Trying to include the British in our party
Anonymous
or two Irishmen who object to the term British Isles, whom they
have beaten to a pulp, I would offer a concilatory alternative
before another war erupts.
I stress that for myself I don't care shit what the islands are called.
I am in fact the only person on these newsgroups who has it in
his power to change such a usage. That is because I am a
novelist and the definition of words in dictionaries of record
(eg OED) is always what good writers use the words to mean. I
f I were therefore to start using "British Isles" to mean "a hellhole
full of smugly insensitive overage and overripe schoolbullies
like Pigface Pearce and Poopie Stevenson" and persaude a few
other writers to do the same, soon the word would be said by
dictionaries of record not to mean "a geopolitical area" but "a
hellhole etc". But I can't be bothered to make the effort.
As I say. I don't care shit what the British want to call the entire
group of islands. Nor can I find anyone on the Carberry Costa
del Artistic Tax Exile where I live who cares. Many of them are
rocknrolling or literary Brits anyway who think a curse on the old
country's penal tax regime (though in public they cuddle up to
Tony and help him pretend Brittannia is kewl). Nor do the Irish I
know care; they have real estate agents to look after their
property in London and give that uncomfortable city a miss a
ltogether, preferring Barcelona and points further East. It is
possible the government in Dublin cares, or maybe they are just
keeping up pretenses; the senior politicians I know consider
Britain merely an inconvenient landmass with obstreperous
people inconveniently placed between Ireland and the entity
that really matters, Europe. My understanding is that the lower
classes in the far north of Ireland feel themselves oppressed by
British mismanagement and want rid of the Brits (a prospect
that fills predominantly middle-class Ireland with the utmost
horror, as the north will be very expensive to incorporate and
support). The North (capitalized like A Vision of Hell) is where
the sensitivity to the name "British Isles" originates and is
perpetuated by British insensitivity and cackhandedness and
smug insularity and just plain foul manners, as we have seen
in the thread "Come ride with me".
So, while I don't care shit, and no one else I know cares shit
though some pretend in order to be elected, still, to pour oil on
roiled waters, I offer the following compromise that should
satisfy everyone:
Let us replace the politically incorrect (literally) and
geographically suspect term "British Isles" with "European Isles".
The larger term can then include Marbella (an outpost of British
yobbery already), Corsica, Sardinia, "Great" (1) Britain
(comprising England and Scotland with Wales more or less
attached), the Scillies, Ireland, a large part of Greece, Mafialand
aka Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia, and Malta, even Greenland
and some other Danish possessions whose names I can't be
bothered to look up. This namechange has the huge advantage
that the more smugly insenstive British like Pigface Pearce can
pretend both that their lost Empire included places it never did a
nd that they belong to Europe even if they can't speak any of
its languages and prefer to eat appalling crap rather than the
fresh produce of Europe; the superannuated schoolbullies are
therefore likely to accept this change immediately. Meanwhile
the Irish, or those at least of them who care about these names
(and who might just have skill with an Armalite or Semtex),
will not feel that they are associated in the naming convention
with the inferior and largely despicable (to them) British.
Headknocker
Chief Conciliator
Solomonic Solutions Inc
(1) "Great" Britain is a pretty picayune place to anyone who has
travelled a little, and I don't mean just the predominant smug
provincial insularity of attitude, I mean physically as well.
Maybe at the same time as changing "British Isles" to "European
Isles" the British might like to change the name of their country
to "Greater Britain (or at least a little larger than England alone)".
Nomen Nescio
to "Greater Britain (or at least a little larger than England alone)" :-)
Anonymous
to "Greater Britain (or at least a little larger than England alone)".
********
Peter Wieck
Jute-McCoy x 3.
Schizophrenic as well as OCD.
Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA
Bret Ludwig
best thing it has is its Not Terribly Good Club.
avidlistener
> Since the usual overage schoolbullies on UKRA have found one
> or two Irishmen who object to the term British Isles, whom they
> have beaten to a pulp, I would offer a concilatory alternative
> before another war erupts.
>
> I stress that for myself I don't care shit what the islands are called.
> I am in fact the only person on these newsgroups who has it in
> his power to change such a usage. That is because I am a
> novelist and the definition of words in dictionaries of record
> (eg OED) is always what good writers use the words to mean.
You have obviously confused the term novelist with bullshit artist.
Obviously you are the latter.
Peter Wieck
Not at all.
Bullshit Artist: One who pays to have works published.
Novelist: One who is paid to have works published.
Either way, the unsuspecting public sees paper between two covers.
Unless sufficiently discerning, that public would not be able to
determine the difference between really bad garbage published in a fit
of bad taste, or for a particularly tasteless audience (example: L.
Ron Hubbard), or vanity published crap. So, within the limits of the
definition in OED, Mr. McCoy may make the claim to being a 'novelist'.
That Mr. McCoy appears to be rewriting the works of "It was a dark and
stormy night" Bulwer-Lytton might be an interesting sidebar discussion
were McCoy worth that effort. But the significant difference between
them is that Lytton was paid for his work and quite handsomely. And if
not still read, his influences still continue. McCoy, on the other
hand will improve the world by its absence.
Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA
Bret Ludwig
It's Official: British (a.k.a. America's Founders) Not Diverse At All
By Steve Sailer
As every schoolboy used to know, the episodes of group migration into
the British Isles were remarkably few between the Norman Conquest of
1066 and the beginning of modern mass immigration after 1945: the
French Huguenot refugees, the modest flow of Ashkenazi Jews, and a few
others. Nevertheless, in recent years the politically-correct elites
on both sides of the Atlantic have begun to promote the improbable
contention that Britain has always been a land of immigration.
Ironically, just as this has become an article of faith, genetic
evidence has begun to pile up about how profoundly wrong it is. Not
only did immigration after 1066 play a vanishingly small role in the
makeup of the offshore islanders, but even the famous invasions of
previous millennia-Normans, Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, and Romans-merely
added a fairly minor overlay to the prehistoric gene pool.
Political control and even language varied in the British Isles over
time. But the oldest occupants endured, adapted, and flourished. In
the words of Oxford University geneticist Bryan Sykes in his new book
Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland
[published in the United Kingdom under the title Blood of the Isles]:
"We are an ancient people ..."
The family trees of the English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish are
overwhelmingly indigenous to the British Isles since far back into
prehistoric times. The title of Sykes' first chapter, "Twelve Thousand
Years of Solitude," summarizes this finding The "average settlement
dates" in the Isles for the ancestors of modern British and Irish
people, he estimates, were around 8,000 years ago.
Historical population genetics is an extremely complicated science.
It's not uncommon for well-known authorities, such as Sykes and his
rival L.L. Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford, to differ. Bearing that in
mind, Sykes' recreation of the genetic history of Britain and Ireland
appears plausible.
Sykes' team obtained DNA samples from 10,000 individuals in the United
Kingdom and Ireland and reviewed genetic records for 40,000 more. They
looked at functionally trivial mutations in the Y-chromosome to group
each man into clans based on patrilineal lines of descent (e.g.,
Abraham begat Isaac who begat Jacob who begat ...). And they examined
mitochondrial DNA to group individuals into matrilineal descent clans.
(I reviewed in VDARE.com Sykes' 2001 book The Seven Daughters of Eve,
which outlined the initial European-wide genealogical discoveries
revealed by mitochondrial DNA. If you are interested in the
understanding the technical aspects more, please see that article.)
>From his database, Sykes concludes that the majority of the genes of
the peoples of the British Isles are descended from the oldest of the
modern inhabitants: Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, who began arriving
10,000 years ago from Continental Europe after the end of the last Ice
Age, as soon as the islands became habitable again.
Global cooling had pushed modern humans out northern Europe and down
into refuges near the Mediterranean, remixing the early peoples of
Europe. (This may be one reason that, as Cavalli-Sforza has noted,
Europeans are the most physically homogenous of all the great
continental races.)
>From the South, big game hunters trekked north again as the ice
melted, some getting all the way to Britain. Before the seas fully
rose, Britain was connected to Europe by a land bridge, and the Thames
was a tributary of the Rhine!
A smaller but still important genetic contribution later came from the
Neolithic farmers, who had begun thousands of years before slowly
spreading northwest from the Middle East's Fertile Crescent.
Both the hunter-gatherers, who had sought refuge from the ice in
Mediterranean lands, and the farmers, who had emerged from the Fertile
Crescent, appear to have followed the same two main routes to the
British Isles. One was a western oceanic route from Iberia north,
primarily settling in Ireland and western Britain. (I would speculate
that the somewhat darker coloration of the Welsh reflects this sunnier
origin.) The other main path was a central continental route up the
great river valleys into northern Europe, and then west to eastern
Britain.
