The Economy Thread

[lxskllr]

Everything is distructive to the environment, there's only so far I am willing to go. I recycle, reuse plastic bottles, try not to take showers that are too long etc, but if I need a TV I am going to buy one. Mother earth has weathered heavier storms in her days.

A TV isn't "needed" in the first place, and if it were priced appropriately most people wouldn't be able to afford more than one. As it is, we ship the production across the world to people who don't pay their workers, and have no problem dumping arsenic and heavy metals in the river. Then they they ship their piece of shit back over here so the rubes can buy it at the WalMart for $300, then dump it in the garbage when a new shiny trinket presents itself. THEN *I* have to ****in' pay for the cleanup as it leaches toxic chemicals into the groundwater, and takes up room in a landfill, while the people really responsible(greedy consumers, and corporations) aren't held accountable.

[sgreger1]

A TV isn't "needed" in the first place, and if it were priced appropriately most people wouldn't be able to afford more than one. As it is, we ship the production across the world to people who don't pay their workers, and have no problem dumping arsenic and heavy metals in the river. Then they they ship their piece of shit back over here so the rubes can buy it at the WalMart for $300, then dump it in the garbage when a new shiny trinket presents itself. THEN *I* have to ****in' pay for the cleanup as it leaches toxic chemicals into the groundwater, and takes up room in a landfill, while the people really responsible(greedy consumers, and corporations) aren't held accountable.

Almost nothing in your house is really "needed" by that standard, and every product you buy, from toothpaste all the way up to the materials used in constructing your house all contibute to the problem you noted.


Choice 1) Live as nomads in the desert

Choice 2) Polute and live in civilization


Put that up for a vote and see what people decide. We can try to minimize our impact, but at a certain point we have to accept that there is a certain footprint that is inherent to 4 billion people living on a planet.



It's easy to complain but not as easy to practice what you preach. I assume you will no longer be eating anything but 1600 calories of rice each day, and living in a hutt made of mudd and with no electricity, right?


It doesn't matter if a human left behind no polution other than his farting. It all has an impact when you multiply it by 4 billion.

and if it were priced appropriately most people wouldn't be able to afford more than one.

This is the key. Back in the day people didn't consume os much because things were priced at their actual value. It was not cost effective to buy a new car every 3 years. As a result, things were more pricey but were built to last. The price being higher means every 3 years a new car does not have to be produced by the factories, which drastically decreases pollution.

[lxskllr]

Almost nothing in your house is really "needed" by that standard, and every product you buy, from toothpaste all the way up to the materials used in constructing your house all contibute to the problem you noted.


Choice 1) Live as nomads in the desert

Choice 2) Polute and live in civilization

It's only a binary choice for the greedy. People need to take responsibility for their actions, and pay for their impact instead of offloading it to someone else. Who's really paying for the Gulf spill? I'm not paying at the pump. Fuel costs the same as it always has, other than seasonal/voodoo changes. The amount BP has put up doesn't sound like enough to really cover the damage, so who's paying for it? What's gas really worth? Why is it STILL cheaper than milk? Who's paying for cadmium in the ground water? How about the retard that gets his lawn sprayed so it's the most beautiful green of greens. Who's paying for his groundwater pollution? How about the reduction of fish in the bay due to nutrient overabundance? I tend to doubt his $100 lawn job covered that. I guess I'm paying for it, eh? Our manhole lids come from India. Why's that? Bethlehem steel is(was) 20 miles from me. Who's paying to ship a cast iron disc across the world? Whatever we paid for the lid, I'm sure it isn't enough after invasive species invade our waters, and our air gets polluted because we don't make things here anymore.

It's easy to complain but not as easy to practice what you preach. I assume you will no longer be eating anything but 1600 calories of rice each day, and living in a hutt made of mudd and with no electricity, right?

Soon enough...

[sgreger1]

It's only a binary choice for the greedy. People need to take responsibility for their actions, and pay for their impact instead of offloading it to someone else. Who's really paying for the Gulf spill? I'm not paying at the pump. Fuel costs the same as it always has, other than seasonal/voodoo changes. The amount BP has put up doesn't sound like enough to really cover the damage, so who's paying for it? What's gas really worth? Why is it STILL cheaper than milk? Who's paying for cadmium in the ground water? How about the retard that gets his lawn sprayed so it's the most beautiful green of greens. Who's paying for his groundwater pollution? How about the reduction of fish in the bay due to nutrient overabundance? I tend to doubt his $100 lawn job covered that. I guess I'm paying for it, eh? Our manhole lids come from India. Why's that? Bethlehem steel is(was) 20 miles from me. Who's paying to ship a cast iron disc across the world? Whatever we paid for the lid, I'm sure it isn't enough after invasive species invade our waters, and our air gets polluted because we don't make things here anymore.




Soon enough...

