Thread: Environmentalism and Socialism Board: Purgatory / Ship of Fools.


To visit this thread, use this URL:
http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=020109
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
OK, I have started reading Naomi Klein and "This Changes Everything". This was one book that (just from the introduction) prompted my "Do we deserve to survive" thread, a question which she actually asks early on.

I am sure there will be more threads on this, as I continue. It is a heavy book, but very good - 460 pages of small font, makes it a massive and challenging read, which is why I wanted to raise one point early.

She raises the point that environmental concerns - saving the earth - is fundamentally socialist (more specifically, anti-capitalist). What is more, and interestingly, most of the climate change deniers are well aware of this, and have to reject accusations of climate change, otherwise their fundamental beliefs in the capitalist dream will collapse. The deniers - possibly even more than the environmentalists - know that the only way to save the planet is to dismantle the capitalist model.

Now I actually arrived at environmentalist and socialism distinctly, but I do see that they are connected, and they both come from my faith position.

But this is, to me, an interesting insight. Not that they are both right, but that they are fundamentally connected. The only chance we have to save our planet is to break the current world economic model, something that is extremely difficult, not least because all of the money is in opposition to this.

With the rise of the right across the world - something that may well be related to the increasing climate problems - it seems that we are lost. The trade agreements across the world are fundamentally anti-environmental, and they are more powerful than world governments, because they allow multi-national corporations to sue governments.

So do we need a socialist revolution? Is that the only way to save the world?
 
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 
I'm not sure that socialism and anti-capitalism are the same thing.

An obvious comment is that the countries of the former Eastern Bloc had an atrocious environmental record. And while it is unfair to judge socialism by the Warsaw Pact, the justification for the environmental destruction was that the triumph of the proletariat needed a prosperous society, and a prosperous society needed heavy industry. You can't all have a Trabant and a flat in a Plattenbau without factories making Trabants and concrete.

Round here we have a perpetual battle with the Labour mayor wanting to sell off or develop green spaces. His justification is that the money is needed to provide vital services to poor people, and the protesters are largely from the middle classes who don't need to depend on council services.
 
Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's Cat
So do we need a socialist revolution? Is that the only way to save the world?
A socialist revolution would not necessarily solve the problem. I have a book called Ecocide, which details what happened to the environment in the Soviet Union during the years that the communists were in power. (Most of the sources cited in this book are official Soviet government reports.)

Here are two examples of the kind of problems the book discusses.

The government decided to grow cotton in the region south of the Aral Sea. At first the crop yields were excellent, but cotton depletes the soil very quickly. The farmers were instructed to use more and more fertilizer and irrigate more. Here is the testimony of someone who saw the deterioration of the Aral Sea at first hand.
quote:
*On the Aral's southern shores, just north of Turkmenistan, said Tulepbergen Kaipbergenov, "our earth no longer smells like soil, but like chemicals." In the waters of the Amu Darya "the level of chemical residues washed back from irrigated lands is so high that the fish die," and "incomplete data" show that "two our of every three people examined in public health dispensaries are ill--mainly with typhoid, cancer, of the esophagus and hepatitis....Worst of all, most of the sick are children" and some "doctors recommend against breast-feeding because the mothers' milk is toxic.[p.73]
In the highly industrialized cities such as Magnetigorsk and Novolipetsk the rate of stillbirths and serious congenital defects was horrendous.

The problem is not who runs things but whether people who are opposed can make their objections heard, and, if reasonable, acted upon.

The farmers and fishermen near the Aral Sea protested bitterly, but the authorities in Moscow, who never went near the area, were sure their decisions were right.

The problem was that all the power was concentrated in one place. ISTM the structure of socialism lends itself to this kind of concentration.

Moo

Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly, jr: Ecocide in the USSR 1992 Basic Books
 
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:

The problem was that all the power was concentrated in one place. ISTM the structure of socialism lends itself to this kind of concentration.
Not really. There is no reason why socialism has to involve centralisation any more than capitalism. There are centralised capitalist states (the UK is a clear example) and de-centralised ones (like the US), and it's not clear that there is a close link between the centralisation and environmental degradation. The main issue seems to be the level of democratic accountability and the quality of public discourse. Both were severely lacking in the Soviet Union, and are the major left criticism of it.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Quote Ricardus:
quote:
His justification is that the money is needed to provide vital services to poor people, and the protesters are largely from the middle classes who don't need to depend on council services.
Well, well, well,just like the arguments in Lambeth about library closures, almost word for word. Apart from the tweeted cat pictures showing absolute contempt for protestors of all ages, colours and classes. I wouldn't call them socialists at all, not in any way. They call themselves Progress. I believe it may have been Puddleglum who said progress could be seen in an egg - going bad.
 
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :
 
Not only have socialist states a very bad record on the environment. All the evidence leads to the inescapable conclusion that socialist revolutions do not save the world - neither in any secular nor in the Christian sense.

And in the latter sense, if the world could have been saved that way, Jesus would have seized power in Jerusalem and set up his regime with the 12 disciples as his cabinet. After all that is what the mother of the sons of Zebedee tried to get him to do.

This is an inconvenient point and one that all those who over the centuries have tried to rebuild society or to construe the gospel as a political message have ignored.
 
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :
 
Really? I think the anti-slavery movement and the civil rights movement very much, and with some accuracy, found a political message in the Gospel.
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
I am very much of the watermelon variety - green on the outside, red on the inside, so the idea that environmentalism and socialism go hand in hand has a great deal of resonance for me.

Where, I think, some Shippies are having problems in reconciling the two are because 20th century socialist revolutions were very much Marxist Materialist in their concept and execution. And it's materialism, both neo-liberal capitalism and Marxism, that is the enemy of environmentalism - the environment is on an ever-tightening death spiral in an economy dominated by materialism.

Obviously, a socialist economy is better than a neo-liberal one, because the benefits are more widely distributed, but if non-renewable resources are being consumed at a faster rate, all we're doing is choosing which hand-cart to go to Hell in.

The modern socialism which I want isn't based on consumption, but on freedom from consumption. An economic system that isn't reliant on buying crap (which pretty much sums up most of the western world, which consumes the lion's share of planetary resources) will be radically different to the one we have now.

Assuming we haven't managed to immanentise our eschaton and entered a post-scarcity society (which will, almost inevitably, be not just socialist but communist), then environmental resources will need to be shepherded carefully, for the use of the many, not the few. Private ownership of land, as we currently understand it, will have to cease, and industries (including agriculture) will to be allowed to pollute only to the extent that the environment can absorb the impact.

With the increase in the world's population slowing, and likely to go into reverse, and huge advances in renewable energy creation and automation, things could swing either way, to catastrophism or utopia. Continued materialism of whichever stripe will consign us to the former. Environmentalism is pretty much the only game in town for the latter.
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
I think cooperatives and cooperation are far closer to environmentalism than socialism, because the former is interested in long term improvement whereas socialism very often is interested in short-term chaos for longer term political goals. Environmental chaos can and is used for socialist ends, such as in South America. I thinj there is a subtle but important difference.
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I think cooperatives and cooperation are far closer to environmentalism than socialism, because the former is interested in long term improvement whereas socialism very often is interested in short-term chaos for longer term political goals.
If you would explain yourself further, I might be able produce a coherent argument against. As it stands, all I can say is 'I disagree'.

AFAIC, socialism is pretty much all about long term political goals - terms far longer than my own, or anyone's, life.
 
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
The criticisms of socialism are really criticisms of one-party states and totalitarian governments. What you criticise isn't socialism. Socialism is about levelling societies re opportunity, income, sharing resources.

Captilism could be environmental if it was regulated properly.

Example: Embodied costs. Which is an economic idea that factors in the true and total costs of human activities. Such as the cost of oil to a consumer has to factor in the cost to the environment and oil well clean up post production. Thus, you pay for the production costs + the carbon + water + air. Maybe add in the costs of wars and compensation for killing of people too. If this was done, oil might be so costly, we would immediately turn to other things.

As for cooperatives, yes they do operate culturally differently. Community pastures, retail groceries, credit unions etc abound here. But we are still very hard on the environment. Coops exist for the benefit of members. Even gov't own companies (Crown Corporations) despoil. Our power utility, a Crown, burns coal for 70% of its production. We all own it as provincial residents.
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
If you would explain yourself further, I might be able produce a coherent argument against. As it stands, all I can say is 'I disagree'.

