Matus1976

Michael, I did not suggest Brazil was a hell hole, it seems pretty decent now from what I understand of it, still it's violent crime rate is some 20x that of the US. You must differentiate your assessment of shitty nations between ones that control the economy and ones that do not. While China is not very shitty in the grand scheme of things today, although it is still pretty shitty, it damn well was during the cultural revolution and the engineered famines. Right wing dictatorships, like Chile, ultimately did not control your average person's means to stay alive. As long as you minded your business and kept quiet about complaints, those dictators were more likely to leave you alone. In China, the Soviet Union, Ethiopia (interesting that you mention that, their biggest holiday now is the celebration of the day the Soviet government left) no matter how nice you were, how quiet you were, disastrous economic policies would still kill you. And he kills 50,000 people, like Saddam did post Gulf War I. Or he pretends to be opening up for reforms, like Mao's hundred flowers campaign, then collects and kills everyone who revealed themselves as a reformer. Of course, I build the best assessment I can by reading as much as possible right now, but unfortunately I can't travel the world on a whim. And most of these countries I would not want to visit. Because of major market reforms and political restructuring, I don't consider China to be a 'hell hole' right now, although for many people, such as those who protest and write about democracy, it certainly is. I know it is a common libertarian position that with globalization and international investment, markets must be opened concurrently with the political structure, I hope that proves to be true in the long run. If China retains it's closed political structure yet becomes a global economic and military power house, it could be a dangerous situation.

Ron Paul does not hold popular support because of his libertarian ideals on civil liberties and economic freedoms, but because of his anti-war stance. The vast majority of the people who support him are not libertarians at all. As president, he would have very little power to make any real 'libertarian' difference since any new law he proposes would need to be approved through both the House and the Senate, neither of which have any significant libertarian potential. As president, he WILL have major control over the military, which is exactly where his ideas are the most dangerous.

Michael, I don't know much about Brazil, but it seems in the grand scheme of orwellian hell holes, it was pretty low on the totem pole if it let so many obvious infractions slip by. I recall stories from East Germany where every single speck of a car was searched at border crossings, including underneath floor mats above sheet metal floors, where no gun could possibly be hidden, but a pamphlete certainly could be. It's a compelling thought, but I don't buy into that wholesale. The democratization of information might very well make totalitarian oppression even more total. MIT's "Oxygen" prorgram, and many of the likely advances from nanotechnology, will enable dust particle sized survaillance systems, which under the control of a totalitarian state, could literally keep an eye on everyone, every moment. The nature of the technology would demand that it controlled by a massive centrallized repository of the collected information, something which though amenable to open source technology, could easily be monopolized by a massive invasive government. Current understandings of Relativity and quantum mechanics suggest that we may be able to build devices which can view the past, so literally no act could go completely hidden. Arthur C Clarke's book "the Light of Other Days" and Isaac Asimov's short story "The Dead Past" both explore this possibility. Combined with total survaillance, the possibilities for abuse of such systems is mind numbing. On the other hand, I see tremendous potential in the internet for promulgating freedom and would certainly advocate any and all uses for it in that regard. China spends a considerable amount of time and money trying to filter questionable content. The totalitarian nations which offer internet access usually force everyone to go through government controlled firewalls, where international information is easily controlled. Perhaps clandestine operations where satelite internet ready computers are dropped into totalitarian nations, the hi-tech equivalent of leaflet drops, might create a foundation for freedom in these rogue states. I'm sure in such instances these governments would hunt down and kill anyone with such devices though. I would certainly advocate rational efforts to use subversive internet access technologies to undermine murderous regimes, but I've not so rosy a view of technology to think that our myspace pages about Brittany Spears CNN comments and You Tube videos will so easily bring about a revolution of freedom while conveniently letting us go about our daily routines. The entire world stands in stark contrast, as a shinning beacon of ... everything really, to North Korea, yet it remains an incredibly oppressive hell hole and seems to be getting worse despite new technologies.