Yah and I totally understand all of this, and it is a tragedy, but it is something that has been going on for a long time. Humans have always had a devestating impact on their surroundings throughout time, it's just exponentially larger now that we have this global trade thing going on. But what can we do Lx, really? Really what solution is there. There is no way to stop the developed world from polluting, it's impossible. We would have to ban cars, industry, food production, medicine, EVERYTHING.

The truth is that this polution is just a biproduct of humans being here, and it's never going to change. Whether it's cutting down the rainforest for the last thousand years or mining the earth for dirty oil to power our engines today, it doesn't matter, it's never going away. And whether you eat nothing but rice of not will change NOTHING, because the other 99.999999% of humans will never do that unless they have to.


Catch 22. Live in the desert as nomads or benefit from civilization and all of it's luxuries. Mankind has made it's choice, and someday it will have to answer for it. But untill then, **** it.

[lxskllr]

Yah and I totally understand all of this, and it is a tragedy, but it is something that has been going on for a long time. Humans have always had a devestating impact on their surroundings throughout time, it's just exponentially larger now that we have this global trade thing going on. But what can we do Lx, really? Really what solution is there. There is no way to stop the developed world from polluting, it's impossible. We would have to ban cars, industry, food production, medicine, EVERYTHING.

The truth is that this polution is just a biproduct of humans being here, and it's never going to change. Whether it's cutting down the rainforest for the last thousand years or mining the earth for dirty oil to power our engines today, it doesn't matter, it's never going away. And whether you eat nothing but rice of not will change NOTHING, because the other 99.999999% of humans will never do that unless they have to.


Catch 22. Live in the desert as nomads or benefit from civilization and all of it's luxuries. Mankind has made it's choice, and someday it will have to answer for it. But untill then, **** it.

Nothing has to be banned, but people need to make a best effort at reducing impact. Saying **** it, there's nothing *I* can do, so I'll do what I want is what got us into this mess. That's what's bad about unrestrained capitalism. The cheapest product isn't always the cheapest product. Sometimes the payoff gets deferred, and it costs much more than paying it up front. Drive your car for 10 years instead of 3. I've been driving mine 10 years, and it was 3 years old when I bought it. Buy local produce when you can. It's cheaper and cleaner buying cabbage from the next county over instead of buying it from Chile. Say **** you Levi Strauss, I'm buying my jeans from an American company. That keeps ALL the money here, saves shipping pollution, and gives Americans jobs, usually in areas that don't have much going economically. Even better, buy used. Go to the Goodwill. Zero resources got expended recycling clothing, you save a ton of money, and help an organization that helps Americans. There's tons of things that can be done, and if everybody does a little bit, it equals big changes. Just like Folding@home. My 3 folding clients aren't really doing much in the grand scheme of things, but with the tens of thousands of other clients going, real work is getting done.

[justintempler]

The Dems saw that passing a second stimulus was dead on arrival so the $600 billion is the admistration's way of getting around Congress.

The other thing inflating the money supply does is devalues the dollar so paying off foreign debts is done in dollars that are worth less.

It's a hidden tax on it's citizens and a way to steal from the foreign governments holding US treasury bonds.

[Bigblue1]

It's all the biggest scam/ponzi ever, and if you think madofs marks were pissed just wait till the holders of US debt get the bill, and that does include each and every American........ We can argue how many tv's one deserves all day long but it has not 1 iota of relevance on this "situation"........

[sgreger1]

Nothing has to be banned, but people need to make a best effort at reducing impact. Saying **** it, there's nothing *I* can do, so I'll do what I want is what got us into this mess. That's what's bad about unrestrained capitalism. The cheapest product isn't always the cheapest product. Sometimes the payoff gets deferred, and it costs much more than paying it up front. Drive your car for 10 years instead of 3. I've been driving mine 10 years, and it was 3 years old when I bought it. Buy local produce when you can. It's cheaper and cleaner buying cabbage from the next county over instead of buying it from Chile. Say **** you Levi Strauss, I'm buying my jeans from an American company. That keeps ALL the money here, saves shipping pollution, and gives Americans jobs, usually in areas that don't have much going economically. Even better, buy used. Go to the Goodwill. Zero resources got expended recycling clothing, you save a ton of money, and help an organization that helps Americans. There's tons of things that can be done, and if everybody does a little bit, it equals big changes. Just like Folding@home. My 3 folding clients aren't really doing much in the grand scheme of things, but with the tens of thousands of other clients going, real work is getting done.

