PeakOil is You
THE Energy Waste Thread (merged)
Re: Why we waste oil
by Z » Mon 17 Jul 2006, 08:19:16
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gego', 'T')hese are my values. I am not responsible for your life or the lives of your family, nor are you responsible for me or my family.
In the 2 million years of the existance of the human race, the exact opposite has been true. Talk about evolutionnary dead end.
Only in the last few decades have we seen this rise in individualism in the general population. It is a natural consequence of the technologies developped that enable us to live apart from society : cell phones, tv, cars etc ... The truth is we don't need each other anymore, and the little social contacts that are essential are performed with money, making them totally mecanical and emotionless.
Since we cannot change ourselves, our instincts, our need to socialize, this will inevitably lead to serious problems. I can name a country with 1% of its population in jail. No wonder that this country is the promoter of individualism and free ( but as little responsible as possible ) market. Already, human beings are treated like objects, and with the economic hardships lots of us see coming, civilization ( human rights, democracy ... ) will probably regress in a futile exercise to save selfishness as a way of life.
Freedom is up to the length of the chain.
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Re: Why we waste oil
by gg3 » Mon 17 Jul 2006, 08:52:06
Gego, I was not accusing you of being a stoner or of dumping your literal garbage in your literal neighbor's yard. Those were examples made to illustrate points.
What I am cricitizing here is that your arguements appear to come from the perspective of a kind of simplistic psuedo-libertarianism that is stuck at a nine-year-old level of ego development. Sorry if that seems harsh, but it's true.
The item about "retarded personality development" is based on your own words: you said specifically that you resented it mightily when your pastor in church told you to "put God first, others second, and yourself last." Apparently you haven't gotten over it yet, because the entire thrust of your arguements is that it's morally legitimate to put yourself first, which by logical necessity puts others second (and since you are an atheist, puts God out of the picture entirely, which is not much different than putting God third i.e. last). So yes, your arguements are stuck at that stage of development: still fighting the battles of the nine-year-old to assert "me first!" Like I said, apologies if this is harsh, but it's the truth.
Your definition of acts of aggression is overly simplistic. Clearly it's aggression if either of us punches the other in the nose, no one disputes that. But aggression can also take subtler forms, and these you seem to miss or dismiss.
Re. use of resources:
You assert that any use of nonrenewable resources could be construed as aggression against future generations. However that misses the issue of value traded for value returned, vs. value taken without value returned.
If you use a nonrenewable resource to build something that future generations will benefit from, or to develop technology that will overcome the lack of the resource, that's responsible use. For example if we use petroleum to build breeder reactors that will stretch the uranium supply until we can build thorium reactors: thus we have taken petroleum from the future but in exchange we have given sustainable nuclear power to the future.
In contrast, "pleasure driving," i.e. burning petroleum for amusement, is pure waste: it takes from the future and gives nothing back, it's selfish as hell and has no redeeming features whatsoever. We might make an exception for automobile racing since this tends to bring out engineering talent and develop spinoffs that lead to more efficient vehicle technologies. But a professional (or even an amateur) race driver, is not the same thing as an idiot who meanders around the map in a gas guzzler while producing nothing. And not everyone can become a race driver, any more than everyone can become a performing musician: these are limited slots, people compete for them on the basis of talent, few pass, most are left behind, and that's life.
Key point: give and take. Exchange of value is giving and taking in equivalent measure. Taking without giving equal value in return is theft. Equalization of value is normally a market function: I go to the store, I see an appliance with a price tag of $300, I pay the money and take home the appliance. The appliance is worth $300; that is to say, worth what I willingly pay; the exchange of value is equal. If I were to attempt to get it for less than the seller agreed to sell for, I would be stealing. Thus, taking nonrenewable resources without returning equal value to the future, is stealing.