You used these tactics before--introducing wildly bogus premises as if they were my own, and I had to keep saying that they weren't. Your whole method in the other debate was to do this, it confuses the other readers as to what my position is and adds an unjust burden to me to keep denying your ridiculous claims. So back on the ignore list for you. I won't waste my time discussing this with someone who is so dishonest. Shayne These comments are the literal implication of your comments on this thread, and also taken directly from the discussion you are likely referring to. You complained explicitly about how difficult it is to start a business in the US, and suggested I knew nothing about what I was talking about because I had never 'tried to do anything' (like starting a business) The difficulty in starting a business was one of the first pieces of evidence you suggested in that thread (I admit I am just going from memory here) you offered as evidence of how 'not free' the US is. Your readers are confused because you are confused about your own position, in one post you say: Then two post laters contradict yourself when you say: Which is it, are we implicitly allowing the encroachment of civil liberties domestically by opposing their loss internationally? Or can small victories be one against the loss of civil liberties domestically while large victories are made internationally? You seem to embrace a zero sum perception of this struggle. It is a non zero sum struggle though, any losses are bad, and any gains are good. Gains abroad are not correlated with losses domestically. Everyone in this thread has found little value in your comments since you essentially called everyone else in the world a blithering idiot, even those who started out agreeing with you in this thread. If there is any one worthy of putting on ignore, it's you. Too bad you can't ignore yourself eh?

You lack vision. Shayne You are naive.

You are making my point. You are giving reasons why we need to vigorously use our freedom of speech to defend individual rights in this country, as opposed to being content with being the least worst country. I think attitudes like yours is causing an erosion of freedom of speech in this country, e.g. granting telecoms immunity from spying on us and passing bills that violate the constitution. That's a false dichotomy Shayne, you act like you can only be EITHER against encroachments on free speech HERE or against encroachments on free speech elsewhere. Why can I not be opposed to both? And always strive to deal the worst blow I can with available resources and the surrounding contexts against the worst enemy I face? I never said, and I don't think anyone here even remotely implied, that I am 'content' with being the 'least worst' country. I think attitudes like *yours* are causing the erosion of freedom of speech around the globe, and consequently threatening it domestically, because you act like its the same thing that we cant start a business in the US without fileing a DBA in our town, as being executed in North Korea of criticizing the dear leader. Any assault on free speech anywhere on the globe to any person is an assault on the very concept of free speech, and if you allow it anywhere to grow in strength or to get entrenched it will always come back to you ten fold. You, in practice, promulgate the global growth of the worst kinds of restrictions on speech, while nit picking the details in an all ready mostly free nation. You could care less if every other nation on the planet became an orwellian totalitarian hell hole, because you have to recycle here. If America had followed your aboslutist isolationistic solipsism during the cold war, we would today be a Soviet hell hole. You must always deal the worst blow you can with your available resources against the worst enemy you face. Oh, a small victory here and there, I thought you said: So which is it, does opposiing the assaults on liberty in all parts of the world lead to the loss of liberty here always, or does it make a small victory 'here and there' I think you need to get your opinions straight on this before calling all other objectivists the equivalent of blithering idiots. Why not fight on both fronts, one should fight all battles by always striving to deal the best blow they can against the worst enemy they face with whatever oppurtunities arise.

Indeed. "Philosophical and Intellectual" warfare do not work in nations which have no free speech. How far do you think you would get preaching individualism and free markets in North Korea before you were 'dissappeared'? I believe yours and studiokadents attitudes on this are completely biased by the fact that you are lucky enough to live in a nation where you can speak your mind and not be killed and have your family killed. In East Germany under Soviet rule, documents released since the fall of the Soviet Union have shown that nearly 10% of the population actively spied on their neighbors, reporting on habits, movements, discussions, or even a mere passing deragotory comment about communism. How far do you think 'intellectual and philosophical warfare' would get when 10% of your fellow man was ready to turn you in?

