his boats on. He wants a bigger, fancier private jet so he can rub its phallic shape in the face of lesser CEOs with smaller jets. He wants another supermodel to gently caress but she just can't live without a $17 million house and fifteen assistants. The senator he just bought wants to go hunt a rhino to hang a new trophy on his wall before they go extinct. The president of the college he sends his children to heard that the other schools are getting big statues and he wants one too. It isn't a list of specific things that are necessary it's ending this cycle of greed. It's convincing people that living with a roommate or two isn't shameful. It's convincing people that you don't need to have a big house in the suburbs to be happy. It's convincing people that mass transit isn't so bad. More importantly, it's important to convince people that sometimes you don't need more. There is a such thing as "enough" and when you have that it's time to stop consuming for its own sake. Unfortunately there are strong social pressures telling you that you must have more. Advertising is partly to blame. If you didn't buy your wife a new car on Valentine's Day then you're a lovely husband. The diamond ring you bought to ask her to marry you wasn't big enough. Better get another one for the wedding. Vacations are awesome, you should take more of them so you can impress your coworkers with all the cool places you've been. If you don't buy enough toothpaste your breath will stink and nobody will gently caress you. I don't care how comfortable those shoes are they're a year old and that makes them disgraceful. How can you possibly feel safe in that tiny hybrid? Lucky for you we made our SUVs even bigger this year. Your yard is dark at night so bad guys can hide in it. Buy this overpriced security system and a poo poo load of lights so you can keep it lit up like day time all the time and feel safe. If you don't buy a more expensive suit every year people will think you're broke so come buy a dozen new suits to show off how awesome and wealthy you are. But often these are little more than status symbols. Stupid, petty bullshit we buy to impress the neighbors. Then we buy it on credit. We max out credit cards so we have to work more hours to pay it all off and all so other people won't judge us for being poor.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2016 20:17
|
|
|
Potato Salad posted:With respect to economic growth and sustainable lifestyles, is there space in the discussion for universal population control? It's actually kind of difficult to do that without violating any civil rights. It's something that gets discussed every now and again and you have nations like China implementing various types of population controls but it gets into questionable territory. Some people have a religious belief that you must have as many children as possible and we kind of like religious freedom. The other side is that it turns out that might not even be necessary. Better access to education and a high standard of living actually leads to people having less children. Some developed nations are actually below the replacement rate; Japan in particular is aging something fierce and people are actually starting to wonder if they should be encouraging more loving and babies instead of discouraging it.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2016 13:15
|
|
|
Potato Salad posted:Pro nuke here: I don't see how we can continue to expand our nuclear program without an operational long-term repository a la Yucca Mountain. The big problem there is the rampant NIMBYism loving up pretty much everything. The current power infrastructure skates by because it's already there but, well, not only are people resistant to change but none of the power sources proposed to replace fossil fuels are perfect. Really a lot of the issues with that sort of thing is people just sticking their heads in the sand and deciding that if they can't see the problem it doesn't exist. In the case of nuclear, well, it's like planes. Plane crashes are rare enough to make the news. The fact that they don't happen every day means they get attention but do you hear about the gently caress tons of car crashes that happen every day? Nah, that isn't news. When a coal plant belches tons of lead and mercury into the atmosphere it isn't news. poo poo happens all day every day. Whatever, no big deal. Ignoring that it's a huge loving deal and is part of why the oceans are such a mess. Nuclear plant melts down? That doesn't even happen every YEAR. Even when it does happen the chances of having another Chernobyl ever are pretty slim but that's what everybody thinks about. "What if we have another Chernobyl?!?" Then you get into people rattling their sabers and vomiting fear whenever some country that doesn't have nuclear power wants to set up a few plants because we'd like to have modern society too, thanks, and nuclear anything just gets a bad name. Then you get people that won't the gently caress up about nuclear waste as if fossil fuel doesn't produce waste at all. Kind of rambly but I think that points at a few things people were asking here. Yes, it is a very good option to set up more nuclear plants because the just get continually better and safer. If you have a big rear end repository for all the waste somewhere you can store it in a way that is >99% safe but all people can think about is Chernobyl.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2016 22:44
|
|
|
The most important thing there is that it increases the raw area that you can use for farming. One very important question we have is what to do with our land, which is a limited resource. This rock is only so big and only so much of it can be used to grow food. This is why there's push for urban farms; less travel time for produce means less energy expenditure to feed the cities. More importantly cities are paved. That land can't be used to grow food. So if you can grow food on top of or under buildings then you've both increased land area and reduced the need to move poo poo. This also has the benefit of reducing the amount of traffic into and around the city. I figure that sort of thing is expensive now but will get cheaper in the future.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2016 19:35
