Dakkus wrote:If USA, China, Australia and India jump into a well, will you follow?
Would you kill yourself only because some other people are suicidical morons?
In the long term there the only way to stay alive is to stop raping the planet we live on.
There are two possible scenarios:
1) Nature is protected as much as now or less than now. In a few generations there are only half a billion humans left because everyone else has died.
2) Nature is protected more than now. We will stay alive.
I disagree. We'll die anyway, whether we protect nature and environment
or not. If we don't destroy life, than a supervolcano or an asteroid/
comet will destroy, and if it is none of them, in the end that huge shiny
star that brings us daylight (the Sun) will destroy us. When the Sun gets
older, she starts expanding and shining brighter. She'll swallow Mercury,
Venus and possibly our planet, that's not so certain. In the best-case
scenario, our planet will survive the Sun, after having been heated to app.
3500 degrees, i.e. our planet will be molten, and even cooked. After the
Sun died, our planet will be no more than a lump of carbon, with a few
heavy metals. It'll look most like a lump of charcoal. The other scenario,
the Sun swallows our planet, means that our planet ends up in the core of
the Sun, compacted together so much that a matchbox of that matter
weighs about 2500 kg. One of these two scenarios is our future, no matter
how much we protect or destroy nature.
Dakkus wrote:I believe even those countries with not-so-developed abilities to look to future will eventually understand there's no other possibility than starting to protect nature.
If they don't, it's goodbye for life.
Because those countries start protecting nature several decades later than EU, they will have to use tremendeosly more money than they would if they did the unavoidable in time. When things are done well all the way from the beginning they're a lot cheaper in the long term.
The economy of EU will also get a huge boost when the nature destroyers start doing things reasonably, because then EU will already have huge amounts of technology and knowledge the suicidical countries do not.
They will have to pay us for their lives, which is often quite profitable
This will also have consequences in Europe, so they also have to start
protecting nature and environment, else the Kyoto protocol is pointless.
Besides that, I am still sceptical about global warming. Some scientists say
that without reducing the exhaustion of carbon dioxide and water vapour
the temperature may rise with 10 degrees this century, but in these calcu-
lations they presume water vapour is also contributing to global warming,
which isn't sure at all. And let's not forget the Sun. If the Sun starts shining
1% brighter than now, the polar ice will melt, the sea level will rise about
35 meters, thus flooding huge parts of land. If the Sun starts shining 1%
fainter, there'll be another ice age. The polar ice will stretch out until the
Mediterenean sea. And about global warming, the plants and trees are now
using about 25% of their total capacity to transform carbon dioxide and
water into oxygen and glucose, so they can deal a lot more exhaustion!
Dakkus wrote:And to some extent I also understand the urge to disallow building new roads. The Dutch population doesn't really increase. At least not as fast as he public transportation technology evolves. I think many roads could be removed and replaced with more ecological and economical methods of transportation. When the population density climbs over a certain ridiculously high limit, using cars is simply not a good idea anymore. Building new main roads in the Netherlands that already has an unbeliavably (and sickly) good motorway network is nothing but complete stupidity. I don't believe anyone has completely banned building small roads on the countryside.
Here I completely disagree with you. That the Dutch motorway network is
dense doesn't mean it is good enough. The last 20 years, the Dutch
motorway network has grown with 10%. By that time, the car traffic has
grown with 80%, which has caused a huge amount of traffic jams, and until
2010, traffic will grow with another 40%, which is mostly caused by large-
distance traffic (trucks): that traffic will grow with about 80%, while local
traffic hardly increases (just like the Dutch population). By building new
roads the jams will be solved for a major part, which will cause the
exhaustion to drop (cars driving a steady velocity exhaust half the amount
of cars accelerating and slowing down all the time). And about public
transportation, I agree with you that requires lots of investments too,
because IMO people should have a choice of how they want to get
transported.
Dakkus wrote:Also city developing could be handled better by creating very fast rail transportation methods. Everything within a 10km radius from downtown could be made car-free, so that only delivery cars and other such cars would be allowed to get there.
There are better alternatives than building new roads and houses. If there was a more efficient method of transportation in use, there would be no need to stuff new houses to downtowns. They could be built even 100km away, and still they'd be only a bit over 15min away from downtown. There's absolutely nothing impossible in this. People just don't dare to save their asses by doing something sensible instead of the "good" old.
The power of USA, China, Australia and India will eventually decrease very drastically because of their short-sighted politics.
Why are we still using the "good" old? Simply because it is good. Why
change something that is already good? Individual transportation is the
most efficient affordable way of transportation. The more futuristic forms
of transportation, such as magnetic levitation trains (maglevs) is simply
extremely expensive and energy-consuming (In the Netherlands there are
plans to build such a maglev track from Amsterdam to the north, in
Germany one is planned between Berlin and Hamburg. Maybe in future
they can be linked, creating a connection Amsterdam-Hamburg-Berlin).
Dakkus wrote:Free trade is no problem if it's done so that all people are equal. Currently it doesn't work that way. Opening small, developing countries to free trade practically always causes foreign corporations and through them also foreign governments to have an unbeliavably strong influence to the politics and developement of the country and its culture. Free trade in its current form is deadly. It doesn't serve people, it serves the holy corporate masters.
I support having free trade inside a country such as EU practically is, but in its current form I am extremely strongly against it in a global scale.