You are separating the effect from the cause, you are focusing on the particulars of the situation (the individuals which actually attack) and not the over arching concept (the totalitarian dictators that promulgate the idealogy and arrange the attacks) You like to assert that Iraq and Saddam was 'relatively' secular, yet Saddam was directly funding terrorist attacks against Israel and paying out tributes to the families of suicide bombers. That *alone* is reason enough to remove him from power. Of course not, nor did I ever suggest anything of the sort. I am talking about attacking the people who actually commit attacks, and the primary cause of those people deciding to commit those attacks, where that cause violates fundamental civil liberties. If a lone preacher advocates this stuff, but has no literal power of his people, he falls under the realm of free speech. Where a totalitarian dictator forces a murderous fundamentalist ideology down the through of his prisoners and kills everyone who speaks out against him, we can certainly take every reasonable action to remove him from power and remove the oppressive infrastructure he left in his wake. You act as though since Saddam Hussein *himself* did not literally attack us, and that no Iraqi Battleship was steaming up the Hudson, we have no just cause to act against him. We had plenty causes for action 1) Saddam Hussein was a murderous tyrant, and a more free nation is always justified in a rational effort to remove from power the tyrants of a less free one to create a more free one 2) Saddam Hussien directly funded terrorism against western nations, allies, and Americans. Any assault on individual freedom and personal liberty against any person anywhere in the world is an assault on the very concept of liberty and freedom. 3) Hussien invaded neighboring nations and started wars 4) Hussien tried to have a president of a free nation assassinated. 5) Controlled a major portion of the worlds energy supply and used it, not surprisingly, for murder, tyranny, and sponsoring terrorism (even if it wasnt Al Qaeda) 6) The brutally oppressive social and economic policies and controlled forced indoctrination is creating more murderous terrorists, and as the totalarian despostic tyrant holding 10's of millions of people hostage, <i> ought to be</i> removed from power. 7) violated the conditions that ended the previous war he started, violating no fly zones and refusing international monitoring groups access to stores of weapons of mass destruction First, remember that many of these brutal dictatorships are against the Islamic terrorist groups. The internal strife's and disagreements about how to best go about killing westerners and wiping isreali off the face of the earth does not constitute being 'against' islamic terrorist groups. And both preach the destruction of the west, the only difference is in who they considered the rightful heir to Islam, Muhammad's relatives or Muhammad's students. Nearly every majority Arab / Islam nation is ruled by Sunnis, regardless of whether or not Sunni's comprise the Majority in that nation. Only Iran is ruled by Shias. Despotic totalitarian nations, theocratic or secular, which preach and act in accordance with the destruction of freedom and individual liberties, are not just nations and their 'leaders' are nothing more than massive hostage takers and oppressive cultists. Every reasonable effort should be made in the long term to remove every one of them from power, they are unjust, they breed terrorism, start all the wars, cause all the major global instabilities, are hotbeds for famine and pandemics, and ultimately may lead to the destruction of all life on earth. Saudi Arabia pays lib service to opposing Al Qaeda but in fact is the primary source of wahhabist terrorist funding in the US. See - http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?p...3&report=45 Iraq was not 'significantly' secular. It was slightly less of a theocracy. Even so, being 'secular' does not make a nation just, and being a murderous totalitarian hell hole certainly makes it an unjust one. Yet it is infinitely better than the constitution under the taliban (oh wait, there wasnt one) The status of freedom in liberty in ancient greece and Sparta were intolerable by modern standards, yet they represented the first major steps toward freedom in the history of the world, and in a world where most cultures did not even have a word for freedom. It is unreasonable to expect a 'western' liberal constitutional democracy to spring forth from the ashes of the theocratic hell hole of the taliban, but every positive steps in the direction of freedom should be celebrated, and the Afghan constitution certainly is a positive step. Yet again far better than the previous state of affairs, where you and your family were murdered for opposing Saddam. You undermine your own case here, you simultaneously assert that the Iraqi and Afghan constitutions should be comparable to the US's or modern wests in regards to freedoms, secularism, and civil liberties, yet conversely assert that you cant just take 'thousands of years of traditions' and merely change the political system over night. The current incarnations of constitutions in Iraq and Afghanistan are the best compromise between modern western values and those deeply routed cultural traditions. However, Japan and South Korea are stark contrasts to your point, both represented hundreds of years of cultural dominated by singular authoritarian rule, yet in a few decades south Korea, with no international assistance aside from not being conquered by the communist north, went from having no cultural tradition of freedom to being one of the freest, richest, and most progressive nations on the planet, and Japan did it in even less time. While it took 100,000 years to invent the airplane, it need not be re-invented every time a new nation develops an airline, cultures and nations adopting new ideas can learn from the growth and progress of others. It took the west over 2,000 years to almost fully integrate freedom (obviously as objectivists we probably think it still has some progress to make) yet South Korea did not need to go through a war against persians, an alexander the great, a roman republic, a collapse into dark ages, power struggles for hundreds of years between church and king, a magna carta, an enlightenment, the discovery of a new world, and the formation of a new nation on the principle of freedom in order to adopt most of the western notions of freedom. The only way we are going to get rid of these bad ideas is to change the minds of people. This requires philosophical and intellectual warfare, not physical warfare. Perhaps we can hold hands and sing kumbaya as well. One significant way to get rid of those ideas is to kill or remove from power the despotic and unjust tyrants that force it on people. After that, intellectual and philosophical warfare is the way to go. Or do you suggest htat if you lived in a Orwellian totalitarian hell hole that you're only justifiable recourse would be 'philosophical and intellectual warfare' (this, of course, would get you killed almost instantly) The only rights a nation deserves are the rights which it protects of it's people. A nation which does not grant it's individuals a right to life, has no right to self defense or to exist on it's own. A nation which has no free speech leaves no room for 'intellectual and philosophical' warfare and directed physical retaliation is absolute justified.