In the British Isles, the hunter-gatherer-fishermen presumably stuck
to the water's edge, while the farmers cleared the inland forest. This
meant there were few incentives for a genocidal clash between them,
allowing the genes of both to survive in large numbers. Over time,
some of the hunter-gatherers must have learned to farm, permitting
them to be fruitful and multiply. The two groups appear to have
merged, a happier outcome than typically seen in more recent
collisions between farmers and hunter-gatherers.
Sykes writes: "Overall, the genetic structure of the Isles is
stubbornly Celtic." (Interestingly, this means that the Irish and the
English are largely the same-and Sykes is unable to discern any
difference at all between the Ulster Catholics and Protestants, or
"Scotch-Irish", as they are known to American immigration history).
Sykes points, out, however, that the term "Celtic" is something of a
misnomer:
"The 'Celts' of Ireland and the Western Isles are not, as far as I can
see from the genetic evidence, related to the Celts who spread south
and east to Italy, Greece and Turkey from the heartlands of Hallstadt
and La Tene in the shadows of the Alps during the first millennium
BC."
The British "Celts" have been in the British Isles long before the
emergence of Central European Celts known to anthropology and the
military history of the Roman Republic. These British "Celts" adopted
the Celtic language, but otherwise their relationship with the
continental Celts, if any, remains unknown.
Sykes guesses that the proliferation of La Tene-style handicrafts in
Britain was not the result of mass immigration from Central Europe, as
anthropologists have long presumed, but simply of British Isle
goldsmiths learning to copy the latest style from the Continent.
(Similarly, the recent mass-production in China of knick-knacks
emblazoned with the Celtic Cross for Dublin tourist traps doesn't mean
that Guangdong is suddenly filling up with Irishmen.)
Sykes observes:
"It seems to me that the constant tendency to interpret past events in
terms of movements is completely the wrong assumption. Surely the
correct starting point is to assume that our ancestors were
sufficiently resourceful and skillful to pick up virtually any skill."
The half of modern British/Irish DNA that comes from female ancestors
is especially native to the Isles.
Sykes points out that after the arrival of the agriculturalists in
Britain:
"The genetic bedrock on the maternal side was in place. By about 6,000
years ago, the pattern was set for the rest of the history of the
Isles and very little has disturbed it since."
The one region where there was subsequent large-scale female
immigration was the northern islands of Shetland and Orkney. Some
30-40 percent of today's inhabitants trace their maternal ancestry to
Viking women.
There was also a limited immigration during historic times of women
into eastern and northern England, accounting for 10 percent of the
maternal genes in the east and 5 percent in the north.
Whether these women were Saxons, Vikings, or Normans is hard to say
because they are all so similar genetically. The Angles, Saxons, and
Jutes, who invaded England after the Roman evacuation in 410 A.D.,
were from southern Scandinavia and northern Germany. The Vikings, who
sacked the monastery of Lindisfarne as early as 793, were centered
merely a little farther north and west. The Normans were simply
Vikings who had conquered Normandy and adopted the French language.
Sykes' guessed, based on sketchy historical evidence: most of this
newer maternal-side DNA was introduced by the Vikings.
The Vikings/Normans were incredibly dangerous-their conquests ranged
from the Volga to North America, from Greenland to Sicily-for the
paradoxical reason that during the Dark Ages they cooperated with each
other better than their less ferocious victims did. (To defend against
Viking raids, Europeans eventually evolved feudalism, the fundamental
institution of the Middle Ages, to support the expensive knights in
shining armor needed to rapidly mobilize and defeat a Viking raid.)
Yet, despite their taste for rapine and pillage, the supremely
opportunistic Vikings were not averse to family outings either,
apparently bringing their womenfolk with them to farm in Orkney and
East Anglia.
The Romans appear to have imported almost no women into Britain. Sykes
found only a "tiny number" of examples of exotic mitochondrial DNA
that might represent female slaves imported by the Romans from Syria
or black Africa.
The famous historic invasions left a larger, but still limited, mark
on the male Y-chromosome.
Roman soldiers no doubt left children behind, but it's hard to pick
them out because, as the Empire matured, fewer Legionnaires were
recruited from increasingly decadent Italy, and more from the northern
reaches of the mainland Empire, where the men were genetically closer
to the British.
All together, the Saxons, Vikings, and Normans account for the
ancestors of about 10 percent of Englishmen living south of the old
Danelaw line between London and Chester, and 15 percent north of it,
"reaching 20 per cent in East Anglia."
(Remarkably, this ancient ethnic palimpsest can be seen to this day in
the United States. As David Hackett Fischer pointed out in his great
history of British settlers in America, Albion's Seed, the American
Puritans tended originate in East Anglia and other once-heavily Danish
regions of England. In turn, the American states founded by Puritans
and their descendents feature the most famous colleges and the highest
NAEP school achievement test scores.)
That the people of the British Isles, whose offspring founded and
still profoundly shape the American nation, have been a homogenous
racial group for 6,000 years has many implications.
For one thing, it offers an important perspective on the current
obsession with the supposed educational blessings of racial diversity.
Virtually every college president in America publicly denounces the
mentally-stultifying effects of a non-diverse student body. (Diversity
of opinion, of course, is somehow much less fashionable on campus.)
And yet, William Shakespeare, who likely never left homogenous England
in his life, sketched what is perhaps the most diverse array of
personalities in world literature. Nor have the British Isles-home to
Samuel Johnson and John Lennon, Oscar Wilde and the Duke of Wellington-
been grievously lacking in real life individuality.
This is not to say that the close observation of racial diversity
don't add interest to our understanding of humanity ... or Shakespeare
wouldn't have made Othello, the Moor of Venice, the tragic hero of one
of his greatest plays.
What it does show, however, is that even in the most superficially
uniform racial groups, there is almost endless human richness to be
found.
[Steve Sailer [email him] is founder of the Human Biodiversity
Institute and movie critic for The American Conservative. His website
www.iSteve.com features his daily blog.]
http://www.vdare.com/asp/printPage.asp?url=http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070415_diverse.htm
Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!
> It's Official: British (a.k.a. America's Founders) Not Diverse At All
<snip>
Yay, white males!
or is there some other point?
Laurence Payne
<arty...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> It's Official: British (a.k.a. America's Founders) Not Diverse At All
>
><snip>
>
>Yay, white males!
>
>or is there some other point?
Only as an antidote to politically-convenient misinformation. You can
support multiculturalism without telling lies.
elm...@shaw.ca
>
> http://www.vdare.com/asp/printPage.asp?url=http://www.vdare.com/saile...
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Mr. Ludwig is well versed in a Mr.Sykes' Anglo-Saxon "race"
researches..
That gentleman he says went back 6 millenia. Quote:
" The genetic bedrock on the maternal side was in place. By about
6,000
years ago, the pattern was set for the rest of the history of the
Isles and very little has disturbed it since."
Mr. Ludwig you can't whet our appetite and then just leave us pining
to find out what ahppened before 4000 B.C.
Or do you date the birth of this planet to about that time (give or
take a millenium or two)
Ludovic Mirabel
Andre Jute
You want to be more precise than that, Ludo, when you speak to
scientists of received religion.
Bret Ludwig belongs to Bishop Beverley's congregation. He thinks M was
Created at 11.02am on 17 August 4004BC (and never mind the politically
correct dating system either!). Soon Ludwig will make a little schism
with the rest of the fundies on whether it happened at 13 seconds
after the minute or whether that was an error in later transcription
(the good Bish spilt his port on that precise spot in the manuscript)
and Man was not Created until 31 seconds past the minute. (1)
Of course, my own hyper-fundy Church of Reason split off from Ludwig's
misguided lot on the subject of God's motivation. Ludwig and his half-
literate clowns believe that God Created Man as Perfect in His Own
Image. To us it is obvious that God cannot be that stupid, that
Ludwig's fundies are committing hubris (as is the entire ecological
movement, the most destructive religion the world has ever seen). We
think it more likely that, having swept up the dust in Paradise, God
sneezed, some biomatter landed in the dust, and thus Life was started.
For the date, see above.
> Ludovic Mirabel
This is the first time in a long time that Ludwig has posted anything
interesting. I am reminded of Paul Johnson's insight that the first
intention of the enemies of society is to debase the common meaning of
words. By that standard, the president of virtually every American
college is an enemy of society, never mind daily blatant attempts to
undermine free thought and free speech.