AFAIC, socialism is pretty much all about long term political goals - terms far longer than my own, or anyone's, life.
Take for example Venezuela. By most estimations that is a Socialist, rather than a Marxost, country.

Petroleum is highly subsidised for various reasons. And the end result is environmental damage.

It is hard to know how a cooperative society could operate, because there has never been a potent political forced based on the ideals of Robert Owen, but it is a bit unlikely that it would allow short term benefits of a petrol subsidy to come ahead of massive long term pollution.

[ 11. March 2017, 14:53: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]
 
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Really? I think the anti-slavery movement and the civil rights movement very much, and with some accuracy, found a political message in the Gospel.
Anti-slavery and civil rights campaigners do not, as a rule, claim to have saved the world. They have a goal. They are motivated to go for it. They then do or don't achieve it.
quote:
Originally posted by DocTor
... a post-scarcity society (which will, almost inevitably, be not just socialist but communist) ...
What is your basis for saying that? Pre-abundance societies were neither. Almost without exception they were made up of a small clique of belligerent aristocrats who lived by fighting each other for resources and exploiting pauper peons.

The same applies to extra-abundance societies today.
quote:
Originally posted by No prophet is set so ...
The criticisms of socialism are really criticisms of one-party states and totalitarian governments. What you criticise isn't socialism. Socialism is about levelling societies re opportunity, income, sharing resources.
For most of us who don't believe in socialism, it is because we lack the starry-eyed idealism to believe in the face of the all the evidence of the last 100 years that you can have the one without the other. So far every attempt at any so-called 'true' socialism has got stuck in the dictatorship of the proletariat phase.

Dictators, whether of the socialist, capitalist, fascist, militarist or whatever variety, don't give up their power once they've got it.
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Anti-slavery and civil rights campaigners do not, as a rule, claim to have saved the world. They have a goal. They are motivated to go for it. They then do or don't achieve it.
That's a very odd statement, Enoch. For socialism, the objective is a fairer world where the majority share in profits made from their labour rather than a minority.

For the anti-slavery movement the objective was to prevent a wealthy class abusing a powerless class. For the American civil rights movement, the objective was to empower people of one skin colour to stop people of another skin colour abusing them.

There is clearly a very significant overlap there, and it is pretty clear to anyone who has ever been in a shitty job, who is a woman or is from a skin-colour minority that these overlapping movements have made their lives better.

So, yes, very clearly socialism and these other movements are claiming to have made, and continue making, the world better.


quote:
Originally posted by No prophet is set so ...
The criticisms of socialism are really criticisms of one-party states and totalitarian governments. What you criticise isn't socialism. Socialism is about levelling societies re opportunity, income, sharing resources.
For most of us who don't believe in socialism, it is because we lack the starry-eyed idealism to believe in the face of the all the evidence of the last 100 years that you can have the one without the other. So far every attempt at any so-called 'true' socialism has got stuck in the dictatorship of the proletariat phase. [/quote]

I think you may need to distinguish between socialism and Marxism.

A poor working person who is not a socialist is, moreorless, a contradiction in terms and is in fact working against their own interests.

The solution is not less socialism, but more socialism. And for me, the most radical, most extreme version of socialism is the one where it merges into Co-operation - and becomes as much about sharing in practical solutions as in a political platform.

quote:
Dictators, whether of the socialist, capitalist, fascist, militarist or whatever variety, don't give up their power once they've got it.
That's true, but that's saying that we need to build socialist and co-operative societies which arseholes are not able to subvert rather than that socialist and co-operative societies are somehow not a goal to want.
 
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
I would accept that it is less socialism per se, more anti-(materialistic-capitalism). This doesn't mean Marxist, because Marxism is focussed on one group of participants within the capitalist system.

It is about a political system that is prepared to live without the growth so fundamental to capitalism. Prepared to use the resources available for all, so all can have what they need, and the structure of the society is self-sustaining.

The communist countries were not particularly good in environmental terms, because their focus was on providing for all (but mainly those in charge). It is the problem I have always had with basic left-right wing politics, in that they tend to be focussed on different parts of a broken system. Whereas the point that Klein makes is that it is capitalism itself that needs to die.

The communist leaders all claiming "yields are up! Production is growing!" are claiming capitalist aims for a communist government. Where growth and profit are the driving forces, we are doomed.

An interesting example is the green capitalism - where we are encouraged to buy new things, more things, to make sure we are green and environmentally friendly. Buying a new, more efficient car, out of green motives, is wrong, because the environmental cost of making the car is huge, and it promotes and supports a growth system. Sometimes, it is better - even if more expensive - to keep an older car.
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:

An interesting example is the green capitalism - where we are encouraged to buy new things, more things, to make sure we are green and environmentally friendly. Buying a new, more efficient car, out of green motives, is wrong, because the environmental cost of making the car is huge, and it promotes and supports a growth system. Sometimes, it is better - even if more expensive - to keep an older car.
Lifecycle analyses are complex, but I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that it is better to keep an older car, period.

It is clearly true that a huge amount of wasted materials are produced from new cars. But a massive part of the impact of a car is from running it - so having a more efficient newer car may well be better than an older, much less efficient, car.

The thing we should be looking for, I think, is more modular concepts, where we repair older components of old cars with newer/better components without needing to completely change the whole car. Most of the time that's hard to do because the car hasn't been specifically designed to (for example) easily have an engine replaced.
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Take for example Venezuela. By most estimations that is a Socialist, rather than a Marxost, country.

Petroleum is highly subsidised for various reasons. And the end result is environmental damage.
Yes, because the model is still materialist. Petroleum is, by definition, a non-renewable resource that when burnt releases a large amount of pollutants.

There was long term planning in Chavez' initial programme, and certainly nationalising the oil industry was part of that, in order to keep Venezuelan wealth under Venezuelan control. The problem was that becoming overly reliant on a single resource to pay day-to-day expenses can only ever end one way. (The UK can also have a finger pointed at it for the way it pissed its billions in oil revenue up the wall. Compare that with Norway, who now have a sovereign wealth fund worth a cool $1trillion.)

Long term planning environmental planning would have foreseen the volatile oil price, the conversion to non-fossil fuels and the necessity to make sustainable investments across the whole country to wean the country off of oil money.

It is, of course, extraordinarily difficult to do this on a country-by-country basis - pollution and people respect no borders.
 
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:

Where, I think, some Shippies are having problems in reconciling the two are because 20th century socialist revolutions were very much Marxist Materialist in their concept and execution.
If that's addressed to me, what I was trying to say wasn't that socialism and environmentalism are incompatible but that they are orthogonal - that is, it is possible to take socialist premises and end up destroying the environment, but of course, as you say, it is possible to end up at the opposite conclusion as well. I accept I didn't say it very well though.
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
I have no idea now who I was talking to... [Biased]

But yes, I concur. Socialism can be environmentally destructive.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that Capitalism can't not be. The concept of calculating environmental cost and adding to the price of a service or product isn't really capitalism. It's a massive market intervention based on socialist principles, acknowledging that the product isn't solely a private peer-to-peer transaction, but something that affects us all and in which we all have an interest.
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Petroleum is, by definition, a non-renewable resource that when burnt releases a large amount of pollutants.
I think socialism is, almost by definition, materialistic. It is certainly a challenge to the economic orthdoxy that says "wealth creators" who skim a majority of the profits from the labour of the masses are needed by a society - and yet the focus on pay and political rights of workers too often becomes a battle over who is paid what.

A society that isn't interested in materialism is the one which is unconcerned about the physical things but which seeks to meet the needs of the current and future generations; and for me that can only be a co-operative rather than a socialist society.

I think the history of labour in South-wales valleys illustrates this quite well. Since the 1840s to the 1980s, the story was about the exploitation of poor working people - who organised themselves and fought for better conditions. Socialism meant something - it meant something to miners, to their wives and to their communities.

But alongside that from quite early one was a fairly strong notion of Co-operation. Whilst the NUM might call out the miners to strike against exploitation, Co-operatives worked to ensure that families could buy things outwith of the normal exploitation from factory shops seen elsewhere. It was the mutuals who helped miners and others buy homes so that they were not forced to live in company houses.