I can't disagree. I realise the overall goal is unacheavable, yet I still buy most things used from craigslist, try to use as little water as possible, I do buy locally a lot (but not all) of the time, I donate to goodwill and try to not print things when it's unecessary. Lots of people making little changes has a big effect, this is true, but in the end we are only delaying the inevitable. For buildings to stand, for cars to drive, for society to exist there is always some impact. Your right about pure capitalism, the cheapest product is not only the cheapest product. The $3 you saved by buying a shirt from target endorses slave labor, pollutes the oceans as it's transported here, and burn preciouse fossil fuels that will soon be depleted. But at the end of the day, humans are about survival, and with money always being in short supply I cannot blame the immegrant family I see buying peppers at the walmart supercenter.


I guess my point is that this is not a problem that will ever be solved. Even if we had a logan's run style system where everything was apportioned perfectly and everyone died at 30, it would all be the same, it would just take longer to come to full effect. Capitalism is not something someone dreamed up one day, it is a byproduct of the human condition. It will never go away.

[sgreger1]

The Dems saw that passing a second stimulus was dead on arrival so the $600 billion is the admistration's way of getting around Congress.

The other thing inflating the money supply does is devalues the dollar so paying off foreign debts is done in dollars that are worth less.

It's a hidden tax on it's citizens and a way to steal from the foreign governments holding US treasury bonds.

That's the way I see it. It is a hidden tax and a way of circumventing the checks in place to stop things like this. The government takes the dollar in your wallet and cuts it into 600 billion pieces and uses that to pay back foreign investors. It's much, much worse than what maddof did, but no one will ever hang because of it. It's simply how we do business now, and failed business models lead to failed businesses.

[lxskllr]

I guess my point is that this is not a problem that will ever be solved. Even if we had a logan's run style system where everything was apportioned perfectly and everyone died at 30, it would all be the same, it would just take longer to come to full effect. Capitalism is not something someone dreamed up one day, it is a byproduct of the human condition. It will never go away.

Oh yea, we're doomed regardless. My overall point was that American's thinking has changed a lot over the decades. People used to make due with what they had, and only bought what they needed. Everybody wants everything now, and they'll do anything they can to get it. I honestly can't say corporations have changed any. It's just gotten easier for them to sell out the country. I will say that whatever loyalty there was from companies to their employees and the surrounding communities is long gone, and I think a lot of that is the customer's fault.

[Bigblue1]

Oh yea, we're doomed regardless. My overall point was that American's thinking has changed a lot over the decades. People used to make due with what they had, and only bought what they needed. Everybody wants everything now, and they'll do anything they can to get it. I honestly can't say corporations have changed any. It's just gotten easier for them to sell out the country. I will say that whatever loyalty there was from companies to their employees and the surrounding communities is long gone, and I think a lot of that is the customer's fault.

You know, this is totally correct and it is most importantly not a generation at this point. At least not in my world. It seems to me the 60 yr olds who dodged every bullet so far, are even more brazen. the've dodged like how many bullets? Their either like **** it, won't happen to me. or ****it I got so little left, won't make a difference, mine as well enjoy it. Now these are the same people, who, wouldn't by me a soda if we went out to eat after church...... And in retrospect that saves my family so much money with a household of 6 and it did make a difference....... It added up whn a dollar meant sumthing...... TBC

[sgreger1]

Oh yea, we're doomed regardless. My overall point was that American's thinking has changed a lot over the decades. People used to make due with what they had, and only bought what they needed. Everybody wants everything now, and they'll do anything they can to get it. I honestly can't say corporations have changed any. It's just gotten easier for them to sell out the country. I will say that whatever loyalty there was from companies to their employees and the surrounding communities is long gone, and I think a lot of that is the customer's fault.

I dont blame them. People will choose to live a better life as soon as they are able to make that choice. Egyptian slaves would have bought a big screen tv if they could have. Its not that prior generations necessarily wanted to live a lean life, its that they had to, and because thats how people had always lived. As soon as the choice to have all of these thing becomes available, people will choose it over the alternative. It's simple human behavior.


And in all honesty, i dont think most people think as deeply as some on this forum do. People shopping at wal mart never sit down and think of what a blatant waste of resources went into their 5$ t-shirt they bought at walmart. Then again, i think about those things and i shop there too, because there is no better alternative. I pay my taxes and i am charitable with my resources, but im too broke to afford quality american made shit, if that even still exists. I buy what i can afford and they are selling it.

[Bigblue1]

You know if we survive, We'll be able to say, Yep knew it was gonna happen. Nothing I could do about it..... We just might be coined the greatest generation if somehow we could get out of it........

[lxskllr]

You know if we survive, We'll be able to say, Yep knew it was gonna happen. Nothing I could do about it..... We just might be coined the greatest generation if somehow we could get out of it........

We need a world war. That does wonders for the economy, and gives you hero stories you can tell for generations to come :^D

[Bigblue1]

tho the American people may be flouridated out of their gourds and such. I Don't think we could put together forces like that again. Whilst are standing forces are huge they are not inter-continental world war huge....... Tho they are way more efficient...... It'd be interesting to say the least......