Global warming is a crockFollow

See, this is why it's very hard to have a normal discussion with you gbaji. You change the meaning of words to suit your argumentation.

Socialism is not "an inbetween state. In between capitalism and commmunism in this case." This is YOUR definition, and to be honest I couldn't give a rat's *** about how YOU define socialism. The definition I quoted was the correct one, so don't come here and tell me that it's something else.

What you are referring to is called a "social market economy". That's the expression you're looking for. And that's what we have in Europe, and that you have in the US too, albeit to a lesser extent.

having said all that, you're whole theory about the free market in Europe not being "free" is both misleading and circumstatial.

The European Union is founded on the principle of free movement of workers, capital, goods and services. These four Freedoms are the cornerstone of the EU. Competition is "free", and while government does impose standards and regulations, not much more so than in the US. 95% of all the private sector is the same as in the US, and if it wasn't, we wouldn't be competing on the same marketplace.

What is left is that *in general*, the EU is a tiny bit more regulatory than the US. But not much more so. And, once again, this is making huge generalisations. In many countries in Europe, especially in Eastern Europe, the economic system is less regulated and more "free-market" than in the US. Take the flat tax, for exemple. Even in the US, Republicans are slightly scared of talking about it.

There are differences in the economic systems of the EU and the US. But implying that these tiny differences are enough to produce some sort of giant conspiracy, such as the one on global warming, is quite simply laughable.

It's quite funny because I could almost quote you point by point when you talk about Europe and show how what you write is at ebst an approximation, and at worst a blatant lie. But I'll just take one exemple:



Let's start from the beggining. It wasn't "rioting", it was demonstrating. No one was hurt, nothing was burned, it was simple protests by msotly middle-class kids. i think you're mixing it up with the riots in the suburbs.

Second, it was not that the President "suggested that employers should be able to fire workers who underperform". That's simply untrue. It was a law, passing through the French Parliament, changing labour laws to say that employees that are offered permanent contracts could be fired during the first two years of their contracts if the employer felt like it. Not only that, but they would receive very little compensation. The employees felt that it gave employers a licence to hire people on the cheap for two years, and then allow them to fire them for no reason just before the heavy charges (pension, health, insurance, etc..) kicked in. And, of course, the people in France being offered these contrcts in the first place are generally middle/upper-class kids. They were the ones demonstrating.

Now, read what I quoted again. See how different it is? It wasn't "the president", it wasn't "rioting", it wasn't about "underperforming", and it has nothing to do with the relationship between the governemnt and the private sector, but everything to do with changes in teh labour laws, which exist in every civilised country in the world.

Now, this little excerice could be repeated for almost everything you say, especilly when it comes to France or Europe, subjects you might have read about, but that you obviously haven't experienced directly. Which leads to me to think that your sources of information suck ***.

Now, please explain again how you link changes in French labour laws to a European-wide conspiracy on gloabl warming?

Well the productivity tables I've seen don't put the US ahead of Europe. And, within Europe, France is actually ahead of the UK eventhough our working hours are much smaller.

But otherwise, I can't deny that French people have it quite easy: Lots of bank holidays, low working hours, 5 weeks paid holiday, it's cool.

The reforms wre not so much trying to change that, as much as trying to make the labour market more flexible, making it easier to sack and employ people. And, funnily enough, I thought that this reform was good for France. But it seems the priviledged ones wanted to keep their privileges, eventhough they dressed it up as some sort of "social movement".

It's funny, when I'm in France people think i'm a right-wing free-market enthusiast, and when I'm talking to you guys I sound like a hradcore communist.


I love creme-brulée. And I want more holidays too, sniffle


Edit Found a table relating to different kinds of productivity for each country. Quite interesting. And France is ahead in terms of prodcutivity per hours worked, which obvisouly means that we are, like, the most cleverest of the all dem people...



Edited, Dec 20th 2006 7:03am by RedPhoenixxx

That's misleading by itself. Words can have different meanings depending on how they are used for example.

I'm also not the person who responded to a statement about the degree of "socialism" in Europe with a long rant repeatedly stating that Europe is not "communist". You can quibble over my use of a word, but at least I don't ignore the word used, replace it with a completely different one, and then argue based on that instead...



You missed the second part of the definition then



Wow. You'd think I looked that up or something. I didn't. Not until you barged in with your own definition, that is. Some of us start out knowing what we're talking about... ;)



Who'e quibbling over words now? Is that really what it's called? Is that really "different"? Or did someone just come up with some different words so they could convince people like you that what your government(s) doing isn't really the same thing as real socialism...? Cause you don't believe that your governments, given enough control over the means of production, might just become defacto "dictatorships"?