Socialism organised people and gave them something to fight for - self-worth, freedom, better lives. But it was the (often Methodist/Non-conformist inspired) co-operatives who gave them a vision of a future that they wanted to live in. One where children were educated, one where health needs were met out of a shared insurance pot, one where shared purchasing gave shared cost savings, one where the long term gain of all was prioritised over the possible gains from this strike or that protest.

Socialism without mutualism slips into short term gains without long term planning.

quote:
There was long term planning in Chavez' initial programme, and certainly nationalising the oil industry was part of that, in order to keep Venezuelan wealth under Venezuelan control. The problem was that becoming overly reliant on a single resource to pay day-to-day expenses can only ever end one way. (The UK can also have a finger pointed at it for the way it pissed its billions in oil revenue up the wall. Compare that with Norway, who now have a sovereign wealth fund worth a cool $1trillion.)
Well yes, although there is a pretty major difference between supporting Venezuelan oil and in subsidising it so heavily that it became cheaper to buy than water. Once the population became so reliant on very cheap oil, it was very hard to change even though the environmental impacts became increasingly obvious.

I believe a mutual, co-operative society would carefully balance the benefits of a subsidy against the environmental costs and would be very unlikely to choose to do something which would mean that the society would find it hard to function into the future.

So, for example, if the UK had been a mutual, co-operative society when North Sea oil was discovered rather than a capitalist one then the best use of a limited resource would have been to invest it in producing longer term energy. To put it in simple terms to burn oil to produce solar panels.

Norway's sovereign wealth fund looks better than the British only because the results are being measured in a materialistic way. OK, yes, Scandinavia has generally produced "socialist" societies which spent a lot on social security - but it has done that by investing oil revenues in high yielding investments and is now sitting on a huge pile of cash. The British history of spending the (far lower) monies raised from North Sea oil on infrastructure rather than investing it like Norway was not wrong, the problem was that it was spent too often on the wrong things. And then when the Tories got their hands on it, it was easy to subvert it further to gain profits for their dirty little plutocratic chums.


quote:
Long term planning environmental planning would have foreseen the volatile oil price, the conversion to non-fossil fuels and the necessity to make sustainable investments across the whole country to wean the country off of oil money.

It is, of course, extraordinarily difficult to do this on a country-by-country basis - pollution and people respect no borders.
I think if one imagines that (a) there is no value in cash in-and-of-itself and (b) that we're here for life rather than just for the weekend, we might begin to invest in things that actually matter rather than things that really don't and we might begin to see beyond the idea that all value can be measured in £ and p.
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
I'd also say that anyone who thinks that Norway's North Sea oil wealth has led to a fair, socialist society hasn't tried living there. The problems are different to the UK's, but they are still loom large.
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
I think you're making a category error trying to separate socialism from mutualism. The two are so thoroughly intertwined that even now we have Co-operative Party MPs who sit under the Labour whip.

The cooperative movement was, and is, an expression of socialism.
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I think you're making a category error trying to separate socialism from mutualism. The two are so thoroughly intertwined that even now we have Co-operative Party MPs who sit under the Labour whip.
Please assume that I know that. Thanks.

quote:
The cooperative movement was, and is, an expression of socialism.
I disagree. Mutualism is the ultimate form of socialism which the majority of socialists never seem to grasp.

It is not so much "an expression" as the pure, highest form of socialism.

[ 11. March 2017, 17:19: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
The cooperative movement was, and is, an expression of socialism.
I disagree. Mutualism is the ultimate form of socialism which the majority of socialists never seem to grasp.

It is not so much "an expression" as the pure, highest form of socialism.
You brought up the co-op movement in the Welsh valleys. I - accurately I think - stated that that co-op movement was an expression of the burgeoning socialist awakening.

And no, I don't see mutualism as the pure, highest form of socialism. Mutualism serves socialism.
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
You brought up the co-op movement in the Welsh valleys. I - accurately I think - stated that that co-op movement was an expression of the burgeoning socialist awakening.

And no, I don't see mutualism as the pure, highest form of socialism. Mutualism serves socialism.
You ask for a more developed argument, I attempt to supply one and you not only insult my intelligence but also respond in a way that suggests you have no idea what you are talking about.

Excuse me if I refuse to contribute further.
 
Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
There was long term planning in Chavez' initial programme, and certainly nationalising the oil industry was part of that, in order to keep Venezuelan wealth under Venezuelan control. The problem was that becoming overly reliant on a single resource to pay day-to-day expenses can only ever end one way.
Another problem was that the people at the top skimmed off a great deal of money for themselves. Hugo Chavez's daughter is the wealthiest person in Venezuela.

Moo
 
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
In the province of Saskatchewan, after the Depression and the Dust Bowl, the decision was made that we wouldn't have outside people and big corps profit from our resources. So insurance (auto, home, commercial), health care, telephones, electricity, water, natural gas, bus transportation, all came under a socialist banner as provincially owned with profits to fund the commonwealth. We also forced the sale of potash mines to the Crown and some other resource extraction. Later cellular telephone network and internet, cable TV. The socialist premier Tommy Douglas headed the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) started it off, it became a social democratic political party, the NDP. Social democracy is where socialism is now. Moderate, pragmatic, restraint of profiteering. "The Co-op" is the largest grocer in the province.

Our experience suggest that a balanced social approach works much better than private. Conservatives get elected in boom times in Sask, they have repeated what the Conservatives did the last time. Spent all the money and created a huge deficit. Mostly by low taxation on resources and encouraging their fat cat friends.

I think the opposition to socialism usually comes from those who never had it. And they put up a false version to oppose. Socialism is associated with small business here as the largest employment sector.

But business is business, and still doesn't focus on the environment, without being forced.
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
There was long term planning in Chavez' initial programme, and certainly nationalising the oil industry was part of that, in order to keep Venezuelan wealth under Venezuelan control. The problem was that becoming overly reliant on a single resource to pay day-to-day expenses can only ever end one way.
Another problem was that the people at the top skimmed off a great deal of money for themselves. Hugo Chavez's daughter is the wealthiest person in Venezuela.
Well, quite. But there was an awful lot of money around, most of which did end up in social programs. Even if they were, in the end, doomed, because they supported an unsustainable economic system.
 
Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :
 
Just get rid of the limited liability of corporations. It was a reform instituted to allow for the conglomeration of capital to exploit economic opportunities at home and in the colonies. The need for the conglomeration of capital has now past. So, everyone involved in a particular economic activity, from the Chairman of the Board to the superannuant can now be sued and all their personal assets are available to satisfy a judgement debt.

Any activity that might require a large reserve of capital is carried out by the Government, stepping in where private capital is too gutless to do the job.

There is still a place for Private Enterprise of course. It can run dress shops and take-away pizzas, insured by the Government Insurance Office.
 
Posted by wabale (# 18715) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:


So do we need a socialist revolution? Is that the only way to save the world?
My annual shot of history talks took the form last week of a seminar on the subject of ‘Revolutionaries and Revolutions’, with three academics giving talks. It was mainly about what happened in Russia in 1917. The most poignant illustration we heard was the comment of a diarist, Alexander Berkman, reflecting on Trotsky's military operation on the Kronstadt sailors in March 1921. He commented that Trotsky and other leaders celebrated the anniversary of the Paris Commune of March 1871 by shelling and then slaughtering 'sailors and workers'.

The point was made, not least by a Labour Party historian who contributed to the seminar, that people generally don't distinguish between communism and socialism, even more so now as politics generally has moved to the Right - so that poor Mr Corbyn is widely perceived as a Trotskyist. This does seem to be the fate of 'socialist revolutions' – both the Paris Commune and the Kronstadt sailors actually had very mild demands.

In other words too many people fear socialist revolution for it to be a uniting philosophy or movement, which is presumably what we are looking for to save the world.

Some of us may have come to both socialism and environmentalism and see them as complementary. But puzzling to those of us who think that way, some conservatives are environmentally-minded too. One thing is for sure – we do need green policies if we are to halt global warming before temperatures reach catastrophic levels. Climate change has already had the effect of promoting new political parties which focus on 'dealing with' the consequences climate change. So rather than looking to Red as our rallying flag would it not make much more sense to focus on Green policies, whatever our political leanings may be? Morever, now christians are beginning to find more connections between their faith and environmental issues, shouldn't christians be influencing public opinion on this, and in the right direction for a change?
 
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
I do agree that company directors should be held responsible for company losses especially where there is negligence involved.