|
|
|
Nice piece of fish posted:Yeah, that's 90 000 gallons of CO2 not going into the atmosphere. Also, it's ugly, unpopular and terrible PR for oil companies. It sucks for the local wildlife, but it's not necessarily bad for the rest of the world. The Gulf of Mexico is already have serious environmental problems. It really, really doesn't need another one.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2016 22:48
|
|
|
You know, that chart is the funniest damned thing I've seen in a loooooooong time. "Climate-related deaths went down! Must be that climate change doesn't exist." Or, you know, medical care and emergency services are significantly better than they were 70 years ago. Nah, I'm sure that's unrelated.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2016 23:01
|
|
|
Hey if people falling victim to desertification of previously habitable areas wanted better lives they'd have chosen to not be born in those areas. Obviously they should just work harder so they can afford to move or pay for college so they can emigrate. What's that you say? It's currently almost impossible to immigrate to the U.S? Those areas of the world don't even have universal high school education let alone accessible colleges? Well that isn't my problem. They should just work harder to fix their own nations and not expect help from us. Hey where did all of these desperate bands of guerrillas come from?
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2016 03:59
|
|
|
Tree Bucket posted:I'd like to know more about this, and not just because my part of the world's seen record heat, coral bleaching, bushfires in places that aren't supposed to get bushfires, etc. Would people just... move away for the worst of summer and one year never come back? And anyone want to guess what happens when it's too hot for the Hajj? It's a bit slower than that and, in the case of the Middle East, already happening. Part of the problems Syria is having stemmed from the fact that a poo poo load of people have been seeing dwindling harvests for several years now. The farmers had zero choice but leaving their home lands simply because they could no longer grow food there. It's getting continually worse and it's spreading. This is why there's a refugee crisis but also why this right wing "gently caress everybody but us" attitude that has been growing in the western world just plain isn't helping. Climate refugees with nowhere else to go are falling in with some rather unsavory groups out of sheer desperation. Which is also why it's sickening to hear people say "well let's just arm them, send them home, and tell them to fix their own drat homes." They can't because those homes have become parched, barren hellscapes.
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2016 04:57
|
|
|
phasmid posted:I imagine this point has already been made but: didn't the US Gov help fund all manner of infrastructure that was mainly put in the hands of private companies? From energy to transportation to communications, ever since we built railroads, private groups have sought aid from the government because it has powers they do not and they, in turn, promise that they'll use their new trains/planes/mining operations/telephone lines for public benefit. Isn't that pretty much the long and short of it? The U.S. government has also been funding the research that's been making advancing the modern world possible. It also turns out that the increasing hatred of public funding for science from the right has been making American progress stagnate. We're actually behind the rest of the developed world in a lot of ways and are progressing rapidly toward looking more like a third world nation. Pretty much every major innovation or leap forward by the private sector has been because the government dangled a huge bag of money in front of them and said "hey if you do X this is yours." Granted that technique is very effective; "hello Company Inc, we have a public project we want done and you can accomplish it. We'll give you a huge bag of money that you can just keep if you pull it off." The other side is, of course, that a ton of private companies just kept the money and did gently caress all because there was no punishment for doing so. In other cases the government had to pass laws to force companies to do things. Telecom was the worst for that; the only reason rural areas ever got phones was because the government showed up and said "you'll connect everybody or else." ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 13:33 on May 18, 2016 |
|
#
¿
May 18, 2016 13:31
|
|
|
VectorSigma posted:Would the world financial markets even be able to handle the writing-off of all those oil, gas and coal revenues that will suddenly vanish from the books? This is assuming the mandated total changeover to renewables, let's say in a fantasy world where humanity actually wakes up. A pretty significant chunk of all money in circulation is borrowed against unburned fossil fuels that, if utilized, will most certainly doom our civilization. That's one hell of a catch-22. The entire world economy is not financially dependent on oil. Some of it is but all of it? No. The other side of it is that nobody that knows anything about investment throws everything they have on one huge bet. Well, nobody competent anyway...even so portfolios are diversified and I figure financially smart people are looking at the writing on the wall and working on shifting away from oil for a ton of reasons. So really, yes, if they want to move away from oil they will. Granted some are going to stick to oil forever anyway. Those people will lose.
