The Triumph of Stupidity in American Politics

[pbrower2a]

(01-05-2021, 02:10 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(11-26-2020, 09:42 AM)David Horn Wrote: There are three issues that are unambiguous: climate change, pandemic control and inequality.  No politician is actually doing any of those things today. Climate change is still happening, or not.  Most of the actions being taken are driven by market forces, which are unlikely to be in the best interest of the majority. The pandemic may be under better control because so many vaccines are getting qualified, but there is still the issue of getting it into the arms of a skeptical public.  And inequality is growing so fast that it's quickly escaping the potential of being controlled.

Of the three biggies that you mentioned, one is already resolved and the pandemic is the only one that can be resolved. So, who isn't free in America today? Are you blind, don't you see all the women in the workforce today? Didn't you see a black President in the White House? Don't you see the black coaches and politicians and movie stars and wealthy people that we see these days? I'd say, inequality has been addressed and pretty much resolved. Who isn't free to advance and do as they please these days? We have some problems with sex in the workplace. We still have sexually attracted males and females who mingle that causes problems. We still have opportunistic bosses with active sex drives and ambitious employees who will do whatever to advance that causes some problems.

Partial alleviation of racism and moves toward gender equity come with the increasing inequality. Economic elites often define freedom as the prerogative to treat others badly, and the increasing inequality and economic insecurity in America has largely so define 'freedom', at least in economic terms. Let us also remember that people who got ahead in our system if not white males generally did so through their own hard work, self-development, and often great personal sacrifice.  Our economic elites demand great sacrifice with themselves as the recipients of the boon coming from such. Again, when "freedom" means the right to treat others badly, then such is travesty. It is easy to see that a revolution can see the removal of such people from their power as the sole means of getting freedom for themselves.

Quote:As far as climate change, that's pretty much here to stay. We're fortunate that we've been transitioning and becoming more efficient and paying more attention to the environment for many decades.

So we aren't wasting as much energy as we used to. Vehicles are more efficient, and more people are using public transit (which really is efficient). We don't have the idea that the Soviet Union had that energy is effectively a free good because it requires little labor to produce and can substitute for labor, and built energy-devouring plants that wasted energy in producing things. Energy dropped dramatically as the Soviet bloc started to conserve energy in the 1990's. 

On the other hand, global warming will compel people to use more energy in cooling their buildings... and with the cooling of buildings will come the ironic result of more waste heat. There will be waste heat that itself becomes a positive feedback to energy use and consumption because the waste heat will itself warm the environment and cause people to use more energy. The waste heat will appear whether the energy used in air conditioning (as Minneapolis becomes like St. Louis in the summer, as Detroit becomes like Little Rock in the summer, as Dallas becomes like Karachi in the summer) comes from fossil fuels or from solar power. A warmer climate pattern means that more polar ice will melt and cause the rise of the sea level to inundate much of the world's most productive farmlands (and that ironically includes places now heavily populated with very poor people. Seasonal changes will change agricultural patterns, and not to the better. We will have the chance for a traumatic disruption of the world's food supply... our economic systems are all finely tuned to a narrow range of agronomic realities. Without that reality, social orders can implode in wars and revolutions.   

Farmers in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota need blizzards to protect the soil moisture. 

Quote:We aren't perfect but we aren't that bad for a super power. We could be still like China and Russia and India today. There's your problems dude. It's not us. We understand that we can't crush American economies as a means to address environmental issues related to other countries that Limousine Liberals lack the balls to address at this time. The Limousine's have to much time and money invested and are making to much money off their relationship with them to do anything about them now.

We are also approaching the end of the era in which we can produce our way into ever-greater prosperity. More people have the problem of excess of stuff than of gross need. Just look at the growth in the use of storage sheds.  Basically if you are putting stuff into storage and it is not for ultimate resale, then you have too much stuff.  We are also approaching the Singularity in which machine intelligence becomes more powerful than the human mind.  That is technological advancement, but even that will require some adjustments.