Iraq and MONEY!

[RussSchultz]

Like I said:

I don't think it would be productive to continue discussing this with you.

We apparently don't have any common ground between us when it comes to economic theory.

It takes at least a modicum of common ground to discuss a topic.

p.s. what, pray tell, would be an example of a "sustainable economy", if capitolism isn't?

 

[Grall]

Why do you persist in claiming there is no common ground, yet still ask me a follow-up question? That makes me go

Second, are you suggesting "capitolism" is a sustainable economy? Sustainable HOW, exactly? By making a squillion things that we then throw away so they end up in a landfill and slowly seep out into our environment over the course of the next few decades/centuries?

Ever heard of acidic rain? Where do you think that comes from, huh?

As for your question, it isn't exactly easy to answer, but to begin with, it would be an economy where it isn't profitable to make short-term capitalizations such as logging a forest that took a millennium or more to grow and far far longer to evolve, or make stuff that are only meant to be used once and then creates lots of waste ("disposable" cameras comes to mind here, as do many different types of packaging material), or selling French spring water in Japan (Evian, etc), or making cars that are unneccessarily big, heavy, fast, fuel-thirsty and resource-hungry in their manufacture. Etc etc.

You guys in the US burn tremendous amounts of fossile fuels to produce electricity only to waste much of it with ordinary lightbulbs where 80% of the energy turns straight into heat, which you then squander more power on to cool off with an AC unit. That's also terribly inefficient.

So you won't have as much cool STUFF as in a purely capitalist society, but you'd have all you need and more, in a way that is more sustainable over the long term and available to a far greater part of the population. Once greed is removed as the driving force for the economy, things start looking much rosier.

Well, except for the rich and hopelessly greedy of course, but why kiss their asses, they're such a small minority of our population, and nobody elected them. Why should they be allowed to dictate the life of the rest of humanity?


*G*

 

[cthellis42]

Because its a lot more polite to say it that way then the other that came to mind. I'd rather not spend my day 'fisking' somebody's lack of economic understanding when its obvous he's already made his mind up about the rightness of socialism, the wrongness of capitalism.

Because you have inherent "rightness" of your own economic views?

The problem is, I think, that people who follow one school of thought far enough believe--when talking about the "other side"--that there is only one level to talk about... the far, far extreme. Both are wholly unrealistic, utterly unworkable, and against human nature. We will never, EVER see a society built around them unless we can carve huge chunks out of the human psyche. (Or said "society" doesn't progress above a few dozen people. ) They also wouldn't stand up against the rest of the world and over the course of time, which is why our society, economy and everything else is in a constant state of flux. We can point an curse at examples from all over the spectrum that are objectionable, but when we get right down to it, the key is in coming up with the right balance that provides for the society as a whole and flexes enough to stand strong under pressure rather than whip around violently.

People just have strange ideas as to where we should be, and how we can remotely pretend to get there.

 

[RussSchultz]

Why does your answer include the term "profitable", if you're not describing a form of capitalism?

But beyond that, you seem to be equating capitalism with wasteful living, as if it was a tenet of the concept. If anything you're railing against "consumerism" (assuming that consumerism would be the idea of consumption as an economic model).

Assuming the true cost of producing goods was somehow always put upon the producer and had to be included in the risk/reward balancing, would you still have a problem with capitalism as an economic model?

You sound like you should take some basic economic theory classes, truly listen and learn what is being taught, and then re-apply that to your activism. I think you'll find yourself railing not against capitolism, but for finding some way to prevent society from subsidizing companies.

 

[RussSchultz]

Because you have inherent "rightness" of your own economic views?

No, because what he rails against isn't capitalism. Its impossible to have a meaningful discussion about apples when who your talking with is really talking about windows, yet he calls them apples.

 

[notAFanB]

because for a capitalist system to remain stable it relies on constant growth.

capitalism is observed to stimulate and benefit from economic growth, can you substantiate that it relies on said growth? because it is not entirely obvious from my limited understanding why ou conclude this to be so.