One thing that Klein points out is that the reason the west has been able to meet our emissions targets is because we have put our dirty industry to poorer countries. And the targets do not include the environmental cost of shipping. So another approach is to tax everything based on its environmental impact. Scrap VAT and suchlike, charge based on total environmental cost.

Of nothing else, this would mean production locally would be cheaper. However, that is still pandering to the capitalist mindset.

the real answer, Klein argues, is to break the capitalist dogma of growth. Which means actively targetting those who get rich from other peoples misery. It means closing the tax havens, where so much of our money is stashed away. It means rejecting the profit motive.

Which, of course, is why the deniers are so scared. They are wealthy because of the capitalist system, and want to see that continue.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Not only have socialist states a very bad record on the environment. All the evidence leads to the inescapable conclusion that socialist revolutions do not save the world - neither in any secular nor in the Christian sense.

And in the latter sense, if the world could have been saved that way, Jesus would have seized power in Jerusalem and set up his regime with the 12 disciples as his cabinet. After all that is what the mother of the sons of Zebedee tried to get him to do.

This is an inconvenient point and one that all those who over the centuries have tried to rebuild society or to construe the gospel as a political message have ignored.
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Really? I think the anti-slavery movement and the civil rights movement very much, and with some accuracy, found a political message in the Gospel.
Further, Ceasar certainly seemed to interpret "Jesus is Lord" as a highly political statement.

It wasn't that Jesus was not political. It's that his conception of power was quite a bit different than what the brother's mom thought-- or many others at that time-- and now.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I have no idea now who I was talking to... [Biased]

But yes, I concur. Socialism can be environmentally destructive.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that Capitalism can't not be. The concept of calculating environmental cost and adding to the price of a service or product isn't really capitalism. It's a massive market intervention based on socialist principles, acknowledging that the product isn't solely a private peer-to-peer transaction, but something that affects us all and in which we all have an interest.
Similarly, related to capitalism is simply our heavy dose of Western (particularly American) individualism. Making sacrifices for the sake of the environment is never beneficial to me
individually. My small sacrifice is but a drop in the bucket of the larger social impact-- so it costs me a lot personally but has little impact on my overall quality of life. Environmentalism only makes sense for us as a community. Where we make sacrifices together and reap the benefits together.
 
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I do agree that company directors should be held responsible for company losses especially where there is negligence involved.
Quite what do you mean by "responsible" and then "negligence" please? Both are fairly loose terms that are bandied round. And responsible to whom? If you're using that in a criminal sense, the answer to that's easy, but not if you're talking of civilly liable.
 
Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
There was long term planning in Chavez' initial programme, and certainly nationalising the oil industry was part of that, in order to keep Venezuelan wealth under Venezuelan control. The problem was that becoming overly reliant on a single resource to pay day-to-day expenses can only ever end one way.
Another problem was that the people at the top skimmed off a great deal of money for themselves. Hugo Chavez's daughter is the wealthiest person in Venezuela.
Well, quite. But there was an awful lot of money around, most of which did end up in social programs. Even if they were, in the end, doomed, because they supported an unsustainable economic system.
The problem is that there is now an acute shortage of items needed by the population. Babies are dying because hospitals can't afford to replace their worn-out incubators. Other patients are dying for lack of necessary medicines. There are serious food shortages.

Chavez's daughter should be forced to cough up some of that money.

Moo
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
The modern socialism which I want isn't based on consumption, but on freedom from consumption. An economic system that isn't reliant on buying crap (which pretty much sums up most of the western world, which consumes the lion's share of planetary resources) will be radically different to the one we have now.
I can't help but wonder what life would actually be like in the sort of environmentalist/socialist society you advocate. Without industry or the profit motive, what would we do all day? How would we be provided for? Which of the luxuries that currently make life worth living would remain, and which would be deemed "crap"?

Would transport that's fast enough to get more than a few dozen miles in a day still be possible if pollutants were banned, or would we be back to the days of horse-drawn carriages and sailing ships? Without factories, power stations and intensive farming methods (all of which are hideous for the environment) would we even be able to support such a high population?

I've read plenty about what wouldn't happen in the environmento-socialist paradise, but I'd like to hear about what would happen on a day-to-day basis.
 
Posted by betjemaniac (# 17618) on :
 
For my money Edward Bellamy had the best go at articulating that - he did do it in 1888 though so it's a little out of date. Looking Backward: 2000-1887.
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
]I can't help but wonder what life would actually be like in the sort of environmentalist/socialist society you advocate.
It would be like Star Trek and it would be fucking awesome. [Big Grin]
 
Posted by deano (# 12063) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
The modern socialism which I want isn't based on consumption, but on freedom from consumption. An economic system that isn't reliant on buying crap (which pretty much sums up most of the western world, which consumes the lion's share of planetary resources) will be radically different to the one we have now.
I can't help but wonder what life would actually be like in the sort of environmentalist/socialist society you advocate. Without industry or the profit motive, what would we do all day? How would we be provided for? Which of the luxuries that currently make life worth living would remain, and which would be deemed "crap"?

Would transport that's fast enough to get more than a few dozen miles in a day still be possible if pollutants were banned, or would we be back to the days of horse-drawn carriages and sailing ships? Without factories, power stations and intensive farming methods (all of which are hideous for the environment) would we even be able to support such a high population?

I've read plenty about what wouldn't happen in the environmento-socialist paradise, but I'd like to hear about what would happen on a day-to-day basis.
The two questions that communists (socialists, Marxists, Maoist etc) need to answer are...

1) Who gets the job of cleaning the public toilets in this utopia we are all waiting for?

2) In the wonderful planned economy who decides on the distribution of games consoles? This is important because if the communists annoy the gamers by taking the position that such things won't be produced as they are trivial, then they will have lost 80%+ of their potential vote. Kiddies like gaming and communism so they need to be reasured that communism doesn't treat their pleasures as trivial. But if they can have their trivia then I get to keep my trivia - a nice camo humvee.

Or are we talking about not having a vote but having a genuine revolution with guns and hangings from lamposts? Because if we are then bring it on. Me, I love the military-industrial complex and I would grass up the local subversives to it without losing any sleep.

Also, we have all the guns, tanks and ground attack aircraft. This socialist revolution seems like a good way of thinning the heard.

So between the gamers and the tanks, I'm pretty sure any socialist revolution would last about half as long as the Turkish one of last year, and with about the same result; nothing changes except the lifespan of the revlutionaries.

The OP has put up a nice strawman - that environmentalists and socialists have to be the same, no conservative can be concerned about the environment - and quite a few have agreed with it and become quite excited about doing all sorts of revolutionary things, but I just wanted to explore the endpoint of actually trying them out in the real world.
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
1) Who gets the job of cleaning the public toilets in this utopia we are all waiting for
You do. Get your marigolds on.
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
The two questions that communists (socialists, Marxists, Maoist etc) need to answer are...

1) Who gets the job of cleaning the public toilets in this utopia we are all waiting for?
We have some examples of a "socialist utopia" in worker co-operatives. And the answer to who is responsible for cleaning the toilets is "everyone".

Unlike in a capitalist system where the most important jobs (like cleaning the toilets, nursing, etc) are the least valued, in a worker co-operative the roles are shared and valued.

quote:

2) In the wonderful planned economy who decides on the distribution of games consoles? This is important because if the communists annoy the gamers by taking the position that such things won't be produced as they are trivial, then they will have lost 80%+ of their potential vote. Kiddies like gaming and communism so they need to be reasured that communism doesn't treat their pleasures as trivial. But if they can have their trivia then I get to keep my trivia - a nice camo humvee.
I am not sure things are as bland in a socialist utopia as you are suggesting. The point is not that pleasures are trivial so unwanted, but that they should not be enjoyed by a minority at the expense of everyone else.

I don't think it is beyond the imagination to have shared video games available to everyone.

quote:
Or are we talking about not having a vote but having a genuine revolution with guns and hangings from lamposts? Because if we are then bring it on. Me, I love the military-industrial complex and I would grass up the local subversives to it without losing any sleep.
Yeah, it figures.

quote:
Also, we have all the guns, tanks and ground attack aircraft. This socialist revolution seems like a good way of thinning the heard.
Nice.

quote:
So between the gamers and the tanks, I'm pretty sure any socialist revolution would last about half as long as the Turkish one of last year, and with about the same result; nothing changes except the lifespan of the revlutionaries.
OK, yeah, whatever.

quote:
The OP has put up a nice strawman - that environmentalists and socialists have to be the same, no conservative can be concerned about the environment - and quite a few have agreed with it and become quite excited about doing all sorts of revolutionary things, but I just wanted to explore the endpoint of actually trying them out in the real world.
I have yet to see anything in what you've said ever that suggests the conservatism you espouse has any care whatsoever for the environment.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I can't help but wonder what life would actually be like in the sort of environmentalist/socialist society you advocate.
It would be like Star Trek and it would be fucking awesome. [Big Grin]
Riiiiiight.