|
|
#
¿
May 19, 2016 17:58
|
|
|
Mozi posted:You don't need to predict the outcome of chaos to know that it's bad news. That's really the big difference between your bog standard doomsday prophet and climate science. The doomsday prophet will typically pick a specific day. Climate science is saying "yeah uh we're going to have some problems. Not sure when, not sure how big, but bad poo poo is coming." They aren't focusing on what will happen but rather on what can't happen. At this point what they're saying is "we can't keep doing things the way we're doing them now in the long term." The thing that can't happen is global temperatures staying where they were and that is exactly the problem. They aren't entirely sure how bad things will get beyond "poo poo's gonna get worse." How worse? Nobody can say for certain; too much is in the air right now.
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2016 23:09
|
|
|
Grouchio posted:No no no, not that. The doomsayers coming of the Mayan apocalypse horseshit cycled through my mind 24/7 for 4 weeks straight because 1) It's what my brain does and 2) I didn't know if such a nonsensical, improbable apocalypse could occur on 12/21 because for whatever reason I'd be forced to think it might happen anyways. And then when that passed I still couldn't stop thinking that the moment I relaxed (for sleep or during normal times) I would die - for about 5 months after that. It's still probably worth seeking some therapy over so you don't do that again if you haven't already. Therapy isn't just for axe crazy people, you know.
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2016 09:37
|
|
|
Trabisnikof posted:Climate Change is too important and too timely to wait for global economic revolution. We have to use our existing capitalistic systems to adapt and mitigate. And we can, as that hegemony is just as threatened by Climate Change as anything. One of the big problems is that there are some very wealthy and powerful people who would become less wealthy and powerful if the changes were made. For better or for worse there are also a poo poo load of people thinking "meh whatever, I'll be OK so I don't care." It can be very hard to get somebody over here to care about millions of people starving due to crop failures over there.
|
|
#
¿
May 27, 2016 23:31
|
|
|
Triglav posted:Capitalism promotes sharing through arbitrage. It is in an individuals best interest to move goods from a place with surplus to another in famine. Market socialism can accomplish that too, but without there being an incentive for participants to exploit inefficiencies, there will be efficiency. Capitalism is a symptom rather than a disease; one of the biggest issues is that a huge chunk of western culture contains "the person with more wealth is better than you by default." We've created an economic system, a social system, and a political system that encourages getting as much for yourself as possible, at any cost, no matter who you have to gently caress over. This is why we have billionaires saying they can only really be happy if they have twice or even thrice the billions they already have and why the financial sector has been getting up to the fuckery it has been getting up to. Capitalism is also based on scarcity; we're approaching post-scarcity on some things and it's causing problems. Western capitalism, as it exists right now, is loving broken. It's also progressing away from capitalism and more toward oligarchy. The super rich own a thoroughly obscene amount of the wealth and are saying "hey this isn't enough, give us more." What they're advocating isn't capitalism at all; it's oligarchy on the level of the 19th century. They want slavery and indentured servitude back. They want to call in the militia again to force people back to work for starvation wages at the factory. The only thing that matters to western capitalism is stock prices this week, profit this quarter, and the CEO making more money. That's it. The entire system is based on funneling more money into the pockets of a tiny number of people and lol gently caress everybody else. This isn't free market capitalism at all and it's going to be disastrous in many, many ways. We're seeing it in both global warming and social unrest. An absolute gently caress load of people world wide are feeling the crunch in many, many ways and the powder keg is going to explode. If nothing is done poo poo is going to get very, very messy before we know it. You think the Syrian refuge crisis was bad? That's pennies on the dollar compared to some of the problems up and coming.