Andre Jute
The trouble with most people is not what they don't know, but what
they know for certain that isn't true. ---Mark Twain
(1) I haven't looked up the precise times either, though I'm pretty
certain the year was 4004. But if I'm right all the time, we'll never
have a good flame war before all the little permanent losers become
discouraged and go away.
Eeyore
Lord Valve
Andre Jute wrote:
> (as is the entire ecological
> movement, the most destructive religion the world has ever seen)
If you wrote nothing else this year, that one phrase would endear you to intelligent readers of any stripe.
This movement seeks to control industrial production
from a central location, to remove resources from
those who are best equipped to use them and
reassign them to those who are not, and to redistribute
wealth. Sound familiar? It damn well ought to. And
here everyone thought communism bit the dust with
the Soviet Union. Where might one find Gorbachev
these days? Smack dab in the middle of the "Greens,"
along with all his other little Red pals. Watermelons,
they're called - green on the outside, red on the inside.
Faugh.
> This is the first time in a long time that Ludwig has posted anything
> interesting. I am reminded of Paul Johnson's insight that the first
> intention of the enemies of society is to debase the common meaning of
> words. By that standard, the president of virtually every American
> college is an enemy of society, never mind daily blatant attempts to
> undermine free thought and free speech.
Orwell was a piker - he didn't anticipate anything as radical as American academia.
You are indeed an astute observer, Andre. Godspeed.
Lord Valve
American
Jon Yaeger
detr...@ix.netcom.com wrote on 4/17/07 8:48 AM:
LV,
No doubt you have read ... and are intimately familiar with Garrett Hardin's
Monograph, "The Tragedy of the Commons" (If not, see
http://dieoff.org/page95.htm).
Since you have strong feelings on the subject matter, what is your reaction
to his treatise?
Jon
Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!
> I am reminded of Paul Johnson's insight that the first
> intention of the enemies of society is to debase the common meaning of
> words.
You just got called an "enemy of society."
Lord Valve
Jon Yaeger wrote:
My goodness.
What an utter crock of unmitigated leftist horse-shit. You
subscribe to crap like that?
> Since you have strong feelings on the subject matter, what is your reaction
> to his treatise?
Like most raving leftists, he's an America-hater of the first water.
And that defeatist manifesto is archived on a site belonging
to dieoff.org, a group of certified fucktards who think human
beings are some kind of disease that Gaea needs curing of.
They - like most of the technological nonbelievers, who think
commie balm is the medicine that cures everything - continue
to look downward for the solution. To them, it's all about dividing
the pie in a zero-sum game. Upward-looking futurists know -
not think, *know* - that there are quadrillions of gigatonnes
of resources, including volatiles, gases, metals, organics, etc. -
just floating around waiting for us to get off this fucking rock
and go fetch them. Sorry, I'm not willing to accept their definition
of this particular rock as special; it's what *lives* on the rock
that is special, and that's ME. If it's a matter of resources,
resources are UNlimited, given the drive to go and retrieve
them. If that drive - and the ability to develop the technology
which will empower it - exists anywhere, it's in America.
Defeatist Euro-think ain't gonna get the job done. Europeans
have already had their shot at providing "solutions" for the
problems of the world (one of them "final") to the tune
of communism, socialism, fascism, Nazism, feudalism et al,
with no tangible results other than the deaths of untold tens
of millions of humans. Piss on Europe, it's over with.
Islamism ain't gonna get the job done - it's just another
system for killing people, one that invokes God (unlike the
atheistic systems enumerated above) as a reason. Islamism,
however, is not yet over with. It's gonna take the USA to
make that happen; we lose, you ALL die - or put your butts
into the air and your noses towards Mecca five times a day,
and any Ayatollah who walks by will feel free to shove something
where you don't ordinarily want something shoved while you
are doing so. America *is* the last best hope.
Now, I know your reply. You're going to tell me that you're
Red because you're smart, and the fact that I'm not Red
is de facto proof that I must be unintelligent - because if
I were intelligent, I'd be Red too. This particular gobbet
of circular logic is the ultimate Leftist defense, and it is
*always* invoked. I mean, if I weren't stupid, I wouldn't be
arguing with you. Right? It's so *obvious* the Left has all
the answers. After all - look at the predominance of leftists
in academia. All the "smart" folks, yes?
Horse-shit.
Lord Valve
American
Jenn
Lord Valve <detr...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Lord Valve
> American
Well, there it is.
Dersu Uzala
>> No doubt you have read ... and are intimately familiar with Garrett
Hardin's
>> Monograph, "The Tragedy of the Commons" (If not, see
>> http://dieoff.org/page95.htm).
>
>My goodness.
>
>What an utter crock of unmitigated leftist horse-shit. You
>subscribe to crap like that?
I'm unsure what your complaint means, L. Are you saying that there is no
"Tragedy of the Commons"- that is to say, shared open resources aren't
depleted as described, or the imposition of controls are leftist horse-shit?
http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/sotp/commons.dtl
I see lots of examples around the world, such as the collaspe of fisheries,
etc.
Jon Yaeger
detr...@ix.netcom.com wrote on 4/17/07 3:23 PM:
LV,
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
I'm impressed that you know my reply because I didn't have a preconceived
one, at least not on the terms that you have seen the issue.
The treatise was written quite a while ago, and I suspect that dieoff simply
adopted it, not authored it.
The gist -- oversimplified for the sake of argument --- is that there is a
limit to personal freedoms as well as free market capitalism with increasing
population and decreasing resources. There are some things about depletion
that are incontrovertible -- such as the fact that the quality of fossil
fuels is gradually going down while the price (or energy, if you will) to
recover each BTU is going up.
I admire your certainty. I'm not smart enough to be confident about a lot
of things. Where you might color me red, I see gray.
One of my failings is that I don't see political conspiracies in every facet
of life. I am interested in examining an idea based upon its intrinsic
merits (or lack thereof) and then look at the politics, if warranted.
But I'm just a naive bumpkin from Georgia - what could one expect?
Thanks
Jon
Jenn
Jon Yaeger <jon...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
IMHO, you're far AHEAD of most people.
Peter Wieck
Well... I take Sam Clemens' and William Claude's view of "society"...
if Mr. McCoy is its paradigm, I am glad to be its enemy. Keep in mind
that such society-as-defined is not *my* enemy... it is hardly worth
that level of effort.
Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA
Andre Jute
His Lordship has answered succinctly and pointedly. I want to make a
few further necessary points about Hardin's well-known paper for
perspective:
1. Hardin's article "The Tragedy of the Commons" was written in 1968,
an era when unless you were some kind of closet Marxist you couldn't
get a university position. Hardin is a control freak in the marxist
mode; he wasn't alone and his sort of attitude was so common at the
time that it wasn't even commented on except by people (then) on the
fringes like me; I wrote a devastating analysis in the Sunday Times
and was universally abused as a reactionary. Now I've been proved
comprehensively right and Hardin totally wrong.
2. Hardin has a very poor grasp of history. For instance, he says:
'"Thou shalt not..." is the form of traditional ethical directives which
make no allowance for particular circumstances.' That must have been
a pretty tenth-rate Sunday School he attended, or pretty
fundamentalist. The entire set of scrolls in the Torah (roughly the
Old Testament of Christians) which regulate the lives and actions of
the Jews, for instance, are an adaptation to their particular
circumstances in a hostile land. That's a detail of course. But
Hardin's grasp of history is so poor that he apparently doesn't know
that the Malthusian prophecy never came true, and no, not even in the
Irish Famine, which was a bureaucratically-made famine, British civil
servants keeping up wheat exports from Ireland throughout the relevant
period; there was enough food so that no one needed to starve, but it
was exported. Forty years after Hardin's paper appeared everyone in
his right mind admits that Malthus is a curiosity, not a prophet. See
below about feeding the starving in Africa.
3. Hardin's Marxist-inspired mentality (I repeat, so common in 1968
among academics as to be hardly noteworthy) denies the role of the
Adam Smith's Hidden Hand. Indeed, Hardin comes closest to open passion
in his entire closely argued piece where he condemns Smith. I quote at
length, because this is where Hardin goes right off the rails, never
to recover them for the rest of his argument:
'We can make little progress in working toward optimum population size
until we explicitly exorcise the spirit of Adam Smith in the field of
practical demography. In economic affairs, The Wealth of Nations
(1776) popularized the "invisible hand," the idea that an individual
who "intends only his own gain," is, as it were, "led by an invisible
hand to promote...the public interest." [5] Adam Smith did not assert
that this was invariably true, and perhaps neither did any of his
followers. But he contributed to a dominant tendency of thought that
has ever since interfered with positive action based on rational
analysis, namely, the tendency to assume that decisions reached
individually will, in fact, be the best decisions for an entire
society. If this assumption is correct it justifies the continuance of
our present policy of laissez faire in reproduction. If it is correct
we can assume that men will control their individual fecundity so as
to produce the optimum population. If the assumption is not correct,
we need to reexamine our individual freedoms to see which ones are
defensible.'