Returning value to the present only, i.e. paying money for gasoline, is insufficient because it leaves out one party to the contract: "the future generations," who have a clear interest in the outcome and an equal moral claim on the resources. By analogy this would be like a general contractor paying some but not all of his subcontractors in an attempt to hold down the price of the built house. The home buyer pays the contractor, it appears to be an equal exchange of value, but behind the scenes, some of the subs have been cheated: ripped off.
BTW, this also addresses CrudeAwakening re. "fair share." One's fair share of a resource may be difficult to ennumerate, but one way to look at it has to do with whether the resource is taken in exchange for value returned to the future.
---
Re. charity:
In fact there is a potentially compelling case to be made for state-sponsored charity via mandatory taxation.
If all forms of providing for the disadvantaged were purely voluntary, then what happens is that those who voluntarily give, deplete their own resources and thus reduce their capability to compete effectively, compared to those who do not voluntarily give. This creates a positive feedback cycle that penalizes charity and rewards selfishness; and over time, selfishness becomes the dominant meme in the human social ecosystem.
On the other hand, if the state uses taxation for charitable purposes, we end up with a level playing field where the selfish end up paying for charity alongside the compassionate. The compassionate are not automatically placed at a competitive disadvantage. The taxation limits the positive feedback cycle that would have given selfishness an advantage.
And as for aggression, taxation is not aggression against you, it at most is aggression against your bank account. Last I checked, bank accounts are not natural persons or even corporate persons, and thus do not have natural and inalienable rights.
----
I'll address the issue of the "clear programming into humans and most other creatures to promote their own self interest." The fact that we share motivations with beasts that have no moral sensibility proves nothing. And the entire history of civilization is one of controlling natural urges that would otherwise cause damage to society-at-large.
For example male humans have all kinds of programming to have sex with as many females as they can take to bed: after all it suits their genetic advantage to spread their seed far and wide. Yet as a society we establish all kinds of legal arrangements to limit that kind of behavior: cheaing on a spouse is grounds for divorce with economic penalties; bigamy is illegal; "alleycat" fathers are tracked down and made to pay child support; etc.
And just because someone wants something, does not mean they can have it. Think of two-year-olds screaming at the supermarket when their parents deny them some trinket or another. The natural programming of infant humans, like infant chimps, is to grasp at objects that are shiny and new. Yet the process of socialization includes placing limits on that behavior.
Re. immigrants and ambition: The reverse case could be made, that those who ran away from their home countries were indulging in a kind of escapism rather than attempting to compete and cooperate under conditions (in their countries of origin) they felt would have been more difficult. In that case, those who stayed in their countries of origin would have been the more robust and capable. In point of fact all of these variations are true, i.e. migrants as harder-working, and migrants as lazy escapists.
As for those who came against their will, that would be black slaves and thus their descendants.
----
Rogerhb: interesting point about the unselfish behavior of providing hospitality to strangers, that is a core element of Middle Eastern (particularly Arabic) cultures. That this should occur in one of the most harsh ecosystems on the earth, is particularly interesting.
----
Re. profits for toolmakers: No one here is arguing for elimination of profit. We have all come to the same conclusion, that profit is essential as an incentive for the risk-taking of business activity. Where we differ is with respect to what is and what isn't reasonable. Keep in mind that the United States was the world-leading industrial power at a time when the spread of income distribution from top to bottom was 35 or 40 to 1. At present, Japan and Germany are at the top of the heap in terms of technology, and in those countries the income distribution ratios are about the same.
Meanwhile the US is no longer the world's leading industrial power, and income spread has reached the level of about 500 to 1. What this says is, beyond a certain point, the added income at the top does not produce anything of value. It's pure waste. When companies are managed by individuals who have lifted themselves out of any realistic sense of competition, what you have is stagnation. There are obvious counter-examples such as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and as the latter illustrates there comes a point where the individual sees their wealth as a legacy rather than a possession; but these exceptions prove the rule rather than invalidating it.