I'm sure you're not being serious, because obviously. I'm also assuming you mean TNG-era Star Trek, because the TOS-era has plenty of references to free markets and the profit motive. And we neither have nor are likely to have the replicators or faster-than-light transportation that would be necessary to sustain such a society, so that's one more reason to take you less than seriously.

But maybe you refer to the society/societal attitudes that are shown in Star Trek. In which case there are still numerous problems that arise:


I don't think Star Trek would be a fucking awesome place to live at all.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
We have some examples of a "socialist utopia" in worker co-operatives. And the answer to who is responsible for cleaning the toilets is "everyone".
I don't want to. Hell, I don't even clean my own toilet - I pay someone else to do it for me.

Just one more reason for me to oppose your so-called "socialist utopia".
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I don't think Star Trek would be a fucking awesome place to live at all.
I didn't think you'd think that Star Trek would be a fucking awesome place to live, and I was right. You appear to base your self-worth on the accumulation of crap and being able to consider yourself better than other people, so I imagine life in the United Federation of Planets would be terrible for you, and people like you. But as you say, there's always the Ferengi.

However, I wasn't seeking your endorsement or approval. I did manage to answer all your questions from this post, but rather than acknowledging that, you immediately Gish-galloped onto another set of questions/problems rather than acknowledge that a socialist-environmental future didn't need to be something resembling Wyndham's _The Chrysalids_.

I don't think you're debating in any more good faith than deano is.
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I don't want to. Hell, I don't even clean my own toilet - I pay someone else to do it for me.

Just one more reason for me to oppose your so-called "socialist utopia".
Well there is obviously a pretty big difference between "taking responsibility for" and "valuing" people doing different roles on the one hand and "having to do things you don't want to do" on the other.

I think in a utopian socialist society it is not so much that people are assigned roles which they cannot deviate from - as much that there is much more equality and value placed on a much wider variety of roles.

I don't want to be a surgeon, and rightly in a our society that role has a lot of respect. I don't want to clean toilets either, and yet there is very little value put on that role in our society.

I don't know how much you pay your toilet cleaner, but I suspect it is probably less than the amount you'd pay a car mechanic, which is less than the cost of a solicitor.
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
Circling back to this point about pollution; if the objective of the society is not about wealth creators, not about corporations making big profits and not about wealth/status of individuals, then the attitude to pollution would be very different.

I'd agree that a socialist ideal that I'm describing would likely not eliminate pollution. But a society which focused on people rather than profits would surely make more sensible choices about the extent to which pollution was allowed, the way that resources were used, the likely losers in society from any given pollution. In a capitalist society, these are simply externalities, things which are unavoidable and which the corporation try to avoid paying for (or, if that doesn't work, try to avoid affecting the bottom line).

But a co-operative socialist society where citizens didn't simply throw others under the bus because of narrow self-interest would surely be more efficient, more able to contain/control wasteful forms of production (such as overproduction of food), more able to make sensible choices about investments in public transportation.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I didn't think you'd think that Star Trek would be a fucking awesome place to live, and I was right.
To be fair, the spaceships, replicators and holodecks are awesome.

quote:
I did manage to answer all your questions from this post,
Wait, am I actually supposed to assume that "It would be like Star Trek, and it would be awesome" is a genuine and serious answer to the questions I asked in that post?

quote:
but rather than acknowledging that, you immediately Gish-galloped onto another set of questions/problems rather than acknowledge that a socialist-environmental future didn't need to be something resembling Wyndham's _The Chrysalids_.
I addressed your answer by pointing out the problems with the societal example you had (jokingly, I thought) put forward.

quote:
I don't think you're debating in any more good faith than deano is.
Says the man using a sci-fi TV show as his example of how society should function? [Confused]

That's like answering a question about how to feed the hungry with "just send them a replicator".
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I'd agree that a socialist ideal that I'm describing would likely not eliminate pollution. But a society which focused on people rather than profits would surely make more sensible choices about the extent to which pollution was allowed, the way that resources were used, the likely losers in society from any given pollution. In a capitalist society, these are simply externalities, things which are unavoidable and which the corporation try to avoid paying for (or, if that doesn't work, try to avoid affecting the bottom line).
It should be noted that most industrialized societies aren't really "capitalist" per se, they're what economists refer to as "mixed economies". In other words, a combination of market economics with a certain amount of socialized central control over the kinds of collective action problems associated with well known market failures. (e.g. health care provision, pollution control, old age poverty, etc.) Given that, the question seems to be more along the lines of what the right ratio of the "mix" in "mixed economy" needs to be to deal with climate change.
 
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I do agree that company directors should be held responsible for company losses especially where there is negligence involved.
Quite what do you mean by "responsible" and then "negligence" please? Both are fairly loose terms that are bandied round. And responsible to whom? If you're using that in a criminal sense, the answer to that's easy, but not if you're talking of civilly liable.
I am not trying to articulate a very clear, defined, legal position. Just a general principle.


Who should clean the toilets? Well, someone for whom that is an acceptable job. I don't think my dream of a socialist utopia involves no jobs - it involves many of the same jobs we have today. Someone would do it, because there would be some motivation to do it. I don't know how it might work.

And the problem is that, while I - and others - can't define exactly how a new society might work, it assumes that things are fine as they are, and they are not. The current capitalist society doesn't work. My socialist ideal might not work, but that doesn't mean we just continue as we are.

Because if we carry on as we are, we are fucked. In the end, that is the problem. We cannot just ignore the problem because we cannot answer every last issue.
 
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
The "mixed economy" comment and a Monday morning at -29°C has me philosophical. I need to pollute today because it is cold.

Isn't the problem with capitalism its insistence on liberty before unity? Liberty enough to do what I want, including pollute how I want. Unless someone else enforces a law or regulation against my liberty?

Isn't the problem with socialism the opposite, insisting on unity at the expense of liberty. Not allowing independence, but polluting because we're doing it equally and together.

Thus, we'd have to reconcile the liberty of individuals, companies and nations, with the common good of other individuals, companies, nations, the whole world. We'd have to add individual rights and liberty to collective action, together in government and regulation. Our current mechanisms don't work very well because it is all done without ethics. A pollution or climate change agreement and regulations backed by monitoring and controls are an invitation to cheat, as Volkswagen showed us.
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Wait, am I actually supposed to assume that "It would be like Star Trek, and it would be awesome" is a genuine and serious answer to the questions I asked in that post?
Yes.

Which part of a clean, sustainable, high-energy future where no one has to worry about food and shelter and medical bills and education don't you understand? Or is it just that fact that because you no longer have people prepared to (literally) clean your shit up that puts you off?

Automation will change everything. Either we aim for a Star Trek future, or an Elysium future. In 1900, there were 1 million working horses in the UK. By 1914, there were 20,000. I know all the right-wing libertarians believe they're the special kind of snowflakes that deserve the best of everything, but in reality, you're going to be in the 98% of workers who are going to be, like all those horses, culled.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Which part of a clean, sustainable, high-energy future where no one has to worry about food and shelter and medical bills and education don't you understand?
The part where it's a realistic possibility rather than science fiction. [/QB][/QUOTE]
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Which part of a clean, sustainable, high-energy future where no one has to worry about food and shelter and medical bills and education don't you understand?
The part where it's a realistic possibility rather than science fiction.
If I thought for a moment you wanted that, rather than playing utterly destructive dominance games with the life and health of the planet, I'd take a lot more time explaining things to you.

If by some slim chance you're genuinely interested, then read this book (don't worry, it's not one of mine). It's very good.

And I fixed your code for you.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
If I thought for a moment you wanted that, rather than playing utterly destructive dominance games with the life and health of the planet, I'd take a lot more time explaining things to you.
What I want doesn't matter, the point is that if we're going to have a discussion about your vision for how global society might be changed and rearranged into a more environmentally friendly and socialist structure then you need to put more on the table than science fiction fantasies. Sure, I may not agree with your ideas, but it would be nice if you could give me some ideas that are worth disagreeing with.