 

[cthellis42]

The term "profitable" does not refer solely to monetary concerns. Plus, are you stating that it's impossible for a socialistic economy to experience growth? That is certainly "profit" for the society as a whole. So is upping quality of life as a whole, reducing hazards, laying the groundworks for future long-term growth (even if taking a strict monetary hit)... <shrugs> The focus and considerations are widely different, but the terms are not somehow incompatible.

 

[ByteMe]

What part of "one last chance" didn't you understand though ByteMe? I said on quite a few occassions that if Saddam didn't cooperate with the process, or if the weapons inspectors found weapons, that we should have gone in and taken out his regime. I said that, and so did a lot of other people in Washington and around the world.

If you have kids I bet they are brats. You can "one last chance" all you want.

We were told that he had weapons and that they were an imminent threat. What I want to know is, since we couldn't wait for the UN Weapons Inspectors to do their job and had to go in immediately, where are they? The administration was so sure that it couldn't wait, why aren't the weapons there?

What happens the next time we go to the world and say "That country has weapons of mass destruction. We know it. We can't afford to wait. We have to go in now." You don't think our credibility on these matters is just a tad shaken by this episode?

All evidence suggested he had or was trying hard to get them. Even your own liberal party. This is the USA. While having the entire worlds support is great, we don't NEED it. Besides, we have many countries that do support us.

Everyone talks about Saddam and Iraq being a terrorist threat and being tied to 9/11 even though there was no evidence to support that claim. Yet even before 9/11, the PNAC was advocating Saddam's ouster for the economic interests of the United States and nothing more. Those same members of the PNAC are now key officials in this administration, such as Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. All of a sudden Iraq is tied to terrorism.

I'm not advocating that taking out Saddam was a bad thing in and of itself. I disagree strongly with the methods used to get us to that point.

The methods used (war) was the only method that would of worked. Doesn't Saddam's history show you this?

 

[ByteMe]

Ever heard of acidic rain? Where do you think that comes from, huh?

Do you understand what it is? Do you understand how the earth's atomosphere works? This has been a major "call" of the liberals. The problem is very few understand how it works.

 

[Natoma]

What part of "one last chance" didn't you understand though ByteMe? I said on quite a few occassions that if Saddam didn't cooperate with the process, or if the weapons inspectors found weapons, that we should have gone in and taken out his regime. I said that, and so did a lot of other people in Washington and around the world.

If you have kids I bet they are brats. You can "one last chance" all you want.

:?

I think it's obvious that the world said together that this was it. No more.

We were told that he had weapons and that they were an imminent threat. What I want to know is, since we couldn't wait for the UN Weapons Inspectors to do their job and had to go in immediately, where are they? The administration was so sure that it couldn't wait, why aren't the weapons there?

What happens the next time we go to the world and say "That country has weapons of mass destruction. We know it. We can't afford to wait. We have to go in now." You don't think our credibility on these matters is just a tad shaken by this episode?

All evidence suggested he had or was trying hard to get them. Even your own liberal party. This is the USA. While having the entire worlds support is great, we don't NEED it. Besides, we have many countries that do support us.

Key word? *Suggested*. Not concrete evidence. That's what the weapons inspectors were for. And if we don't NEED support or help, why are we going back to the UN countries we spurned just a year ago, looking for cash and troops, all the while saying "No you can't have any contracts"?

And just fyi, I don't consider the support of countries who can send a militia of 10 men and donate a couple of thousand dollars as support. If you look at the countries who really have a credible military (if you can really call it that) and ability to offer substantial sums of money, we only got the support of the British, Japanese (financial only), South Koreans (financial only) and the Australians at the start of the war. Or do you really consider Rwanda, Kuwait, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Angola, El Salvador, Colombia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Malta, Cyprus, Singapore, Philippines, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Micronesia, Solomon Islands, Mongolia, and Tonga to be either militarily or financially imposing in any way shape or form? If we're really getting so much help, why is it that in 10 months we've spent $200 Billion and the *vast* majority of troops in Iraq are ours?

Again, what happens the next time we need to take out a country. Do you honestly believe we're going to be able to go to the world community like this again with the Iraq WMD debacle hanging over our heads?

Unilateralist Pre-Emption does not work unless the Intelligence *and* the methods used to decipher that Intelligence are sound. And in the case of the Iraq war, it seems that both prerequisites had monumental failures.

