3 ms·

You're right - but also wrong. Governments built the roads - other solutions are conceivable. Tax payers paid once for the roads to be built, and are now payi

You're right - but also wrong. Governments built the roads - other solutions are conceivable. Tax payers paid once for the roads to be built, and are now paying for roads to made unusable for cars (lane restrictions, pedestrianisation, etc). That's a waste. Did you know that electric cars were very popular 100 years ago - but because of the oil industry + government, they were quashed? Government waves through unacceptable, unenvironmental behaviour by corporations. However, it does want the consumer who bought the fridges, to foot the bill! Consumers are ignorant of course of the unenvironmental impact of the products they were being sold - that's what government was ostensibly there for - all those agencies were meant to assure that we were getting decent products. It hasn't worked as we thought - but it has worked out as corporations planned. A bigger governance system is not the answer.

axiomsEnd 5y ago
Ok, but how removing the goverment will change that we have massive industries? Small groups of consumers will held accounrable companies?
- verisimi 5y ago
  You say remove - I say rollback. The sentiment should be that we have less government - we should empower individuals, not monolithic state apparatus. It would ideally be rolled back slowly, keeping a steady focus where governmental power is continuously eroded. However, I also think that things are so wildly out of kilter now, that it is far more likely that things could become even more tumultuous. I even think the tumult is planned for - we are in a somewhat artificial and managed crisis - the co-ordinated global response to the virus, was calculate to devastate Western economies. The plan - as I understand it - is for us to be brought to our knees so that we accept/want even global governance as an end to our suffering. At that point, when the deal is done, the crises will disappear as the global technocratic goals will have been achieved.
  - heavenlyblue 5y ago
    > we should empower individuals Does that mean that I now have to spend my time in the evening doing the "monolithic state apparatus'" job instead of going for a meal with my partner?
    - nonrandomstring 5y ago
      > Does that mean that I now have to spend my time in the evening doing the "monolithic state apparatus'" job instead of going for a meal with my partner? Yes. Because we are all responsible. But guess what, you'd be sharing the job with 7 billion other people, so the total workload would be like 5 minutes on a Thursday morning every other month. Could you spare that? Please read a book called "Leviathan" [1] by Thomas Hobbes and maybe a little of Jean Jacques Rousseau's "The Social Contract" [2] to balance it up. The state is not your enemy, but also it is not your nanny, there to wipe your bottom and hold your feeding bottle because you "pay taxes". There's plenty of time for dining out and being a responsible, participating citizen. [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm [2] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46333 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46333
      - heavenlyblue 5y ago
        > Please read a book called "Leviathan" [1] by Thomas Hobbes and maybe a little of Jean Jacques Rousseau's "The Social Contract" [2] to balance it up. The fact that you can bring up two books to support your opinion doesn't mean I agree with it. They are pretty much classics and anybody who was interested in philosophy would have already been familiar with it. > Yes. Because we are all responsible. But guess what, you'd be sharing the job with 7 billion other people, so the total workload would be like 5 minutes on a Thursday morning every other month. Could you spare that? You can't do serious politics spending 5 minutes on Thursday morning every other month. It takes me more time to plan my night commute back home on a Friday night.
        nonrandomstring 5y ago
lm28469 5y ago
> Did you know that electric cars were very popular 100 years ago - but because of the oil industry + government, they were quashed? Er this is extremely simplistic. Electricity wasn't as common as now and battery tech was extremely shitty (requiring maintenance every few days, handling acids, &c.)
- nonrandomstring 5y ago
  > > Did you know that electric cars were very popular 100 years ago - but because of the oil industry + government, they were quashed? > Electricity wasn't as common as now and battery tech was extremely shitty (requiring maintenance every few days, handling acids, &c.) When automobiles first appeared, gasoline was not as common as now and internal combustion technology was primitive, requiring almost constant maintenance, handling flammable liquids etc. The modern IC automobile is unrecognisable from those of the Benz/Ford era. Had electrical vehicles been preferred for 100 years of government financial and policy support they'd be equal or superior to combustion technology, and vastly superior to Tesla and other EV's around now which are catching up on decades of lost development. (but then neither of us have a time-machine to prove our post-facto fantasies about alternative histories)
  - lm28469 5y ago
    > When automobiles first appeared, gasoline was not as common as now and internal combustion technology was primitive, requiring almost constant maintenance, handling flammable liquids etc. Yeah and one ended up easier to develop than the other. Even when we started producing proper batteries they were not good enough for cars (80s, 90s, 2000s), it took a few decade to get good engines, it took a century for proper batteries
    - nonrandomstring 5y ago
