01-08-2022, 02:58 PM
How do we deal with global warming? We are going to need to tax the Hell or price the Hell out of behaviors that contribute to global warming. We will need to re-engineer cities to make them more communal in the sense that one could get almost any need met easily without taking a ten-mile drive to some box store. Yes, that will be trouble for Wal-Mart, but Dollar General will do fine. We will need heavy taxes on motor fuels and stiff licensing fees on vehicles that use them. Air traffic will have to be so priced that only elites (the equivalent of the Jet Set of the 1960's) will use them. We will need to re-engineer cities so that they will be more livable, which means more friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists. Long-distance travel will be by train again. I can imagine freeways being rebuilt so that trains use a median that was once lanes dedicated to cars and trucks.
We are at the stage at which we can meet the need for all manufactured goods (including foodstuffs) in far fewer hours than the 40 or so that were deemed necessary in the 1930's. We are going to need smaller living spaces so that we are not tempted to buy, buy, and buy stuff. Many of us already rely upon the Internet for subscription news, video, and music. Many of us are at the position in which we must ask ourselves not so much whether something would be nice to have as what we really need to get rid of to make space for it.
We will need to change our diets to get tasty simulations of expensive food. I find fake crab meet as tasty as the real stuff. I might have some tonight. The technology for simulating meat and fish is nigh.
The single-family home is an anachronism. Yes, I know -- it is good for giving kids the privacy appropriate for going into their own private worlds and unleashing their imaginations and curiosity. The only single-family homes will be in rural areas, and even at that the corporate farmers are squeezing out the small farmers so that what were once single-family farmhouses are practically dormitories for farm workers.
Is it barbarous? New York City is the safest large city in America, and it is the city in which the middle class is effectively priced out of owning cars. No giant city has less-scary people than Tokyo. We will need to adapt... but America has always redefined itself while keeping personal liberty intact.
That's not the whole story, but all in all we need to keep the world's prime farmland from being inundated. We cannot be sure whether desertification will be a big problem; if that occurs along with inundation of lands on which live hundreds of millions of peasant farmers who make the food for the bulk of the world's industrial workers then we are cooked.
Eric: I think that I can draw some conclusions from history. Desperate people are more likely to fall for nationalistic demagogues, whether Donald Trump or Adolf Hitler. If Donald Trump is a genital yeast infection, Adolf Hitler was full-blown HIV-AIDS. At one time a general warning was that if you got a genital yeast infection you had done something that could have easily infected you with HIV/AIDS. America is not safe from someone who might promise to cull people that many potential voters see as "vermin". The more stress that people feel, the more likely they are to fall for some vile person who claims to have a cure for everyone. This can as easily be from the Left (the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela) as from the Right (Viktor Orban in Hungary). Hugo Chavez distorted social democracy, which usually has a good reputation on human rights and civil liberties, into an authoritarian order; Orban did much the same with "Christian democracy", which also has a good reputation. Chavez was not a commie and Orban was not a fascist.
If you were to ask me which country now has the most solid liberal democracy, I would put the Federal Republic of Germany near the top -- yet its two main parties are the Christian Social Union (Christian Democracy) and the Social Democratic Party (self explanatory). Political parties can go bad, as the "Party of Lincoln" showed when it became the Party of Donald Trump. Imagine a country in which advantages such as college education, faster advancement in military rank, and loans for housing and small businesses go those who as kids who got indoctrinated in a politicized youth group. Imagine finding that the only valid sources of news are those that glorify the Leader. Imagine that government-sponsored militias are the exemplar of "gun rights". Imagine that anyone who runs afoul of the Administration becomes a helpless pariah who risks losing a job with real pay... you know, you made a political joke and you have gone from being a veterinarian to being a farm laborer or you have gone from being an engineer to a clerk at a convenience store. Imagine that the government has a narrow range of options for music, video, and print. Imagine that reading material contrary to the views of the leadership is highly restricted if not destroyed (whether burned in a perverse ceremony or pulped for toilet paper). If a preacher or a teacher Imagine that if you are a member of a minority ethnic or religious group that you can suddenly become the target of a hateful campaign. What is done to pedophiles might be done instead to Chinese-Americans or to Muslims. If you are a teacher or a preacher, then you toe the political line or you go to prison.
We are not there, but the 45th President made baby steps in those directions. He nearly got re-elected, and he still claims that he would have been re-elected except for cheating in some large cities. If he is one of the few who harbor such a delusion, then we are safe. But if millions believe this, then we are not safe. Few people are members of sieg-heil Nazi or ideologically-similar cross-burning cults (or is it Kross-burning Kults?), and few Americans believe that Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin offer a reliable way into a glorious future.
I cannot deny that those who, like Classic X'er in some other threads, are Americans. Many Americans are like him, especially among white rural folks who know few people unlike themselves. Where those people dominate, people who really are liberals know enough to avoid deprecating Trump. I can say this: if one lives on the Reservation, then one knows that one is not like everyone else. If one lives in the overwhelmingly-Hispanic areas of the Lower Rio Grande Valley one knows that as one goes farther north that there will be be more people who look very different. If one is a Muslim in Dearborn or a Jew in Kiryas Joel, one knows that one lives in a largely-Christian country. If gay -- you know that it is wise to make sure to not make gay passes at people scared of homosexuality. People like Classic X'er and Donald Trump are delighted to divide others unlike him into factions hostile to each other. The good thing is that it isn't working! The bad thing is that I need the qualifier "yet".
