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The argument against hyper capitalism causing more and more derailments is credible if you look into 'precision scheduled railroading' practices, aka shaving ex

The argument against hyper capitalism causing more and more derailments is credible if you look into 'precision scheduled railroading' practices, aka shaving expense by eliminating unnecessary costs and 'optimizing Assets'. Sadly this has little to do with 'conservatives' or 'the left' and a lot more to do with our apolitical global oligarchy who own the politicians in power and many lobbying groups including 'climate change' and environmentalists who are strangely silent on this major disaster as they were when the Nord Stream pipeline was destroyed.

briantakita 4y ago
Climate Change & the war on CO2 has sucked the oxygen out of the room wrt pollution with dangerous chemicals. Many in the environmental community are optimizing a single metric, CO2 emissions, & not focusing on the myriad of chemicals that cause widespread ecological damage. That coupled with the ongoing doomsday hysteria over CO2, it is easy to lose focus on pressing issues & the complexities in dealing with these other environmental issues. The core tension here is should we narrow focus on a single metric or widen focus on the entire system? Also, Que bono for the different approaches? Instead of focusing so much on CO2, it would benefit humanity to adopt a more well rounded approach that addresses all pollutants, prioritizing the safe handling of extremely toxic chemicals & reducing the amount of toxic waste emitted by industry. Also, it would be helpful to take the approach that novel substances should be proven safe instead of assuming these substances are safe until proven unsafe.
- bakuninsbart 4y ago
  I'd be really interested in why climate change is a hysteria and not well-founded fear. Well founded studies say we are currently on track to reach 4°C higher average temperature by 2100, and a plausible rise in sea levels of that would be around 40 meters. Completely ignoring all other effects, this would be a catastrophe on a level we can hardly achieve otherwise. And 2100 isn't an end date, it would be kind of nice if the planet was usable a fair bit after that as well.
  - olivermarks 4y ago
    'Climate change' is a hysteria because there is so much money involved in green tech. anyone with an ounce of common sense is an environmentalist, but there have been so many predictions of impending doom (which is your fault, repent and atone for your sins) that the genuinely important issues tend to get buried in the tsunamai of doomy junk science that is drip fed to Guardian readers and anyone else who will listen. There is a real danger of the $$ cult of climate change $$ undermining important environmental issues.
    - MrMan 4y ago
      this is vile bullshit - we need to invest trillions to possibly arrest climate change, so yes there will be a lot of money in it for someone.
      - olivermarks 4y ago
        Apologies for offending your religious beliefs but there are an awful lot of now very rich snake oil salesmen out there who are doing a lot more for their cronies wallets than for the planet. Be more mindful of where trillions of tax payer money is 'invested' would be my advice and try to see both sides of the religious divide. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11653723/How-Al-Gore-300m-climate-alarmism-Former-VP-fortune-losing-George-W.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11653723/How-Al-Gor...
        briantakita 4y ago
        To your point, where are the sanctimonious green agenda pushers, like Greta Thunberg & AOC, on this environmental disaster? The crickets are easy to hear. I thought they cared about the environment...
  - goatlover 4y ago
    It's a range from 2.7° - 4°C, where four is the high end of where we'll likely end up at end of century, based on current trends.
danaris 4y ago
You really don't see there being a very distinct difference between the beliefs of the left and right wings of American politics on this? You think "global oligarchy" is "apolitical", at a time when the right wing is pushing harder and harder for the very wealthy to, essentially, be able to do anything they want, while the left wing (such as it is in this country) is pushing to restrict their power and tax their wealthy?
- olivermarks 4y ago
  Two wings of the same party. At this point because the DNC are currently so powerful they are parochially dominant (and extremely corrupt), the pendulum will swing soon and the power will shift to the RNC (who will no doubt also be extremely corrupt). The unelected bureaucrats actually run everything in the US and at a state level. In California where I live we currently have a supermajority Dem state government, but regardless of this a handful of unelected bureaucrats from the Gray Davis era run everything in Sacramento behind the scenes. The idea the DNC 'left wing' is pushing to restrict the local elite's power and tax them is laughable. They just have a few noisy straw men to placate voters and fill their air waves. (I'm a registered Dem FWIW. I loathe the party these days). We need a big parochial political shake up!
  - danaris 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - olivermarks 4y ago
      [flagged]
- rodgerd 4y ago
  While I agree that there are, in general, significant differences in positions on these things, this seems like a bad example to choose: after all, US rail workers went on strike over the safety, long hours, and being expected to work injured or sick, and President Biden signed off on laws making their strikes illegal. Unfortunately, at least in the English-speaking world, many nominal workers' parties have largely bought into worker-hostile policies under Blair, Starmer, Clinton, Albanese, and so on.
ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
One thing on the ontology of capital: once enough capital (billions, trillions) is gathered in one single control point there is a phase transition: from a means towards an end (build X, destroy Y) it becomes a manner of escaping reality: with enough (crony or not) capital you can keep afloat a business no matter how bad it is, how badly run, how useless or how dangerous the products. Not that 'there is no skin in the game', but there is no skin, there is no game anymore.
- eastbound 4y ago
  Whereas with government, you can keep afloat a government no matter how bad it is, how badly run, how useless or how dangerous it is. Except, as opposed to a company, it can’t crash like Enron or be threatened by competition. It doesn’t even need to fight to stay afloat.
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    You can't. At some point disaster and dumb leadership conspire to push the people and elite to revolution. We're no where near that now, but don't be fooled that governments are untoppable. They aren't. Every former regime had its peak. You can see how structural faults in US government could produce the tinder. The threefold and interdependent issue of the US Senate and subsequently Electoral College resulting in Presidential and Legislative and ultimately Judicial representation by a smaller and smaller group of constituents. The reason we have legitimacy narratives today stems from this very structural fault. But tinder alone does not produce a fire. An unforeseen event poised to exploit the flaws of the fault and uniquely incompetent leadership conspire to make régime ancien.
  - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
    By control point you can understand a corporation or a government, no need for false dichotomies: in the age of capital there is no beyond. Enron was a weak company, nowhere near the escape reality velocity: at peak, in 2000, they had a market capitalization of $60 billion, at the same time Microsoft was at $600 billion [1]. Also, any company worth their capital knows very well that "competition is for losers" [2] and dreams of the ultimate consolidation [3]. [1] The Largest Public Companies by Market Cap (2000–2022), https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/largest-companies-from-2000-to-2022/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/largest-companies-from-2... [2] Competition Is for Losers, https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-losers-1410535536 https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-..., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k [3] The Consolidation Curve, https://hbr.org/2002/12/the-consolidation-curve https://hbr.org/2002/12/the-consolidation-curve
x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
The fact of the matter is that we had a rule to prevent this that was rescinded by conservatives. Further implementation of safety rules will always and forever be hamstrung by conservatives due to their ideology concerning deregulation. There is no need to cast blame onto shadowy oligarchs to avoid attributing the disaster to conservative ideology for the past 60 years.