      > one ended up easier to develop than the other. Because many hundreds of millions in research money went into doing so. Science and technology are not blind pursuits whereby we stumble across answers handed down by the gods. We progress according to our motivations. This is the difference between so-called "technological determinism" which is an ignorant quasi-religious shrugging abdication of reason, and "science as agency", which is instrumental reason. It has it's down-sides, but the latter is infinitely preferable to the former, which, perhaps to labour the car-analogy painfully, is like taking your hands off the steering wheel.
mort96 5y ago
Don't dodge the topic. Propose how leaded gasoline would have been phased out earlier if only governments didn't make them illegal. Answer the same question for HCFCs.
coderenegade 5y ago
Electric vehicles weren't quashed, they were outcompeted by a more capable product. And to be honest, that's still pretty much the case even a century later. BEVs still don't have the range or the towing capacity of conventional vehicles, and charging one is still nowhere near the power transfer of a standard petrol bowser. That's not to say they don't work for a large chunk of the population -- I think it's pretty clear that they can and do -- but petrol cars are ubiquitous because they're capable of tremendous up-time, in any environment, require relatively little maintenance, and they'll perform for hundreds of thousands of kilometers even on an ordinary maintenance schedule. I mean, I'd like to see the world move away from fossil fuels as well, but acting like BEVs are somehow universally better than ICEVs without acknowledging the tremendous ability and success of regular cars, and the shortcomings of BEVs, doesn't really help the cause, because in certain regions, applications, and for certain individuals, BEVs really are the wrong choice. There needs to be more acknowledgement of this, and acceptance of the fact that maybe a one-size-fits-all solution won't be the future of automobile propulsion.
hnbad 5y ago
Government bad! Here's an example of businesses using their power over the government to do bad things. Let's deregulate businesses further so they don't need to use the government to do bad things because they can do them themselves. Did I miss anything?
- verisimi 5y ago
  Not really - but I think its a message that bears repeating. Most people have been through the governmental education process and have been taught that the government is the only fair/legal/possible answer to all our ills. That 10+ formative years of propaganda to counter. Even more if you go to university and licensed to do your job - you are now vested in an exploitative system, that initiates harm against others. Understandably people will want to stick with the devil they know until a/ they have worked through the alternatives and b/ understood that the problems commonly blamed on people are actually the natural outcomes of government policies.
  - hnbad 5y ago
    You're making an excellent argument why centralised power is bad. You're not addressing how those same power dynamics won't be recreated with "smaller government" if large businesses are already so powerful they can influence governments. It sounds like you're arguing the problem isn't the amount of power being centralised but who gets to control it and your solution is to replace any semblance of equal democratic control with unevenly distributed capital. So in other words, feudalism with extra steps, but instead of the divine right of kings we have a supposed meritocracy built on generational wealth. Now, I'm with you that representative systems are undemocratic and centralised power leads to corruption and is a bad idea. Where we apparently differ is that my answer would also dissolve corporations by eliminating the concept of private property and use the minimalist government structures to provide social services and infrastructure rather than to protect private property.
    - verisimi 5y ago
      One thing at a time! I don't even think that most people are even on board with the idea that big government might not be the answer to all of our problems - most people like the way government is acting! Things that I think should be mandatory is a lot more freedom of information. I'm absolutely not a fan of gatekeepers of information (eg the media) nor of any policies to manage 'misinformation'. At the present we don't even know what we don't know.. Given government is purportedly working for us, surely it should be the case that the info that is collected and gathered should be freely available to all of us, that would be great start. Eg with the covid info, why is this not available in real time to us all? What information does the government use to base their decisions on? I think it is a small and simple step to take (provide information immediately) so we can see wtf is even going on. Let's also stop this 'misinformation' mud slinging, but level ourselves up to try to make sense of whatever info there is. Re the point about private property. I love the way indigenous American tribes did not even have that concept. But, if we were to implement that, all that would happen is that no one would care. I'm totally fine with people owning property that they use. I would approach this problem differently. If I were king (and obv. I'm not!) I would make all ownership fully traceable back to the specific individuals. Because, in fact, individuals are all that matters! Corporations/Trusts/Offshore arrangement/etc are just bits of legal paper, concepts. If we knew who owned what, I suspect that this would illuminating. Again, this would be just an information gathering exercise. I'm sure there would be lots of issues with that! but again, in the first place, all I'd want to do is have the information. In general, I'm most interested in a calculated rollback away from monolithic institutions towards the individual. The general direction of travel is entirely the opposite though - and accelerating!
fzeroracer 5y ago
Are you going to actually answer the question of how corporations would've phased out leaded gas versus the government declaring it illegal due to the harms it posed? You can't address the rollback of government without addressing the corresponding power increase in corporations.

