Global Politics
- JMTelevideos
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Re: Global Politics
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Re: Global Politics
In what sense do you think that globalization will disappear? You appear to be talking about trade in goods and labour. Do you think that individual countries will stop trading with each other? Do you think that bananas and iPhones will disappear from the shelves of our shops? If I want to continue to communicate with you will I (as a citizen of the UK) have to use a UK built computer made from UK made components? If so, I'll say goodbye now.
- Rr6
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Re: Global Politics
There still exists enough hydrogen bombs to destroy all of humanity,
Greenhouse effect > Global Warming > Cimate Change > Irractic Weather patterns has not been deterred to any significant to effective not bring about end of humanity,
...ocean marine life is dying off via more and more pollution,
.....fresh water is getting less less---see Mexico City sinking because they have sucked their fresh water aquifers dry,
...nuclear power is on rise again, with no long term storage solution yet in place,
and the list goes on and on.
I don'tr see how humanity will last another 7 million years on Earth. Maybe lucky if we last another 1000 years. Only time will tell.
More and more people on Earth with the current systems has limits..........this is common sense.
Carl Sagan and B Fuller both made statements in the final books that humanity was entering or already in a new dark age.
r6
r6
- Rederic
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Re: Global Politics
It is at its worst when it deludes us into thinking we have all the answers for everybody else.
Archibald Macleish.
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Re: Global Politics
- Rederic
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Re: Global Politics
It is at its worst when it deludes us into thinking we have all the answers for everybody else.
Archibald Macleish.
- Sy Borg
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Re: Global Politics
Over time, when resources gush upwards and trickle downwards there is only one logical result. Besides, most of the wealthy know that the biosphere won't sustain humanity for long so they are quickly "gathering their nuts for the winter", despite public debunking statements. Fossil fuel companies are especially conscious of cashing in while they can.Steve3007 wrote:But if some of that fat trickles down to the thin, in a kind of liposuction trickle-down, then maybe it's not a bad thing, Rederic?
Not long ago I believed in equality but I can see that, with the current crop of humanity - both in terms of quantity and quality - it would make no difference. Rederic is right - natural selection has been minimised by humans for some time but now it's returning, but now "the fittest" are not people but the largest institutions. The institutions' human constituents are mostly expendable, aside form those who could be thought to be the institutions' "brains" and "hearts" (ie. top brains trust and the board).
Those least likely to be carried to safety by wealthy institutions are obviously the poor, especially those in developing countries around, and just north of, the tropical latitudes.
- Rr6
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Re: Global Politics
OMG! LOL that is so rich and partly because it is so right-on{ the money }. Thank you for that one.Rederic wrote:Capitalism is the new Darwinism. Survival of the fattest.
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Re: Global Politics
Greta:I think 'trickle down' economics is a myth, perpetuated by the rich.
OK. It looks like we've got us a good old fashioned "what are the pros and cons of 'free' market capitalism?" discussion. It's been a while.Over time, when resources gush upwards and trickle downwards there is only one logical result...
A couple of initial thoughts that I have on the subject: I am all in favour of free market economics in situations where its strengths can be realized. And it does have great strengths - harnessed correctly, it has the ability to generate innovation and wealth. One of the standard 'free' market arguments is to point out that there is nothing inherently good about equality for its own sake; if we're all equally poor that doesn't help anybody. One of the defining features of 'free' markets is that they need inequalities to drive work, just as an electric circuit needs potential differences to drive current. If (and that is an "if") the end result is that everybody is richer than they would otherwise be, despite the richest being much richer than the poorest, then that is a good thing. The poorest may be much, much worse off than the richest, but if they're still richer than they would otherwise be, who cares?
I have some sympathy for that argument. One problem with it is that people don't judge their own circumstances in absolute terms. They judge them in relative terms. They compare their plight to people around them. Like it or not, inequality damages social cohesion, regardless of whether everybody is richer than they would be in a society without 'free' markets.
Generally speaking, the operation of global markets has made the world richer. It has lifted millions out of poverty. But that brings me to another objection to 'free' markets that was touched on by Greta in relation to the environment. A much more fundamental problem than the "social cohesion damaged by severe inequality" one is that 'free' markets are not forward-looking. They are simply a very good way to generate wealth here and now. They make us vulnerable to the whole "tragedy of the commons" thing. The care for infrastructure systems which benefit everybody but only in the long term is not in the interests of any individual market player to fix. For the purpose of maximising value for one's shareholders it's best to leave that to the other guy. That's where the dreaded "big government" that 'free' market advocates seem to hate so much comes in.