The main problem of free trade is it's founded on inequal conditions. Its foundations are built on the military force used a few hundred years ago. The idea of free trade is that different nations and peoples could trade with each others equally without any limits. That would help cultures exchange their best parts, thus developing all societies in the world with fastest possible pace both economically and culturally. In theory that's a good idea, but since currently countries can be divided (quite roughly) into two categories according to whether they're masters or slaves, the fundamental base of free trade doesn't exist.
Looking deep enough the very idea of free trade is to distribute the natural resources more evenly across the world. That helps the planet support more people with the same amount of natural resources. However, the current type of free trade in use does quite exactly the opposite. It takes from the poor and gives to the rich.
Let's think about bananas. (This could as well be tea, coffee, tobacco, or many other traded stuff)
During the time of imperialism we Europeans got a nice foothold in the areas where bananas are grown. We kicked the asses of the local people and submissed them under our rule. We forced them to grow banans for us. If someone didn't agree, we killed him.
Although there isn't any imperialist politics left in the scale of those days, the European banana farmers stayed there. They still had a hold of the farms and through them also the main natural resources. They pay very little salary for the local people. Even though the money we let the banana economies have is far less than what they should have, it's still money. And the banana economies will have to stay under the rule of the foreign banana farming corporations, because if they stopped that, they would have to start building their economies all the way from the beginning. Because other economies have had almost 10000 years more time to develop, there is no way they could develop to our level again, now that there has been the time of imperialism.
Once again, I disagree with you. Let's take sugar (but this could also be
some other stuff). Sugar can be produced nearly everywhere. Initially the
sugar production is cheapest in the third world countries. In theory it
should be easy for them to sell their sugar. But because the western world
is protecting its market against that sugar with import taxes and subsidized
sugar production, the poor countries have absolutely no chance of selling
their sugar, so they remain poor. With a free market the poorer countries
will be able to sell their sugar, and so their economies will also develop.
Dakkus wrote:Maybe the most important thing why free trade can't work is its actually only a part of something far bigger. Letting economical resources flow freely isn't enough. We will also have to let people flow freele. As long as there is border control, free trade can't work.
The "free trade machine" is supposed to work so that when the people are not paid well enough, they will move to jobs where they are paid better. That way free trade will keep all salaries and possibilites of life equal.
However, the areas where the people who now work under inhuman conditions would be paid better don't accept them.
If a Cameroonian, Venezuelan, Bangladeshian or Moroccoan tries to come to Europe he's sent back or even killed. Why do we let people who are born in a certain area have different rights from the people living in some other area?
In the short term (maybe three generations) it might be a bad thing letting all immigrants in, but in the long term (some ten generations) it would help a lot.
Supporting free movement of goods, but being against free movement of people at the same time is nothing but self-centered domination and lying to one's self.
When opening all borders, many people from the poorer countries come to
the rich countries, creating a HUGE overpopulation in the richer countries,
making these countries inhospitable. Besides, if the poorer people stay
there, more and more companies will come there, more people can get a
job, and gradually these workers will become more and more expensive
(i.e. get better salaries).
Self-centrism is nothing but natural. In nature it is always the survival of
the fittest. Without being self-centered, you won't survive for long. People
want to be unique, so equality is unachievable. In my opinion, somebody
who has been working and studying a lot to get a good job has the right to
earn more money than some normal worker who hasn't been doing
anything special. Reasoning that way, unequality will cause ambition:
people want to be special, so they'll work and study for that, in order to
get a good job, and receive an above-average salary.
Dakkus wrote:If everyone was allowed to move anywhere they wanted, a great amount of world's problems would be solved. Might sound absurd, but is true. If people could move freely there would be no labour left where the nature is destroyed and so the corporations couldn't destroy nature.
If people could move freely the economies and cultures would evolve faster.
If people could move freely they wouldn't have to fight over who is allowed to move where. (border conflicts)
If people could move freely any human could live the way he is happiest with.
If people could move freely there would be no countries of cheap labour and we could keep good pensions and good social benefits.
If people could move freely the crisis of the western system would end. (although for first it would surely get worse)
Freely taking the natural resources of other people, oppressing them in their own country and not letting them move to better places is cruel.
Allowing people to move where they want will eventually cause the original
people to dislike the immigrants. This has happened in the Netherlands for
several decades, where many immigrants were allowed in. Nowadays it is
more difficult for the immigrants to get a job here, which causes them to
be relatively more criminal, so the genuine people will dislike the immi-
grants even more. By now, the situation between Moroccan and Dutch
teenagers is worsening dramatically.
By making everybody equal you'll disencourage people to be ambitious, so
in the end the economy will collapse. Take the DDR and North Corea for
example.
Removing all borders by now will create complete anarchy and chaos, thus
destroying the economy, creating huge poverty, famine and war (we all
want to have our own land, and our own identity, and we'll fight for it).
Talking about cruelty, the western world is the fittest population in the
world (i.e.: the strongest and smartest), so we win, and they lose. It is
cruel, but nature is even more cruel. Where we let the weak live nature
will kill the weak: the lion will eat the antilope, the barnacle will eat small
fishes and spiders and venus plants will eat insects. Especially the last two
are cruel: the insect will be poisoned by the spider and sucked empty, and
the venus plant will digest the insect in a pool of acid alive, in a very slow,
painful and humiliating way.
Dakkus wrote:In the long term we will either have to change or starve. I support the first one of those options.
So, I will fight for freedom. And I will do my best to get also other people stand up for their rights.
Changing won't have any effect, we'll die out anyway. And if I have to
choose between a world where nobody is special (like DDR and North
Corea) and a world where somebody can be special, I prefer the latter
one. Life may last shorter, but hey, in a mew million years we are all dead!
So do something with your life as long as you can!
