"Whether we like it or not" - Page 3 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Pollution, global warming, urbanisation etc.
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#15188684
ckaihatsu wrote:And what's the *social basis* for this fleet of autonomous cars (presumably Nuro or similar) -- ?

Right now it's sounding more like a politician's *campaign promise* -- so, who would *own* these AI cars, how would costs be covered, etc. -- ?


Hey watch the video.
I said there that it may not work or be enough to avoid a 4 deg C world by 2100.
However, the riders would pay for the ride with a credit or debit card.
Likely several corps would own them to provide competition, and maybe the gov. would own some or all of them. Who knows?
The idea is each city or town would need many fewer, than if each person had their own.
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#15188693
Steve_American wrote:
Hey watch the video.
I said there that it may not work or be enough to avoid a 4 deg C world by 2100.
However, the riders would pay for the ride with a credit or debit card.
Likely several corps would own them to provide competition, and maybe the gov. would own some or all of them. Who knows?
The idea is each city or town would need many fewer, than if each person had their own.
.



Maybe it's the *term* then -- maybe consider not-using the term 'rationing' because it's evocative of the *World War II* era.

How about 'provisioning' instead, or 'public transportation', or 'per-ride leasing', or something.

Sure, I'm all for any tech improvements to mitigate the carbon in the atmosphere, but the overall question is whether such *piecemeal* approaches, based on a *consumer* / client model of mass individual opting-in, or not, would be a *sufficient* social response to the ticking clock.

The elephant-in-the-room here is the *corporations* -- if they can be *ended*, politically, then humanity as a whole would have its own vehicle for decision-making and implementation that *doesn't* have to go through the capitalist markets.
#15188771
@ckaihatsu,
I'm using the word 'rationing; because I want to invoke WWII thinking.
I intend the Govs. of the Western nations, and others, to ration almost everything that dumps carbon into the air.. Also methane, etc.
IIRC, rationing worked in WWII, it freed-up resources to make war material to win the war.
When I was growing up in the 40s and 50s, I heard zero complaints about the wartime rationing. Zero. It seems from here that the people understood the necesity.

IIRC, sir, you want to eliminate corps.
I just want to break them up. I have suggested taxing their revenues instead of their profits and at double the rate on smaller corps. on all corps with revenues above some amount. This amount is set to not let any corp. control over 10% of any market.
So, there would have to be 10 makers of cars in the US.
I would also do something about international corps. Maybe just ban them. Corps. must be controlable by the gov. of the nation where they opperate. Nations should be the top dog, not corps. everywhere.
I think this because corps. are run by a few rich people for the good of themselves, while nations may be run by the mass of the people. Thomas Jefferson said it in the Decl. of Indep. in 1776, that nations derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Corps. therefore have no just powers, except those they are given by the nations where they opperate.
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#15188773
Nation-states and corporations are very similar to each other -- in size, internal organization, reach, etc. But mostly neither is really democratic or *accountable* to the public.

You're not-addressing how to have a consistent policy approach, on a *global* basis, to either global warming, or to the coronavirus, similarly. Here's from previously:



The scope of the disasters also exposes the bankruptcy of capitalism and its complete inability to deal in any meaningful way with the ongoing climate crisis.

In a 1982 internal memo that was “given wide circulation to Exxon management,” it was made clear that global temperatures would increase sharply as more CO2 was released into the atmosphere. The memo at the time predicted an increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases and global temperatures seen today and also predicted that global temperatures would exceed an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius before the middle of this century and 2 degrees Celsius sometime around 2060.

[...]

More recently, the 2017 Carbon Majors report showed that just 100 corporations worldwide now produce about 90 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions each year, and are responsible about half of all greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity since the industrial revolution. That same presentation also noted that if the trend in fossil fuel extraction and release continues for the next quarter century, global average temperatures would be on track to reach an increase of 4 degrees Celsius by the year 2100.



https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/0 ... s-a23.html
#15188807
Steve_American wrote:@ckaihatsu,
I'm using the word 'rationing; because I want to invoke WWII thinking.
I intend the Govs. of the Western nations, and others, to ration almost everything that dumps carbon into the air.. Also methane, etc.
IIRC, rationing worked in WWII, it freed-up resources to make war material to win the war.
When I was growing up in the 40s and 50s, I heard zero complaints about the wartime rationing. Zero. It seems from here that the people understood the necesity.