My question is, why hasn't there been an agency wide and administration wide inquiry into this matter? This is of the utmost importance. Someone or some group of people failed along the way, either in gathering the intelligence or in using it. Frankly it was more than likely a little of both. I want to know what went wrong and who did it. There was a massive failure during 9/11, and yet not a single official lost his/her position and not a single reason for the failure was ever released to the public. We have those same people in charge in both the CIA/FBI and the Administration. Again, there was a failure of Intelligence in Iraq and yet not a single official lost his/her position and not a single reason for the failure to find WMD has ever been released to the public.

This is an enormous problem in this age of Unilateralist Pre-Emptive Wars don't you think?

Everyone talks about Saddam and Iraq being a terrorist threat and being tied to 9/11 even though there was no evidence to support that claim. Yet even before 9/11, the PNAC was advocating Saddam's ouster for the economic interests of the United States and nothing more. Those same members of the PNAC are now key officials in this administration, such as Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. All of a sudden Iraq is tied to terrorism.

I'm not advocating that taking out Saddam was a bad thing in and of itself. I disagree strongly with the methods used to get us to that point.

The methods used (war) was the only method that would of worked. Doesn't Saddam's history show you this?

As I said time and time again. It would not have killed us to wait an extra month or two to let the UN process finish. It was already moving in the direction of declaring Saddam in breach of UN rules because he was impeding the work of the weapons inspectors and they were writing that down in their reports. But the point was to let them finish their job. Once they were done, countries around the world would have had no reason to withhold support from our action, and we could have gone in with a far more multilateral force than the one we went in with in March. On top of that, but at the very least in the reconstruction phase, we could have secured more money and troops from other nations, especially muslim, who were waiting for a UN "ok" to support this "illegal" war.

As I've said on many occassions, the first Gulf War was fought with a largely international force, along with US taxpayers spending roughly $7 Billion. Granted the objectives of the two wars were different, but that was $7 Billion of a war that cost roughly $60 Billion. Why was the situation completely different? Because Bush I took the time to go to the international community and build a *true* coalition. *That* is good diplomacy and decision making and something that Bush II should have inherited from his father. Unfortunately for us and our wallet, he didn't. But c'est la vie.

 

[Natoma]

Ever heard of acidic rain? Where do you think that comes from, huh?

Do you understand what it is? Do you understand how the earth's atomosphere works? This has been a major "call" of the liberals. The problem is very few understand how it works.

Uhh, enough people understand that if you dump Sulphur into the atmosphere it will eventually react with the Hydrogen and Oxygen and rain back down upon the earth in a highly acidic form.

But of course it's just the "liberals" who are trying to politicize the healthiness and cleanliness of our environment so it's not only better for us but for our descendents as well. Such an evil, politicized, and obviously twisted goal. :?

 

[ByteMe]

Ever heard of acidic rain? Where do you think that comes from, huh?

Do you understand what it is? Do you understand how the earth's atomosphere works? This has been a major "call" of the liberals. The problem is very few understand how it works.

Uhh, enough people understand that if you dump Sulphur into the atmosphere it will eventually react with the Hydrogen and Oxygen and rain back down upon the earth in a highly acidic form.

But of course it's just the "liberals" who are trying to politicize the healthiness and cleanliness of our environment so it's not only better for us but for our descendents as well. Such an evil, politicized, and obviously twisted goal. :?

Mother nature works this way. The "acid rain" is exatly how the sky is cleaned. By definition acid rain is a pH of 6.5 or lower. Mother nature in perfect balance IS a pH of 6.5 (rain). So if mankind has one campfire we have created acid rain.

Mother nature can clean more than mankind is capable of putting up currently.

 

[Grall]

Mother nature works this way. The "acid rain" is exatly how the sky is cleaned.

Woe us, if this is what you gas-guzzlers actually believe. Jeez, this is wrong on SO many different levels.

Mother nature in perfect balance IS a pH of 6.5 (rain).

First, neutral PH is 7, 6.5 is not "balance", SECOND, acid rain is generally much much LOWER than 6.5!

So if mankind has one campfire we have created acid rain.

