The Republicans are doomed!!

[tvashtarkatena]

OH, and regarding FW's drivel about Chicago housing and Stalin or whatever diarrhea he's going on about, again: Dated. Nobody's built housing like that since the 60s; it's long been recognized as a failure. New public housing looks and works very differently nowadays, not that he'd know anything about such things way out there in Meth County.

[billcoe]

So long as societies retain the capacity to innovate, resources become obsolete long before they're completely depleted. Yawn.

 

Sorry, I just sprayed coffee all over the keyboard trying to stifle my laughter. Good luck in your new 'no resources required' universe.

 

Once you've cleaned off the keyboard, can you show me an example of a critical resource that was completely depleted before substitution, conservation, and innovation made the problems presented by the scarcity of the said resource manageable - if not null and void?

 

That's the question. I'm sure you can find at leas one example. Hell, I bet I probably could.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Were Passenger Pigeons Critical resources?...Hmmm, probably not.

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

One interesting example is America at the time of Gifford Pinchot. America was facing an energy crisis back then, too: wood, the primary energy source of the day. Massive deforestation was a huge issue at the time; the eastern US was running out of trees (they've grown back as hardwoods, mainly, after the cessation of most of the agriculture in the region enabled them to). Pinchot went to Europe to study forestry (which didn't exist in the U.S.), and came up with the sustainable national forest system. Problem solved (well, sort of)...through reasoned governance and a (relatively) early recognition of the problem.

 

The Romans, also a wood powered society, weren't so prescient.

Edited November 25, 2008 by tvashtarkatena

[Fairweather]

OH, and regarding FW's drivel about Chicago housing and Stalin or whatever diarrhea he's going on about, again: Dated. Nobody's built housing like that since the 60s; it's long been recognized as a failure. New public housing looks and works very differently nowadays, not that he'd know anything about such things way out there in Meth County.

 

Your transfat-addled lobe is apparently unable to comprehend that the structures represent more than just the physical.

[JayB]

So long as societies retain the capacity to innovate, resources become obsolete long before they're completely depleted. Yawn.

 

What critical resource does the world no longer have due to the recklesness of the Easter Islanders?

 

As a society Easter Islanders collapsed because of wrecking their environment. Ex post facto changing your goal post to humankind doesn't change the painful reality that societys can, and do, fuck up.

 

Poor choice of words on my part - I meant the sum of all societies - e.g. mankind - because societies tend to exchange things with one another (in addition to innovating, conserving, and substituting when things get scarce), and the initial premise that that we've entered an age in which an absolute scarcity of natural resources is upon us. Absolute as in world-wide - across all societies.

 

Once you confine the discussion to the reality that we actually inhabit, and exclude groups of people who can't trade with one another (stone age jungle tribes, etc), absolute scarcity ceases to explain very much about which societies fucked-up in catastrophic fashions up and why. Take all of the starvation deaths that have occurred in the past 150 years, plot them on a map, and look at the political/economic systems in place when the famines hit. That'll be far more relevant and informative than pretending that the stone-age ended for lack of stones.

[pc313]

Its a fuckin Rita Aid from the 90s,they used to lease in a lot of strip malls,but now all the new ones have drive thru Phramacies! Drive thu Drug Dealers,what next?

Edited November 25, 2008 by pc313

[JayB]

One interesting example is America at the time of Gifford Pinchot. America was facing an energy crisis back then, too: wood, the primary energy source of the day. Massive deforestation was a huge issue at the time; the eastern US was running out of trees (they've grown back as hardwoods, mainly, after the cessation of most of the agriculture in the region enabled them to). Pinchot went to Europe to study forestry (which didn't exist in the U.S.), and came up with the sustainable national forest system. Problem solved (well, sort of)...through reasoned governance and a (relatively) early recognition of the problem.

 

The Romans, also a wood powered society, weren't so prescient.

 

The claims here are that:

 

1)Rome fell because the Romans ran out of wood.

 

2)When Gifford Pinchot was in office (1910-1925?), the primary source of energy in the United States was wood.

 

3)During that time timber was primarily harvested for fuel.

 

4)Most importantly - had Pinchot not stepped in and devised a plan to manage timber harvests - the US would have suffered an acute shortage of energy because we wouldn't have had enough trees to cut down and burn?

 

If one or more of the arguments/statements listed here is inconsistent with what you've stated above, please correct me. Once that's done, I want to hear about the critical natural resource that humanity hasn't found any substitutes for before the said resource was completely exhausted.

[JayB]

The Eastern Islander's world collapsed because of lack of resources. As did the Mayans. And the Greenlanders. And on and on and on. Those societies lived in relatively closed systems. Well, I would define the Earth as a relatively closed system, just a bigger one, sudden arrival of star hopping aliens notwithstanding.

