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Coming soon: Ice-free arctic summers?
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Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 6:11 pm Post subject:

Julius wrote:

Fox wrote:

If your Flood actually occured as you describe, then it would have far outstripped anything humans are currently doing. As such, how can you describe the activities we're currently engaged in as causing "unprecedented destruction?" According to you, they're just a pale shadow of the horrific eco-terrorism God enacted in a few thousand years back.

God preserved and renewed life on the planet. The ark was the first act of conservation in history.

God murdered over 99% of life on the planet with a gigantic flood according to you. If I killed every tiger on the planet except for 2, you'd accuse me of a great crime, not of conservation. And you'd be right to do so.

If God simply knew the Flood was coming and did his best to save those animals, yes, he'd be a conservationist of a sort. But God didn't do that according to you. You say he caused the Flood; caused an unprecedented ecological disaster that ended the lives of almost everything on the planet.

Julius wrote:

If it was up to you and your reckless evolutionism, it would simply be a case of survival of the fittest and we need feel no guilt about snuffing out any number of other lifeforms: they are simply "losers that couldn't adapt".

That's silly. There are perfectly good secular reasons for preserving species where ever we can.

Julius

Joined: 27 Jul 2006

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 6:34 pm Post subject:

Fox wrote:

Julius wrote:

That's silly. There are perfectly good secular reasons for preserving species where ever we can.

Really? Because evolutionism provides no motivation nor impetus to do so.
If something goes extinct, not to worry. It will simply re-evolve again millions of years later.
I have heard this expressed by evolutionists.

You see with evolutionism, there is no sanctity to life whatsoever. We, and the animals, are simply a chance cluster of cells. Therefore it is not wrong to extinguish whole species, or races of people. Hitler believed this, and he was a big fan of Darwin.
By your viewpoint, life is simply a competition, and if something doesn't survive or gets selected out, all the better. No room for losers. There aren't many lifeforms that can live on concrete or in rivers full of chemicals, but who cares? Adapt or die.

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 6:59 pm Post subject:

Julius wrote:

Fox wrote:

Julius wrote:

That's silly. There are perfectly good secular reasons for preserving species where ever we can.

Really? Because evolutionism provides no motivation nor impetus to do so.

I agree, evolutionism provides no motivation at all for preserving species. This is because evolution is a scientific theory rather than a lifestyle. Condemning evolution for not giving us a reason to preserve other species is like condemning biology for not giving us a reason to write poetry.

Secular individuals turn to philosophy for their ethical motivations, not the theory of evolution. Evolution attempts to explain an observable process, that's all. It's not there to give us ethical guidance.

Julius wrote:

You see with evolutionism, there is no sanctity to life whatsoever.

When you stop worshipping a being who you believe committed mass murder via a global Flood, you can start talking about the sanctity of life, Julius.

Julius

Joined: 27 Jul 2006

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 7:11 pm Post subject:

Fox wrote:

When you stop worshipping a being who you believe committed mass murder via a global Flood, you can start talking about the sanctity of life, Julius.

The earth and everything in it belongs to God, he created it. Your life is not your own, you owe it to your maker. The flood was the just penalty for a fallen and evil creation.
The sanctity of life exists because it is not ours to destroy: that decision is up to he who made it in the first place.

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 7:19 pm Post subject:

Julius wrote:

Fox wrote:

When you stop worshipping a being who you believe committed mass murder via a global Flood, you can start talking about the sanctity of life, Julius.

The earth and everything in it belongs to God, he created it. Your life is not your own, you owe it to your maker. The flood was the just penalty for a fallen and evil creation.

A fallen and evil creation made by an omnipotent, omniscient being reveals its creator as evil.

Julius wrote:

The sanctity of life exists because it is not ours to destroy: that decision is up to he who made it in the first place.

This doesn't make life sacred, it makes life property.

Rusty Shackleford

Joined: 08 May 2008

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 7:36 pm Post subject:

Fox wrote:

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

Actually the complete reverse is true. I agree the right to pollute would probably be a market item, but it would not lead to more pollution.

Ontheway is saying it will lead to no pollution. He's said repeatedly that the only reason pollution occurs at all is because "Socialist governments legalize it." This is a fantasy.

It's only really pollution if it spills over to someone elses land. (negative externality.) I reserve the right to "pollute" my own land. Though, it is not likely to be in my best interest, and that land would quickly fall into the hands of those who know how to use it better.

