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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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 Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| gang ah jee wrote: |
| That's a pretty egregious strawman, wouldn't you say? |
No I would not.
Who sold it as "the correct side of history?" Who sold it as "a workers' paradise," etc.?
Is there, by the way, anoter example of a successful leftist utopian project anywhere at all in human history...? Anything at all will do. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:40 pm Post subject: |
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Gang ah jee: I do not pose that obviously-rhetorical question to spite or defeat the left.
I could not possibly quote all that Carr has to say on the subject. And Carr does speak for me. He also says that without leftist wish-dreaming the Realist right will become dangerously cynical in its Realism (think Nazi-Soviet pact, Orwell's example, "the Eurasian alliance," right?).
I just think that just as Realists -- and face it: Realists rule the world and will likely always do so -- need the breath-of-fresh-air the utopianists can contribute, the utopians need Realists to give them an "Earth-to-Utopians: please-come-back-now" commands from time to time. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 11:11 pm Post subject: |
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It seems to me that in the case of climate change, it's been the left who were the realists and right who have been the little wild-unbridled-capitalism-will-save-us-all-so-let's-ignore-the-damage-we're-wreaking-on-the-planet utopianists.
The right are only now beginning to acknowledge the reality of climate change. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 11:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
It seems to me that in the case of climate change, it's been the left who were the realists and right who have been the little wild-unbridled-capitalism-will-save-us-all-so-let's-ignore-the-damage-we're-wreaking-on-the-planet utopianists.
The right are only now beginning to acknowledge the reality of climate change. |
But the left has not been talking about "climate change" per se except as pretext for its other sociopolitical and economic issues, Big_Bird.
See, for example, Carolyn Merchant, Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution; or Clive Ponting, A Green History of the World...
I can easily cite at least ten or twelve more if this proves insufficient to make my point. |
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sundubuman
Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: seoul
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 11:50 pm Post subject: |
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The way to spur development in alternative fuels/energy sources is the free market.
The more people that drive cars, the more expensive oil becomes, the more likely we are to see breakthroughs/investment in new technologies.
And let's face it, the billions of people in the developing world are not going to give a rats ass about first world environmentalists when it comes to buying a new scooter/refrigerator/air con/TV. And if their governments tried to stop them from improving their lifestyles......we'd have an even bigger mess on our hands.
Kyoto was a gigantic joke. And in fact, much of the environmental movement has descended into a self-perpetuating machine built on fear mongering and hysteria.
The real way to make a difference is to work your ass off, save ten million dollars, and buy a big chunk of land and give it to a conservation society.
As opposed to begging the UN or your national government to tax free enterprise even more through controlling the world's energy market. |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 12:07 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
Gang ah jee: I do not pose that obviously-rhetorical question to spite or defeat the left.
I could not possibly quote all that Carr has to say on the subject. And Carr does speak for me. He also says that without leftist wish-dreaming the Realist right will become dangerously cynical in its Realism (think Nazi-Soviet pact, Orwell's example, "the Eurasian alliance," right?). |
Gopher, honestly, I reject Carr's framework of realism and utopianism as excessively reductionist, and furthermore it doesn't make any sense to conflate 'the left' (note the return of scare quotes) with the Soviet Union, even for crude rhetorical purposes. I mean, come on, I was thinking more that workable solutions might be in the social liberal - social democratic political spectrum. I'm not even stating that as fact, just suggesting that given the legal status and purpose of the corporation, it seems reasonable to think that additional regulation may be necessary to curb harmful practices and to develop more sustainable methods. Hardly utopianism.
And as for your examples of silly postmodernist identity politics books, I swear you in the humanities must be the only people who take them to be serious statements of position for those on the left. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 12:14 am Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| ...honestly I reject Carr's framework... |
Before I go any further in this: have you read Carr and you reject his framework; or are you rejecting Carr's framework without having read him merely because I cited him...?
| gang ah jee wrote: |
| And as for your examples of silly postmodernist identity politics books, I swear you in the humanities must be the only people who take them to be serious statements of position for the left. |
Gang ah jee: I do not know which world you live in. Perhaps New Zealand is just out of the loop. Perhaps you in the hard sciences or whatever it is you study merely play with politics when you get a chance without ever having actually apprehended or delved into them. As for me, what I see in the social sciences and in the area studies divisions (Latin American Studies; Near Eastern Studies), on campus, in the classrooms, in the journals and academic presses, and in interdisciplinary conferences I have attended from the United States to Chile, yes...absolutely...those who I cite do in fact represent your allegedly mythical left. |
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Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
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| Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 1:09 am Post subject: |
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| sundubuman wrote: |
The way to spur development in alternative fuels/energy sources is the free market.
