Re: High strength fibers for high pressure tubes.
- From: Mitchell Jones <mjones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 27 Apr 2005 02:40:03 EDT
In article <Xns9644D4EEDCBWQAHBGMXSZHVspammote@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
bz <bz+sp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Mitchell Jones <mjones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:mjones-
> 740551.20301826042005@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
>
> I said:
> >> Private property does not solve the problem, though it might if people
> >> cared about long term consequences rather than short term gain.
> >
> > ***{Private property does in fact solve the problem. Weyerhauser does
> > not clear cut its privately owned forests. It follows careful,
> > scientific land management practices, cutting in carefully selected
> > patterns designed to prevent erosion, and it plants seedlings to replace
> > the mature trees that it harvests. If it did not do that, it would go
> > broke, and its land would wind up in the hands of someone who had enough
> > sense to not piss away the value of his property.
>
> Expecting corporations to always keep in mind Long term consquences means
> that one ignores the 'hostile takeover, gut, liquidate, and dump'
> philosophy. Unfortunately that philosophy makes some people rich.
***{Under pure capitalism gold and silver are money and the issuance of
paper money not backed by specie is regarded as counterfeiting. Result:
the liquidity fueled boom and bust cycle that prevails locally under
fractional reserve banking, or which prevails nationally under central
banking, or that prevails worldwide under the present international
system of central bank cooperation, simply cannot happen. In addition,
pure capitalism makes no attempt to protect the public from its own
stupidity by violating the property rights of those who are not stupid.
That means the so called "Wolves of Wall Street" are free to operate, so
long as they relieve suckers of their money without violating their
property rights. Under those conditions the public is out of the market
for multiple reasons: (1) they can't get credit; (2) those who speculate
with their hard-earned money lose it; and (3) the financial columns are
filled with stories about *perfectly legitimate* manipulations--wash
sales, corners, pools, etc.--that have separated the ignorant from their
money.
With the public out of the market, stock ownership is concentrated in
the hands of the wealthy--which means: in the hands of people who have
the knowledge to recognize management behavior that adversely impacts
the bottom line. Moreover, such people have the votes, due to control of
large blocks of stock, to do something about mismanagement. Result: the
corporate lootings by management which are the norm under the present
fascist system, will be virtually nonexistent under pure capitalism.
Bottom line: the fact that management does not focus on the long-term
under the present fascist system does not mean it will not do so under
capitalism.
--Mitchell Jones}***
> > And that's the key to
> > understanding why private property works: those who do not carefully
> > husband the resources they control earn losses, go broke, and are forced
> > to sell out to persons who have better sense. And the same process would
> > work in other areas, including fishing rights, hunting rights, shipping
> > lanes, and so on, if property rights were in place in those areas as
> > well. --MJ}***
>
> But by the time they work, the fishing grounds are barren.
***{Treating fishing grounds as a commons has been the prevalent system
for thousands of years. In spite of that, the fishing grounds are for
the most part not yet barren. Given that fact, it seems a bit odd to
claim that, if we were to implement the restraints of a private property
system, everything would suddenly go straight to hell. That's like
saying that a building is on fire but you shouldn't turn in an alarm,
because as soon as the fire trucks arrive, the place will instantly burn
to a crisp! --MJ}***
> The theory is
> nice, but we don't have time for it to work.
***{Yup: the guy has ingested poison, but we shouldn't give him the
antidote, because we don't have time for it to work! --MJ}***
> We also have several centuries
> of international law to overcome. That will be the EASY part. Getting
> people to act with good sense is the hard part.
***{Under capitalism, owners act with good sense, or else they go broke
and are replaced by someone with the sense they lacked. The hard part is
restoring the capitalistic system, in a world that has become quite
literally insane, where politics and economics are concerned. The
chances of it happening, I'm afraid, are essentially zero. The world
will cling to its false political and economic beliefs just as the
ancient Romans clung to theirs, until the system collapses, and a new
dark age begins. We may not like that state of affairs, but there isn't
a damn thing you, or I, or anyone can do to stop it. It's a freight
train coming straight at us, and we are chained to the tracks. And
that's all there is to that story. --MJ}***
> When there is a riot going on, no one cares about property rights.