Note: All the way through here I've put the word 'free' in scare quotes. This is in recognition that there is a whole other arm to the argument about whether the markets can be regarded as truly free. But I can't deal with too many issues at once. My fingers get sore.
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There. Maybe that's a start. Does anybody here think that there is no role whatsoever for the concept of global 'free' markets? Does anyone disagree that while there are vast inequalities in the world, global markets, for all their faults, have so far generated wealth, albeit in a possibly environmentally unsustainable way?
-- Updated Tue Feb 21, 2017 1:34 pm to add the following --
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A more detailed reply to Greta's post:
Greta:
If we're talking about material wealth - money and the things that can be bought with it - then I think this idea that a small number of people own a vast proportion of the world's wealth can be misleading. No matter how wealthy each individual is, they're still only one human being. They can't consume everything. Obviously they can waste resources by, say, flying around the world by themselves in a big plane. But there's a limit to the extent to which they can do that. To me, the fact that Bill Gates has a hundred billion dollars (or whatever it is) is meaningless. It doesn't mean that he eats those dollars.Over time, when resources gush upwards and trickle downwards there is only one logical result.
I don't really buy the idea that wealthy people secretly believe in the evidence which suggests that we are destroying our environment, but pretend not to. I don't think oil companies cash in while they can because they think the earth will soon be uninhabitable. From their point of view, that would make no sense, unless they're planning something exotic like moving to a different planet. And I don't believe they are planning that.Besides, most of the wealthy know that the biosphere won't sustain humanity for long so they are quickly "gathering their nuts for the winter", despite public debunking statements. Fossil fuel companies are especially conscious of cashing in while they can.
No, I think the oil companies cash in while they can because they're simply obeying the rules of market forces and trying to maximise their profits. If oil prices go up they invest more in exploration for new sources of oil using their enhanced profits. If oil prices go down they cut back on that investment and try to pump more oil from existing sources to compensate for the lower profit-per-barrel. A variation on this rule is the recent agreement between OPEC and some non-OPEC countries to deliberately cut production in the hope of stimulating prices, after the recent price crash. This is the first such agreement in several years. It has happened because Saudi Arabia (mainly) had previously been pursuing a policy of pumping to maximum capacity in order to push down the price-per-barrel and drive more expensive producers (mainly US shale oil and Canadian oil sands) out of business. The plan was then to cut production again once those producers were "tamed" - driven out of business in large enough numbers that they didn't grow their market share more than the Saudis were comfortable with. But the low oil price was seriously hurting the high spending Saudi economy. So it wasn't a game that they could play indefinitely. As it turned out the US shale producers proved more resilient to low prices than they had expected, so they had to abandon the policy and start supporting prices again. Hence the OPEC/Non-OPEC deal last November.
All of this is simply people working out how to make more money. Market forces. I'm certainly not saying it's a wholly good thing (for reasons touched on earlier), but I don't think there is really any element of cashing in while the Earth is still inhabitable, or any such thing.
I don't think I ever believed in economic equality - everyone having the same level of material wealth - as an end in itself. I believe in equality of opportunity in theory, but I recognise that I am necessarily a hypocrite on that subject, when applied globally, because I know that genuine global equality of opportunity would mean that, in my business, I'd have to compete with people who are willing to work 100 hours a week in exchange for a much lower standard of living than I enjoy. The question of balancing global free trade with maintaining western standards of living and managing the environmental problems caused by those standards of living going global is not an easy one.Not long ago I believed in equality...
My slightly hypocritical belief in equality of opportunity leads me to believe that there are some basic public services which should be equally available to all (at least within countries), free, or at least artificially cheap, at the point of delivery. To me this means education, healthcare, some transport infrastructure, some IT infrastructure and possibly some utilities publicly funded, or subsidised to various degrees.
I'll leave this one for another post because I'm tired of typing!...but I can see that, with the current crop of humanity - both in terms of quantity and quality - it would make no difference. Rederic is right - natural selection has been minimised by humans for some time but now it's returning, but now "the fittest" are not people but the largest institutions. The institutions' human constituents are mostly expendable, aside form those who could be thought to be the institutions' "brains" and "hearts" (ie. top brains trust and the board).