This whole thread so far has been "what we're doing now is bad". There's precious few practical ideas for how the sort of society you want to usher in would look, feel and act on a day-to-day basis - and when I asked about such things you responded with "Star Trek is cool - let's live like that".

As for links to other people's books, I'd much rather interact with what you have to say on the matter.
 
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
Interestingly (I am still reading the book), Klein does accept that there is right wing and left wing materialistic capitalists.

She defined "Extractivists" who are those whose focus on extracting - from the world, from people - and not caring about this. Their political position is irrelevant.
 
Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :
 
I'm not sure about this, but I think it's the American brand of capitalism that is so focused on individual freedom at the expense of equity. No, perhaps its better to say that the American electorate seems to let its politicians get away with allowing appalling levels of disparity in wellbeing exist in the same region, or putting in place the most egregious social policies in a wealthy society.

I remember that after about 10 years in power our Prime Minister Howard lost his Government and his seat in Parliament when he tried to substantially deregulate our system of industrial relations.

Britain, I'm not sure about. Obviously, its most hateful PM in living memory was Thatcher, and her brand of capitalism was just as horrid as that in place in the United States. There were protests and much disruption during the period, but she managed to stay in power until her own party knifed her, I think.

Freedom and equity are not mutually exclusive. Universal health care does not mean that you have to give up your giant car. Putting systems in place to ensure that banks can't do what makes their business the most money but imperils the international economy and the wellbeing of millions is not about stifling innovation.

Freedom and equity are not mutually exclusive. Our parents knew it, our Grandparents knew it, and it is high time we reclaimed it.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Sure, I may not agree with your ideas, but it would be nice if you could
Green technologies, reduced consumption and actually giving a shit about the planet and each other. All things you've evinced no concern about.
It also involves people being politically engaged, so I've little hope.
 
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by simontoad:
Britain, I'm not sure about. Obviously, its most hateful PM in living memory was Thatcher, and her brand of capitalism was just as horrid as that in place in the United States. There were protests and much disruption during the period, but she managed to stay in power until her own party knifed her, I think.
Precious little to like about either Thatcher or the policies of her governments. However, many of the protests and much of the disruption to which you refer was initiated by Militant Tendency in its efforts to overthrow an elected government. Ultimately Labour recognised the danger iMilitant Tendency posed, expelled the leaders and proscribed the movement.
 
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
Our current government is being excessively introvert and nationalist - it is all about "Making Britain Great Again". So as long as we are OK, the fact that others are dying is irrelevant. It is the same small-mindedness that means we won't consider tackling global problems until we cannot explain them away.

There is such a lot of the rhetoric or climate change deniers used, although with a different focus. "We don't want refugees here" from countries we have helped bomb the crap out of is not that different from "We have reduced our emissions, it is up to them to do the same" from countries we have exported our dirty industry to.

It is a global problem, and yet, more and more, I see major leaders being less global, more introverted, especially those on the political right.

Oh and I think Mrs Thatcher may not be the most hated PM in living memory. Current and recent ones are plying for that title. Of course, she is responsible for the current batch.
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
Precious little to like about either Thatcher or the policies of her governments. However, many of the protests and much of the disruption to which you refer was initiated by Militant Tendency in its efforts to overthrow an elected government.
Whilst the Militant was associated with the Poll Tax riots, it is a mistake to suggest that they were solely responsible for the Poll Tax protests, which let's not forget were ultimately successful.
 
Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
The modern socialism which I want isn't based on consumption, but on freedom from consumption. An economic system that isn't reliant on buying crap (which pretty much sums up most of the western world).
Could you clarify what you mean by 'crap'? I'm not entirely sure what you think we're all buying that we shouldn't be buying and how we'd be all better off if we didn't have it.
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
Could you clarify what you mean by 'crap'? I'm not entirely sure what you think we're all buying that we shouldn't be buying and how we'd be all better off if we didn't have it.
You know, crap. All the stuff that ends up in landfill sites or is sorted out and sent for processing here or abroad.

Mountains of it is unrecoverable, but even the stuff that is recyclable is clearly wasteful (in the sense of needing energy, water etc to recover). Stuff that is sent abroad is associated with pollution, slavery, illness, poverty in many parts.

And, ultimately, the planet could in no ways cope if everyone lived like we do.

I'm not sure why this is so hard for you to compute?
 
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
mr cheesy, There were multiple elements to the Poll Tax riots, but that's only part of what I was referring to. The efforts to unseat an electd government started under Wilson and were pushed even harder under Callaghan. Indeed, Callaghan's must rank as one of the weakest British governments of all time, virtually unable to formulate policy and put it into effect. These efforts reached their peak in the Thatcher years with a combination of industrial action, the miners' strike* and so forth.

*Not to attempt to justify the harshness of the police response.
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
mr cheesy, There were multiple elements to the Poll Tax riots, but that's only part of what I was referring to. The efforts to unseat an electd government started under Wilson and were pushed even harder under Callaghan. Indeed, Callaghan's must rank as one of the weakest British governments of all time, virtually unable to formulate policy and put it into effect. These efforts reached their peak in the Thatcher years with a combination of industrial action, the miners' strike* and so forth.

*Not to attempt to justify the harshness of the police response.
Miners strikes were not related to Militant Tendency. You are tying things together when they were only tangentially related.
 
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
mr cheesy, That's not how it appeared at the time.
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
So you don't think the miners strikes were associated with, oh I don't know, trying to preserve jobs and whole communities which were on the verge of being economically wiped out by the Tory policies? You think it was simply about a small number of Militant members in Labour?

You might want to try coming here to the Welsh valleys and test out that opinion.
 
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
To expand briefly and quickly - the original strikes were local, directed towards jobs and rights preservation. All good and proper union an workers activities. The Militant involvement started with the flying pickets and so forth, and appeared a determined effort to bring down the elected government. That effort would have been better saved until the next election, gathering anti-Thatcher votes and delivering those voters to the booths.
 
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
mr cheesy, That's not how it appeared at the time.
That appearance was amply helped along by the right wing tabloid press, also see Hillsborough.
 
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
mr cheesy, That's not how it appeared at the time.
That appearance was amply helped along by the right wing tabloid press, also see Hillsborough.
I'm not sure that either the New Statesman or the Guardian would be called right-wing or tabloid.

Hillsborough??? What's that please?
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
Herein is a case-study in doing historical analysis from a distance.
 
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
But well informed on this topic.

[ 15. March 2017, 09:52: Message edited by: Gee D ]
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
But well informed on this topic.
Erm. no.
 
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
Perhaps, but you'd not be surprised if I disagreed. The eighties here were a period of renewal under a right-wing Labor government; the UK underwent a period of moving backwards under a right-wing Tory government, kept in power by the shenanigans ot Militant Tendency and the like. It was a tragedy.

[ 15. March 2017, 10:01: Message edited by: Gee D ]
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
OK then, thanks for sorting us out on that point.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Green technologies,
With the best will in the world (and assuming you don't count nuclear as a green technology), they are extremely unlikely to be able to match current demand for power, let alone projected future demands. Which brings us to...

quote:
reduced consumption
...in which we have to decide which parts of our current lifestyle will no longer be acceptable. The single largest end use of energy in the UK is transport, followed by space heating - all other uses put together aren't as big as either [source]. So for us to meaningfully reduce our energy consumption we'd have to either travel less or heat our rooms less. Or both.