Meanwhile I have a market-based solution to the problem of excessive executive compensation: an SEC rule that would require publicly-traded companies of larger than X size to put their top three levels of management out to bid. Yes, competitive bidding: take your qualified applicant pool and then choose the lowest bidder, just as is done with everything else. After all, if low bid is an acceptable basis to build civil engineering projects such as bridges and dams, where hundreds or thousands or more lives are at stake in the event of failure, then it should certainly be an acceptable basis to choose a CEO and so on, since lives are not at stake.
Now once you get executive compensation down from the stratosphere to the realm of reason, you end up with greater value produced for the shareholders, which after all is the point of publicly-traded corporations in the first place. (The entire Cult of the Rockstar CEO is a myth foisted upon us by those who benefit from it.)
----
Re. fairness:
Fairness (as with lawfulness) is always an imposition on those who don't like playing by the rules. Tough for them.
What I am cricitizing here is that your arguements appear to come from the perspective of a kind of simplistic psuedo-libertarianism that is stuck at a nine-year-old level of ego development. Sorry if that seems harsh, but it's true.
The item about "retarded personality development" is based on your own words: you said specifically that you resented it mightily when your pastor in church told you to "put God first, others second, and yourself last." Apparently you haven't gotten over it yet, because the entire thrust of your arguements is that it's morally legitimate to put yourself first, which by logical necessity puts others second (and since you are an atheist, puts God out of the picture entirely, which is not much different than putting God third i.e. last). So yes, your arguements are stuck at that stage of development: still fighting the battles of the nine-year-old to assert "me first!" Like I said, apologies if this is harsh, but it's the truth.
Your definition of acts of aggression is overly simplistic. Clearly it's aggression if either of us punches the other in the nose, no one disputes that. But aggression can also take subtler forms, and these you seem to miss or dismiss.
Re. use of resources:
You assert that any use of nonrenewable resources could be construed as aggression against future generations. However that misses the issue of value traded for value returned, vs. value taken without value returned.
If you use a nonrenewable resource to build something that future generations will benefit from, or to develop technology that will overcome the lack of the resource, that's responsible use. For example if we use petroleum to build breeder reactors that will stretch the uranium supply until we can build thorium reactors: thus we have taken petroleum from the future but in exchange we have given sustainable nuclear power to the future.
In contrast, "pleasure driving," i.e. burning petroleum for amusement, is pure waste: it takes from the future and gives nothing back, it's selfish as hell and has no redeeming features whatsoever. We might make an exception for automobile racing since this tends to bring out engineering talent and develop spinoffs that lead to more efficient vehicle technologies. But a professional (or even an amateur) race driver, is not the same thing as an idiot who meanders around the map in a gas guzzler while producing nothing. And not everyone can become a race driver, any more than everyone can become a performing musician: these are limited slots, people compete for them on the basis of talent, few pass, most are left behind, and that's life.
Key point: give and take. Exchange of value is giving and taking in equivalent measure. Taking without giving equal value in return is theft. Equalization of value is normally a market function: I go to the store, I see an appliance with a price tag of $300, I pay the money and take home the appliance. The appliance is worth $300; that is to say, worth what I willingly pay; the exchange of value is equal. If I were to attempt to get it for less than the seller agreed to sell for, I would be stealing. Thus, taking nonrenewable resources without returning equal value to the future, is stealing.
Returning value to the present only, i.e. paying money for gasoline, is insufficient because it leaves out one party to the contract: "the future generations," who have a clear interest in the outcome and an equal moral claim on the resources. By analogy this would be like a general contractor paying some but not all of his subcontractors in an attempt to hold down the price of the built house. The home buyer pays the contractor, it appears to be an equal exchange of value, but behind the scenes, some of the subs have been cheated: ripped off.
BTW, this also addresses CrudeAwakening re. "fair share." One's fair share of a resource may be difficult to ennumerate, but one way to look at it has to do with whether the resource is taken in exchange for value returned to the future.
---
Re. charity:
In fact there is a potentially compelling case to be made for state-sponsored charity via mandatory taxation.