Free movement, and "free trade" are not the same thing. Capitalism also is *not* the same thing. "Free Trade" has to do with governments reducing tarriffs between eachother. It has to do with trade, but not specifically to do with capitalism. China trades goods. The USSR traded goods. The mere act of trade occuring between two nations does not imply the use of capitalism. Free trade and free market are not the same thing.

Capitalism is something different as well:



There's a few key points there. Means of production and distribution are privately owned. That's one we can debate. I'm positive there's a lot more "means of production" under state ownership or at least heavy state regulation/control in Europe then in the US. You are correct that this is just a matter of degrees though. The more important bit is the second part: "proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market". In the US we allow our businesses to reinvest their profits into new ventures. In the EU profits are taxed to provide benefits to the people instead. That, far more then any other thing, is the key difference here.

The re-proportioning of wealth from the top end of the economy to the bottom via government (taxation and entitlement) is what makes a nation socialist. The degree to which this occurs can vary of course. We do this to a small degree in the US. It's far more prevalent in Europe. It's not just about how much direct control the nation has over it's industry, but also the degree to which the government of that nation controls the wealth generated by that industry. If we're to contrast capitalism and socialism, we must look at both of those aspects.




Viable points. I still think you're using the wrong litmus test when you declare them "less regulated", but we could literally wander around debating that all week long and never come to an agreement as to what "more regulated" really means. I'm not sure what you're getting at with the flat tax statement. However, that's also a gross simplification. When we talk about flat taxes, we're talking just about income taxes. That's only one piece of the taxation puzzle. That's not touching corporate taxes, VATs, sales taxes, tarrifs and numerous other forms of taxes that affect businesses differently then people (usually), and the wealthy differently then the poor.

How you structure your tax system says a lot about the viewpoint a given nation has about wealth and how it should be used. And that's much more core to any discussio contrasting capitalism and socialism IMO.



It's not the on paper differences, but the direction they're leading that makes all the difference in this case. Socialisms have a desire to increase the amount of the economy that is controlled by the government. It's not just about direct control (as I've already pointed out). Economic control is just as good (and is, in fact, a more common methodology). The way in which European socialisms gain this power (the ability to take wealth from the top and redistribute it to the bottom) is by convincing "the people" that if they don't, some horrible thing will result. Common tactics are to focus on the plight of the poor, the hungry, the homeless. But those in the government don't really care about those things. They care that by getting the people to ok programs that redistrubute wealth from the top to the bottom (to fix those problems), they are the ones who get to handle that money. They gain more control over the industries they are taxing. The government is the one now deciding who makes money and where that money goes. That's not a "free market" at all.

Global warming is just another tool. Remember. In this particular case, we're talking about "democratic socialisms". They can only gain control over the industry if they can convince the voting public to give them that control. Thus, there's a definate desire to highlight problems so as to convince the voters to shift that power and control to the government's hands. Every little bit matters in this case. If global warming concerns allow a bill to pass that requires oil companies to pay X amount of extra money to pay for some fund the government will control (presumably to deal with global warming), then that's more power for the government. Same deal with research. Right now, no one's really pushed any "solutions" to the problem of global warming. As I pointed out much earlier in this thread, I have yet to see any scientist publish a peer reviewed paper that lays out a set of specific actions we can take to reverse the rise in temperatures.

So what are we doing with the whole global warming thing? Well. Pretty much all of the effort goes into more research to investigate it. Hmmmm... I don't know about you, but that certainly implies a vested interest on the part of the scientists. The government wins because they get to control more of the economy. The scientists win because they get more funding from that extra money. The people think they're winning because they've got a government that is "taking global warming seriously".

It doesn't take a conspiracy. Just people don't what they naturally do. I'd explain the whole "red/green game" reasoning for why building a structure that requires people act in ways counter to their nature doesn't work, but that would be a whole nother post. Suffice to say that IMO, the biggest flaw of socialized systems is that they assume that no one ever gets greedy for power or money. So while everyone is patting themselves on the back for how "mature" their society is, they don't notice that they're creating a system rife for corruption. Again. It doesn't take a big conspiracy to cause this to happen. Just individuals acting in their own best interests in a system in which their best interests wont result in a best result for everyone else.



Not going to dispute most of your points there. I did get a couple facts wrong there (it was presented in the US as Chirac doing this, so sue me).

However, it has *everything* to do with the relationship between the government and the private sector. If you hadn't grown up in an environment where the relationship is already so screwy, you'd see this. In a "normal" economy, it's normal for employers to be able to fire people if they don't perform. In fact, the very idea that there's some status of "permanent employment" (is that a government regulated status btw?) is antithical to the basic priciples of a free market.