axiomsEnd 5y ago

Ok, but how removing the goverment will change that we have massive industries? Small groups of consumers will held accounrable companies?

verisimi 5y ago
You say remove - I say rollback. The sentiment should be that we have less government - we should empower individuals, not monolithic state apparatus. It would ideally be rolled back slowly, keeping a steady focus where governmental power is continuously eroded. However, I also think that things are so wildly out of kilter now, that it is far more likely that things could become even more tumultuous. I even think the tumult is planned for - we are in a somewhat artificial and managed crisis - the co-ordinated global response to the virus, was calculate to devastate Western economies. The plan - as I understand it - is for us to be brought to our knees so that we accept/want even global governance as an end to our suffering. At that point, when the deal is done, the crises will disappear as the global technocratic goals will have been achieved.
- heavenlyblue 5y ago
  > we should empower individuals Does that mean that I now have to spend my time in the evening doing the "monolithic state apparatus'" job instead of going for a meal with my partner?
  - nonrandomstring 5y ago
    > Does that mean that I now have to spend my time in the evening doing the "monolithic state apparatus'" job instead of going for a meal with my partner? Yes. Because we are all responsible. But guess what, you'd be sharing the job with 7 billion other people, so the total workload would be like 5 minutes on a Thursday morning every other month. Could you spare that? Please read a book called "Leviathan" [1] by Thomas Hobbes and maybe a little of Jean Jacques Rousseau's "The Social Contract" [2] to balance it up. The state is not your enemy, but also it is not your nanny, there to wipe your bottom and hold your feeding bottle because you "pay taxes". There's plenty of time for dining out and being a responsible, participating citizen. [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm [2] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46333 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46333
    - heavenlyblue 5y ago
      > Please read a book called "Leviathan" [1] by Thomas Hobbes and maybe a little of Jean Jacques Rousseau's "The Social Contract" [2] to balance it up. The fact that you can bring up two books to support your opinion doesn't mean I agree with it. They are pretty much classics and anybody who was interested in philosophy would have already been familiar with it. > Yes. Because we are all responsible. But guess what, you'd be sharing the job with 7 billion other people, so the total workload would be like 5 minutes on a Thursday morning every other month. Could you spare that? You can't do serious politics spending 5 minutes on Thursday morning every other month. It takes me more time to plan my night commute back home on a Friday night.
      - nonrandomstring 5y ago

lm28469 5y ago

> Did you know that electric cars were very popular 100 years ago - but because of the oil industry + government, they were quashed? Er this is extremely simplistic. Electricity wasn't as common as now and battery tech was extremely shitty (requiring maintenance every few days, handling acids, &c.)

nonrandomstring 5y ago
> > Did you know that electric cars were very popular 100 years ago - but because of the oil industry + government, they were quashed? > Electricity wasn't as common as now and battery tech was extremely shitty (requiring maintenance every few days, handling acids, &c.) When automobiles first appeared, gasoline was not as common as now and internal combustion technology was primitive, requiring almost constant maintenance, handling flammable liquids etc. The modern IC automobile is unrecognisable from those of the Benz/Ford era. Had electrical vehicles been preferred for 100 years of government financial and policy support they'd be equal or superior to combustion technology, and vastly superior to Tesla and other EV's around now which are catching up on decades of lost development. (but then neither of us have a time-machine to prove our post-facto fantasies about alternative histories)
- lm28469 5y ago
  > When automobiles first appeared, gasoline was not as common as now and internal combustion technology was primitive, requiring almost constant maintenance, handling flammable liquids etc. Yeah and one ended up easier to develop than the other. Even when we started producing proper batteries they were not good enough for cars (80s, 90s, 2000s), it took a few decade to get good engines, it took a century for proper batteries
  - nonrandomstring 5y ago
    > one ended up easier to develop than the other. Because many hundreds of millions in research money went into doing so. Science and technology are not blind pursuits whereby we stumble across answers handed down by the gods. We progress according to our motivations. This is the difference between so-called "technological determinism" which is an ignorant quasi-religious shrugging abdication of reason, and "science as agency", which is instrumental reason. It has it's down-sides, but the latter is infinitely preferable to the former, which, perhaps to labour the car-analogy painfully, is like taking your hands off the steering wheel.