The idea that pollution wouldn't exist in a Libertarian society is quite feasible (though one I don't really subscribe to if you count polluting your own land as "pollution). If you said "negative externalities" wouldn't exist, I would agree. You can simply sue the person who is polluting your river. In the current set-up, the only limits on polluting the communally owned river are regulations.

Quote:

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

On the contrary, it would mean pollution would be properly "priced". At the moment it is free. When something is more expensive, it becomes rarer, pretty much by definition.

That's only true if the real demand is equal to or less than the current limitations imposed by the government, though. If the real demand exceeds the current limits imposed by the government, then even if it cost money, we'd see more. I suggest that, in fact, the real demand for pollution exceeds the limits currently imposed by the government.

This is assuming that the govt knows what level of pollution is optimum.. We have been conditioned to believe that all pollution is bad. That simply isn't so. If you could pollute a river by 10% whilst feeding all the people in the neighboring region, would you do it? Of course you would. We make those trade offs every day. You are perhaps correct that pollution might rise, in some areas, but at least it would be to an optimum level, whereby the most benefit could be had. Pollution would also fall in some areas, where the govt mandated level had been set too high.

Quote:

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

Quote:

ontheway wrote:

This means that factories, mines, and developers will have to produce in a way that does NOT harm the environment.

No, it doesn't. It just means they'll be compensating private owners for the pollution they enact, or buying land to concentrate their pollution into.

Exactly. I actually agree with you here. I don't see it as a bad thing, though. If you own it, you should be able to do what you want with it.

When it comes to things like land and non-renewable resources -- things that are important on a scale extending beyond your lifetime, and which you yourself did not create -- no, I don't feel you should be able to do with it anything you want.

You are imposing your values on other people. I don't share them.

You absolutely should be able to do as you please with your property. That is a central tenet of the constitution. However, you can't do anything that would affect others. That seems obvious.

In any case, if you owned a river and decided to pollute it, you would piss off a lot of people who were probably willing to pay to use it. If you did that (and it wasn't the optimum thing to do), you would soon lose that property to people who did know how to use it properly.

Quote:

Buy a computer, sure, do with it what you want; it was made by humans, it won't outlast you, and what you do with it is your concern. Buy land and do anything with it you want, not so much. Humans didn't make it, and it will last a lot longer than you will. There's an element of responsibility involved; an element totally impossible for economics to capture. An element Libertarianism has no answer for.

The environment is much more resilient than you give it credit for. Devastated locations have recovered surprisingly quickly. Nature is very eager to claim back what we have taken from it. We are actually always fighting a battle against nature to keep what we have claimed.

Quote:

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

Quote:

This idea that privatizing land will stop pollution is ridiculous. Giving people unlimited rights to pollute on their own land -- or to sell those rights -- in combination with a total lack of regulatory limitations will result in an increase in pollution, not a decrease.

Haha, a completely ideological assertion. This statement has no basis in logic or facts. People have private land now and they rarely pollute it.

There are laws limiting what people can or cannot do with their land right now. Even despite those laws, companies get fined for things like illegal waste dumping. Pretending companies would stop doing those things if limiting laws were removed is just silly. There's nothing ideological about it. In fact, the only ideologically driven thing here is ontheway's predictions about how his Libertarian society would be.

[/quote]

I don't pretend for a minute that companies would stop dumping/polluting, whatever. They choose to dump because it is economically beneficial to do so. If you can make/save 5mil from dumping and the fine is only 2 mil, of course you would dump. No level of regulation is going to stop that.

We have to face the fact that to live the life we do, and for those that want the life we have, we need to accept some level of pollution. For this to work, we need to have the optimum system to distribute who gets to pollute and how much. Only those who can create the most benefit for how much they pollute should be able to. The only way to distribute that right is in the free market. Govt officials are too prone to corruption to be allowed to distribute such an important resource.

asylum seeker

Joined: 22 Jul 2007
Location: On your computer screen.

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 7:40 pm Post subject:

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

Personally, I would rather let technology handle it, IF, the problem arises. Lowering our standards of living for a nebulous thing we don't fully understand, that may or may not happen is, to me, a very bad idea. Especially considering that the people it will hurt most is the poor people of the world.

Taking such environmentally-friendly actions as increasing use of renewable energies and making homes and businesses more energy efficient does not mean that he will have to lower our living standards, in fact quite the contrary. In the long term homes and businesses can save money by becoming more energy-efficient or taking other actions like installing solar panels and replacing fleets with hybrids. People are wising up and realizing that doing business and being environmentally-friendly are not mutually exclusive and there no longer needs to be such an antagonistic relationship between environmentalists and big business. In the long run even the poor of the world will benefit from renewable energy as the price of oil is only going to keep going up in the future anyway as supply wanes.