I don't care what "class" the people demonstrating were. The very fact that they demonstrated and the government basically backed down on the position shows the degree to which the government controls the market (and the people control the government). In the US, it would be unthinkable for the government to pass some sort of law requiring an employer to hire someone permanantly, without the ability to fire them if they didn't work out, much less having people demonstrating that it was unfair if they couldn't get that status in the first place.

That highlights the absolutely *huge* differences both legally and socialy between the US and Europe. You think that's normal. We think it's insanely stupid.




It's not the labor laws themselves. It's the social approach to the relationship between "people->government->industry" that I was getting at. The demonstrations show the degree to which government controls industry. I mentioned earlier that one of the indicators that you're in a socialism is that "the people" exercise control over industry by applying pressure through government rather then directly to the industries themselves. In the US, if a business is using practices we deem unfair, people will organize boycotts. Aside from the liberals who seem to try to get the government to step in, most of "the people" use their pocketbooks to put pressure on the industry. This works in a free market, because the biggest threat to a business is their customers. The more government controlled your economy is, the more this shifts to government. Industry fears actions, regulations, and whatnot from the government more then it fears consumers withdrawing their funds. The people know this, and act to force government to impose changes (or lack of changes in this case) on industry if they don't like the result.


How does this relate to global warming? It's not the specifics but the process. If the methodology by which changes are applied to industry is to get "the people" to march and protest, forcing the government to apply those changes, then the same argument applies to global warming. The way you get the government the power to apply extra controls or restrictions on industry is through the people. Same deal. Convince them that global warming is a huge threat, get them to march and protest. Make them demand their government take more control...


That's how they're related. Surely you can see that if you live in a system where people marching in the street over an issue is what leads their government to make changes with regards to industry, that if you want to make a change with regard to industry, you do it by convincing "the people" of the need first. After all, they're much easier to convince of something then a smaller group of experts who might know something about the subject.

What's your point?

Someone asked me what the political motivation for hyping global warming was. I answered. It's more then a bit unfair to then accuse me of changing the subject, don't you think?

Given the original post on this thread was specific to the "political" aspect of global warming, I don't think it's an absurd argument to talk about those political aspects:




I'll put the challenge out again. Find me a peer reviewed scientific paper that has specified a particular course of action that would be guaranteed (or at least provable within the paper) to reverse the increase of temperatures over the last century.

Let me clarify that again: Don't bring me a paper that says "We can reduce greenhosue gases by X% if we reduce CO2 emmissions by Y%". That does not say that it'll prevent or reverse the warming trend. Find me one that makes the entire chain of logic within that single paper, and advocates a specific course of action.

That's the point Totem started with. That the knee-jerk legistlation is not necessarily the right thing to do. Everyone has been spinning around trying to argue this point or that point, or trying desperately to cling to the "science", while ignoring that this whole thread was about the political. What legistlation do we advocate? Why? Is that legistlation valid in terms of overall effect? What "proof" do we have that by imposing said legistlation that we'll actually change the overall climate picture?


For all the pro-global-warming advocates arguments, they basically boil down to "But Global Warming exists! See. It's a scientifically proven fact!". That's great. I can prove that gravity exists too. But that does not mean that passing a law requiring that we invent anti-gravity in order to fix the problem is a rational thing to do. Similarly, we need to have some evidence that a particular legistlative path is a sane and rational response to the science. I've been saying all along that that's where the problem comes in.

I don't have to come up with peer reviewed papers. I just have to point out that the one's folks are using for their arguments don't support the political actions that are being foisted on the world in the name of Global Warming.

Can you find a peer-reviewed paper describing the effects of giant strawman arguments in a forum thread? I bet that one would be good reading.Yeah, if I had absolutely no evidence, I'd be using that line as well. Funny how it took you six pages of people asking for studies refuting anthropogenic global warming for you to finally fall back on "I don't have to! So there!" It's okay to just admit that the studies don't exist. Really, it is. We all know it already so it'd be liberating for you to just admit it rather than trying to spin and dodge your way out of it.

Gbaji. You dont' have to take your signature litterally.

But since I have 15 minutes before I leave work, and nothing else to do, I'll respond to that block of text.



And you missed the second part of the second part of the definition:



Are you seriously implying that the EU is on the way to having the ownership of the economy under the dictature of the proletariat? Seriously?

If not, then the EU doesn't fit either 1 or 2 and is therefore not "socialist". To think I actually have to to convince somebody of that... *sigh*



Obvously not.



Yes. Repeat after me: Social market economy. Three words, easy.




Yep. A sopcial market economy is not on the way to becoming communist. It is a market economy with social considerations. It is not an "in-between" stage, it doesn't hate the bourgeois capitalists, etc... It's just not socialism.