I have made the case a few times here that Iraq is in fact in our long term rational self interest. I elaborate on that here http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/in...amp;#entry44016 Our war is not one against Al Qaeda, but one against Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism. Al Qaeda is not the only murderous fundamentalist group, in fact there are thousands. Invading Afghanstan was the best blow we could deal against Al Qaeda, the worst of the fundamentalist islamic groups, as demonstrated by 9/11. But Invading Iraq was the best blow we could deal against Ismalic Fundamentalist Terrorism *in general* It's one thing to question the efficacy of that, it's another thing to pretend that Al Qaeda is our only enemy and that the nature of the nations of the middle east don't play any role creating and funding terrorism. Is that your position? The biggest threat we face now is that of islamic terrorism, in the long term, the terrorism this breeds and the murderous hatred, intolerance, and indoctrination the prison camps of the middle east called 'countries' may very well wipe out all life on earth. The rapidly growing pace of technological innovation enables smaller numbers of people with fewer resources to kill ever more people. The social infrastructures in these nations are the worst in the world and are perpetually the hotbed of famines and pandemics. The root cause of all of these is the nature of the murderous dictatorships which brutally oppress and indoctrinate hundreds of millions of people throughout the middle east. The single best blow we can deal against this is to demonstrate clearly what a liberal constitutional democracy smack dab in the middle of the middle eastern islamic sea of tyranny is capable of. We had to start somewhere against the *general* threat of islamic fundamentalism, the conceptual over arching theme of the threat, not the individual particular terrorist groups, but where they come from, and where they are armed and funded from, and what causes that attitude in the first place. If you suggest responding only piece meal to individual attacks from individual groups, one at a time, you'll find yourself with a death toll in the millions. It is not reasonable in a world of transcontental flights and internation nuclear armed cruise missiles to base your foriegn policy on technology and predominant political ideas of 200+ years ago when it took 6 months to cross the Atlantic. It will be even less relavant in the age of bio-engineered viruses, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. Is this really what you think Iraq is? It's clear that this whole effort has been centered around trying to establish rule of law and a reasonable representative democracy in Iraq. If it wasnt, we could surely prop up some new dictator and secure oil supplies, something like this might be more inline with a comment that you cannot defeat dumb ideas with bullets, but when every reasonable effort is being expended to help people protect their own individual liberties and partake in a representative government, I hardly think this is accurate at all. The whole of the middle east is filled with bad ideas promulgated by murderous governments at the end of a gun, these bad ideas may kill millions of people globally, or lead to the end of all life on earth. What do you think <i>should</i> be done about these bad ideas?