Holy shit! "Exorcise", eh? That's a word more suited to a witch-burner
than a sober scientist and philosopher. By God, Hardin must have hated
Adam Smith! It is this entire attitude which made liberals (not
libertarians of my stripe, an entirely different class of thinker)
support the forcible mass sterilizations in India under Mrs Gandhi (a
fascist from a fascist family which always had a glib line of prattle
to cover up the most brutal line of action).
This is another example of where even a modest grasp of history -- and
Hardin prattles on about the survival of the fittest, which implies
that he sees himself as taking a longterm historical overview -- would
have straightened Hardin out right sharply. It was widely known to
demographers already in 1968 that with increase in disposable income
and social services, families tend to become smaller because parents
look to savings and the welfare state to take care of their old age,
not their children, thus fewer children are required; since medical
services and general conditions (water, hygience) improve with very
little lead time when incomes rise, child mortality falls and another
reason for large families is removed. I stress, all this was known in
1968. Hardin must have had his eyes shut tight, another reason to
believe he was closet marxist or at least an fellow-traveller.
3. Next Hardin comes up with a really dilly:
'But we can never do nothing'
This is the control freak dream of controlling everything from the
centre breaking through again. In fact, the proven recipe of success
is "Don't mess with success" and "Don't fuck with what ain't broke."
But the control freaks, having lost guilt (Hardin gets that right) as
a handle on the control of our lives they so much desire, next set
about raising scares about the environment to grab back control over
our lives and actions. Certainly, coercing mass sterilizations, which
is still the only way to do what Hardin wants, would lead to a third
world war. We'd win it, of course, because the guys we want to
sterilize are fuzzy wuzzies and we have the Gatling Gun (Kipling) --
that is essentially the policy Hardin tells us he favours. What a
fascist he is!
4. We have done nothing since Rachel Carson's hysterical book, and
Hardin's dumb article -- nothing except to let the Greens kill
millions of African children and poor peasants by malaria through
their banning of harmless DDT, and a few other deplorable examples of
the same nature, but that hardly matters to Greens as these
environmental control freaks trying to "save" us are the moral heirs
of those who justified communism as "a few necessary murders". As I
was saying, we have done nothing much in response to all the
hysterical screeching of ecological control freaks -- what Matt Ridley
has called "a faith -- a narrow but
lucrative industry of environmental fund-raising that has a vested
interest in claims of alarmism" -- and a damn good thing too, because
our world is better than it has ever been, and gets better and better
every passing year. Birth rates are falling. The richest and most
comfortable and healthiest people in the world live in the most
heavily populated place on Earth, the Benelux. We have food mountains.
Feeding the world's hungry isn't a matter of production but of
distribution of surplus food. We didn't freeze (Hardin didn't fear
global warming but global cooling as the result of overpopulation; he
and his kind were screeching out catastrophe warnings of an
encroaching ice age week on week) just as we won't die in the heat
storm the current crop of gravy-train ecologists with their snouts in
the public trough are desperately forecasting now, week on week
sounding more hysterical as more and more people discover that they
are lying, that the CO2 levels in fact follow warming and don't lead
it.
You can confirm this for yourself: Check the movie Al Gore made. The
graph before which he ponces around telling us how CO2 emissions are
responsible for global warming is sixty feet long. That guy was Vice-
President of America and wanted to be president. But he is so dumb, he
cannot see that -- on his own graph! -- CO2 emissions historically
follow global warming phases, clearly indicating that CO2 does not
cause global warming. And the Democrats wanted to put Gore's finger on
the button of nuclear devastation! Makes you despair of America and
Americans but of American politicians most of all. Gore makes Bush Jnr
look like shining genius!)
5. Just as every demographer predicted, long before 1968 (I predicted
rapprochement with China in a public debate in 1964, based on
demographic analysis and a "guns and butter" economic argument), rates
of population increase peaked and started falling in every nation
where wealth was generated at a sufficient level. The birthrate in
some European countries, and heading that way in some Eastern ones, is
now so low that the population is not replacing itself, that is, some
nations already have negative or very near-negative population growth;
there are fears that, through replacing by immigration native citizens
who do not replace themselves by conjugation, The Netherlands for
instance in less than two generations will become a brown-toned Muslim
country. France and Germany are in the same boat, and birth rates are
falling drastically in the erstwhile Eastern bloc countries now that
they are free and capitalist. Where I live in Ireland, the middle
class classes are resigned to the consequences of replacing native
population growth by immigration: "Don't you think a bit of colour in
the street adds interest?" a lady asked me a few days ago.
6. Kyoto is an expression of a religious faith. It has no basis in
science. Many of the scientists whose names are signed to the IPCC
report on which it is based say they never wrote what appeared in the
report, that the figures don't support what is in the report, or in
the Kyoto Agreement, and that the effect of Kyoto will be enormous
expenditure for negative effect. Some of them even tried to take legal
action to have their names removed from the report as "lead authors".
In short, the United Nations, mother of the IPCC, has lied to you
again, your government has lied to you again, and large groups of
pseudoscientists with their snouts in the trough of "global warming"
have lied to you again and again. (The hysterical fervour with which
they persecute naysayers like Lomberg and those who revealed the above
scam, losing them their jobs, tells you they know they're lying scum
without a scientific foot to stand on.)
7. I thought Hardin was an impressionable if glib fool in 1968 when
his paper appeared. I have been proved right. No surprise. His thought
is flawed by his prejudices, formed by his period and his education;
it took very great willpower to deny entry to one's mind to the
pervasive, miasmic Marxism prevalent as a subtext in almost every
university syllabus at the time. Anyone who swallows Hardin today is
an idiot, or if he has a brain hasn't put it in gear, or is a
religious fanatic who takes Global Warming with his wheaties as the
Received Faith; the last lot are magnitudes more dangerous to our
wellbeing, and indeed to Gaia, than Muslim terrorists could ever
become under any circumstances whatsoever, including giving every
mullah his own nuclear bomb to do with as he pleases. You see, an
exploded nuclear bomb has a familiar containment procedure and cost,
both just technical matters, tiresome and dangerous and expensive,
sure, but we'll take those problems in our stride and as we did at
Nagasaki and Hiroshima (Mon Amour, indeed, after not even a
generation) and Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and in a year or two
they will be forgotten; the damage the ecologists will do is uncosted
(deliberately so! -- Jesus Christ, how reckless can even ecologists
be?) and uncontainable and very likely irreversible on any practical
timescale, thus ecological over-reaction (Kyoto for instance) is the
unique case of a human-made problem without a technical solution
(thank you, Mr Hardin, take a bow for introducing some useful
phraseology even if you did point it in the wrong direction).
8. Professor Julian Simon spent his life pointing out what we can all
see, that things get better year on year, being threatened with losing
his job for it while the idiots who made false forecasts of
catastrophe (like Norman Meyers) were given awards and fancy titles
( Genius of the Nation, anyone? -- just forecast that 7 per cent of
all cuddly wildlife will become extinct in a generation). Professor
Simon, now dead, should forthwith be canonized by the Pope for his
patience and good humour in the face of near-universal foolishness.
(Considering his name, perhaps Professor Simon was a Jew. Never mind:
the Pope can say it is the start of practical ecumenical
multiculturalism -- just about the time multiculturalism goes into bad
odour with the very people it was supposed to include in white middle-
class society!)
Andre Jute
A little, a very little, thought will suffice -- John Maynard Keynes
Andre Jute
I agree, Poopie, this thread is totally over the head of a simple
fellow like you. Never mind, we don't blame you for being stupid: you
can't help how you were born. Give this one a miss and soon I promise
something simple you can really teeth into, say a thread of dumb and
dumber jokes from the back of the school bus. How's that?