I'll grant you that a significant minority of the transport energy usage is for freight, which could be cut down by us not buying as many things. Again, we'd have to decide which things to no longer make available, with the knock-on effect of causing major job losses in the sectors that manufacture and sell those things.

quote:
and actually giving a shit about the planet and each other. All things you've evinced no concern about.
Unfortunately, giving a shit about each other may not be fully compatible with giving a shit about the planet. If it were just about the planet then we could eliminate all non-green energy sources tomorrow, but the resulting economic crash would make every previous one look like a picnic.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:


I'll grant you that a significant minority of the transport energy usage is for freight, which could be cut down by us not buying as many things.
The problem is that buying things from China might not have as an obvious local impact, it does affect globally. Which then affects local.
quote:
If it were just about the planet then we could eliminate all non-green energy sources tomorrow, but the resulting economic crash would make every previous one look like a picnic.
If we do not begin, it will never happen. Immediate cessation of purchasing the unnecessary is incredibly unlikely and not feasible. But we need to begin now if we at all care for the next generation. Indeed, if we at all care for the youngest of the current.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The problem is that buying things from China might not have as an obvious local impact, it does affect globally. Which then affects local.
Granted.

quote:
quote:
If it were just about the planet then we could eliminate all non-green energy sources tomorrow, but the resulting economic crash would make every previous one look like a picnic.
If we do not begin, it will never happen. Immediate cessation of purchasing the unnecessary is incredibly unlikely and not feasible. But we need to begin now if we at all care for the next generation. Indeed, if we at all care for the youngest of the current.
Maybe you'd like to begin by suggesting some things that can go on the "unnecessary" pile.

This is part of what I've been getting at in the last few days. Mr cheesy and yourself have both said we should stop buying "crap", but neither of you has yet given a single example of the sort of "crap" you have in mind. Are you thinking this sort of thing, or maybe this sort of thing, or even this sort of thing (to pick three of the UK's top 10 imports from China at random).
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Maybe you'd like to begin by suggesting some things that can go on the "unnecessary" pile.

This is part of what I've been getting at in the last few days. Mr cheesy and yourself have both said we should stop buying "crap", but neither of you has yet given a single example of the sort of "crap" you have in mind. Are you thinking this sort of thing, or maybe this sort of thing, or even this sort of thing (to pick three of the UK's top 10 imports from China at random).
To start. Food waste, power waste, excessive use of transport, eating out of home, etc. Not necessarily scaling back to the absolute minimum, but a lot.
 
Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
The modern socialism which I want isn't based on consumption, but on freedom from consumption. An economic system that isn't reliant on buying crap (which pretty much sums up most of the western world).
Could you clarify what you mean by 'crap'? I'm not entirely sure what you think we're all buying that we shouldn't be buying and how we'd be all better off if we didn't have it.
Frivolously, I have bought at least three desktop computers in the last ten years, but I use my wife's hand-me-down smartphone. My wife has her new smartphone and a work smartphone, a kindle, a laptop, an i-pad and a work thing (thin with a thin detachable keyboard, might be an i-pad too). We have at least four televisions which we bought in stages as the technology changed. I think we are up to internet connected and HD now. I have a new modem (unsolicited) as my area is about to connect to a new broadband network. Connecting that will render my current landline telephone inoperable, voila I have a new complimentary telephone. I'm a bit worried that the new broadband will mean that I have to get rid of this three-year-old desktop as it has no capacity for wifi, although there is probably a cheap fix.

Shall I tell you about our car and travel related consumption?

[ 15. March 2017, 23:29: Message edited by: simontoad ]
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
You're proud of that? Happy or indifferent to the lives shortened and ended so you can recite that list?
 
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
OK then, thanks for sorting us out on that point.
You're very welcome. I trust that you enjoyed the primary and early secondary education that Ms Thatcher's governments provided to you.
 
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
You're very welcome. I trust that you enjoyed the primary and early secondary education that Ms Thatcher's governments provided to you.
You are so wrong it isn't even worth wasting time responding.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
To start. Food waste, power waste, excessive use of transport, eating out of home, etc. Not necessarily scaling back to the absolute minimum, but a lot.
That's a good start, though none of those things are ones I'd normally put in the "consumerist crap" category.

For food waste, do you mean eating too much food or throwing away too much food? I think everyone can agree that the latter is bad, but the former might be more problematic! I'm also not sure why eating out is an inherently bad thing, as surely the same amount of food would be eaten whether people were eating it at home or at a restaurant?

Power waste should be a no-brainer, because using less power means smaller bills as well as lower emissions. It amazes me that so many houses, offices, etc. are left with all the lights on at all hours of the day and night.

I'm not sure what constitutes "excessive" use of transport in your book. Is this about the amount of freight that gets moved around the world, or the amount of passenger transport that happens? If it's the former then we're back to the question of which items shouldn't be transported (as per my last post), but if it's the latter then I'd be interested in your ideas about which journeys shouldn't be made.
 
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
There's a bit of a disconnect, especially with the transportation issue, between what we need as a society to be doing and what it's reasonable to expect people to do as things now stand. Case in point - long commutes. Caused by two things - the disappearance of the "single breadwinner" household model (and we'd not want to turn the clock back to married women not working), the increased insecurity of employment and the greater tendency to have a series of jobs, which may be in different places, and also the availability of relatively cheap motoring (yes, I know, but actually from what I understand it's never been cheaper relative to income). At the same time, housing costs have increased signficantly, making it even harder to live near where the jobs are, as that's where the property prices are often highest*

So we have a lot of people, generally driving because societally That Is What People Do, doing long commutes with all that entails. It's not generally reasonable on an individual level to tell them to stop, either, because since it's what everyone else does, and it's sort of expected, the alternatives aren't there or aren't the sort of thing people can see themselves doing (15 miles each way by cycle, for example - most people wouldn't dream of doing it, but I do, because I tend not to give a shit what everyone else does and I'm determined not to have a second car if I can possibly avoid it because I hate it. Multiple car ownership, that is**.)


I'm probably wibbling. My point is that on this particular topic, as a society we need to

1. Live closer to work
2. See private cars as a transport problem, not a transport solution.

Getting individuals to do this, however, unless they're committed awkward bastards like me*** is however probably unreasonable.

*Yes, I know about rural house prices, but I'm thinking more of the comparison between say Sheffield and Chesterfield. Chesterfield house prices are lower, at least in comparable areas, because the jobs are in Sheffield. That's how we ended up in Chesterfield.

**Because I'm fed up to the back teeth with the destruction of the environment in my home village caused by people buying second or third cars then parking them on the pavements and verges because there's not room on their driveways.

***Had the very devil of a job getting my boss to accept the fact that I didn't consider having a second car so it could sit in the office car park on the offchance it was needed (once or twice a years, possibly) to be a reasonable requirement. I won, in the end, because I'm bloody-minded.

[ 16. March 2017, 11:36: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
eating out of home,
Is eating out environmentally bad? It's expensive, of course, because you have to pay for labour rather than getting it for free, but isn't it more efficient to have many meals cooked in one kitchen rather than many meals in many kitchens?
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
eating out of home,
Is eating out environmentally bad? It's expensive, of course, because you have to pay for labour rather than getting it for free, but isn't it more efficient to have many meals cooked in one kitchen rather than many meals in many kitchens?
The fuel consumed getting diners to the restaurant. The file consumed bringing food to the many restaurants instead of the more centralised market, the constantly on cooking sources, the constantly opened cold units, warming trays, electricity, etc. I would think more food is wasted as well, but that one is more difficult to track.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
MtM,

By food waste I mean throwing away food.
By excessive use of transport, I mean individual use of cars when public transport could be used. But I also mean inefficient use as well. I will use myself as an example. I find myself making multiple trips to the same area when I could plan more efficiently and make fewer. I will go a distance to try a new restaurant when I could wait until I am in the area or just not go.
We do all manner of things less efficiently than we could.
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
If there is an example of waste when it comes to using private cars instead of public transport, it must be the non-use of these vehicles. Half-an-hour each way, and your car is doing sweet FA for 23 out of 24 hours each working day. It's either sat in the road, in your driveway or in a car park. OK, it gets more use at other times but even 15000 milesis 1250 per month and at an average on twenty days on the road that is about 60 miles per day, considerably less than two hours per 24 hour day. Typically a bus is used for about eight hours, a train for ten hours plus and they both carry more passengers per unit of resources used.

It's wasteful and inefficient as far as cars are concerned and forces governments hands to fund road building.
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The fuel consumed getting diners to the restaurant.
Yes, I'll give you that one.

quote:

The file consumed bringing food to the many restaurants instead of the more centralised market,
But not that. The food has to go to people's homes to get eaten.

quote:

the constantly on cooking sources, the constantly opened cold units, warming trays, electricity, etc.
Or that. Ovens that are constantly on and in use are way better than many ovens that are warmed up, cook one thing, and then left to cool.

A restaurant is like a bus. When it's full, it's much more efficient than private cars. If there's only one passenger, it isn't.

quote:

I would think more food is wasted as well, but that one is more difficult to track.
More food wasted because people order too much and don't finish it? Quite possibly, but that's not really a function of eating out per se.