IIRC, sir, you want to eliminate corps.
I just want to break them up. I have suggested taxing their revenues instead of their profits and at double the rate on smaller corps. on all corps with revenues above some amount. This amount is set to not let any corp. control over 10% of any market.
So, there would have to be 10 makers of cars in the US.
I would also do something about international corps. Maybe just ban them. Corps. must be controlable by the gov. of the nation where they opperate. Nations should be the top dog, not corps. everywhere.
I think this because corps. are run by a few rich people for the good of themselves, while nations may be run by the mass of the people. Thomas Jefferson said it in the Decl. of Indep. in 1776, that nations derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Corps. therefore have no just powers, except those they are given by the nations where they opperate.
.


As usual in an internet debate, I reply to your specific point, and you reply to me only tangentially.

I said that nations may be run by the people, and you reply that now in present tense they are not.
OK, fine. In few nations now does the Gov. do what is good for the mass of the people.
However, if we look back in time we can see that Govs. have done better in the past.

Yes, the US was driven off the rails by a series of USSC decisions, after the Federalist Society packed it with stooges. And Yes, the Dems cooperated by loosing too many elections they should have won, like 2010.

So, IIRC you are a revolutionary Marxist. So, you want revolution. Well, a revolution will mean civil war, and in war carbon gets burned to win. A war right now in every nation in the "West" will end humanity.
IMO, the only hope is political means.

In the US we need to get a majority of actual progressives in both houses of Congress and a Pres. who will not veto everything. However, the people seem too complaisant to do that. I have seen the voters fail to build on success twice, and it seems likely they will fail to build on the last success in 2020 to vote for more Repuds, even though they tried to overthrow democracy on 1/6/21.
.
#15188984
ckaihatsu wrote:Nation-states and corporations are very similar to each other -- in size, internal organization, reach, etc. But mostly neither is really democratic or *accountable* to the public.

You're not-addressing how to have a consistent policy approach, on a *global* basis, to either global warming, or to the coronavirus, similarly. Here's from previously:


So, we make Govs. accountable to the public by ---
1] Requiring every citizen go and vote in all elections.
2] Funding all elections with Federal Gov. money because it/they can borrow large amounts of money to do it.
3] Have larger districts with 5 to 7 Reps. per district, with 7 preferred.
4] Have recall elections to remove politicians who lie to get elected.
5] Have a way for laws to be enacted by a direct vote of at least 55% of the people.
6] Have a way to amend the Constitution by a vote of at least 55% of the people in 3 consecutive elections.
7] Get rid of the filibuster except for judges, where it does seem like a good idea.
8] Expand the Senate by adding 1 Senator per state who must be a woman.
9] Expand the Electoral College by adding 3 Electors per state who *must* vote for the candidate who got the most popular votes.
10] Don't let politicians take jobs for large corps for 10 years after they leave office, and cap speaking fees at $3000/ each, and 1 per week.
#15189036
Steve_American wrote:
As usual in an internet debate, I reply to your specific point, and you reply to me only tangentially.

I said that nations may be run by the people, and you reply that now in present tense they are not.
OK, fine. In few nations now does the Gov. do what is good for the mass of the people.
However, if we look back in time we can see that Govs. have done better in the past.

Yes, the US was driven off the rails by a series of USSC decisions, after the Federalist Society packed it with stooges. And Yes, the Dems cooperated by loosing too many elections they should have won, like 2010.

So, IIRC you are a revolutionary Marxist. So, you want revolution. Well, a revolution will mean civil war, and in war carbon gets burned to win. A war right now in every nation in the "West" will end humanity.
IMO, the only hope is political means.



No, SA, proletarian revolution does *not* mean 'civil war', because the 'stakes' for proletarian revolution are not the *country*, but rather all of society's *production*, worldwide.

You're thinking of the 'Cold War', versus Stalinism.

A revolution doesn't even need to be about warfare, as you're saying, or to be bloody. It's simply about whose interests over social production happen to *prevail*, at any given moment. Right now social production is *not* controlled by the working class -- it's controlled by the capitalist *ruling class*, known as the *bourgeoisie*.


Steve_American wrote:
In the US we need to get a majority of actual progressives in both houses of Congress and a Pres. who will not veto everything. However, the people seem too complaisant to do that. I have seen the voters fail to build on success twice, and it seems likely they will fail to build on the last success in 2020 to vote for more Repuds, even though they tried to overthrow democracy on 1/6/21.
.