Andre Jute
Generous to a fault
Andre Jute
Yo, Jenn, I agree with you, it is too easy to hate a guntoting, all-
American triumphalist, hairy hunkamuscle like Fat Willie. The problem
is that a moment's superficial examination demonstrates to even those
much slower on the uptake than an interpreter of artists, like a
conductor for instance, should be, that Lord Valve is cultured,
articulate, thoughtful, and talented as a performer on the organ as
well as with words. As the superior artist here, as an original
creator rather than an interpreter, I am happy to welcome Lord Valve
to the brotherhood (sorry, my dear, this is my week for not bothering
with political correctness -- you too are welcome to the brotherhood).
I therefore would advise you in my threads to cut Lord Valve some
slack. (1) The alternative is to take the rest of the evening off to
dye your hair blonde.
Andre Jute
Hairy feminist
(1) Elsewhere you may do as you please, and Valve will plant you like
a hayseed, but this is the second time in a year that I've had to
speak to you about your inattention to who started the thread. It
could get old real fast.
Peter Wieck
> > detri...@ix.netcom.com wrote on 4/17/07 8:48 AM:
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
You can take the charlatan out of South African, but yuo can't take
the South African out of the charlatan.
Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA
Andre Jute
Furthermore:
9. The commons had been enclosed and controlled and regulated since
time immemorial by various means, of which one was Smith's Hidden Hand
which the control freak Hardin so despises. The broadcast air waves
are regulated, air traffic is regulated, air pollution can easily be
regulated by the same mechanisms. One of those mechanisms is form of
self-regulation called survival of the fittest; Hardin's assumption
that civilisation is permanent or even universal state is totally
unfounded, in fact ludicrous. (Anyone want to call Saddam Hussein
civilized, even for the sake of an argument?)
10. Even if we agree with Hardin that population and its concomitant
of pollution is a threat (and the population part of Hardin's thesis
has been exposed as toothless while even the pollution part isn't
proven!), as early as 1965, three years before Hardin published his
paper, there was a proven sollution available and fully formalized.
It was a version of the Hidden Hand, called "Polluter Pays". It has
worked brilliantly for decades now, until reversed by Kyoto, which can
be summed up as "Efficient producer pays for the pollution of
inefficient producers." Kyoto isn't about pollution at all, it is
about wealth redistribution by shackling the most productive nations
to an anvil while telling the inefficient that they needn't pay for
technology transfer, they can pollute even more than they do now.
Andre Jute
Reprised
Peter Wieck
Malthus was flawed greatly inasmuch as he did not anticipate
technology to the extent that it has become central to the survival of
the present planetary population. And "technology" is not just a
matter of crops or transport or electricity as much as it is one of
medicine. Picka a population 'in balance' and change any single factor
and that balance will do one of two things... it will change and keep
changing or it will change and find another equilibrium. It has
nothing to do with intelligence and little to do with available
resources as those will be maximized in some way anyway. Shortages
will be divided amongst the peasants, surpluses will raise the
standard of living for the top tier. The level of egalitarianism will
define how broad that top-tier might be, but there will be such no
matter what. Aids is just such a "Factor" and it is the major reason
that the continent of Africa is in turmoil. Desparation breeds war,
pestilence and hatred. From Morocco to Capetown.
At present, the United States alone consumes 25% of the world's total
developed annual energy souces and resources, be they oil, gas, coal,
hydropower, nuclear, solar or otherwise. And the United States has
about 5% of the world's total population.
Put another way, if China were to consume the same amount of energy
per capita as the United States, they would consume 132% of the total
energy available. India would consume 103%. England (and most of
Europe) are only a hair's breadth behind the Americans, so there is no
'virtue' on that front. Now, as an American, I chose not to live like
the typical Bolivian peasant, a population that has roughly a 1:1
relationship of resources consumed to population, vs. the 5:1 of the
typical American. But I also realize that a good part of the so-called
"Western" world is poorly educated, does not value education, and does
not perceive the real and direct threat of the Third world. When the
Chinese, using essentially unlimited American and European and
Japanese money can afford to pay $0.04 more per barrel for oil that
the West can, the oil will go to China. Or India. And those two
populations realize this fact right down to their toes. So they are
fanatical about education, about developing industry and technology,
and about growing and keeping their brains at home. The Chinese
largely by force and restriction, the Indians largely by a
redefinition of culture and opportunity. So, unless we in the west get
off our butts, educate our children and take control of our resources
(which is increasingly mostly our brains) we will lose the future to
those more adept, better eductated, more aggressive, willing to work
harder and so forth. If every Chinese were to work twice-as-hard to
actually get half-as-much, the west as we presently enjoy it would be
wiped out overnight.
It has damned-all to do with politics. Those in political power have
but a single goal, to remain in power. So no hard lessons will be
given and no tough decisions will be made. External threats will be
ignored until they are fully realized and playing 'catch-up' will be a
way of life. But the politicians will say "NOT MY FAULT" and the same
set of bums, their clones or twins will remain in power without
substantial change. That swinging pendulum will have smaller and
smaller excusions between tweedledum and tweedledumber.
World population is a Chimera as it threatens the "West" directly.
What threatens the West is when the governments of the massive
population centers decide that they want to stay in power. They can
maintain this powere only by the consent of an increasingly demanding
and fractious population. So, they will meet the demands. And they
will crush the West not with guns, but economically. What we in the
fat-and-stupid west will learn very quickly then is that _D_emocracy
is a luxury of the very rich. And when we ain't so rich, we won't be
so democratic either.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty-power is ever stealing from
the many to the few.
Wendell Phillips (1811-84)
Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA
Jon Yaeger
fli...@fish.net wrote on 4/17/07 8:16 PM:
> Implying that either of those are implicitly 'unlimited' suggests a
> misunderstanding of the principles.
>
>> with increasing
>> population
>
> Malthus's theory won't die even after literally every aspect of it has
> been proven to be invalid. Population does not grow exponentially,
> food resources are not limited to his model, and famine is not a
> "Malthusian check" on population growth.
>
> These are not 'theories', as his is, but nearly 200 years of empirical
> observation since he proposed it.
>
>> and decreasing resources.
>
> The Malthusian model presumed 'resources' to be a stagnant pie based
> on how they were used at the time and it simply isn't true. For
> example, he looked at crop yield per acre, compiled arable acres, and
> defines that as a 'resource limit' yet yield per acre has dramatically
> increased, plus being able to grow in areas previously considered
> unusable. What he considered a 'limit' simply isn't.
>
>
>> There are some things about depletion
>> that are incontrovertible
>
> Want to bet?
>
>> -- such as the fact that the quality of fossil
>> fuels is gradually going down while the price (or energy, if you will) to
>> recover each BTU is going up.
>
> Which is a classic supply-demand market incentive to explore and
> develop alternate sources. The supply of 'oil' is only a problem if
> one assumes there is no other means to obtain 'energy', a patently
> silly assumption given that at least some alternates, such as nuclear
> power, are already known.
>
> One could have, a few hundred years ago, made a similarly flawed
> 'prediction' that mechanization was 'impossible' because there are not
> enough horses, mules, or other beasts of burden, available to power
> it, nor enough 'food energy' to 'power' the beasts. But then man comes
> along and screws up the 'incontrovertible' theory by inventing steam
> and combustion engines.
>
> And, contrary to the 'government control' notion, those developments
> came from 'free enterprise'.
>
>> I admire your certainty. I'm not smart enough to be confident about a lot
>> of things. Where you might color me red, I see gray.
>>
>> One of my failings is that I don't see political conspiracies in every facet
>> of life.
>
> One does not have to engage in 'imagination' to see the notion assumes
> human nature to be inherently self destructive and, so, must be
> 'controlled', like cattle, by the, supposed, 'intellectually
> superior'.
>
> It's not a 'new' notion, only the 'justification' varies. Others have
> included 'Descended from the Gods', force of power, 'Divine right',
> and collectivism. And all try to argue it's 'for your own good' by
> virtue of the 'ruler(s)' being 'better'.
>
>> I am interested in examining an idea based upon its intrinsic
>> merits (or lack thereof)
>
> Then you'd have to reject the very premise it's based upon.
>
>> and then look at the politics, if warranted.
>
> I submit you should be extremely cautious about basing political
> philosophy on temporal problems and 'predictions' as surrendering
> rights is deceptively easy but getting them back is not.
>
> Dieoff makes a lot of doom and gloom cases. all seriously flawed, but
> lets take Africa and their case for "Malthusian dieoff" as one. But
> contrast it to the 'freedom" and "free enterprise capitalistic"
> countries of the industrialized world where population growth is flat
> or, in some cases, declining with a high standard of living. You
> suppose that 'freedom" and "capitalism" might be a better model for
> solving the very problem they mention than imposing even more
> oppression on people as if they're cattle and 'El Patron' needs to do
> some 'herd management'?