Man, you are seriously paranoid. Please, come and live in the UK for a while, tell me then if its just socialism under another name. Or ask Nobby.



I think if any government is given total control of the economy, it could turn into a dcitatorship. Cuba's, France's, The US's. What's your point?



Bullpoo. In the US, you tax profits too. In the EU, we tax profits, and we allow companies to reinvest. This is so fucking obvious. If our companies couldn't re-invest their profits, do you think companies like Vivendi could exist? Do you really think we would have stock exchanges, pension funds, investors, shareholders, venture capitalists, outsourcing, etc?

The only differnce, once again, is one of degree. In some EU countries, profits might be taxed more than they would in the US, in others, they will be taxed less.



This is so silly. What's the point of "handling" money if it goes into welfare programs? What's the point of "controlling" anything if you don't choose what to do with it?

Anyway, you're speaking as though Europe was not democratic. The "government" has nothing to win, since it's only elected for 5 years.

Your whole argument is based around the fact that the EU has, in general, higher tax rates than the US. And that's your "proof" that there is a conspiracy to turn it into some sort of communist/socialist utopia.

It is ridiculous.



This is not true. We have EU-wide carbon-trading schemes, for exemple. Talks are going on about extending this to arilines too. There are things being worked out. The problem comes from the fact that the EU is not that big a polluter, and that any progress/impact we might make will be be pointless if the US, China, and India don't do the same.



No, it shows that we live in a healthy democracy. France especially places a lot of importance on the social contract between the people and the government. Toqueville, Rousseau, Volataire, Diderot, every kid knows about them in France. Social protests, revolutions, demonstrations, strikes, all these are part of our education from when we're little kids. France really wants to believe in those revolutionary ideals, and we really think that democracy means "the rule of the people". That's why they strike, march, demonstrate, riot, on such a regular basis.



It's not that simple. You can fire people, you just have to pay them compensation. That's all. It's really not that big a difference.

Anyway, I could go on and on about your points and how it;s not that simple, but it would be endless.

You're arguing that the EU is on its way to becoming communist, and that global warming is a tool in that ultimate goal. It's ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense. It's a crackpot conspiracy theory, and I'm sorry for you if you really believe that this is what is going on. not only that, but it slightly insulting, first of all to all Europeans whoa re basically idiots for falling into this trap laid by every government that existed since the 30's. It's insulting also for all those from Eastern European countries, who actually had to live under a Communist regime, and are now free. Except that under your theory they're heaqding straight back to where they were, with 25 governemnts colluding to that end.

Wake up man. It's about as likely as the conspiracies about 9/11 being the work of the CIA/the Jews/the Free-Masons. It's on the same intellectual level.

It's all in your head.

Really.



Edited, Dec 22nd 2006 6:32am by RedPhoenixxx

Except that there are basically no published results on the other side. It all says human activity is warming the climate - although they disagree on the exact extent - no one is saying human activity is a tiny fraction of the temperature increase.

You've outlined a great procedure for perhaps finding the exact extent to which we've altered the environment - and perhaps the more difficult question is what reparations we should pay to those who have been effected.

Does anyone care?
If people were told how to stop global warming by giving up their luxuries do you tink that they would do it?

do-mo ari-gato Mr. Kyoto. This is the thread that just keeps going and going ... All I want for x-mas is a thread, a thread that gives throughout the whole year.

[I]Global warming crocks
Roasting, on an open fire.
Jack-offs nipping at your posts {count}
You all tide tide clothes being folded by a female
And folks dress up like /point all you people

Blah, blah, blah.

Though it's been said many times, many ways
A very Merry Christmas to you

(Sorry, I couldn't thing of any thing more offensive than to shove a little holiday Joy down your throats). :P

Ok, fine since you asked, I'll reconstruct the first post of mine system maintenance banned.

Wow, this thread keeps going and going ... This is the gift that keeps on giving. All I want for X-mas is a thread, a thred that gives the whole year round.

Global warming crocks
Roasting on an open fire
Jack-offs nipping at your posts (counts)

Blah, blah, blah.

Although its been posted, many times, many ways
A very Merry Christmas to you

(Sorry, I couldn't think of any thing more offensive than to shove some religious holiday Joy down your throats.) ^_^

Volcanoes don't erupt when we as villages sacrifice live virgins to them. What can I say? There was a glut of ice princesses sacrificed to the snow goddess, Monica Lewinsky. No one even bringing up bad news of any sort, like that baby killer Kansas doctor. Those pesky conservatives got progressively smart, quick. Duke. Class dismissed. Oblviousness. What a conclusion for an Act. /bravo /bravo I mean, damn, even the O.J. prosecutors didn't get pwned that hard.

Edited, Dec 23rd 2006 10:01am by MonxDoT