Steve_American wrote:
So, we make Govs. accountable to the public by ---
1] Requiring every citizen go and vote in all elections.
2] Funding all elections with Federal Gov. money because it/they can borrow large amounts of money to do it.
3] Have larger districts with 5 to 7 Reps. per district, with 7 preferred.
4] Have recall elections to remove politicians who lie to get elected.
5] Have a way for laws to be enacted by a direct vote of at least 55% of the people.
6] Have a way to amend the Constitution by a vote of at least 55% of the people in 3 consecutive elections.
7] Get rid of the filibuster except for judges, where it does seem like a good idea.
8] Expand the Senate by adding 1 Senator per state who must be a woman.
9] Expand the Electoral College by adding 3 Electors per state who *must* vote for the candidate who got the most popular votes.
10] Don't let politicians take jobs for large corps for 10 years after they leave office, and cap speaking fees at $3000/ each, and 1 per week.



All of this is *reformism*, within the framework of the *nation-state*. Workers don't need nations. The working class has a collective interest in its own *independence* from the bourgeoisie and all of its social conventions, like nation-states.
#15189103
ckaihatsu wrote:No, SA, proletarian revolution does *not* mean 'civil war', because the 'stakes' for proletarian revolution are not the *country*, but rather all of society's *production*, worldwide.

You're thinking of the 'Cold War', versus Stalinism.

A revolution doesn't even need to be about warfare, as you're saying, or to be bloody. It's simply about whose interests over social production happen to *prevail*, at any given moment. Right now social production is *not* controlled by the working class -- it's controlled by the capitalist *ruling class*, known as the *bourgeoisie*.


All of this is *reformism*, within the framework of the *nation-state*. Workers don't need nations. The working class has a collective interest in its own *independence* from the bourgeoisie and all of its social conventions, like nation-states.


If you think the workers can rise up and take the control of the factories away from their owners without the armies of the nations the owners control trying to stop them, you are mistaken. This would lead to civil war between the workers and the nation's armies. Others would join one side or the other.
.
#15189120
Steve_American wrote:
If you think the workers can rise up and take the control of the factories away from their owners without the armies of the nations the owners control trying to stop them, you are mistaken. This would lead to civil war between the workers and the nation's armies. Others would join one side or the other.
.



I mean to say that the term 'civil war' is *misapplied*, and regularly so.

Here's the prime example:


Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_in ... _Civil_War


Here, and then also in the past decade or so in Syria, etc. -- 'civil war' is used as something of a *euphemism*, I would argue, to gloss-over a more *precise* description of historical events.

Sure, for the *U.S.* it *was* actually a civil war, but for Russia in 1917 it was a *proletarian revolution*, by the soviets and then the Bolsheviks, and then there was the White counterrevolution and the imperialist invasions of the Allies.

For the people of Syria in 2011 their uprising was in the momentum of the Arab Spring, but wasn't successful, as the movement had been in Egypt with the ousting of Hosni Mubarak.

'Civil war' implies / connotes a situation of a competitive face-off, militarily, so working class revolutions and populist uprisings don't fit the bill, exactly.
#15189271
ckaihatsu wrote:I mean to say that the term 'civil war' is *misapplied*, and regularly so.

Here's the prime example:

Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_in ... _Civil_War

Here, and then also in the past decade or so in Syria, etc. -- 'civil war' is used as something of a *euphemism*, I would argue, to gloss-over a more *precise* description of historical events.

Sure, for the *U.S.* it *was* actually a civil war, but for Russia in 1917 it was a *proletarian revolution*, by the soviets and then the Bolsheviks, and then there was the White counterrevolution and the imperialist invasions of the Allies.

For the people of Syria in 2011 their uprising was in the momentum of the Arab Spring, but wasn't successful, as the movement had been in Egypt with the ousting of Hosni Mubarak.

'Civil war' implies / connotes a situation of a competitive face-off, militarily, so working class revolutions and populist uprisings don't fit the bill, exactly.


I think that you just disagree with the historians who give names to wars.
I don't agree with your connotation for 'civil war'.

It seems like for historians the definition of 'civil war' is a conflict within a 'nation' that rises to the level of "a war".
So, various civil rights 'riots' in the US are not civil wars.
So, the French Revolution is not a civil war because it didn't rise to the level of a war.
I don't know enough to comment on the Syrian "civil conflict".