What a laughingly ridiculous assement of Churchill, though not at all surprising coming from the idiotic mises pacifist libertarians camp. I find it odd that this author spends so much time condeming Churchill for fighting the war which stopped Hitler, and yet still acknowledges that he was 'better than Hitler' If Churchill was merely a warmonger and not an adament defender of justice and freedom, than 'Greybird' and this Ralph Raico are just nihilistic death worshipping aboslute pacificists who despise their own existence so much that they'll pave the way for every murderous tyrant to rise to power, and not merely misinformed idealists who mistakingly value peace more than justice and freedom.

Sorry, I'm speechless! You should send that to some highway engineers and get their opinions. You seem to be afflicted by speechlessness throughout this thread - anytime that I have tried to dive a little deeper into your opinions of these matters.

I'm still waiting for an explanation of how this would actually cause more traffic congestion (interestingly, these pictures from Dubai about traffic congestion show very few cars actually on the roads)

I'm pretty sure no amount of evidence would convince you. You know nothing about me, why would you think that? I'm pretty sure that you actually have no evidence to back that up, because there is no evidence suggesting that we are making the planet 'uninhabitable' and this statement of yours is just an evasion so you don't have to try to provide evidence for something that has no evidence.

But isn't mass transit socialism and involve planning and against your individualism? What? Uh, no it's not. In densely populated areas mass transit makes economic sense, in sparsely populated areas it does not.

So are you suggesting that Would actually create MORE traffic congestion? Why did the Bush Administration open up more federal aviation lanes for the Thanksgiving and Christmas season in 2007, and why did that opening up of more lanes (more airline highways, essentially) lead to reduced air traffic congestion and fewer delays? Why is building more highways different? Or, furthermore, if we should someday have 'flying cars' would that not indeed open up the skies to be literally thousands of highways? So by your reckoning, each and every one of these sky lanes will be bumper to bumper traffic james? Such is the ridiculous nature of the claim you are making. Yes, one or two more highways, in the short term, will raise the number of cars on the roads, but as these studies I provided show, this is because the vehicles are coming off of secondary roads (where more car drivers and pedestrians are killed) but in the long term they will lead to less traffic and congestion. 10 or 20 more highways will definately reduce traffic and congestion, 100 or 200 across the nation will absolutely and markedly reduce traffic right away. When was the last time you actually have seen a highway constructed? Not in my whole life have I ever seen a highway under construction, I drive on thousands of miles of roads, I've seen interchanges updated, but I have NEVER seen a new highway made. And yet, somehow, amazingly, traffic keeps getting worse and worse!!! There is a 7 mile stretch in CT that CT has been trying to finish for 30+ years. There are even paths cut through the granite hills where the road will go, there is a bridge which crosses over a 2nd road which has no highway on top of it. Instead, traffic comes to the end of the section of highway which was built, gets off, and drives a secondary road, Rt. 85, where giant signs demand that headlights remain on at all times and 1 person per year is killed in accidents on this 7 or 8 mile stretch of road. I am sure that, when the remaining part of that highway is finished, if ever, it will have traffic on it no doubt, but this would be traffic that moved off of a secondary road and traveled faster and in more safety than it otherwise could have.

Yes, and since the first attempts to practice medicine sometimes harmed or killed the patient we should have abandoned that as well. What is the relevance of such a comment? Medicine is a process of understanding the way the natural world works, and failures will necessarily occur. Planners are attempting to control and manipulate people, and nothing but failure will always result. Understand nature is far different than seeking to enslave people. You, and these planners, are nothing more than frustrated little social tyrants who are annoyed that other people don't choose to live the way you think they ought to choose to live and are perfectly content in leveraging police and SWAT teams to do your social engineering. Like Mao, you think that people are books full of blank pages ready to be molded and formed to what you think is best. Perhaps I've misjudged you, please feel free to clarify, but your adament defense of planning and controls suggests you follow the same line of thinking. Despite it's grandoise headline, this article is saying that it is more cost effective to solve dubais traffic problems through mass transit than it is to solve it through building more highways, which is entirely plausible in many cases.

It is not life as in the physical mechanical perpetuation of our existence which is our highest value, but in fact a particular kind of life, a good life or Aristotlean Eudaemonic life that is our highest value. To value your existence over everything else in life would quickly lead you down the path of sabatoge, manupulation, and general pejorative behavior toward everything and everyone. Of course the physical mechanical perpetuation of our existence is a requirement toward leading a good life, and as such is one of our highest values, but it is the good life that existence makes possible which should be your absolute highest value - as is explicitly demonstrated by Rand when she had Galt threaten to kill himself to keep Dagny from being tortured.