Rusty Shackleford

Joined: 08 May 2008

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 7:56 pm Post subject:

asylum seeker wrote:

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

I have nothing against people choosing to adopt green energy, voluntarily. I am, however, vehemently opposed to govt legislators coercing citizens, through any means, to adopt anything against their will.

Some of your assertions about saving money in the long run, are a little iffy. You can save money by installing solar panels, IF, you get a govt subsidy. Small diesel cars are still cheaper to run than most hybrids.

Let me reiterate. I have nothing against people doing this stuff voluntarily. I am always opposed to govt coercion, in all its forms.

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 8:02 pm Post subject:

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

It's only really pollution if it spills over to someone elses land.

I disagree completely. By this logic, if one person owned the entire world, pollution would be impossible. That's obviously false, so your definition is obviously false.

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

I reserve the right to "pollute" my own land.

And I don't want you to have that right; I value the land being maintained at a certain standard more than I value your right to "own" it. With people like yourself saying such things, is it particularly surprising that many people don't trust the common person sufficiently to believe Libertarianism could possibly work?

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

Quote:

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

On the contrary, it would mean pollution would be properly "priced". At the moment it is free. When something is more expensive, it becomes rarer, pretty much by definition.

This is assuming that the govt knows what level of pollution is optimum..

No, it's not. I'm not talking about what level is or isn't optimum, only about whether or not ontheway's system would reduce pollution to zero (like he claims), reduce it somewhat, keep it at the same level, or increase it.

You say:

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

We have been conditioned to believe that all pollution is bad. That simply isn't so.

Then you say:

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

If you could pollute a river by 10% whilst feeding all the people in the neighboring region, would you do it? Of course you would. We make those trade offs every day.

The fact that you use the term trade off demonstrates that all pollution is, in fact, bad. You correctly point out at that times it can be a sufficiently small bad that it is worth doing, but that doesn't make it not bad, it just means it's a bad outweighed by the comparative good. And I agree, often some pollution is acceptable in return for sufficient benefit. I simply don't trust the common person with that decision. People are notoriously short sighted.

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

You are perhaps correct that pollution might rise, in some areas, but at least it would be to an optimum level, whereby the most benefit could be had.

An optimum level whereby the most benefit could be had right now. That's what most people are concerned with: right now. I'm concerned with more than right now, though. I don't care if you have the deed to a plot of land, there are things I want you to be unable to do on it, and excessively polluting it is one such thing. I know you don't care about that, because your value system is about profit and efficiency. And that's exactly why I'd never trust a Libertarian system to work.

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

Quote:

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

Quote:

ontheway wrote:

This means that factories, mines, and developers will have to produce in a way that does NOT harm the environment.

No, it doesn't. It just means they'll be compensating private owners for the pollution they enact, or buying land to concentrate their pollution into.

Exactly. I actually agree with you here. I don't see it as a bad thing, though. If you own it, you should be able to do what you want with it.

You are imposing your values on other people. I don't share them.

I know you don't share them, which is why I -- and people like me -- have to impose them upon you and other people like you. There are plenty of things people have done throughout history which conflict with my values, and I'd certainly authorize reasonable force them to stop if I could. Slavery, female circumcision, cutting off hands/mutilating for crimes, the death penalty, etc. I don't care if people's values differ from mine on these matters; I'm more than happy to stop them where possible.

So disagree all you want. All I can do is do my best to help prevent your dreams from becoming a reality, because your dreams are a Hell I don't want to live in.

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

In any case, if you owned a river and decided to pollute it, you would piss off a lot of people who were probably willing to pay to use it.

Yes, I've heard these straw-grasping attempts at defense before. "Oh no, it wouldn't happen, because blah blah blah." Communists had similar ideas, and we all know how that turned out. Ideologues have an incredibly poor track record from a historic point of view.

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

Quote:

The environment is much more resilient than you give it credit for.

The environment is quite resilient. By contrast, human ingenuity is relentless. Humans are constantly coming up with new innovations, products, etc. This is a good thing, but it also means our capacity for environmental damage increases every day. The environment, by contrast, grows no more resilient over time.

There is a strong possibility that even right now, we're working our way towards a less liveable planet due to the excesses of materialists such as yourself, who care about present day profit more than future sustainability. I'm not comfortable gambling on that matter based on ontheway's totally unproven ideologies. Sorry.