>
> What makes you think you're going to be one of the 'El Patrons'?
>
>> But I'm just a naive bumpkin from Georgia - what could one expect?
>
> Perhaps some refresher reading on Jefferson would be in order.
>
Flipper (and LV)
I really marvel how you can be certain of my entire weltanschauung as well
as my political beliefs and biases from just a few sentences. My goodness:
your intelligence is way too great for me to fathom, because I cannot do the
same, nor would I presume to.
Logically, I don't understand how these kinds of inferences must of
necessity be valid, but I guess I ought to bone up on Socrates, Russell,
Husserl, etc while I'm reading Jefferson.
Just because I cite Hardin does not necessarily mean that I agree with him
in part or in entirety.
Let's take Mathus' theory, for example. For the time it was a fairly
"reasonable" theory. He did not have a crystal ball and neither do I. For
that matter, Newtonian physics seemed comprehensive until Einstein came
along. Most theoretical models require adjustment over time -- however, for
certain time intervals a theory may be operationally useful, if not strictly
"true."
Your point about population: well, perhaps growth is not exponential, as
Malthus predicted. But neither has it been linear; population has
increased tremendously during the last century. That's one of those
"incontrovertible" facts that I'd be willing to bet lunch on.
Granted, free market forces and man's innovation has accomplished wonderful
things, but I do not believe that they will solve every problem. At some
point, a framework (hopefully one that involves "ethics") may have to be
applied to the apportion of resources.
IMHO Capitalism is more "efficient" than communism or socialism, but it is
not a cure-all. Just witness the deleterious effect of greed.
One local example is the water supply that flows from the Chattahoochie
river in Georgia to Alabama. Atlanta is using up the water to the detriment
of the folks downstream. When this reaches a critical point, some kind of
government intervention will be needed to prevent anarchy. Pure capitalism
won't fix it.
You state, " I submit you should be extremely cautious about basing
political philosophy on temporal problems and 'predictions' as surrendering
rights is deceptively easy but getting them back is not." Just where did I
say that?
One thing I find troubling in our society is the tendency of people to take
an idea and then posit all kinds of political motivations on the person who
brings it up. So in this narrow view one is of necessity either a
"communist", a "capitalist" a "tree-hugging liberal", etc. Bullshit.
Debate in this country is dead, but ad hominem attacks, labeling, and
prejudice are very much alive. Too bad we can't discuss an idea without
politics and rancor.
Jon
_ george @comcast.net George M. Middius
Jon Yaeger said:
> I really marvel how you can be certain of my entire weltanschauung as well
> as my political beliefs and biases from just a few sentences.
I agree with you, Yaggers. All we know for sure is that you looooove the
sound of your own voice.
--
Krooscience: The antidote to education, experience, and excellence.
Soundhaspriority
1176852878.9...@o5g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
I too agree, André.
I'm not too proud to admit that, like you, some of us are just significantly
more intelligent than the average cretin here. In fact, the average cretin
anywhere. We're just extremely brilliant thinkers, you and me. People just
have to look, listen, and admire our brilliance.
Regards,
Bob Morein
Dresher, PA
(215) 646-4894
Warm Blue Glow
We are humbled by your presence, oh great one. It seems the last time
you descendedfrom the mount to address the rabble it was about how
ethanol was not a good temporary gasoline substitute.
I am heartened to see that technology will prevail, and the free
markets will address all of humanty's ills.
Your religion is refreshing.
On Apr 17, 7:16 pm, flipper <flip...@fish.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:31:37 -0400, Jon Yaeger <jon...@bellsouth.net>
> The Malthusian model presumed 'resources' to be a stagnant pie based
> on how they were used at the time and it simply isn't true. For
> example, he looked at crop yield per acre, compiled arable acres, and
> defines that as a 'resource limit' yet yield per acre has dramatically
> increased, plus being able to grow in areas previously considered
> unusable. What he considered a 'limit' simply isn't.
Perhaps what he considered an absolute limit wasn't. Yet there are
limits. Yields per acre has limits. You will never get 5,000 or 32,000
bushels of corn per acre. Tillable acreage is also limited. Areas
considered unusable also has limits. Crops require water, for example.
In some areas in the soutwestern US (which were previously considered
unsuable), this is already an issue.
There was even a hare-brained idea floated a few years ago to build a
pipeline from Lake Superior to California.
It will be interesting to see what happens in Africa, as the rules are
a little different there than they are in the US or in Malthus' Great
Britain.
> I submit you should be extremely cautious about basing political
> philosophy on temporal problems and 'predictions' as surrendering
> rights is deceptively easy but getting them back is not.
Who'd a thunk it?
You're a democrat.
Warm Blue Glow
> On 17 Apr 2007 18:53:13 -0700, Peter Wieck <p...@aol.com> wrote:
And so on and so forth...
> > Those in political power have
> >but a single goal, to remain in power.
>
> It's a popular theory but, like most broad generalizations, untrue. It
> depends on 'who'.
You seem bright enough, but you always want to reduce the argument to
its smallest (and presumably, most easily defeated) state. Excellent
strategy for high-school debate. A little simplistic anywhere else.
In the US, the Democrats and the republicans. The republicans recently
said the goal was to insure a republican majority for the foreseeable
future.
Not neccesarily individual politicians.
Also look at any garden-variety dictatorship.
> > So no hard lessons will be
> >given and no tough decisions will be made. External threats will be
> >ignored until they are fully realized and playing 'catch-up' will be a
> >way of life. But the politicians will say "NOT MY FAULT" and the same
> >set of bums, their clones or twins will remain in power without
> >substantial change. That swinging pendulum will have smaller and
> >smaller excusions between tweedledum and tweedledumber.
>
> Ok. "end of the world" noted.
Non-answer noted.
> > What we in the
> >fat-and-stupid west will learn very quickly then is that _D_emocracy
> >is a luxury of the very rich. And when we ain't so rich, we won't be
> >so democratic either.
>
> The average colonist in the original 13 were not particularly 'rich'
> but D_emocracy survived nonetheless.
Well, there was that little matter of buying some expansion, taking
some other by force, having abundant natural resources (guess what?
Not all countries do!), trying to take over Cuba six or eight time,
taking over, then losing, Nicauragua... So where do we expand to now?
Your ideas are directly from the 1830s when we transitioned from a
craftsmen-based economy to a wage earner economy.
And if you want to talk theory v. empirical data, let us observe the
many, manyplaces where the American model, and the American system of
manufacture (for example) have not worked.
Lord Valve
Jenn wrote:
.
"Defeatist Euro-think ain't gonna get the job done. Europeans
have already had their shot at providing "solutions" for the
problems of the world (one of them "final") to the tune
of communism, socialism, fascism, Nazism, feudalism et al,
with no tangible results other than the deaths of untold tens
of millions of humans. Piss on Europe, it's over with."
You were saying?
Lord Valve
American
Eeyore
Lord Valve wrote:
> Jenn wrote:
> > Lord Valve <detr...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Lord Valve
> > > American
> >
> > Well, there it is.
>
> "Defeatist Euro-think ain't gonna get the job done.
Uh ?
> Europeans
> have already had their shot at providing "solutions" for the
> problems of the world (one of them "final") to the tune
> of communism, socialism, fascism, Nazism, feudalism et al,
> with no tangible results other than the deaths of untold tens
> of millions of humans. Piss on Europe, it's over with."
Oh really ? I see the dollar isn't even worth 50p today !
Graham
Peter Wieck
> That's only a piece of his 'flaws'. Every premise, formula, and
> conclusion was flawed.
Um... clearly this is little-steps-for-little-feet time.
If a construct, however elegant, is based on false premises, then the
entire construct fails. There is no need to parse each piece,
assumption or conclusion. Example: anything starting with the
assumption that pigs fly may be very elegant and internally very
logical, but it won't work as pigs are not presently very good fliers
under typical conditions. Searching for flaws beyond the initial one
is a worthless endeavor changing nothing.
Khruschev did not have the functional equivalent of an infinite number
of expendible laborers nor was he subsidized by a near-infinite amount
of cash. Were he to have had both, the world would look distinctly
different than it does today. China has both, India has both, with the
added qualification that the laborers are exceedingly bright and very
hard-working as compared to the stoop labor of 40-150 years ago when
both these nations exported such in great quantity.