Yes, because we are rapidly making it uninhabitable. You love those emotional appeals to gross generalizations. How are we making it uninhabitable? Give me some concretes. We live longer and healthier lives than ever before in the entire history of humanity, yet the world is on the brink of being 'uninhabitable' based on what evidence? How will it become uninhabitable, if it is warmer, it is, in fact, more habitable, not less. Plants love warmth and grow faster in CO2, humans love warmth as well. Of course, that will displace people and cause problems, but nothing that technology couldnt handle (like, say, nuclear powered desalination plants) but of course, environemtnalists damn cars, damn nuclear reactors (the safest form of energy we have ever created) damn agriculture, damn technoloy in general, they damn our very existence. If we don't have sufficient technology to detect and mitigate existential threats, which will only come from industrial and economic growth, ALL LIFE on this planet WILL END. ALL LIFE, every microbe, every cute squirrel, mucusy slime mold, all of it. It is not a quesiton of 'if' but only 'when'

So which "law of nature" are you applying here? I'd ask you to think about what you are suggesting, and reduce it to fundamentals. If we build a road, the road gets traveled, and so sees traffic. But did that road cause traffic? C'mon, do you seriously believe that? Honestly I have a hard time even formulating a statement against that because I find it so absurd on so many levels. Ok, so, If we never built any roads ever there would be no traffic jams. Do you want to live in a world with no roads? Perhaps you want to hike everywhere. That might not be a good idea the next time a storm comes your way, or excessive rain, or a small drought. Roads and easy transportation spread risks over larger areas, so no particular area is catastrophically effected by minor local events. It's like saying if you create a medicine that cures a disease, well, that person will just get some other disease and then want a cure for that. If you make a safety improvement in a car, well, people will just want their car even safer, and then drive a little more recklessly, and need still more safety improvements. If a lake is crowded by recreational boaters, and you open a neighboring lake, will it be just as crowded? Will more people come out now that the new lake is open and less crowded? sure, but will those new boaters outpace the new area? People don't boat 24/7, nor do they drive 24/7, nor does every single person want or have a car. Building can easily outpace the growth in demand for roads (as it has in every other industry) The problem the people who just fundamentally don't like cars, they don't like others to have too much mobility, they don't like that people want to go everywhere and trapse all over their precious earth 'ruining' it. This small elite of people have a great deal of control over building through the EPA, and as thousands of people die in traffic accidents, as energy and food costs skyrocket because everyone is sitting on congested higways for hours on end, they give themselves big ol pats on the back for 'protecting' the earth. We have traffic jams because the number of cars has tripled and the number of vehicle miles traveled has quadrupled, while the actual amount of highways has increased by about 10%. It simple, more highways equals less traffic. Do Highways Cause Traffic Congestion? http://www.reason.org/commentaries/staley_20060629.shtml The Road More Traveled Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think http://www.reason.org/road/ "Congestion robs the U.S. economy of over $63 billion a year and traffic delays are expected to increase by more than 65 percent over the next 25 years" Do More Highways Cause Congestion? http://www.ti.org/vaupdate14.html "Highway data show that building new freeways increases per capita freeway driving. However, it does not increase total per capita driving. Instead, it shifts driving from ordinary streets to the freeways. Since freeways are safer, and ordinary street driving is particularly dangerous for pedestrians, new freeways are the ultimate pedestrian-friendly design." On the other side, I find this Highways Cause Sprawl http://www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/transportation/cincy.asp Which comes from the Sierra Club. What do they advocate of course, but more 'planning' !!! "Instead it would be smarter to plan our communities better so that we aren't forced to drive everywhere, and to provide greater transportation choices such as commuter light rail and expanded bus service." Funny that 'planners' always seem to find more reason to make more 'plans' even though all the problems they are trying to fix come from the failures of their previous plans.