 

The difference, and I can't believe I actually need to explain this, is just one of scale. Any population that outstrips its resources in a closed system is due for a reset. We're arriving at that place globally in terms of energy, water, and food production. I guess JayB's never been to Africa to witness some grim examples of what of this for himself (not really his style, I'd wager).

 

JayB exhibits a common trait among conservatives: an inability to recognize the game being played, and an incapacity to understand when the rules of that game have change. For example, he often cites the Green Revolution and the abundance of cheap calories (in the U.S., anyway) as evidence that there couldn't possibly be a problem; ignoring what every farmer has known for decades: we got that abundant food through unsustainable practices; and are now at risk of not only draining the fossil aquifers that sustained it, but the very topsoil that grew it. In JayB's tiny world, you can drive your car at 150 mph indefinitely without worrying about burning up the motor; because, hey, we've been doing it for the past half hour without a hitch, right? Hence, his oft recycled maxims, which always seem to pre-date the last century, nevermind this one.

 

Will this reset mean extermination? In some poorer, politically ravaged areas, that's already happening. In America, where we have a lower population growth rate, stronger civil society, and much greater resources, not necessarily. The reset will certainly mean global depopulation, probably mostly voluntary. The U.S. won't be excluded from this: an inevitability which will (and, um, already is) challenging an outdated economic model that relies on on cheap, abundant energy and unlimited population growth, and unrestrained consumption.

 

The key idea here is that JayB's kind is not capable of recognizing, nevermind accepting, a problem early enough to prevent catastrophe. That's why this election was so important. The conservative movement badly needed to be put down and shoved aside to make room for people who actually have the capacity to recognize a real threat and do the politically difficult work of addressing it. Under JayB's favored leadership, we had no chance to make a reasonable transition to a world of scarcity. Obviously, given the events of the day, it's not going to be painless...at all, but at least it might be non-violent...for Americans, anyway. Shoving the idiots into a closet and locking the door was step one towards some sort of sane adaptation to the somewhat less bountiful reality of the 21st century.

 

Was there a specific example in there? I mean - you spilled your coffee and all, and most resources can be identified with a single word - two words at most (E.g. "Coal," "Natural Gas," "Flint," "Iron," "Copper," "Rubber") so I'm a tad surprised by the length of that entry when a few keystrokes would have sufficed.

[pc313]

Most illuminating.

[STP]

So long as societies retain the capacity to innovate, resources become obsolete long before they're completely depleted. Yawn.

 

What critical resource does the world no longer have due to the recklesness of the Easter Islanders?

 

As a society Easter Islanders collapsed because of wrecking their environment. Ex post facto changing your goal post to humankind doesn't change the painful reality that societys can, and do, fuck up.

 

Poor choice of words on my part - I meant the sum of all societies - e.g. mankind - because societies tend to exchange things with one another (in addition to innovating, conserving, and substituting when things get scarce), and the initial premise that that we've entered an age in which an absolute scarcity of natural resources is upon us. Absolute as in world-wide - across all societies.

 

Once you confine the discussion to the reality that we actually inhabit, and exclude groups of people who can't trade with one another (stone age jungle tribes, etc), absolute scarcity ceases to explain very much about which societies fucked-up in catastrophic fashions up and why. Take all of the starvation deaths that have occurred in the past 150 years, plot them on a map, and look at the political/economic systems in place when the famines hit. That'll be far more relevant and informative than pretending that the stone-age ended for lack of stones.

 

Can you consider time to be a resource?

 

Are we going to follow Daedalis or Icarus?

 

Will our own ingenuity serve as our end?

 

When the rate of change toward disequilibrium e.g., in accumulation of waste products, overcomes the rate of change towards equilibrium (stability) then will we have run out of time, despite our immense abilities?

 

Are we witnessing this now?

[TREETOAD]

A landslide he said!!!hahahah

[TREETOAD]

There is no use in trying to educate the brainwashed. Save the bandwidth for something more worthwhile.

[j_b]

Poor choice of words on my part - I meant the sum of all societies - e.g. mankind - because societies tend to exchange things with one another (in addition to innovating, conserving, and substituting when things get scarce), and the initial premise that that we've entered an age in which an absolute scarcity of natural resources is upon us. Absolute as in world-wide - across all societies.

 

The idea that scarcity has to be global to deeply affect regional populations is bunk. For example, in commercial fishing, stock depletion affects regions without the global market necessary feeling the loss of the regional resource. Thanks to fast boats and ever more refrigeration, international fleets move on to other far away regions were they deplete different stocks and change foreever the lives of those who traditionnally exploited the resource. But perhaps you ought to talk to the haitian women who feed mud cakes mixed in with fat to their children about "societies echanging things" to resolve local resource/services depletion.