The problem is of course not that single campfire, but the hundreds of millions of motor vehicles, coal and oil-burning furnaces etc that we humans employ in our use. This is hardly something that we can just ignore if we want our biosphere to remain functional.

Mother nature can clean more than mankind is capable of putting up currently.

Dude, that's an incorrect, ignorant and DANGEROUS statement!

Here in Sweden - a country that does not use fossil fuels to any greater degree for energy production purposes, we have literally tens of thousands of acidic lakes that are either dead or dying from a biological diversity standpoint. The lakes are very clear and pretty, but they're basically just pools of water with very little activity going on in them.

For example. the acidic water draws out aluminium from the soil. Fish swim in the water and extrude ammonia from their gills (a natural process). The ammonia reacts with the aluminium, forming a sticky aluminium compound on the gills. The fish suffocates and dies.

*G*

 

[Natoma]

Just so it's known, pure sulphuric acid has a pH of less than 1. Diluted in rain water, it lowers the pH to roughly 3, which is roughly the pH of stomach acid. Pure hydrochloric acid has a pH of less than 1 as well, but diluted in stomach acids raises the pH of the concotion to roughly 3. Do you honestly want that raining down on you?

Rainwater normally has a pH of 5.5-7, and seawater normally has a pH of 7-9.

 

[ByteMe]

Woe us, if this is what you gas-guzzlers actually believe. Jeez, this is wrong on SO many different levels.

Are you wanting to argue that acid rain is not how mother nature cleans the air?

First, neutral PH is 7, 6.5 is not "balance", SECOND, acid rain is generally much much LOWER than 6.5!

If mankind did not exist, rain would have a pH of 6.5. That is what I mean by mother natures balance.

Mother nature can clean more than mankind is capable of putting up currently.

Dude, that's an incorrect, ignorant and DANGEROUS statement!

You need to read up on chemistry more. I would suggest looking into Chlorides/Sulfates/Nitrates as a start (as it pertains to our atomsphere). What I said was correct. Your ignorance does nothing more than try and scare people.

 

[ByteMe]

Rainwater normally has a pH of 5.5-7, and seawater normally has a pH of 7-9.

Holy Cow pies! You don't even know what you just showed.








Think about balance.

 

[Willmeister]

Mother nature can clean more than mankind is capable of putting up currently.

Two words to show how this isn't true: agricultural runoff. Mother nature can't keep up.

 

[Natoma]

Rainwater normally has a pH of 5.5-7, and seawater normally has a pH of 7-9.

Holy Cow pies! You don't even know what you just showed.

Think about balance.

Thanks for the selective quoting.

Just so it's known, pure sulphuric acid has a pH of less than 1. Diluted in rain water, it lowers the pH to roughly 3, which is roughly the pH of stomach acid. Pure hydrochloric acid has a pH of less than 1 as well, but diluted in stomach acids raises the pH of the concotion to roughly 3. Do you honestly want that raining down on you?

Rainwater normally has a pH of 5.5-7, and seawater normally has a pH of 7-9.

Rainwater under normal circumstances has a pH of 5.5 - 7. With sulphuric acid diluted in rainwater from our polluting activities, the pH of rainwater is lowered to 3. This is the same pH as the acids that churn in our stomach. Again, do you honestly want that raining down on you?

 

[Sxotty]

LOL sulfur, well sulfur is a solid, and solids don't float in the atmosphere sorry guys you are wrong.

SO2 is what you are thinking of and it is the product of combustion of sulfur this reacts with water and form acid. In addition HNO3 (nitric acid) is formed from N2O5 and other nitrous oxides in the air.

Yes natoma you were right sulfuric acid has a pH that is <1, actually about -2 I think

Acid rain is actually a mix, and listen sulfur can be pretty much removed from gas so those gas guzzlers won't produce any acid rain... you can still complain though and should for other reasons.

And btw byte was right about one thing, rain is acidic and is going to keep being acidic unless we destroy the atmosphere (5.6 is the average unpolluted pH of rainwater).

 

[Willmeister]

Isn't the biggest 'releaser' of SO2 coal-fired plants, not automobiles? With the constant demand for electricity, it looks as if we can never rid ourselves of our need for coal-fired plants.