Reducing Humans to Carbon Ash

[Selene]

Now let us see...public utility companies hmmm.

So are you saying that private utilities do not pollute as much? The only way to stop pollution from power generation is to spend a lot of money on new technology and this means raising power rates to very high levels and people will scream bloody murder when that happens. I am trying to understand the Objectivist position but for the life of me I can't. You seem to think that if only the government would stay out of everything (except protecting rights) then all our problems will be solved. Who knows, maybe you are right, the problem is that is not going to happen, ever. So, from my point of view, we need to deal with the reality of that.

GS:

First of all, the "Objectivist position" is not one I speak to. I try always to use a small "o" for objectivist.

Second, most important and where we truly disagree, is concerning laissez faire capitalism and government control for the public good.

My assumption is that all humans are capable of a complete range of behaviors from good to evil.

I would prefer, as an individualist who believes in individual freedom of action, that is unfettered until it initiates physical force against another, is the preferred standard to actualize human potential.

Government on the other hand is fundamentally inefficient and fundamentally incompetent to solve any problem when placed alongside private action.

If you can illustrate one concrete example wherein government outperforms private action we can discuss that.

Adam

[BaalChatzaf]

If you can illustrate one concrete example wherein government outperforms private action we can discuss that.

Adam

Launching UAVs against our enemies. For every Taliban our government gets that way, thirty of their uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers, sisters and children are killed. No private company can match that record.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

If you can illustrate one concrete example wherein government outperforms private action we can discuss that.

Adam

Launching UAVs against our enemies. For every Taliban our government gets that way, thirty of their uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers, sisters and children are killed. No private company can match that record.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al:

Do you assert that the government's lifelong civil servants did the developing of the technology and that the civil servants created the complicated engineering to deliver the mechanisms for the UAV's?

This voluntary military runs like a private army with massive technological advantages.

Adam

thinking that Ba'al is just "funnin" on that statement

[BaalChatzaf]

Adam

thinking that Ba'al is just "funnin" on that statement

Wrong. You asked a question which I took verbatim and I answered it the same way. If you ask a question, I will answer the question you asked, not the question you intended to ask.

I am genetically programmed to do that. One of the symptoms of Asperber's Syndrome.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[tjohnson]

If you can illustrate one concrete example wherein government outperforms private action we can discuss that.

I don't understand this statement. You seem to be saying that we don't need any government. There are things that governments do that private companies have no interest in doing. You are comparing apples to oranges.

[Selene]

Adam

thinking that Ba'al is just "funnin" on that statement

Wrong. You asked a question which I took verbatim and I answered it the same way. If you ask a question, I will answer the question you asked, not the question you intended to ask.

I am genetically programmed to do that. One of the symptoms of Asperber's Syndrome.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al:

I meant that private contractors provided the means and the technology for the UAV's effectiveness. Even the Manhattan project was government shielded private developement.

As you know, even a cursory view of the developing robotics technology and the exoskeletons that exist will establish a different method of killing enemies with less and less human risk.

Adam

[Selene]

If you can illustrate one concrete example wherein government outperforms private action we can discuss that.

I don't understand this statement. You seem to be saying that we don't need any government. There are things that governments do that private companies have no interest in doing. You are comparing apples to oranges.

GS:

Can you give me some examples of "...things that governments do that private companies have no interest in doing."?

Adam

Edited November 18, 2009 by Selene

[tjohnson]

Can you give me some examples of "...things that governments do that private companies have no interest in doing."?

Things that don't involve the profit motive. Things that put the interests of the population in general ahead of private interests.

[Selene]

Can you give me some examples of "...things that governments do that private companies have no interest in doing."?

Things that don't involve the profit motive. Things that put the interests of the population in general ahead of private interests.

GS:

Give me a specific government operation of a "thing" that does not involve the profit motive? This is a serious question.

Adam

[anthony]

So South Africa tops the world in one more suspect aspect! (Adam's quoted W.Post article on highest polluters in the developing world.)

There was a time that S.A. was also a world leader in the technology of nuclear energy, so this is rather ironic. All we have to show for this is one reactor,(Koeberg, in the Western Cape) which has quietly and efficiently been producing electricity for 20-odd years.

The atomic program was shelved when it became known that we were supplying Israel (in the bad old days of apartheid) with plutonium, enriched uranium, and technology.

(I spent 2 years working as lab assistant at the Atomic Energy Board in the early 70's, and have been a nuclear convert ever since. I sure didn't suspect any hidden agendas going on.)

Our new masters in S.A., politically correct as ever, literally chucked out the baby with the bathwater, and we are today reliant on coal-fired plants. Of course this is a State operation, and naturally it is in big trouble, with black-outs commonplace,and huge price hikes in our power costs. And oh, I didn't mention that the country sits upon an ocean of coal.

All that technology and scientific expertise is now defunct; with those brilliant physicists scattered all over the world. Is there any field the State can out-perform the private sector in? Right at this time, BTW, there's talk of building some pebble bed reactors, at the cost of billions of Rands (The S.A. currency, approx R7.5 to $1).

Ed Hudgins, may I add my congrats on a fine essay.

Tony

[Selene]

So South Africa tops the world in one more suspect aspect! (Adam's quoted W.Post article on highest polluters in the developing world.)

There was a time that S.A. was also a world leader in the technology of nuclear energy, so this is rather ironic. All we have to show for this is one reactor,(Koeberg, in the Western Cape) which has quietly and efficiently been producing electricity for 20-odd years.

The atomic program was shelved when it became known that we were supplying Israel (in the bad old days of apartheid) with plutonium, enriched uranium, and technology.

(I spent 2 years working as lab assistant at the Atomic Energy Board in the early 70's, and have been a nuclear convert ever since. I sure didn't suspect any hidden agendas going on.)