I don't see where you are getting this from, planning is exactly what has caused these problems, that is, little social tyrants planning out what they think things ought to be like, not individual builders and home owners planning whats best for themselves (which <i>does</i> work) Left to their own selfish accords, cities would be tall and confined, not spread out over hundreds of square miles wasting ten times the resources. The very survival of humanity <i>depends</i> on massive economic growth, you seem to think that 'sustainbility' and probably 'global warming' are the biggest threats we face, but frankly none of these are civilization killers and even by their worse estimates will just make things difficult, but do you think that when an asteroid is pummeling toward us it's gonna give a damn how 'sustainble' we are? Will a rouge planet careening through our solar system care what your 'carbon foot print' is? We face tremendous threats in the near future, and hunkering down and abandoning technological growth will *absolutely* ensure our demise and the demise of all life on the planet (don't forget, many times in the past asteroids have wiped out the majority of life on the planet) We also face nearby cosmic threats, the collapse of our magnetic field (which seems well under way) natural or artificial pathogens which could wipe out huge portions of humanity, a major biological or nuclear terrorist strike could plunge most of the technologically developed world into a new dark age, (remember, the last one lasted over a thousand years) Caldera volcanic eruptions could do the same, on and on and on. Every one of these problems requires massive economic and industrial growth to combat, we need to get off this planet and spread life out. If you honestly care about the kind of threats humanity faces and what to do about that (environmental and being more 'sustainable') you would learn about all the ones we face and try to determine which poses the greatest threat and what strategies would work to mitigate those threats. Global warming, even by it's worst estimates is at the bottom of the list. The only extent to which I favor sustainability is when technology makes it cheaper and easier for an individual to create the means for survival, because it makes intelligent technological life more robust. Where 'sustainability' makes it harder for people and curtails technological growth in the name of some floating abstraction of the 'environment' it's pure suicide.

Surely you don't think building more highways will solve traffic congestion? Building more highways actually encourages more traffic, "if you build it they will come". We humans need to face facts - there are limits to everything. You can only handle so much traffic with the superhighway-vehicles model. We will only solve congestion with a multitude of initiatives. Surely I do think building more highways will cause less traffic jams, to think otherwise is absurd. "if you build it they will come" is a catchy phrase from a corny movie, not a law of nature. If every car had it's own highway, do you seriously think there would be 'more congestion' ? Of course as you build a road some people who otherwise would not have driven because traffic was so damn annoying would now go out and drive, but it's pretty easy to build more roads than the minor increase in drivers. It's very difficult to do that when there are 5,000 zoning laws in your way though. WHere I live in CT there is a major stretch if Interstate 95 which runs between NYC and Boston, part of it is one of the most congested highways in the country, it's 2 lanes each way and is a central hub between two major cities. A plan was proposed to widen it by *one* lane each way and they estimated it would take 20 years to do that and 20 billion dollars (after 10 million dollars worth of studies) In 10 years and 20 billion dollars Hong Kong built: - the worlds largest double decker suspension bridge - 20 some miles of elevated highways - a miltiple mile underwater tunnel - 20 miles of a mass transit high speed rail system - an artifical island - one of the worlds largest airports on top of that island We could build elevated highways over existing highways with higher speed limits and cut traffic tremendously. Look at Hong Kong's major engineering project or the projects in dubai. Most of our goods move over the highways and any congestion raises the prices tremendously especially as gas prices climb.

If 'Global Warming' really is a problem, then essentially environmentalists actually caused it by promulgating completely irrational fears about nuclear power and derailing the natural transition we were undergoing to a cleaner, safer, and cheaper form of power. Some leading environmentalists seem to be realizing the stupidity of this particular mistake, and are now champions of nuclear power, including Patrick Moore, co founder of GreenPeace (he left it when it became marxist and anti-corporate) and also James Lovelock, founder of the Gaia Hypothesis and considered 'grandfather' of modern environmentlism by many. James Lovelock: Nuclear power is the only green solution http://www.ecolo.org/media/articles/articl...ep-24-05-04.htm Patrick Moore - Co-Founder of Greenpeace Envisions a Nuclear Future http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/n...007/11/moore_qa Also, plans are moving forward steadily for the first new Nuclear power plant in decades to be built in Texas, it will be the largest plant in the US. Unfortunately it is not expected to go online until 2020. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dw...s.1c0d98a7.html On an Engineering forum I frequent, I see posts for jobs in nuclear engineering about every other week. Where for? in China through a construction firm in Dubai.

