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The article talks about the period "between 1830 and 1870". Karl Marx was born in 1818, socialism as an idea only began around the 1850s, and actual stable gove

The article talks about the period "between 1830 and 1870". Karl Marx was born in 1818, socialism as an idea only began around the 1850s, and actual stable governments on socialist principles didn't happen till the twentieth century. Attempting to frame this as a socialist vs libertarian issue, as you appear to do, is seriously ahistorical. Furthermore, I'm not sure how a solution arising half a century after the period being talked about it supposed to be useful to the people living during that time. Similarly, if a solution to climate change follows the same timeline and is discovered 50 years after we cross the tipping point, how will that be of any use? The point the article is making is one of short-term vs long-term thinking.

08-15 10y ago
Huh? What's anything I wrote got to do with Marx? I see collectives constantly failing to deliver everywhere. Yes, that includes every single socialist country that ever existed (they were not stable), but also many current capitalist governments (German energy policy comes to mind), the many public-private-partnership projects that always go over budget, and any meeting in a sufficiently big corporation. Now please don't try to tell me that "collective" applies exclusively to socialism and that I'm reading things that aren't there. I took the word straight out of the article: > These futures are avoidable, but only if collective international action... happens.
- noelwelsh 10y ago
  I think the confusion arises from the difference between the words "collectivist" and "collective". Collectivism is the name of a political philosophy closely related to socialism communism, and a term popular with libertarians. In this context, writing "collectivist attempt to fix it" reads like 1) a suggestion that the British Empire's actions were motivated by a collectivist government and 2) that you're trying to tie failure to tackle global warming into a larger libertarian worldview. I think it's a valid argument that collective action for long term gain against short-term self interest is very difficult to achieve.

08-15 10y ago

Huh? What's anything I wrote got to do with Marx? I see collectives constantly failing to deliver everywhere. Yes, that includes every single socialist country that ever existed (they were not stable), but also many current capitalist governments (German energy policy comes to mind), the many public-private-partnership projects that always go over budget, and any meeting in a sufficiently big corporation. Now please don't try to tell me that "collective" applies exclusively to socialism and that I'm reading things that aren't there. I took the word straight out of the article: > These futures are avoidable, but only if collective international action... happens.

noelwelsh 10y ago
I think the confusion arises from the difference between the words "collectivist" and "collective". Collectivism is the name of a political philosophy closely related to socialism communism, and a term popular with libertarians. In this context, writing "collectivist attempt to fix it" reads like 1) a suggestion that the British Empire's actions were motivated by a collectivist government and 2) that you're trying to tie failure to tackle global warming into a larger libertarian worldview. I think it's a valid argument that collective action for long term gain against short-term self interest is very difficult to achieve.