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2016 20:29
|
|
|
khwarezm posted:And? The point remains, a pure Capitalist system wouldn't have much incentive to do anything for those workers so long as they have nothing to offer, hence why places like West Virginia had to latch onto and defend dangerous polluting industries for so long, the only way out is for retraining and incentives for other industries to set up in the region to come from somewhere and nine times out of ten that will have to be from the government. West Virginia, the Coal Belt, and the Rust Belt are also prime indicators of how badly capital fucks up the political system too. Parts of this region of the world are so heavily economically dependent on coal mining that you have oodles of people who will vote against whoever says "coal is bad" and for whoever says "I'll keep your coal jobs." This is a major, major part of why coal is hard to get rid of.
|
|
#
¿
May 29, 2016 03:10
|
|
|
Triglav posted:How can you say that? Do you believe people are powerless to demand change? What history has shown is that sometimes change mustn't just be demanded it must be forced into being at gunpoint. Hence bringing up the Gilded Age. People fought and loving died for your right to take five minutes out to poo poo at work. A lot of the labor protections that people take for granted now were literally bought with blood. Capitalism in the west is trying to take them away and workers are rightly loving pissed, especially with western capitalism's response to climate change. It won't affect the rich much but the rest of us are absolutely hosed. It might already be too late to change and that's another part of the problem. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 07:27 on May 29, 2016 |
|
#
¿
May 29, 2016 07:24
|
|
|
Triglav posted:The threat of murder seems like demand to me, albeit one more emotional than the typical market irrationalities of hope and fear. But I must admit I can't relate to getting so worked up over a job that I'd murder my employer. Maybe that's what I'm missing, a bloodlust for murder? Maybe then I'd be down for a good kulak killing? Arguably it'd be best for capital to treat slaves well so they're happy and productive. Look how that turned out. Oh wait, slaves were treated so brutally they had a nasty habit of violent rebellion or escape at every possibility. Once again people have fought and died (and continue to given that slavery still exists in the world) to end slavery. And, once again, some very rich people resisted it tooth and nail simply because the end of slavery meant they might make less money. Oh, the horror. Then the Gilded Age happened and it was the same thing; capital was paying in fake money, brutally exploiting the labor, and often having help from the militia when strikes happened. The same thing happened again; capitalists didn't want to pay workers in real money and quite liked being able to wring people for every shred of productivity they could in 80 hours a week at the mill while exploiting them brutally. They just loved the fact that you could start working people to death before they had two digits in their age and cared little for the health of their workers. When one dies of black lung at 19 you just hire another gently caress it who cares humans are basically cockroaches anyway. Same thing there; workers had a tendency to become violent and unruly but rather than pay more the rich just kept loving them hard as they could until they were forced to actually pay people. Capital has a tendency to actively resist change rather than embrace it. They also don't give a drat what the long-term consequences are if there is money to be made now. Capital must be drug kicking and screaming into the future. Only in this case they have to be drug kicking and screaming into not destroying the future. Seriously, read up on the industrial revolution and quit being so dense. Some of the things you said were used in defense of literal loving slavery. Well hey we'd just love to pay the workers more than starvation wages but wouldn't you know it, the price of Congressmen went up this year. Better luck next time.
|
|
#
¿
May 29, 2016 09:20
|
|
|
Triglav posted:Okay. We all agree: Capitalism is good. No. No we don't agree. You're trying to say that capitalism is completely and totally good and has no bad sides. We're pointing out that completely unregulated capitalism is a disaster. A hybrid economy is, in fact, what actually functions best.