Africa is in turmoil because of poverty, sure. But what caused this
poverty on a continent that by any measure is far richer than the US
was 200 years ago, where the technology to exploit these riches is
readily at hand and where the means to distribute the wealth is
largely complete. That a large segment of the young population is ill
has much to do with the general fear and confusion that allows such
wretched conditions to prevail. Not all, no. But much.
Wealth is not and never has been measured in cash. Cash is ephemeral
and without value except where faith in it exists, and then only as a
representation for wealth. Wealth is the means to produce goods or
services or food or shelter, wealth is also a predictible future with
predictible resources to support it. The colonists had near-infinite
land, near-infinite and cheaply exploited mineral resources and an
endless supply of additional labor. With very few exceptions, the
colonists were not in hyper-crowded conditions answering to pretty
nasty little lordlings or being taxed six ways from go. So they could
afford to experiment with some pretty high ideals.
Now, look at what is laughingly called the "World's Largest
Democracy"... India. Right. Caste system as strong as ever, female
infanticide, dowry system, women as chattel, children as chattel...
Sure there is Democracy. But its effectiveness is confined to a tiny
part of the overall population (Still a Lot of People), those that
have the wealth and power to enforce it. The underclass remains so
untouched and unchanged.
The United States/Europe/Japan exist largely on sufferance, largely by
exploiting the resources of the rest of the world which still sees
value in what we have to offer, mostly cash these days. The moment
that illusion is broken, and the Chinese/Indians/Micronesians/Africans/
Middle-Easterns decide that all that oil, gold, platinum, rhodium,
chromium and various trade goods could better 'stay home'... well...
Short of a very, very few things such as large aircraft, some military
hardware and similar, there is not one singled damned thing that is
made exclusively within the First World.
That is the threat. Not carbon dioxide, not pollution, not lack of
water... those environmental threats though very real are economically
inconvenient to the west, no more. That all of a sudden the Saudis and
the Algerians determine that China and India are more reliable trade-
partners than the US or Japan, THAT is the direct threat to our
collective and several life-styles. The Sudanese are already there.
Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA
Mike Coatham
Must be great to be an American.
Q: What have Virginia State & Antartica got in common?
A: It's minus 33 in both places.
ccr
"Lord Valve" <detr...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:462629C8...@ix.netcom.com...
Dude, you put the ugly in the ugly American. The Europeans also gave us
Magna Carta, Capitalism, Adam Smith, John Locke, Albert Einstein, James
Clerk Maxwell, the basis for all American philosophy, science, and law, etc,
etc, etc. And, America isn't fairing any better at providing solutions for
the problems of the world.
dizzy
>Horse-shit.
I like the way you summarized your post so concisely.
dizzy
>You can take the charlatan out of South African, but yuo can't take
>the South African out of the charlatan.
Why did you quote 200 lines of shite just to add that?
Peter Wieck
It's called a "set up".
Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA
_ george @comcast.net George M. Middius
flipper said:
> >In the US, the Democrats and the republicans. The republicans recently
> >said the goal was to insure a republican majority for the foreseeable
> >future.
> For example, you suppose it might just be that they believe their
> political philosophy to be the 'better'?
If so, that would mean the pol lied. That would be shocking.
Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!
net> wrote:
> flipper said:
>
> > >In the US, the Democrats and the republicans. The republicans recently
> > >said the goal was to insure a republican majority for the foreseeable
> > >future.
> > For example, you suppose it might just be that they believe their
> > political philosophy to be the 'better'?
>
> If so, that would mean the pol lied. That would be shocking.
I love the logic:
There are politicians who think their idea are better. These try
everything to remain in power. The ones who don't believe their ideas
are better do not.
dizzy
Not when it's shite, posted by a waste of skin like Jute, it's not.
No one with a brain would bother to read that shite in the first
place.
Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!
> On 18 Apr 2007 05:23:48 -0700, Warm Blue Glow <artygu...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Every so often fish boy uttureth his proclamations.
>
> >We are humbled by your presence, oh great one.
>
Just reinforcing one's own opinion of one's self.
> > It seems the last time
> >you descendedfrom the mount to address the rabble it was about how
> >ethanol was not a good temporary gasoline substitute.
>
> False.
Whatever, I really don't pay much attention to you.
> >I am heartened to see that technology will prevail,
>
> Glad to hear it. The result of over 4,000 years of empirical
> observation, no doubt.
In the west, no doubt.
> > and the free
> >markets will address all of humanty's ills.
>
> No one ever said that.
Technology and the free market can cure anything.
> >Your religion is refreshing.
>
> You have no idea.
You sound like a scientologist.
> >On Apr 17, 7:16 pm, flipper <flip...@fish.net> wrote:
> >> On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:31:37 -0400, Jon Yaeger <jon...@bellsouth.net>
>
> >> The Malthusian model presumed 'resources' to be a stagnant pie based
> >> on how they were used at the time and it simply isn't true. For
> >> example, he looked at crop yield per acre, compiled arable acres, and
> >> defines that as a 'resource limit' yet yield per acre has dramatically
> >> increased, plus being able to grow in areas previously considered
> >> unusable. What he considered a 'limit' simply isn't.
>
> >Perhaps what he considered an absolute limit wasn't.
>
> There is no 'perhaps' to it.
Parsing. Cool.
> > Yet there are
> >limits.
Here, I'll try it:
> Well,
Well? As in water? Or as in ink?
> there
Where? On Earth? In the library?
> is a theory
which theory that? Who wrote it, and when? Is it the only theory like
that? Scientologists think we came from space. There are contraveing
theories though.
> the universe is finite.
What about parrallel universes?
> But a
> contravening theory as well.
Parsing is so beneath a towering intellect like you.
> > Yields per acre has limits. You will never get 5,000 or 32,000
> >bushels of corn per acre.
>
> You mean *you* don't know how. Neither did Malthus.
True. Technology will just develop 1500-foot-high stalks. I can see
that now.
If I only had the faith of a mustard seed...
> > Tillable acreage is also limited. Areas
> >considered unusable also has limits.
>
> I wasn't aware you had done a galaxy wide survey.
Let's hop into our spacesiuts, fire up the intergalactic transporters,
and see, shall we?
Um, read much sci-fi?
> On the other hand, it's moot with flat population growth, which
> industrialized nations tend toward.
But we're not talking about us. Won't Africa be an interesting study?
> > Crops require water, for example.
> >In some areas in the soutwestern US (which were previously considered
> >unsuable), this is already an issue.
>
> There are always 'issues'. Finding ways to address them is how the
> word "solution" got invented.
And some issues are large, and some aren't. That's how the word "size"
got invented.
> >There was even a hare-brained idea floated a few years ago to build a
> >pipeline from Lake Superior to California.
>
> Sounds almost as "hare brained" as Roman aqueducts.
Sure. Canada will approve, as will all the states bordering the Great
Lakes.
After all, who wouldn't want to ship their water rights to people who
choose to live in a desert?
Besides, we have to make unuseable soil useale, right?
> >It will be interesting to see what happens in Africa, as the rules are
> >a little different there than they are in the US or in Malthus' Great
> >Britain.
>
> A reductio ad absurdum as nothing fits Malthus.
That wasn't meant as a statement about his theory.
> >> I submit you should be extremely cautious about basing political
> >> philosophy on temporal problems and 'predictions' as surrendering
> >> rights is deceptively easy but getting them back is not.
>
> >Who'd a thunk it?
>
> >You're a democrat.
>
> I can see your confusion, stemming from not 'thunking',
Inability to detect sarcasm noted.
Funny, most intelligent people can.
Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!
> On 18 Apr 2007 18:21:28 -0700, Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!
> <artygu...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >On Apr 18, 7:57 pm, George M. Middius <cmndr _ george @ comcast .
> >net> wrote:
> >> flipper said:
>
> >> > >In the US, the Democrats and the republicans. The republicans recently
> >> > >said the goal was to insure a republican majority for the foreseeable
> >> > >future.
> >> > For example, you suppose it might just be that they believe their
> >> > political philosophy to be the 'better'?
>
> >> If so, that would mean the pol lied. That would be shocking.
>
> >I love the logic:
>
> >There are politicians who think their idea are better.
>
> In an ideal world that would be the case.
One would presume that all politicians, even the dictators, think
their way is the "right" way.
> > These try
> >everything to remain in power.
>
> Non sequitur.
One would presume that those who think there way is "right" will do
everything they can to obtain or stay in power.
Do you really think that 527s, for example, are independent?
Congressman are already campaigning even though the election was
barely six months ago.
> > The ones who don't believe their ideas
> >are better do not.
>
> Irrational B.S.