And this one.Those least likely to be carried to safety by wealthy institutions are obviously the poor, especially those in developing countries around, and just north of, the tropical latitudes.
- Rr6
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Re: Global Politics
Those with more money can install more underground storage bunkers in more places. Money will buy water filtering and other devices to have best opportunity to have clean drinking water.
Carl Sagan and Bucky Fuller both state in there final books, that, humanity is in a dark age or about to enter a dark age.
Fullers prognostications say that, if humanity does not become one-world-nation by year 2000 it would be curtains for humanity.
U.S. power is balanced between commander in chief, congress and justice/judicial system and inadverently the power of the people.
Humanity has a balance of peace keeping hydrogen weapons.
Humanity has moved nearly whole-heartedly towards capitalism's 'survival-of-the-fattest'.
Humanity has barely begun begun to consider Earths ecological concerns that sustains us all.
There are many who believe the particle parts per million of greenhouse gases has already breached a limit that humanity will have rough time surviving if any or many of the potential dire effects come true.
Fuller believed we would not get beyond 6 billions people and poo-pooed ideas of ever reaching 10 billion people.
Here is link to World Population Meter http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
r6
- LuckyR
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Re: Global Politics
Not quite, capitalism is the new (efficient) way that darwinism is manifest.Rederic wrote:Capitalism is the new Darwinism. Survival of the fattest.
- JMTelevideos
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Re: Global Politics
Steve3007 wrote:JMTelevideos:
In what sense do you think that globalization will disappear? You appear to be talking about trade in goods and labour. Do you think that individual countries will stop trading with each other? Do you think that bananas and iPhones will disappear from the shelves of our shops? If I want to continue to communicate with you will I (as a citizen of the UK) have to use a UK built computer made from UK made components? If so, I'll say goodbye now.
For some, purity of identity is more important than any consequences of upholding purity of identity in a community. For others, private life and public life are different things: there is no general essence for humanity. In this way, I can say that there are pragmatic virtues in embracing identity for a fraction of the population regardless of the economic consequences: maybe it is time for a different kind of "social experiment" where the world is arranged by " identities"; on the other hand, that does not entail that people can not communicate on an individual level as we are doing right now.
- Burning ghost
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Re: Global Politics
People tend to come together for some mutual benefit that does not involve some hostile threat. People come together and work on a farm to reap the benefits of the harvest. Other benefits of society can be "harvested" to, such as exchange and development of technologies. During this process there is quite obviously the development of a system of commerce.
I am interested in talking about a global body, a united nations, a shift from polarised distribution of power. Not, to be clear, some idealised world of equality. Simply a betterment of humanities situation.
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Re: Global Politics
You mentioned in your OP that some people might not believe in a more united nation of humankind. That's true. Many people don't. I think many people would argue that such a thing could never be practicable. Do you think they have a point?I am interested in talking about a global body, a united nations, a shift from polarised distribution of power. Not, to be clear, some idealised world of equality. Simply a betterment of humanities situation.
Clearly, ever since the League of Nations was invented and turned into the UN, this notion of at least a limited form of world government has been tried. One of the apparent problems with this is essentially the same problem we always get if we try to make decisions to take action by committee. The popular perception of the UN is that it talks and argues impotently while the world burns.
Maybe the global culture is just too diverse to ever be subject to world government? In many ways, even a lot of individual countries are themselves too diverse to be managed by a central government. If Nationalism means self-government by multiple groups whose internal cultural bonds are strong enough to make them cohesive and in broad agreement with each other on central moral principles, then maybe Nationalism is the future? Good fences make good neighbours?
-- Updated Thu Feb 23, 2017 1:20 pm to add the following --
]I don't think the only the reason people come together is due to a common threat. I would say that is a danger in and of itself.
I agree that the existence of a common threat is not the only reason why people come together to cooperate. But it helps.
- Burning ghost
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Re: Global Politics
I am asking a hypothetical question. Some people seem annoyed at me for asking a hypothetical question and so have derailed the topic.
I don't care what people believe. I don't believe in killing people, but I could imagine ways of doing so. You don't have to believe in absolute equality in order to strive for more equality (or the opposite if you so wish).
I am happy with tangents if the OP is being addressed as well as the side issue.
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