More food wasted in preparation? I doubt it. Two-thirds of all food wasted in homes is never even cooked: it goes to the fridge or the fruit bowl, hangs around for a while, and then is discarded. But as you say, it's quite hard to track properly.

[ 16. March 2017, 13:01: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
If there is an example of waste when it comes to using private cars instead of public transport, it must be the non-use of these vehicles.

[..]

It's wasteful and inefficient as far as cars are concerned and forces governments hands to fund road building.
Non-use of cars is inefficient if it means a lot of energy used to create a car which then sits around doing nothing - and it's inefficient to the extent that the usable lifetime of a car is determined by age rather than mileage.

The need for roads depends on the use of cars, not the existence of cars - what counts is peak usage (damage to roads is essentially all caused by large heavy vehicles rather than cars, so total car usage isn't really a feature in road upkeep costs). So if you're driving to work at the same time as everyone else, you're costing more road. If you don't usually drive to/from work at peak times (and perhaps that's your excuse for not taking the bus) then you also don't cause larger roads.
 
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
If we really wanted to change transportation behaviour, we'd implement:
1. road user fees - those who drive pay, per distance travelled in a private vehicle.

2. congestion fees - additional fees for driving within some time periods, like rush hours

3. To pay for building roads we'd need to collect additional tolls for being on the road at all.

I think such fees are entirely fair and much fairer than not making users pay them. They require the people who benefit most from their use to pay more for them. Currently, all taxpayers pay costs of road development and maintenance, regardless of how much they use them, and even if they don't use them.

User fees ensure consumers bear the full costs of their actions. Why should I pay for for your restaurant meal? - roads are the same.

Without user fees, the bad effects of transport like pollution and road maintenance are borne by the public at large. Fees can also effectively reduce these negative effects by encouraging consumers to change their habits of transport.

For meals, obviously the cost of transport must be passed on to the person eating in the restaurant.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
The food has to go to people's homes to get eaten.
Restaurant = 2.4 meals per trip, market = 33 meals per trip.

quote:

Ovens that are constantly on and in use are way better than many ovens that are warmed up, cook one thing, and then left to cool.
This depend upon fuel source and exactly how much time unused. But I'll grant less clear than I stated.
quote:

A restaurant is like a bus. When it's full, it's much more efficient than private cars. If there's only one passenger, it isn't.
Some have a lot of downtime when power/fuel is being consumed.

quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

The need for roads depends on the use of cars, not the existence of cars - what counts is peak usage (damage to roads is essentially all caused by large heavy vehicles rather than cars, so total car usage isn't really a feature in road upkeep costs). So if you're driving to work at the same time as everyone else, you're costing more road. If you don't usually drive to/from work at peak times (and perhaps that's your excuse for not taking the bus) then you also don't cause larger roads.
One 18 wheeler does the damage of nearly 10K cars. It isn't that cars cause no wear, but that it is insignificant in comparison. Fewer cars does, as you say, mean less cost for expansion.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:

User fees ensure consumers bear the full costs of their actions. Why should I pay for for your restaurant meal? - roads are the same.
Except that they are not. Use fees disadvantage the poor.
There are other complications that I do not have the time to address.
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
One 18 wheeler does the damage of nearly 10K cars. It isn't that cars cause no wear, but that it is insignificant in comparison.
Yes, that was the purpose of the word "essential" in my comment. Road damage scales roughly as the fourth power of the axle weight.

(A large bus is nearly as bad as an 18-wheeler for road wear.)
 
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:

User fees ensure consumers bear the full costs of their actions. Why should I pay for for your restaurant meal? - roads are the same.
Except that they are not. Use fees disadvantage the poor.
There are other complications that I do not have the time to address.
That is not only not right, it is not even wrong. The ideas misses so many details in coming up with a sloppy rejection.

User fees do not have to disadvantage poor. Only if you do it wrong. You simply have to decide where to put the money collected from user fees. Such as subsidizing incomes or giving free transit access to certain groups.

We already do it in many places in Canada. Where I live transit passes cost $83 per month for an adult. There is a tax credit which is income dependent which offsets this for working poor. The local example is that students at post-secondary get an 8 month pass for $123 for the whole 8 months. All it takes is some creativity and desire to change behaviour. I'd make the student price be the working poor price. The unemployed poor price less or free. The car fees subsidize. Easy peasy.

So no, you are not correct that user fees must harm the poor. In fact user fees can advantage the poor.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
We already do it in many places in Canada. Where I live transit passes cost $83 per month for an adult.
Transit passes. So, how does the wise and noble Canada handle areas in which there is no, or insufficient, public transport?
There are other components of road use and the transit fee does not pay all the bills of maintenance of the system.
Use taxes are those assessed for direct use. Such as fuel taxes that are mandated for transportation. These can disadvantage the poor who need to travel outside of areas of public transport. They are also difficult to increase as they are transparent and people are reticent to pay more.
Paying for transport out of the general fund is problematic as well, there is significant competition for those resources. It is even more complicated than that, but that discussion is beyond the scope of this thread.

[ 16. March 2017, 15:27: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
OK, the snark was unnecessary. Apologies for that.

I do know something about transportation costs and funding. Though I admit to not being as knowledgeable about Canada's system.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
There's a bit of a disconnect, especially with the transportation issue, between what we need as a society to be doing and what it's reasonable to expect people to do as things now stand.
I think you're absolutely right, Karl. And I think the fact that it would be very difficult to take meaningful action on the transport issue without completely changing our entire society and economy is a significant enough reason to be reluctant to take that action.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:

User fees ensure consumers bear the full costs of their actions. Why should I pay for for your restaurant meal? - roads are the same.
Except that they are not. Use fees disadvantage the poor.
The pollution generated by any given car doesn't get better or worse depending on the financial status of the driver. If people need to stop using cars, that will apply to the poor just as much as the rich.

[ 16. March 2017, 15:53: Message edited by: Marvin the Martian ]
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:

User fees ensure consumers bear the full costs of their actions. Why should I pay for for your restaurant meal? - roads are the same.
Except that they are not. Use fees disadvantage the poor.
The pollution generated by any given car doesn't get better or worse depending on the financial status of the driver. If people need to stop using cars, that will apply to the poor just as much as the rich.
I didn't say people need to stop using cars, just not use them as much.
 
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
OK, the snark was unnecessary. Apologies for that.

I do know something about transportation costs and funding. Though I admit to not being as knowledgeable about Canada's system.
Snark? It didn't come across that way to me. Robust and witty. I like the "noble" comment. Canada is merely where I live and know about. We suck at what I'm talking about and what I want to encourage. Others are doing more.

This is a shift that needs to happen. Work in progress. We need to move it in the direction of encouraging some behaviour and discouraging other.

It requires significant work to educate the public on the finer points. Some misunderstandings are likely to persist and to be exploited deliberately by some folks. Plus the benefits of action are not immediate, whilst the effect of doing nothing is in the future and debatable.
 
Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
You're proud of that? Happy or indifferent to the lives shortened and ended so you can recite that list?
I was clarifying what might have been meant by 'crap' by listing some of our crap. Sorry I didn't get back to this earlier.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
Non-use of cars is inefficient if it means a lot of energy used to create a car which then sits around doing nothing - and it's inefficient to the extent that the usable lifetime of a car is determined by age rather than mileage.
This seems a very clear and concise example of the sunk cost fallacy.
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
This seems a very clear and concise example of the sunk cost fallacy.
I see I wasn't very clear. I was attempting to contrast a model where people bought cars and parked them on their driveways with a model where people owned fewer cars.

If you're comparing the two different models (with different rates of car ownership and so on) which is what I was trying to do, then the costs aren't sunk. The question of whether it is more efficient to purchase X cars and use them in some usage pattern, or purchase Y buses and use them in some way is a sensible one.

This kind of comparison is the right way to think if you are deciding what long-term steady state to aim for.

If you start with a particular distribution of car ownership, and then ask what people should do, then the costs of car ownership are indeed sunk, and the thoughts I outlined would be wrong.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
If you start with a particular distribution of car ownership, and then ask what people should do, then the costs of car ownership are indeed sunk, and the thoughts I outlined would be wrong.
Aren't we, in fact "start[ing with a particular distribution of car ownership"? (i.e. the world as it now exists)
 


© Ship of Fools 2016

Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM 6.5.0