IMO, the Russian 'Civil War' was confined to a nation and it rose to the level of a war, so it is a civil war. It doesn't matter how any 'civil war' started. And, it did have organized sides. Note, there is no requirement that there be just 2 sides.

BTW --- another question is --- what is a nation?
So, for NVN Vietnam was 1 nation, but from SVN's POV there were 2 nations.
So, after the Oct. Rev. was Russia 1 nation, or was it several?
.
#15190892
Truth To Power wrote:
No they aren't, because the planet is not in any danger.



The planet will be fine, but thousands of species have gone extinct, and many more thousands will disappear as things get worse. Humans may be one of them.

Do you have anything better than brain dead lies?
#15190903
late wrote:The planet will be fine, but thousands of species have gone extinct, and many more thousands will disappear as things get worse.

Things are getting better. There is no reason to mourn extinct species. Evolution runs on extinction of species. ~99.999% of all the species that have ever existed are now extinct, and we don't miss them a bit. You might as well mourn the loss of dead indigenous languages.
Humans may be one of them.

But that cannot happen as a result of anything brain-dead environmentalists are shrieking about. The biggest immediate threat to our species' survival is bioweapons research; a few decades from now it will be superhuman artificial intelligence (SAI), unless self-replicating nanotech comes first.
Do you have anything better than brain dead lies?

<yawn> My statements are objectively correct.
#15190926
Pants-of-dog wrote:@Truth To Power does not believe in climate science.

His handle here is ironic.
He tells lies to the masses in the service of the powerful.
The situation in the US has not gotten better this year
There has been one disaster after the last.
It's hard to use any other word to describe his claim that things are getting better climate wise.

As I keep saying, truth is important, because you can prove anything with lies.
#15191078
Truth To Power wrote:Things are getting better. There is no reason to mourn extinct species. Evolution runs on extinction of species. ~99.999% of all the species that have ever existed are now extinct, and we don't miss them a bit. You might as well mourn the loss of dead indigenous languages.

The evolutionary process requires that species go extinct, and by that token we should not be unduly alarmed that species do, indeed, tend to go extinct. They are usually replaced by new species, which may or may not be 'better' than their extinct predecessors, but which will certainly be different. And it is this difference which is important - the Earth's ecosystem strives towards diversity as time passes. Without this diversity, the ecosystem is impoverished and food chains are short and fragile. To get a proper grip, life must be diverse. This lengthens food chains, creates food webs, and makes the biosphere more resilient to sudden shocks or disasters. It is, in fact, diversity rather than complexity or intelligence which the evolutionary process generates. Most living organisms are no more complex now than they were three billion years ago. A few have achieved a high level of complexity and intelligence, but they are niche species and only constitute a vanishingly small proportion of all living organisms. No, the average (in the sense of the mode rather than the mean) complexity of all living organisms has remained essentially unchanged through more than three billion years of evolution. Nature doesn't care about complexity or intelligence; it cares only about filling trophic niches and making life as diverse as possible. Human activity - and not just anthropogenic climate change - has had a catastrophic effect on bio-diversity on Earth over the past ten millennia or so, especially among the vertebrates. And we should be very concerned about this.

But that cannot happen as a result of anything brain-dead environmentalists are shrieking about. The biggest immediate threat to our species' survival is bioweapons research; a few decades from now it will be superhuman artificial intelligence (SAI), unless self-replicating nanotech comes first.

Agreed. The human race is highly unlikely to go extinct any time soon. In fact, we have overrun the entire planet like a plague of vermin. And anthropogenic climate change is a self-correcting mechanism - as our industrial civilisation collapses under the strain of climate change, the cause of that climate change, which of course is our industrial civilisation itself, will dwindle away. It's a negative feedback loop, which will kick in long before we are in danger of going extinct as a species. We'll end up living in mud huts and wiping our asses with leaves, but we'll survive.
#15191295
Pants-of-dog wrote:@Truth To Power does not believe in climate science.

There is a difference between the actual empirical science of climatology, which IMO is credible and well established, and the recent hysterical anti-fossil-fuel scaremongering that so falsely and disingenuously bills itself as "climate science." The findings of climatology are consistent with actual physical events, and are not based purely on computer models and systematically falsified temperature data.
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