mort96 5y ago

Don't dodge the topic. Propose how leaded gasoline would have been phased out earlier if only governments didn't make them illegal. Answer the same question for HCFCs.

coderenegade 5y ago

Electric vehicles weren't quashed, they were outcompeted by a more capable product. And to be honest, that's still pretty much the case even a century later. BEVs still don't have the range or the towing capacity of conventional vehicles, and charging one is still nowhere near the power transfer of a standard petrol bowser. That's not to say they don't work for a large chunk of the population -- I think it's pretty clear that they can and do -- but petrol cars are ubiquitous because they're capable of tremendous up-time, in any environment, require relatively little maintenance, and they'll perform for hundreds of thousands of kilometers even on an ordinary maintenance schedule. I mean, I'd like to see the world move away from fossil fuels as well, but acting like BEVs are somehow universally better than ICEVs without acknowledging the tremendous ability and success of regular cars, and the shortcomings of BEVs, doesn't really help the cause, because in certain regions, applications, and for certain individuals, BEVs really are the wrong choice. There needs to be more acknowledgement of this, and acceptance of the fact that maybe a one-size-fits-all solution won't be the future of automobile propulsion.

hnbad 5y ago

Government bad! Here's an example of businesses using their power over the government to do bad things. Let's deregulate businesses further so they don't need to use the government to do bad things because they can do them themselves. Did I miss anything?

verisimi 5y ago
Not really - but I think its a message that bears repeating. Most people have been through the governmental education process and have been taught that the government is the only fair/legal/possible answer to all our ills. That 10+ formative years of propaganda to counter. Even more if you go to university and licensed to do your job - you are now vested in an exploitative system, that initiates harm against others. Understandably people will want to stick with the devil they know until a/ they have worked through the alternatives and b/ understood that the problems commonly blamed on people are actually the natural outcomes of government policies.
- hnbad 5y ago
  You're making an excellent argument why centralised power is bad. You're not addressing how those same power dynamics won't be recreated with "smaller government" if large businesses are already so powerful they can influence governments. It sounds like you're arguing the problem isn't the amount of power being centralised but who gets to control it and your solution is to replace any semblance of equal democratic control with unevenly distributed capital. So in other words, feudalism with extra steps, but instead of the divine right of kings we have a supposed meritocracy built on generational wealth. Now, I'm with you that representative systems are undemocratic and centralised power leads to corruption and is a bad idea. Where we apparently differ is that my answer would also dissolve corporations by eliminating the concept of private property and use the minimalist government structures to provide social services and infrastructure rather than to protect private property.
  - verisimi 5y ago
    One thing at a time! I don't even think that most people are even on board with the idea that big government might not be the answer to all of our problems - most people like the way government is acting! Things that I think should be mandatory is a lot more freedom of information. I'm absolutely not a fan of gatekeepers of information (eg the media) nor of any policies to manage 'misinformation'. At the present we don't even know what we don't know.. Given government is purportedly working for us, surely it should be the case that the info that is collected and gathered should be freely available to all of us, that would be great start. Eg with the covid info, why is this not available in real time to us all? What information does the government use to base their decisions on? I think it is a small and simple step to take (provide information immediately) so we can see wtf is even going on. Let's also stop this 'misinformation' mud slinging, but level ourselves up to try to make sense of whatever info there is. Re the point about private property. I love the way indigenous American tribes did not even have that concept. But, if we were to implement that, all that would happen is that no one would care. I'm totally fine with people owning property that they use. I would approach this problem differently. If I were king (and obv. I'm not!) I would make all ownership fully traceable back to the specific individuals. Because, in fact, individuals are all that matters! Corporations/Trusts/Offshore arrangement/etc are just bits of legal paper, concepts. If we knew who owned what, I suspect that this would illuminating. Again, this would be just an information gathering exercise. I'm sure there would be lots of issues with that! but again, in the first place, all I'd want to do is have the information. In general, I'm most interested in a calculated rollback away from monolithic institutions towards the individual. The general direction of travel is entirely the opposite though - and accelerating!

fzeroracer 5y ago

Are you going to actually answer the question of how corporations would've phased out leaded gas versus the government declaring it illegal due to the harms it posed? You can't address the rollback of government without addressing the corresponding power increase in corporations.