briantakita 4y ago

Climate Change & the war on CO2 has sucked the oxygen out of the room wrt pollution with dangerous chemicals. Many in the environmental community are optimizing a single metric, CO2 emissions, & not focusing on the myriad of chemicals that cause widespread ecological damage. That coupled with the ongoing doomsday hysteria over CO2, it is easy to lose focus on pressing issues & the complexities in dealing with these other environmental issues. The core tension here is should we narrow focus on a single metric or widen focus on the entire system? Also, Que bono for the different approaches? Instead of focusing so much on CO2, it would benefit humanity to adopt a more well rounded approach that addresses all pollutants, prioritizing the safe handling of extremely toxic chemicals & reducing the amount of toxic waste emitted by industry. Also, it would be helpful to take the approach that novel substances should be proven safe instead of assuming these substances are safe until proven unsafe.

bakuninsbart 4y ago
I'd be really interested in why climate change is a hysteria and not well-founded fear. Well founded studies say we are currently on track to reach 4°C higher average temperature by 2100, and a plausible rise in sea levels of that would be around 40 meters. Completely ignoring all other effects, this would be a catastrophe on a level we can hardly achieve otherwise. And 2100 isn't an end date, it would be kind of nice if the planet was usable a fair bit after that as well.
- olivermarks 4y ago
  'Climate change' is a hysteria because there is so much money involved in green tech. anyone with an ounce of common sense is an environmentalist, but there have been so many predictions of impending doom (which is your fault, repent and atone for your sins) that the genuinely important issues tend to get buried in the tsunamai of doomy junk science that is drip fed to Guardian readers and anyone else who will listen. There is a real danger of the $$ cult of climate change $$ undermining important environmental issues.
  - MrMan 4y ago
    this is vile bullshit - we need to invest trillions to possibly arrest climate change, so yes there will be a lot of money in it for someone.
    - olivermarks 4y ago
      Apologies for offending your religious beliefs but there are an awful lot of now very rich snake oil salesmen out there who are doing a lot more for their cronies wallets than for the planet. Be more mindful of where trillions of tax payer money is 'invested' would be my advice and try to see both sides of the religious divide. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11653723/How-Al-Gore-300m-climate-alarmism-Former-VP-fortune-losing-George-W.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11653723/How-Al-Gor...
      - briantakita 4y ago
        To your point, where are the sanctimonious green agenda pushers, like Greta Thunberg & AOC, on this environmental disaster? The crickets are easy to hear. I thought they cared about the environment...
- goatlover 4y ago
  It's a range from 2.7° - 4°C, where four is the high end of where we'll likely end up at end of century, based on current trends.