|
|
#
¿
May 30, 2016 04:16
|
|
|
Wanderer posted:If nothing else, this article did answer a question I've had for a bit: why the hell are so many renewable/carbon-neutral energy solutions test-driving themselves in rural India, of all places? That's actually one of the big advantages of easy to set up, simple, and cheap renewable things. Doesn't matter how remote the area is you just need to get the thing there once. No shipping fuel; just set up the solar panels and hey look, electricity! Radical.
|
|
#
¿
May 30, 2016 19:42
|
|
|
Media has also been deviating pretty far from actually telling people what the gently caress is going on and just obsesses over ratings. That and all the people that want to sell you something get their hands in the media too. A scientist notices that people who eat X thing have a 5% lower risk of Y cancer. Somebody in marketing reads that study and says "what's that? X cures cancer!?! Let's put X in all our food!!!" Then there are SUPER SPECIAL MEDIA REPORT SUPER FOOD DISCOVERED THAT CURES CANCER!!!!! Then the scientist is just like "uuuhhhh guys that's not what I meant at all" and the media crucifies him for being a liar. "You said it cured cancer!!!" Well no, all he said was that according to the data he gathered people who eat X thing have a very slightly lower risk of Y cancer. Didn't say why, didn't verify it yet, just "hey I think this chunk of information is something we should pay a bit more attention to."
|
|
#
¿
May 31, 2016 12:13
|
|
|
I think that's ultimately the biggest problem with American business right now; you have these MBA graduates that only see people as numbers and want to maximize the amount of profit you can get out of that number regardless of the harm it causes. All that matters is this quarter and my bonus right loving now. So many people in management just plain don't understand the value of a motivated employee who will bust their hump 40 hours a week and do whatever it takes to get the job done because they know the company has their back. Instead they're looking for any excuse to send anybody that's been there longer than a year to the curb because gently caress it we can replace them with somebody cheaper. Then instead of asking their employees what they want, why they hate their jobs, and what they could do to make the workplace suck they just send out memos to the effect of "you should choose to like working here! We're a community! We're a family, take care of your family!" Meanwhile the employees realize that the company treats them like disposable tools to be thrown away. Yes things like living wages, pensions, and benefits cost money. However, not having those things costs loyalty. What is being taught is "you must make as much profit as possible regardless of who it hurts." Somebody that's been at a company 30 years knows the ins and outs of how it works and has a deep, intimate knowledge of the place. That's incredibly valuable but the business world is openly hostile to letting that happen these days. They want that guy but they won't invest in creating him. Everything is about short term gains. It doesn't matter that we're wrecking the environment and making everybody hate us, stocks are up this month! gently caress yeah!
|
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2016 07:41
|
|
|
Shooting Blanks posted:Are we 100% sure carbon is the primary cause? I have a vague memory of some studies pointing to methane as being a primary cause, even before carbon. Methane isn't helping though carbon causes more Methane to be released which just makes poo poo even worse. Overall carbon is the biggest climate problem. Humans putting gently caress tons of carbon in the air is the central cause of like all of it. Then we're also venting methane from gas getting. We just gotta burn that fuel.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2016 18:21
|
|
|
Overflight posted:Again, how am I supposed to live my life with this knowledge? I refuse to raise a family, any and all career goals seem useless to me since society as we know it might not even survive the next 20 years, let alone 100, and most people and family treat me like an annoyance at best. Is the mere act of existing and not being dead supposed to give me some intrinsic joy? Because I don't get it and getting medicated for it doesn't seem like a good prospect because I am afraid of becoming too optimistic and then making choices like raising a family that then will be stuck in this hell and die painfully cursing my name. Hope for the best. Plan for the worst. Decide what matters to you in life and try not to be wasteful. Try to accomplish whatever is important to you and at least try to be conscious about how your actions affect the environment. Reduce, reuse, recycle. You can go surprisingly far on that alone.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2016 23:20
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 6, 2024 12:11 |
|
|
Potato Salad posted:I thoroughly enjoy the time given me to shitpost Was about to say that. It bring me great joy when I grab a cup of coffee, sit on my patio, and poo poo post for a bit when I get home from work.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2016 18:29
|
|