>
> You expect private property to be a magic wand, solving all problems. I am
> trying to point out that it won't work that way fast enough.
>
> I wish you were right. Wishes don't do it however.
***{It would work if it were implemented. It will not, however, be
implemented, because people are ego involved with their beliefs. They
will not change their minds when it becomes clear that the strongest
arguments lie with the other side. Instead, they insist on totally
conclusive proof. They won't believe the horse they are riding is dying
until he is dead, and their attitude toward their political beliefs is
the same: they will not accept that the present system is unsustainable
until it collapses. And, of course, by then it is too late to matter.
--MJ}***
> I do have a magic solution that WILL work FASTER than yours, IF we can do
> it, and we only have a few years opportunity left.
> Move industry into space.
***{By means of some gigantic government boondoggle, I suppose. Raise
taxes enormously, give the money to NASA, and collapse the economy? Get
the money by simply printing it up, give it to NASA, and watch the
resulting hyperinflation collapse the economy? If you mean anything like
that, I'm against it.
On the other hand, if you mean get the goddamned government out of the
way, abolish all government regulation of industry, science, and
technology, including especially the regulation of nuclear power, shut
off all public funding of "education," end all government grants to
science, industry, and technology, then I'd be for that in a really big
way. Do that, and we'll have colonies on the Moon, Mars, and the
asteroid belt in 20 years. Do that, and the life expectancy of the
average newborn will be 200 years by 2050.
Of course, it ain't gonna happen. People are too stupid to permit it to
happen.
--Mitchell Jones}***
> Mine the asteroids. Eliminate an economy based on
> lack of things.
***{Meaning what? There are no limits to human wants. That's simply a
fact. On the other hand, there are limits to what a given person can
have, imposed by reality. Result: our wants are always going to exceed
what we can have, with the inescapable result that we are going to have
to choose from among the infinitude of our wants, a finite subset of
things that we want enough to work for, and strive to obtain them by
means, hopefully, of productive work. That, at least, is the way things
must be obtained when property rights are respected. But in any event
there is no such thing, even in principle, as an economy that is not
based on lack of things. Lack of things, like it or not, is a fact of
reality. --MJ}***
> Clean-up the earth and restore it as a park.
***{Meaning bulldoze everyone's houses, destroy all their property,
everywhere on Earth? Run them out into space, even if they don't want to
go? Kill them if they insist on remaining on Earth? Surely you jest.
--MJ}***
> Of course, it probably won't happen.
***{Hopefully not. I prefer capitalism, despite the fact that it does
not just benefit me and the people I like, but also the people I do not
like. I would prefer a more evolved world, in which the average person
was of much higher quality than the present norm, but getting there by
means of mass murder does not set well with me. Open up space to
colonization, and the worthwhile people would leave Earth in droves,
just as they left Europe after the discovery of the New World. The
conformists, losers, and scum, however, would mostly remain behind.
Given that state of affairs, the only way to turn Earth into a park
would be to kill them all. --MJ}***
> If it doesn't happen in the next 50
> years, it will never happen because we will have burned up hundreds of
> millions of years worth of stored solar energy and done it in a couple of
> hundred years.
***{Incorrect. All the oxygen in the atmosphere was released by
photosynthesis. The formula for photosynthesis is 6CO2 + 6H2O + solar
energy --> C6H12O6 + 6O2. I suggest that you do the following: (a)
compute the amount of O2 in the atmosphere, (b) assume all of it was
produced in accordance with the above equation, (c) compute the amount
of carbon that was freed up when that O2 was released, and (d) compare
to the total amount of carbon used as fuel since the industrial
revolution began. If you do that, you will find that enough carbon
remains in the Earth to support more than 100,000 years of usage at
current rates of consumption. Bottom line: we haven't even scratched the
surface, insofar as the utilization of stored solar energy is concerned.
That's not to say we don't face a crisis; but the crisis is one of
access, as determined by "green" (meaning red) politics, rather than one
of supply. --MJ}***
.
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