danaris 4y ago

You really don't see there being a very distinct difference between the beliefs of the left and right wings of American politics on this? You think "global oligarchy" is "apolitical", at a time when the right wing is pushing harder and harder for the very wealthy to, essentially, be able to do anything they want, while the left wing (such as it is in this country) is pushing to restrict their power and tax their wealthy?

olivermarks 4y ago
Two wings of the same party. At this point because the DNC are currently so powerful they are parochially dominant (and extremely corrupt), the pendulum will swing soon and the power will shift to the RNC (who will no doubt also be extremely corrupt). The unelected bureaucrats actually run everything in the US and at a state level. In California where I live we currently have a supermajority Dem state government, but regardless of this a handful of unelected bureaucrats from the Gray Davis era run everything in Sacramento behind the scenes. The idea the DNC 'left wing' is pushing to restrict the local elite's power and tax them is laughable. They just have a few noisy straw men to placate voters and fill their air waves. (I'm a registered Dem FWIW. I loathe the party these days). We need a big parochial political shake up!
- danaris 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - olivermarks 4y ago
    [flagged]
rodgerd 4y ago
While I agree that there are, in general, significant differences in positions on these things, this seems like a bad example to choose: after all, US rail workers went on strike over the safety, long hours, and being expected to work injured or sick, and President Biden signed off on laws making their strikes illegal. Unfortunately, at least in the English-speaking world, many nominal workers' parties have largely bought into worker-hostile policies under Blair, Starmer, Clinton, Albanese, and so on.

ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago

One thing on the ontology of capital: once enough capital (billions, trillions) is gathered in one single control point there is a phase transition: from a means towards an end (build X, destroy Y) it becomes a manner of escaping reality: with enough (crony or not) capital you can keep afloat a business no matter how bad it is, how badly run, how useless or how dangerous the products. Not that 'there is no skin in the game', but there is no skin, there is no game anymore.

eastbound 4y ago
Whereas with government, you can keep afloat a government no matter how bad it is, how badly run, how useless or how dangerous it is. Except, as opposed to a company, it can’t crash like Enron or be threatened by competition. It doesn’t even need to fight to stay afloat.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  You can't. At some point disaster and dumb leadership conspire to push the people and elite to revolution. We're no where near that now, but don't be fooled that governments are untoppable. They aren't. Every former regime had its peak. You can see how structural faults in US government could produce the tinder. The threefold and interdependent issue of the US Senate and subsequently Electoral College resulting in Presidential and Legislative and ultimately Judicial representation by a smaller and smaller group of constituents. The reason we have legitimacy narratives today stems from this very structural fault. But tinder alone does not produce a fire. An unforeseen event poised to exploit the flaws of the fault and uniquely incompetent leadership conspire to make régime ancien.
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
  By control point you can understand a corporation or a government, no need for false dichotomies: in the age of capital there is no beyond. Enron was a weak company, nowhere near the escape reality velocity: at peak, in 2000, they had a market capitalization of $60 billion, at the same time Microsoft was at $600 billion [1]. Also, any company worth their capital knows very well that "competition is for losers" [2] and dreams of the ultimate consolidation [3]. [1] The Largest Public Companies by Market Cap (2000–2022), https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/largest-companies-from-2000-to-2022/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/largest-companies-from-2... [2] Competition Is for Losers, https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-losers-1410535536 https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-..., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k [3] The Consolidation Curve, https://hbr.org/2002/12/the-consolidation-curve https://hbr.org/2002/12/the-consolidation-curve

x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago

The fact of the matter is that we had a rule to prevent this that was rescinded by conservatives. Further implementation of safety rules will always and forever be hamstrung by conservatives due to their ideology concerning deregulation. There is no need to cast blame onto shadowy oligarchs to avoid attributing the disaster to conservative ideology for the past 60 years.