The more people that drive cars, the more expensive oil becomes, the more likely we are to see breakthroughs/investment in new technologies. |
Sometimes the free market needs incentives. Just the way cigarettes are overtaxed to reduce consumption and pay for tobacco-related health expenses, so too should be fossil fuels. The government has never been above intervening in the free market when it is in the best interest of the country. Never. If we were completely in a 100% free market society, we wouldn't need a FED chairman to contol interest rates because the market would control them.
We have oil companies making the largest profits ever and people paying more than ever for gas and the technology to counter that phenomenon is being blocked at every turn by, you guessed it, oil companies. Why shouldn't the government tax the hell out of Exxon like it does Phillip Morris? That money could be used to delvelop the technologies that will make the U.S. competitive throughout the 21st century and beyond. Oil is going to end, and without the necessary R&D the United States will fall along with the rest of the world. |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 1:41 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
I do not believe that "climate change" is a hoax. It is real and it requires our attention.
I do, however, have no doubt that those who push for it use it not as a convenient truth but rather a convenient pretext to further their same old, tried-and-true far-leftist politics. |
Right. Only you republican shits ever tell the truth. Nobody else speaks without a fork-ed tongue, only you shits
What a fool. |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 1:42 am Post subject: |
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| wannago wrote: |
| The liberals (progressives, whatever you want to call them) use fear as a means to an end. What is that end? The stifling of big business |
Bwahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111 |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 1:54 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| gang ah jee wrote: |
| That's a pretty egregious strawman, wouldn't you say? |
No I would not.
Who sold it as "the correct side of history?" Who sold it as "a workers' paradise," etc.?
Is there, by the way, another example of a successful leftist utopian project anywhere at all in human history...? Anything at all will do. |
Arguing out of your ass again. Who is calling for a Marxian Utopia? Anyone? Anybody? Oh, that's right. The recent report on climate change and the discussions about replacing the oil industry with a cleaner, healthier alternative and the economic benefits or difficulties inherent in doing so are ALL framed within a leftist conspiracy.
Freakin' idiot. I cannot believe anyone still takes you seriously. Everything you post is an insult, a slam, a distortion, or a lie. Or some or all at the same time. I'd so love to sit in on one your supposed class discussions (Do you even actually attend any?) just for the laughs. |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 2:17 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Before I go any further in this: have you read Carr and you reject his framework; or are you rejecting Carr's framework without having read him merely because I cited him...? |
Heh - I only realised that 'realism' is a theoretical position in IR the other day - and indeed I think at least some of our disagreements have resulted from my lack of knowledge of the technical terms of your discipline 
So, regarding Carr, from my perspective now having read summaries of his framework, I don't think that it represents the range of human opinion well - issues and people are, I think, too complex to have one's position pushed into one camp or the other; plus, the line between realism and utopianism seems necessarily arbitrary and relative. I suspect that it may be more useful as a device for merely labeling positions more than for describing them in a useful way. And of course, even if I were to accept the framework, from a logical standpoint the failure of the Soviet Union - or indeed of any other utopian wish-dream for that matter - does not entail that utopianism iteself is necessarily doomed to failure.
No doubt you're laughing at my hasty and ineffective attempt to understand and critique one of your favourite theorists here, but perhaps we can come back to discuss this more at a later date. I do find this IR theory stuff very interesting, after all, but I also have to concede that I'm out of my depth if we're to be debating in this area of your academic specialisation.
So anyway, I've suggested that perhaps a workable solution may lie in the social liberal/social democrat part of the spectrum - that is, because of its fundamental characteristics, corporate capitalism may need more constraints, and possibly some forms of restructuring in order to develop sustainability. That doesn't seem too Soviet Unionesque to me, and at least serves as some form of starting point for any real debate about what is to be done. In practical terms, what do you think we should be doing? |
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SPINOZA
Joined: 10 Jun 2005
Location: $eoul
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| Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 2:32 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
Why is it, for instance, that the so-called green agenda bitterly faults, in order from what I have read, the Neolithic Revolution; Western Civ.; Christianity; Bacon and Newton, all Western men, and the so-called Scientific Revolution; modern capitalism; Western Europe; and especially: you-know-who.