 

How do you think canadians will like sharing fresh water with Vegas and LA?

 

Once you confine the discussion to the reality that we actually inhabit, and exclude groups of people who can't trade with one another (stone age jungle tribes, etc), absolute scarcity ceases to explain very much about which societies fucked-up in catastrophic fashions up and why. Take all of the starvation deaths that have occurred in the past 150 years, plot them on a map, and look at the political/economic systems in place when the famines hit. That'll be far more relevant and informative than pretending that the stone-age ended for lack of stones.

 

As if the difference between the relative well being of Saudis and Yemenis was better explained by their politico-economic systems and not what they have under their soils.

[pc313]

A landslide he said!!!hahahah

 

I never said it was a landslide,it was Tvash! I said 44/56.

[tvashtarkatena]

Bill, if you were any dumber I'd serve you up deep fried with ketchup.

[tvashtarkatena]

It was a landslide, particularly by today's standards, but it doesn't matter. The good guys won, and the self-brain eating zombie army was defeated and shoved into a deep, dark hole where it always belonged.

 

I'm not expecting it to come to fruition, but if Cheney gets frog marched to Buttfuck Acres, I'm going to start believing that Jebus is Lord.

Edited November 25, 2008 by tvashtarkatena

[tvashtarkatena]

A particularly aggressive case of testicular cancer for one Mr. Bush would also be nice.

[tvashtarkatena]

It's not that I'm not grateful for seeing the GOP shat upon by a particularly incontinent electorate, but one can get a bit greedy on Christmas morning.

[tvashtarkatena]

Oh, and Gonzales needs to die. Agonizingly, horribly.

[tvashtarkatena]

Rummy can live out the remainder of his confused days in disgrace. Perhaps he'll be gored by one of his bulls at some point.

[pc313]

Are you better now? Hay you left out John ASScroft!!!

[tvashtarkatena]

After Gonzales, Ashcroft should be canonized.

[tvashtarkatena]

It's too bad the DA who's handling the indictment is such a fucking loon himself.

[JayB]

Poor choice of words on my part - I meant the sum of all societies - e.g. mankind - because societies tend to exchange things with one another (in addition to innovating, conserving, and substituting when things get scarce), and the initial premise that that we've entered an age in which an absolute scarcity of natural resources is upon us. Absolute as in world-wide - across all societies.

 

The idea that scarcity has to be global to deeply affect regional populations is bunk. For example, in commercial fishing, stock depletion affects regions without the global market necessary feeling the loss of the regional resource. Thanks to fast boats and ever more refrigeration, international fleets move on to other far away regions were they deplete different stocks and change foreever the lives of those who traditionnally exploited the resource. But perhaps you ought to talk to the haitian women who feed mud cakes mixed in with fat to their children about "societies echanging things" to resolve local resource/services depletion.

 

How do you think canadians will like sharing fresh water with Vegas and LA?

 

Once you confine the discussion to the reality that we actually inhabit, and exclude groups of people who can't trade with one another (stone age jungle tribes, etc), absolute scarcity ceases to explain very much about which societies fucked-up in catastrophic fashions up and why. Take all of the starvation deaths that have occurred in the past 150 years, plot them on a map, and look at the political/economic systems in place when the famines hit. That'll be far more relevant and informative than pretending that the stone-age ended for lack of stones.

 

As if the difference between the relative well being of Saudis and Yemenis was better explained by their politico-economic systems and not what they have under their soils.

 

1. I agree that depleting fish stocks would/does have an adverse effect on the people who catch fish for a living, the communities they live in, and the ecosystem that the fish inhabit(ed), at a minimum. It might be interesting to discuss the dynamics of fish stocks, the local economies that depend on them, and what would happen to both as they depleted the resource. This doesn't change the fact that both people who catch fish for a living, and people who buy fish from them would ultimately find other ways to make a living, and other sources of food long before the fish in question were completely depleted. This would likely occur when their population reached the point that it cost more to catch the fish than the fish would sell for. Seems like a strange example to base your argument on.

 

2. So it's primarily the distribution of natural resources that explains the difference between Haiti and the Dominican Republic? How about East and West Germany, North and South Korea, etc? Singapore, Hong-Kong, Switzerland, Taiwan, Ireland all grew prosperous on account of the vast stores of natural resources under their soil? Changes in the natural resource distribution explain the decline in agricultural output in Zimbabwe? Do tell...

[pc313]

If we put just one of these fucktrads in Buttfuckers Villa,the world would give us a standing applause!

 

One could only hope!

Edited November 25, 2008 by pc313