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The flaws of the EU's asymmetric approach to imbalances | 132 comments (132 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
That would be a nice discussion to have. "Nice" is more like "must have" due to peaks and resource competition.
by cagatacos on Thu Jul 21st, 2011 at 07:12:12 AM EST
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Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
Impossible. Too many people starting from ideological positions and too much inconsistent data.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Thu Jul 21st, 2011 at 07:14:36 AM EST
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Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
 Nature's inherent limits will "fix" those (supposed) problems and the "discussion" will take place--one way or another.  Would you rather it be primarily verbal or via other, non-verbal means?

   And, besides, "positions" are necessarily "ideological" --otherwise they contain no "ideas".  To pretend that there are any non-ideological "positions" is neither necessary nor helpful though it is, of course, possible to pretend this.

 --------------

  RE (ref. http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2011/7/19/15816/2580#66 ) :

  "You just have to employ a larger fraction of the population in activities with a low resource use."

   "Capitalisms" don't do this well or, so far, at all.  Instead, success is practically defined as "More, more, more, more, more."  Higher consumption, higher profits, higher "productivity", higher output, etc.  Capitalisms, in short, "succeed" by literally using everything up--completely.  

   In this vein, Jean-Jacques Salomon's points in his essay, Le destin technologique ( http://www.folio-lesite.fr/Folio/livre.action?codeProd=A32811 )

   where he describes a very arresting thought experiment.  It goes very roughly something like this:

   Imagine for a moment that the earth and its human populations one day reach their absolute limits--I know, you'll object that this can't and won't occur because one or more catastrophes will intervene before that limit arrives, but this only makes Salomon's point the more arresting since his scenario is the "good news", so to speak, since it takes for purposes of analysis the view that somehow humanity so controls and attenuates those intervening and population-limiting catastrophes that, in effect, populations go on growing until the earth's resources, and or technological capacities to "stretch" them also reach their limits--that, when you think in his terms (i.e., many thousands and thousands of years) has to occur eventually or, otherwise, of course, we become extinct as a species.

   In extrapolating, we arrive inescapably at the point where the only feasible operative possibility is literally "zero" growth, none, at all, because even the smallest measureable increase is beyond the capacity of physical resources to accomodate.

  It seems clear to me that before any future human society arrives at this extreme, we (or that future people, more able than are we to reason and act sensibly for their own survival) have essentially two courses open:

   one is to continue as we are until we eventually destroy ourselves in some combination of itentional and accidental folly;

  the other is to veer off our present course in ways which are so fundamental a departure from our present assumptions that they are as yet not welcome to imagine or discuss in most discussion fora.  The present insanity must be protected and preserved.

  And that's driving the current misery around us.

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Thu Jul 21st, 2011 at 10:08:44 AM EST
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Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
When a discussion ostensibly about the physical world is based in grossly incomplete data and mostly about validating participants political views, there's not much point, is there?

Take the proposition that the question "what's going to power those behemoth threshers and balers?" has no answer. We can spend hundreds of comments dealing with that and at the end of the day the gaia-is-going-to-punish-us-and-we-deserve-it crowd and the technology-will-save-us-all crowd will be just calling each other names. The discussion isn't really about what's possible, it's about other stuff.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Thu Jul 21st, 2011 at 10:27:51 AM EST
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Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
Hmm. Pretty good set of reasons for not discussing anything, like climate change, energy, and certainly nothing to do with politics or economics.

Plus a fairly damaging assumption about the "crowds" in presence.

I suppose we could talk about sport, but I'm pretty sure you'd rather steer away from that, too?

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Thu Jul 21st, 2011 at 11:06:15 AM EST
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Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
 FIFY:

   "Pretty good set of reasons for not discussing anything one would rather not see addressed, like climate change, energy, and certainly nothing to do with politics or economics."

 Exactly---and that may be the point, after all.

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 08:54:21 AM EST
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Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
Well, I don't think it was Colman's point.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 08:56:42 AM EST
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Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)

  Hmm.  Then I've missed yours, in your comment, too.

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge
by proximity1 on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 08:59:55 AM EST
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Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
I responded to the ideas expressed, and though I did not indicate snark or humour, the remark was at once serious and light-hearted.

Also see my comment below.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 09:04:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
 
     I don't see why (and you haven't bothered to explain it) attempts to validate one's own political views and at the same time, defend them from others' critiques (or, failing that, to change them) are  pointless exercises.  I just have your unsupported word for this, which is about all you seem interested in offering.  You aren't interested in giving straight answers when it's apparently so much easier to dismiss the objections with a universally-applicable "It's no use, it'll never work.  People are too stuck in their ways."  (Something of which you seem determined to offer marveloous evidence, yourself.)  And we have once again your always-implied fatalistic underlying view that people are in so many of the most fundamental ways a hopelessly incorrigible lot.  Can't persuade 'em, can't kill 'em all, so the best that can be hoped for is to quibble over the trivial details at the far edges of issues, where it's supposed that tiny compromises can occasionally be found.

  And, then, strangely, at the same time, something hard--like actual political and economic events in the living world--seems to have brought you around to seeing the validity of what seems to me to be at least some the of left-ish political and economic criticisms which once upon a time in these threads I'd could read you opposing and denoucing--or maybe I'm just mistaken about that.

    Now we can read, for example, your valid objections to what you colorfully describe as the absurdly other-worldly habits of econ policy-makers imploring what amounts to throwing more virgins into the sacrificial volcano.  Just who demands and requires these virgins' routine sacrifice?  Surely it isn't the people whose economic beliefs you have in the past or currently still do disparage, is it?  That is, unless I'm mistaken about it, hard facts have wrought some changes in your formerly expressed economic & political beliefs.  This is also and perhaps even moreso true of Migeru who now can admit that the opponents of last several E.U. referenda votes (including what I'd call the Lisbon disgrace)  were after all at least partly right to oppose them--though he still can't quite credit them as being right for reasons which they themeselves understood.  Still, again, there's progress.

  So, you see?  There is such a thing as progress.

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 08:52:28 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
If you want to settle scores in this debate, and in particular make them personal, I suggest you're wasting your time.

We have better things to do.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 09:01:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (4.00 / 2)
At least having the discussion might force the people with definite starting points and data to lay them out.

Economics is politics by other means
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 07:49:04 AM EST
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The flaws of the EU's asymmetric approach to imbalances | 132 comments (132 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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