LOL
Jon Yaeger
It's not all that hard to take someone's post and pick at it line by line -
often wrenching the individual sentences out of context.
Why don't you submit your own comprehensive opinion on the subject? Debate
is more than parsing the other fellow's output . . . .
Peter Wieck
Jon:
Not to worry. Flipper is immune to the rules of logic, and it
necessarily follows that he is also immune to the rules of debate. The
apt term would be 'invincible ignorance' were that not meant to be a
gentle descriptive of wrongly-directed sincerity... another quality to
which Flipper is immune.
Peter
Andre Jute
Jon Yaeger wrote:
> Flipper,
>
> It's not all that hard to take someone's post and pick at it line by line -
> often wrenching the individual sentences out of context.
That is how debate proceeds. One party builds a case fact by fact,
argument by argument. Then the other party destroys as many of the
facts and arguments as he can, one by one. The party with enough men
left standing to make a case wins. You, Yaeger, eagerely put up the
notorious Hardin paper. Flipper destroyed its bases. Lord Valve showed
that Hardin's motivation is hostile. I showed why it is hostile, and
made a detailed analysis of Hardin's errors and his reasons for
committing them. You and the other worthless little catastrophe
shouters don't have a foot to stand on, Yaeger. You're fashion
victims, impressionables trying to sound wise by shouting the
prevailing "wisdom", surplus to policy requirements, mere consumers of
myths created by smarter men, voices in a chorus orchestrated by
demagogues for financial reasons (that global warming is a gravytrain
they can dip their snouts into) or, as we're discussing here, because
they are power freaks (like "Coercion" Hardin) who want to destroy our
way of life so they can substitute their own arid "control" over us.
> Why don't you submit your own comprehensive opinion on the subject? Debate
> is more than parsing the other fellow's output . . . .
This is merely another version of your irrational and illogical
argument that "all the wheels fell off the car and the engine seized
and the body rusted away but it isn't really a bad car". You and the
rest of the worthless trash infecting RAT are like beggars holding up
your self-inflicted mutilations, saying, "If I cut off another finger,
will you dash me, boss?"
I did submit a "comprehensive opinion", and not one of you worthless
little agitators were capable of arguing its points with me; we all
know you lot are incapable of following sophisticated argument; all
you did was sneer and jeer pointlessly, as, having lost the argument
entirely, point by point, you now hope to sneer and jeer at Flipper's
"comprehensive opinion" without bothering to argue its points which,
we all know, you lack the intellectual capability of debating.
Yech. You worthless little losers are so transparent, it is no wonder
real people walk right through you.
Andre Jute
"You can wait 'til more important things get taken care of."
-- Ned Carlson of TubeZone to a Customer who already waited *14
weeks*
for his tubes.
Peter Wieck
> That is how debate proceeds. One party builds a case fact by fact,
> argument by argument.
Mr. McCoy, you really are a pitiful fool. As one who is demonstrably
given to specious arguments supported by volumes of unsupported tripe
leading to empty conclusions, you only wish that "debate" proceeded
this way.
In point of fact, if any single primary premise of any argument (case
as you put it) can be demonstrated as false, the entire argument
fails, fails completely, and at that moment. And any additional
failure (or success) beyond the primary is of no logical consequence
or import. You are given to building very elegant and internally
logical arguments based on false premises. Attacking (or supporting)
the internal logic is just damned silly once the premise(s) is (are)
demonstrated to be false.
That Flipper believes that arguments should be discussed after the
"but pigs don't fly" level of failure is stupid. That you share this
view is indicative of your vapid, empty little life built on unproven
fantasies of doubtful veracity.
Try this crap somewhere else where only your worshiping sock-puppets
are around to see it.
Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA
Jon Yaeger
at fiu...@yahoo.com wrote on 4/20/07 11:51 AM:
>
> Jon Yaeger wrote:
>> Flipper,
>>
>> It's not all that hard to take someone's post and pick at it line by line -
>> often wrenching the individual sentences out of context.
>
> That is how debate proceeds. One party builds a case fact by fact,
> argument by argument. Then the other party destroys as many of the
> facts and arguments as he can, one by one. The party with enough men
> left standing to make a case wins. You, Yaeger, eagerely put up the
> notorious Hardin paper. Flipper destroyed its bases. Lord Valve showed
> that Hardin's motivation is hostile. I showed why it is hostile, and
> made a detailed analysis of Hardin's errors and his reasons for
> committing them. You and the other worthless little catastrophe
> shouters don't have a foot to stand on, Yaeger. You're fashion
> victims, impressionables trying to sound wise by shouting the
> prevailing "wisdom", surplus to policy requirements, mere consumers of
> myths created by smarter men, voices in a chorus orchestrated by
> demagogues for financial reasons (that global warming is a gravytrain
> they can dip their snouts into) or, as we're discussing here, because
> they are power freaks (like "Coercion" Hardin) who want to destroy our
> way of life so they can substitute their own arid "control" over us.
*** As I wrote earlier, I was highlighting the part of Hardin's argument
that population is increasing; there is a limitation to resources; and at
some point some entity will have to arbitrate between citizens to head of
anarchy or war. With this I FULLY agree. I never said I subscribed to his
entire treatise, lock, stock and barrel. As to what form of intervention may
be acceptable, I didn't even take a stab at that. And no mention of his
motives, premeditated, teleological, or otherwise. And no, I'm not taking
the bait . . . not even from a master baiter like yourself.
*** Flipper chose to argue against things that I never stated. I haven't
decided whether or not to join his party.
>> Why don't you submit your own comprehensive opinion on the subject? Debate
>> is more than parsing the other fellow's output . . . .
>
> This is merely another version of your irrational and illogical
> argument that "all the wheels fell off the car and the engine seized
> and the body rusted away but it isn't really a bad car". You and the
> rest of the worthless trash infecting RAT are like beggars holding up
> your self-inflicted mutilations, saying, "If I cut off another finger,
> will you dash me, boss?"
*** Clever, cutting-edge humor here!
>
> I did submit a "comprehensive opinion", and not one of you worthless
> little agitators were capable of arguing its points with me; we all
> know you lot are incapable of following sophisticated argument; all
> you did was sneer and jeer pointlessly, as, having lost the argument
> entirely, point by point, you now hope to sneer and jeer at Flipper's
> "comprehensive opinion" without bothering to argue its points which,
> we all know, you lack the intellectual capability of debating.
*** Of course. I can only gaze upon Olympus wistfully, and wish I was one
of the Jutean Gods. But alas I am a mere mortal . . .
*** To be honest, I didn't even read your brilliant thesis. You remind me
of the little kid at the swimming pool who shouts every 5 minutes, "Mommy,
Mommy, look at me!!!" I'm tired of the noise. And I wasn't even addressing
you - I was addressing Flipper & LV. So why should I care what you wrote,
you pompous windbag?
Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!
> On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 06:35:51 -0400, Jon Yaeger <jon...@bellsouth.net>
> wrote:
>
> >Flipper,
>
> >It's not all that hard to take someone's post and pick at it line by line -
>
>
> >often wrenching the individual sentences out of context.
>
>
> >Why don't you submit your own comprehensive opinion on the subject? Debate
> >is more than parsing the other fellow's output . . . .
>
I do not have the theme song from "Flipper" running through my head
now.
What is runnng through my head is the theme from "Woody Woodpecker."
Peter Wieck
> I did present my opinion.
Sure you did.
Mpffff.... Flipper, you need to cultivate a thicker skin, and you need
to start with a better grasp of basic logic. After that, you will be
just fine.
Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA
Soundhaspriority
1176852878.9...@o5g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> Eeyore wrote:
>> Andre Jute wrote:
>>
>>> elm...@shaw.ca wrote:
>>
>> Get Lost you pathetic troll
>
> I agree, Poopie, this thread is totally over the head of a simple
> fellow like you. Never mind, we don't blame you for being stupid: you
> can't help how you were born. Give this one a miss and soon I promise
> something simple you can really teeth into, say a thread of dumb and
> dumber jokes from the back of the school bus. How's that?
>
> Andre Jute
> Generous to a fault
I too agree, Andr�.
I'm not too proud to admit that, like you, some of us are just significantly
more intelligent than the average cretin here. In fact, the average cretin
anywhere. We're just extremely brilliant thinkers, you and me. People just
have to look, listen, and admire our brilliance.
Regards,
Bob Morein
Dresher, PA
(215) 646-4894
Brian Gaff
What is green, sings out of key and stops you seeing anything?
Kermit the Fog.
Brian
--
Brian Gaff - bri...@blueyonder.co.uk
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!