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

I don't pretend for a minute that companies would stop dumping/polluting, whatever. They choose to dump because it is economically beneficial to do so.

Exactly. It's economically beneficial. That doesn't mean it's good for humanity, all it means is that it's good for their bottom line.

I care about more than their bottom line. I care about more than the economy. I understand my values are different than your values, and that means one of our value sets needs to triumph, because they cannot be reconciled. I'd obviously prefer it was mine, and fortunately, it probably will be.

mises

Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 8:04 pm Post subject:

This is all hysterics. You're all going to feel like suckers when all these apocalyptic predictions don't come true.

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 8:06 pm Post subject:

Rusty Shackleford wrote:

I refuse to accept your proposed system of absolute ownership of land. You agree then that it should never come to be? After all, it would be the government coercing me into allowing you to do as you pleased on that land. Ownership isn't some divine right, it still ultimately comes down to governmental coercion.

This Libertarian "anti-coercion" idea is just a giant red herring. They don't care about coercion, their opinions on the government enforcing property prove that. The discussion is merely about how the government will coerce, not whether it will coerce. Anyone who is truly against coercion is against government, and property rights can't exist without a coercive government to enforce them.

visitorq

Joined: 11 Jan 2008

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 8:08 pm Post subject:

Julius wrote:

visitorq wrote:

they teach you that humans are like a bacteria eating up the planet (not true) .

Well, so far they are. Humans have caused massive and unprecedented destruction to the the earths ecosystems over the past 200 years. It is unsustainable, it cannot continue.

While reducing human populations may help in some cases, this in itself is not the real solution. Large populations need not be a problem, if only they knew how to live sustainably in their environments.
Its the lack of knowledge that is the cause.As I said, environmental education and awareness should be compulsory in all schools from the earliest age. its gotten so bad that a large % of the worlds people are urbanised and have lost touch completely with the natural world and how it works and sustains us. The logic of cause and effect in our actions has been lost. we see ourselves as separate from our environments, they are there to be plundered and exploited for short term profits, and life in all its forms is not regarded with the respect it requires. the current approach is of regarding everything as having only material or commercial value, nothing more.

Julius, you need to take a look at the "Zeitgeist" movie (you can find it on youtube). I don't agree with everything he says, but his part about the debt-based monetary system being responsible for preventing the kind of clean technologies from being used (that would protect the environment and improve our lives) is pretty bang on. If you have time, take a look - it might change your whole outlook. You need to stop looking down on humanity, and start realising that the real problem is the Rockefellers of the world, for keeping the system the way it is (to their own benefit and our detriment).

Here's the link for the complete film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gKX9TWRyfs

Last edited by visitorq on Sun Oct 18, 2009 8:09 pm; edited 1 time in total

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 8:08 pm Post subject:

mises wrote:

This is all hysterics. You're all going to feel like suckers when all these apocalyptic predictions don't come true.

No I won't. I've all ready said that I want the changes human-driven climate change suggests we should make even if human-driven climate change isn't really happening. Human-driven climate change is just another motivating factor.

Julius

Joined: 27 Jul 2006

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 8:10 pm Post subject:

Fox wrote:

A fallen and evil creation made by an omnipotent, omniscient being reveals its creator as evil.

It wasn't created that way. Its flaws are the result of humans choosing to exercise their own free will and disobey the creator. I don't know how to keep on explaining this to you.

Quote:

This doesn't make life sacred, it makes life property.

sacred property, on loan to us. If someone borrows your bike and returns it to you trashed, will you be happy?

As the baptist christian Al Gore quoted in one of his speeches from Psalm 24(?).."The earth is the LORD'S and everything in it". In other words he was trying to remind Americans to remember their responsibilities to wisely tend and keep the creation intact.

Last edited by Julius on Sun Oct 18, 2009 8:20 pm; edited 1 time in total

mises

Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 8:19 pm Post subject:

Fox wrote:

mises wrote:

This is all hysterics. You're all going to feel like suckers when all these apocalyptic predictions don't come true.

Nah. The greens don't want "cap and trade". They want modernity to pull back for the proles. The proles block the view. They'll continue on as if nothing happened. The reforms you want won't happen. They'll just make life more inconvenient and expensive.

The Kennedy's recently prevented a wind farm near their "compound" cause it would ruin the view. That was Ted's work. Gore flies private and spends more than a grand a month to heat his pool. He'll make billions off of cap and trade, by the way. Goldman's too. They don't believe in it. It is just a means of control.

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