If all forms of providing for the disadvantaged were purely voluntary, then what happens is that those who voluntarily give, deplete their own resources and thus reduce their capability to compete effectively, compared to those who do not voluntarily give. This creates a positive feedback cycle that penalizes charity and rewards selfishness; and over time, selfishness becomes the dominant meme in the human social ecosystem.
On the other hand, if the state uses taxation for charitable purposes, we end up with a level playing field where the selfish end up paying for charity alongside the compassionate. The compassionate are not automatically placed at a competitive disadvantage. The taxation limits the positive feedback cycle that would have given selfishness an advantage.
And as for aggression, taxation is not aggression against you, it at most is aggression against your bank account. Last I checked, bank accounts are not natural persons or even corporate persons, and thus do not have natural and inalienable rights.
----
I'll address the issue of the "clear programming into humans and most other creatures to promote their own self interest." The fact that we share motivations with beasts that have no moral sensibility proves nothing. And the entire history of civilization is one of controlling natural urges that would otherwise cause damage to society-at-large.
For example male humans have all kinds of programming to have sex with as many females as they can take to bed: after all it suits their genetic advantage to spread their seed far and wide. Yet as a society we establish all kinds of legal arrangements to limit that kind of behavior: cheaing on a spouse is grounds for divorce with economic penalties; bigamy is illegal; "alleycat" fathers are tracked down and made to pay child support; etc.
And just because someone wants something, does not mean they can have it. Think of two-year-olds screaming at the supermarket when their parents deny them some trinket or another. The natural programming of infant humans, like infant chimps, is to grasp at objects that are shiny and new. Yet the process of socialization includes placing limits on that behavior.
Re. immigrants and ambition: The reverse case could be made, that those who ran away from their home countries were indulging in a kind of escapism rather than attempting to compete and cooperate under conditions (in their countries of origin) they felt would have been more difficult. In that case, those who stayed in their countries of origin would have been the more robust and capable. In point of fact all of these variations are true, i.e. migrants as harder-working, and migrants as lazy escapists.
As for those who came against their will, that would be black slaves and thus their descendants.
----
Rogerhb: interesting point about the unselfish behavior of providing hospitality to strangers, that is a core element of Middle Eastern (particularly Arabic) cultures. That this should occur in one of the most harsh ecosystems on the earth, is particularly interesting.
----
Re. profits for toolmakers: No one here is arguing for elimination of profit. We have all come to the same conclusion, that profit is essential as an incentive for the risk-taking of business activity. Where we differ is with respect to what is and what isn't reasonable. Keep in mind that the United States was the world-leading industrial power at a time when the spread of income distribution from top to bottom was 35 or 40 to 1. At present, Japan and Germany are at the top of the heap in terms of technology, and in those countries the income distribution ratios are about the same.
Meanwhile the US is no longer the world's leading industrial power, and income spread has reached the level of about 500 to 1. What this says is, beyond a certain point, the added income at the top does not produce anything of value. It's pure waste. When companies are managed by individuals who have lifted themselves out of any realistic sense of competition, what you have is stagnation. There are obvious counter-examples such as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and as the latter illustrates there comes a point where the individual sees their wealth as a legacy rather than a possession; but these exceptions prove the rule rather than invalidating it.
Meanwhile I have a market-based solution to the problem of excessive executive compensation: an SEC rule that would require publicly-traded companies of larger than X size to put their top three levels of management out to bid. Yes, competitive bidding: take your qualified applicant pool and then choose the lowest bidder, just as is done with everything else. After all, if low bid is an acceptable basis to build civil engineering projects such as bridges and dams, where hundreds or thousands or more lives are at stake in the event of failure, then it should certainly be an acceptable basis to choose a CEO and so on, since lives are not at stake.
Now once you get executive compensation down from the stratosphere to the realm of reason, you end up with greater value produced for the shareholders, which after all is the point of publicly-traded corporations in the first place. (The entire Cult of the Rockstar CEO is a myth foisted upon us by those who benefit from it.)