We are at the stage at which we can meet the need for all manufactured goods (including foodstuffs) in far fewer hours than the 40 or so that were deemed necessary in the 1930's. We are going to need smaller living spaces so that we are not tempted to buy, buy, and buy stuff. Many of us already rely upon the Internet for subscription news, video, and music. Many of us are at the position in which we must ask ourselves not so much whether something would be nice to have as what we really need to get rid of to make space for it.
We will need to change our diets to get tasty simulations of expensive food. I find fake crab meet as tasty as the real stuff. I might have some tonight. The technology for simulating meat and fish is nigh.
The single-family home is an anachronism. Yes, I know -- it is good for giving kids the privacy appropriate for going into their own private worlds and unleashing their imaginations and curiosity. The only single-family homes will be in rural areas, and even at that the corporate farmers are squeezing out the small farmers so that what were once single-family farmhouses are practically dormitories for farm workers.
Is it barbarous? New York City is the safest large city in America, and it is the city in which the middle class is effectively priced out of owning cars. No giant city has less-scary people than Tokyo. We will need to adapt... but America has always redefined itself while keeping personal liberty intact.
That's not the whole story, but all in all we need to keep the world's prime farmland from being inundated. We cannot be sure whether desertification will be a big problem; if that occurs along with inundation of lands on which live hundreds of millions of peasant farmers who make the food for the bulk of the world's industrial workers then we are cooked.
Eric: I think that I can draw some conclusions from history. Desperate people are more likely to fall for nationalistic demagogues, whether Donald Trump or Adolf Hitler. If Donald Trump is a genital yeast infection, Adolf Hitler was full-blown HIV-AIDS. At one time a general warning was that if you got a genital yeast infection you had done something that could have easily infected you with HIV/AIDS. America is not safe from someone who might promise to cull people that many potential voters see as "vermin". The more stress that people feel, the more likely they are to fall for some vile person who claims to have a cure for everyone. This can as easily be from the Left (the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela) as from the Right (Viktor Orban in Hungary). Hugo Chavez distorted social democracy, which usually has a good reputation on human rights and civil liberties, into an authoritarian order; Orban did much the same with "Christian democracy", which also has a good reputation. Chavez was not a commie and Orban was not a fascist.
If you were to ask me which country now has the most solid liberal democracy, I would put the Federal Republic of Germany near the top -- yet its two main parties are the Christian Social Union (Christian Democracy) and the Social Democratic Party (self explanatory). Political parties can go bad, as the "Party of Lincoln" showed when it became the Party of Donald Trump. Imagine a country in which advantages such as college education, faster advancement in military rank, and loans for housing and small businesses go those who as kids who got indoctrinated in a politicized youth group. Imagine finding that the only valid sources of news are those that glorify the Leader. Imagine that government-sponsored militias are the exemplar of "gun rights". Imagine that anyone who runs afoul of the Administration becomes a helpless pariah who risks losing a job with real pay... you know, you made a political joke and you have gone from being a veterinarian to being a farm laborer or you have gone from being an engineer to a clerk at a convenience store. Imagine that the government has a narrow range of options for music, video, and print. Imagine that reading material contrary to the views of the leadership is highly restricted if not destroyed (whether burned in a perverse ceremony or pulped for toilet paper). If a preacher or a teacher Imagine that if you are a member of a minority ethnic or religious group that you can suddenly become the target of a hateful campaign. What is done to pedophiles might be done instead to Chinese-Americans or to Muslims. If you are a teacher or a preacher, then you toe the political line or you go to prison.
We are not there, but the 45th President made baby steps in those directions. He nearly got re-elected, and he still claims that he would have been re-elected except for cheating in some large cities. If he is one of the few who harbor such a delusion, then we are safe. But if millions believe this, then we are not safe. Few people are members of sieg-heil Nazi or ideologically-similar cross-burning cults (or is it Kross-burning Kults?), and few Americans believe that Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin offer a reliable way into a glorious future.
I cannot deny that those who, like Classic X'er in some other threads, are Americans. Many Americans are like him, especially among white rural folks who know few people unlike themselves. Where those people dominate, people who really are liberals know enough to avoid deprecating Trump. I can say this: if one lives on the Reservation, then one knows that one is not like everyone else. If one lives in the overwhelmingly-Hispanic areas of the Lower Rio Grande Valley one knows that as one goes farther north that there will be be more people who look very different. If one is a Muslim in Dearborn or a Jew in Kiryas Joel, one knows that one lives in a largely-Christian country. If gay -- you know that it is wise to make sure to not make gay passes at people scared of homosexuality. People like Classic X'er and Donald Trump are delighted to divide others unlike him into factions hostile to each other. The good thing is that it isn't working! The bad thing is that I need the qualifier "yet".
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.