Thats easy general semanticist, build more highways. The EPA's policy now is basically to not let anyone build a new road anywhere. From 1956 to 1975 the Federal Highway Act created 35,000 miles of it’s planned 42,000 miles of highways. In the subsequent 20 years from 1975 to 1995 only the remaining 7,000 miles were built. In the latest 10 years from 1995 to today, a mere 4,000 more miles have been paved, a 10% percent increase. According the Bureau of Transportation Statistics the number of vehicle miles traveled in 1975 was 1.4 trillion miles, in 1995 was 2.4 trillion miles while in 2005 that number was 3 trillion. Today highways represent less than one percent of the nation’s total road mileage yet carry over 20 percent of the nations traffic. We see barely 20% more highway travel lanes than in 1975, while the number of vehicle miles traveled has doubled, and the number of cars on the road continues to sky rocket. Interstate 95, which goes from the Florida Keys to the cost of Maine, through Atlantic City, New York city, and Boston, also passes through Connecticut on it’s southern coast. Most of 95 through CT is two lanes, and the Stretch of 95 that goes from Danbury CT (near the New York border) to Old Saybrook is one of the busiest exchanges in the country. Recently a plan was unveiled to add one single lane on the north and south bound parts of 95 in CT, along 65 mile stretch. The estimates for the cost and time frame? 20 billion dollars and 20 years! Are you kidding me, we paved half the nation in that time and cost. In 1991 work began in Hong Kong on the most ambitious civil engineering project of the 21st century. In the following 7 years, and at a cost of 20 billion dollars, a six lane one mile tunnel, two bridges, one of which was the worlds longest double decker suspension bridge, the other the worlds longest cable-stayed bridge, twenty-two miles of an elevated superhighway, much of it built over an existing fourteen lane highway which remained opened, a high speed rail along that highway, an artificial island and on top of it a new airport with the worlds largest passenger terminal in history were built. Yet it takes the US 20 years and 20 billion dollars to add one lane to 65 miles of highway!

That government beuracracy has pretty much caused urban sprawl, just about every city in the country has zoning restrictions on how tall you can make a building, most of which are 2 - 3 stories. If you have ever been to phoenix it is more obvious here than anyway, as a result the metropolotin area of phoenix is geographically one of the largest in the US, but the population is no where near one of the highest. The building heights are limited to 4 stories. You can only grow up or out, if you make it illegal to grow up, well, out's the only way to go. Almost the entire state of New Jersey is one entire tract of urban sprawl. Many cities and towns in New England (where I live) not only limit heights of buildings, but also demand a certain amount of area surround each house, in some town that could be a couple acres. In most it's at least a couple hundred feet or so. It is far more effecient to grow up than it is to grow out, both from the laws of scaling and the huge amount of resources in pipes and materials needed to supply utilities to 20 houses spread over 4 square miles vers 20 units in a 10 story building. I look at cities like that, and am disgusted by what 'we are doing' to the earth, but not because I think the environment is on the verge of the collapse, but because it's an absurdly stupid waste of resources and costs the economy a great deal, and is caused only by the idiotic policies of little social tyrants. I look at cities like Dubai, and Hong Kong, and I *LOVE* what 'we are doing' to the earth. It's marvelous. Dubai http://www.dubai-architecture.info/DUB-GAL1.htm The author of that post ends with "What the hell are they doing over there?" (in regards to the absolutely tremendous growth) I think a more appropriate question is "What the hell are we doing everywhere else"

I think this is an interesting point that deserves emphasis. Although we are champions of free markets, it is wrong to assume fundamentally that every action a 'private' company makes (to whatever degree it is reasonable to even call companies private in such heavily mixed economy) is automatically purely a product of an individual or group of individuals leading a company making a decision outside the mind numbing influece of the government. Equally though, it is also wrong to automatically assume every decision made by large firms in mixed economies is directly influenced by the government, it might be best to look at the kind of business, the regulations relating to that, and the nature of the decision made and if it is closely related to regulatory influence.