----
Re. fairness:
Fairness (as with lawfulness) is always an imposition on those who don't like playing by the rules. Tough for them.
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gg3 - Expert
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Re: Why we waste oil
by Concerned » Mon 17 Jul 2006, 16:44:01
simply awesome post gg3
*slow clap bursting into a crescendo of applause*
*slow clap bursting into a crescendo of applause*
"Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
-Italian Proverb
-Italian Proverb
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Re: Why we waste oil
by ohanian » Mon 17 Jul 2006, 18:57:04
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gego', 'T')his reminds me a Sunday School lesson that was forced upon me when I was a kid (I am a long time athiest, but I was sent to church by my parents). The lesson was god first, others second, self third. This is a perversion of values, and a sure road to failure.
You got it wrong.
It's Allah first, Ummah second and Self third.
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Re: Why we waste oil
by rogerhb » Mon 17 Jul 2006, 19:03:59
The last two hundred years in Western society have been an attempt to justify selffishness and still being able to call yourself Christian.
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers." - Henry Louis Mencken
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Re: Why we waste oil
by captain_planet » Wed 19 Jul 2006, 02:46:49
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gego', ' ')This reminds me a Sunday School lesson that was forced upon me when I was a kid (I am a long time athiest, but I was sent to church by my parents). The lesson was god first, others second, self third. This is a perversion of values, and a sure road to failure. It is biologically absurd. It is psychologically devistating to value selfabnegation. Only someone who does not value himself and his progeny would take such a position, and frankly, I think those who profess to do so are frauds, because when push comes to shove, they will put themselves first anyway. The egelatarian persona is just an expression of wanting to be taken care of by others.
Would you refuse to let your child or your spouse take a seat on a Titanic lifeboat in favor of someone else, or would you yourself stand on the deck rather than to take a seat yourself also? Give me a break.
As life turns out, it is the people whose tanks are half full who are the most greedy, while those with a full tank can afford to be generous and caring. The way to fill up one's tank is to exercise a high degree of caring and providing for one's self.
You think that selfishness is bad. Tell that to mother nature who has programmed into each creature the agressiveness to seek survival. If you truly think that greed is evil, then you are an evolutionary dead end, and rightfully so.
Would you refuse to let your child or your spouse take a seat on a Titanic lifeboat in favor of someone else, or would you yourself stand on the deck rather than to take a seat yourself also? Give me a break.
As life turns out, it is the people whose tanks are half full who are the most greedy, while those with a full tank can afford to be generous and caring. The way to fill up one's tank is to exercise a high degree of caring and providing for one's self.
You think that selfishness is bad. Tell that to mother nature who has programmed into each creature the agressiveness to seek survival. If you truly think that greed is evil, then you are an evolutionary dead end, and rightfully so.
Nothing is being forced upon you in this forum. We all have our own opinions about everything. Sunday school was one way to inform you about God, seems like you did not embrace it though. Your titanic analogy is silly because it has nothing to do with why we waste oil. The word that keeps poping up in your post is agression. Humans are different from animals because we don't tolerate alpha-males. Humans is known as the coalition of the timid. We live in a society today that will tolerate "aggressive" guys like you because we are not like you. "Bring 'em on" gas prices I mean, I want to watch guys like you pay big money at the gas pumps. We are not going to stop oil waste until prices hit 10 bucks a gallon.
"Blessed are the meek and humble, for they will inherit the earth"
http://t3.dotgnu.info/blog/philosophy/c ... timid.html
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Re: Why we waste oil
by rogerhb » Wed 19 Jul 2006, 03:52:21
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('captain_planet', '"')Blessed are the meek and humble, for they will inherit the earth"
Blessed are the cheesemakers....
Of course it's not meant to be taken literally, it means all makers of diary products.
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers." - Henry Louis Mencken
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