Our new masters in S.A., politically correct as ever, literally chucked out the baby with the bathwater, and we are today reliant on coal-fired plants. Of course this is a State operation, and naturally it is in big trouble, with black-outs commonplace,and huge price hikes in our power costs. And oh, I didn't mention that the country sits upon an ocean of coal.

All that technology and scientific expertise is now defunct; with those brilliant physicists scattered all over the world. Is there any field the State can out-perform the private sector in? Right at this time, BTW, there's talk of building some pebble bed reactors, at the cost of billions of Rands (The S.A. currency, approx R7.5 to $1).

Ed Hudgins, may I add my congrats on a fine essay.

Tony

Hey Tony:

Pebble Bed Modular Reactor Pty. Ltd. (PBMR) in South Africa is developing a modular pebble-bed reactor with a rated capacity of 165 MW_e. On June 25, 2003, the South African Republic's Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism approved a prototype 110 MW pebble-bed modular reactor for Eskom at Koeberg, South Africa. On 30 January 2007 it was reported that the South African government had approved the manufacture of PBMR fuel at Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa's Pelindaba Beva complex in the North West Province, and transporting of the raw materials to this site and manufactured fuel from it to Koeberg.[c

I am not familiar with this area. Are they of value?

Adam

[tjohnson]

Give me a specific government operation of a "thing" that does not involve the profit motive? This is a serious question.

Adam

Oh look who's so serious! I don't know, how about allocating land for parks or green spaces in the city?

[Selene]

Give me a specific government operation of a "thing" that does not involve the profit motive? This is a serious question.

Adam

Oh look who's so serious! I don't know, how about allocating land for parks or green spaces in the city?

GS:

You mean like Robert Moses and Fredrick Olmsted?

And yes, quite serious, some of us can think, chew gum, and make a joke while stroking the long hair of a woman.

Adam

[tjohnson]

GS:

You mean like Robert Moses and Fredrick Olmsted?

What about them?

[Selene]

GS:

You mean like Robert Moses and Fredrick Olmsted?

What about them?

GS:

They were two of the men who brought your public parks into reality and you will never guess how they did it. Here is a hint...every dime for the public parks came from PROFITS from evil capitalists, from big oil and big coal and big farming and big auto. Sshhh - don't tell anyone,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Law_Olmsted

Adam

[tjohnson]

Well that's nice but I was referring to making it policy that cities have to have green spaces and FORCING developers to change how they develop. Or maybe closing off streets to cars and making them for pedestrians only, etc.

[Brant Gaede]

Well that's nice but I was referring to making it policy that cities have to have green spaces and FORCING developers to change how they develop. Or maybe closing off streets to cars and making them for pedestrians only, etc.

Ah, yes, forcing. The old standby.

--Brant

[Selene]

Well that's nice but I was referring to making it policy that cities have to have green spaces and FORCING developers to change how they develop. Or maybe closing off streets to cars and making them for pedestrians only, etc.

GS:

"...FORCING..." Yes, GS, I have always seen the bulge in your coat that hides the gun that you will put to my head and force me to do what you think is the good.

When you strip all the philosophical bullshit our of the public good argument you attempted to make, it gets down to the primal statement of:

Mr. Private Property Developer, build it the way I tell you or I will murder you.

It is just a matter of time till you have to pull out the gun.

The prosecution rests.

Adan

[tjohnson]

GS:

"...FORCING..." Yes, GS, I have always seen the bulge in your coat that hides the gun that you will put to my head and force me to do what you think is the good.

When you strip all the philosophical bullshit our of the public good argument you attempted to make, it gets down to the primal statement of:

Mr. Private Property Developer, build it the way I tell you or I will murder you.

It is just a matter of time till you have to pull out the gun.

The prosecution rests.

Adan

Damn, you figured me out! Yes, I will murder you if you don't do as I say. Maybe this is true in the Excited States.

[tjohnson]

*Robert Bidinotto, "Green Cathedrals: Environmentalism's Mythological Appeal." The New Individualist, September 2007.

Man is no longer praised as a heroic conqueror of nature’s obstacles or even accepted as just another part of the natural world. More and more, he’s seen as an interloper—as an alien presence on the planet—even as the planet’s enemy. His creative works no longer are regarded as triumphs of the human spirit, but as acts of desecration that alienate him from the natural order. His cities are viewed not as monuments to human progress, but as symbols of natural destruction. His science is regarded not as a source of human hope, but as a menace to all that exists.

I would like to ask - by whom is "man is no longer praised as a heroic conqueror of nature’s obstacles or even accepted as just another part of the natural world"??

[Ed Hudgins]

I would like to ask - by whom is "man is no longer praised as a heroic conqueror of nature’s obstacles or even accepted as just another part of the natural world"??

Gen S - Virtually every environmentalist liberal and leftist intellectual, politicians who won't let entrepreneurs drill for oil in huge parts of Alaska, and the elite media to name some classes that contain thousands who shape our culture and politics.

[tjohnson]

Gen S - Virtually every environmentalist liberal and leftist intellectual, politicians who won't let entrepreneurs drill for oil in huge parts of Alaska, and the elite media to name some classes that contain thousands who shape our culture and politics.

Well, I think it's all about checks and balances. Nobody has all the answers.

[Ed Hudgins]

Well, I think it's all about checks and balances. Nobody has all the answers.

Not sure what "it" you're talking about. In any case, my "it" is my life, liberty, and property, which I don't want "checked and balanced." Rather, I want them protected, which is the point of government, which should be "checked and balanced."

[Ed Hudgins]

For all those who argue that we're running out of energy, you're in the company or wrong-headed folks who've made those arguments for over a century.

Check out George Will's excellent piece on "Oil's Expanding Frontiers."