The create "the Ecological Indian" myth out of whole cloth and then club us with it for being everything that he is not.
Moreoever, such inherently-oppositionist accounts as these usually propound unreasonably- and unworkably-grandiose "solutions": change the nature of Christianity and recalibrate history; the ecofeminists led by Carolyn Merchant propose something like rewiring gender hierarchies at the time of the Scientific Revolution and then recalibrating history from there; "just say no" to fossil fuels and go back to our way of life as it was before the Industrial Revolution or better yet: as it was when we were the prototypical Ecological Indian as preNeolithic hunter-gatherers...the list goes on.
These people need to put their feet on the ground, stop the neverending blame game (we already know they despise modern capitalism, etc.), and propose actual, workable solutions.
This use and abuse of environmentalism as a pretext to further leftist politics remains perhaps the most important reason why the left meets such resistance from the right on what should be a serious discussion involving everybody.
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Oh dear, sorry to hear you believe the expression 'the left' follows from the kind of hippy radicals, who can't possibly be straightheaded, you describe in previous paragraphs. Simply not serious. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 4:10 am Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| Gopher wrote: |
These people need to put their feet on the ground, stop the neverending blame game (we already know they despise modern capitalism, etc.), and propose actual, workable solutions.
This use and abuse of environmentalism as a pretext to further leftist politics remains perhaps the most important reason why the left meets such resistance from the right on what should be a serious discussion involving everybody. |
Well, I guess my question is this: what if the only actual workable solutions happen to be within the sphere of leftist politics? (and I don't mean leftist in the sense of those queer studies pomo softheads that you keep running into at your university).
And yes, Big Business is generally bad news, wannago, for some very good reasons. It's not in any corporation's short run interest to do a single thing to prevent environmental damage - ask Milton Friedman (or at least you could have until a couple of months ago. Now you'll just have to ask BJWD.)
(oh, and it's not fair to lump Rteacher in with the liberals. He's an independent wacko.) |
I don't know. Corporations have been anticipating regulations in the States for climate change for a long time now and been acting conservatively (conservatively in terms of the environment) in anticipation of sweeping changes.
The gap between what corporations would like to be able to do and what they expect is prudent to do is quite large at this point. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 11:32 am Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| gang ah jee wrote: |
| And yes, Big Business is generally bad news, wannago, for some very good reasons. It's not in any corporation's short run interest to do a single thing to prevent environmental damage - ask Milton Friedman... |
I don't know. Corporations have been anticipating regulations in the States for climate change for a long time now and been acting conservatively (conservatively in terms of the environment) in anticipation of sweeping changes...The gap between what corporations would like to be able to do and what they expect is prudent to do is quite large at this point. |
Gang ah jee: you rightly question a pure Realist theoretical position (both as how states ought to act and as an explantion for how states do in fact act, I presume). Too reductionist.
But you and others show no signs of applying such sophistication to the leftist anti-special interests, anti-corporation, economics-centered theoretical position voiced by critics like Chomsky.
Recently Jared Diamond, in addition to threading his way through the Ecological Indian myth, also attempted to thread his way through the evil corporation myth...
| Jared Diamond wrote: |
[One ideological] camp holds that environmentalists' concerns are exaggerated and unwarranted...Its adherents come especially from the world of big business and economics, but the equation "non-environmentalist" = "pro-business" is imperfect; many businesspeople consider themselves environmentalists, and many people skeptical of environmentalists' claims are not in the world of big business...where do I stand myself with respect to these two camps?
...I have much experience, interest, and ongoing involvement with big business and other forces in our society that exploit environmental resources and are often viewed as anti-environmentalist...In recent years I've also had much opportunity to observe and become familiar with other large extractive companies in the mining, logging, fishing, oil, and natural gas industries...
On some properties I have seen oil companies and logging companies being destructive, and I have said so; on other properties I have seen them being careful, and that was what I said. My view is that, if environmentalists aren't willing to engage with big business, which are among the most powerful forces in the modern world, it won't be possible to solve the world's environmental problems... |
Diamond, Collapse, 15-17.
Now. Which special-interests group do you imagine Diamond is attempting to calm down and negotiate with here: those who categorically dismiss all corporations as "generally bad news" or the diverse and varied corporations themselves...? |
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