This one's for the Liberals

Great Debates
21

Oh, Tejota, since you insist on making this political, perhaps you should remember which administrations signed the bills into law that made our air and water cleaner:

National Environmental Policy Act, 1970
Clear Air Act, 1971
Clean Water Act, 1971
…and the most substantial amendments to the CAA which are responsible for greatly reducing the acid rain problem, 1990

It’s not cut and dried. Environmentalism on the air and water level is a local issue, not a national one, because the problems are usually local. So national political parties are likely to be irrelevant when we’re talking about such pollution.

My present research paper for Environmental Law is on the current Bush’s “Clear Skies Initiative”. Let me assure you, the impact is far from certain, but it isn’t necessarily bad. The Bush changes would allow some older plants to make changes to clean up their plants without having to meet the more strenuous requirements of being considered a “new source.” Without this, many plants might decide not to change at all, because it would be economically infeasible. It might be better, from an environmentalist POV, to let the plants wither and die to be replaced with cleaner new facilities, but that’s what the environmentalist movement has been saying for 30 years and the plant owners are yet to do so. If the plant owners would rather let a dirty facility keep running than face the economic cost of replacing it, why not let it make some changes to run cleaner, changes it otherwise wouldn’t make because of the gov’t requirements. Oh, and the change in the allowable baseline emissions doesn’t even apply to power plants. If anyone’s ever interested, I can cite to the CFR and expound on all these points.

Bush may not be the environmentalist movements biggest friend, but his policies are not strictly anti-environmental. The result of these policies may even be progress in reducing pollution, if not as much progress as liberals would want.

As for the “liberal forestry policies” you think have been helping forests…you know why deforestation happens? Because forests are publicly owned. If they were privately held, there would be an economic incentive to replant for future harvests. Since they’re publicly held, you just buy logging rights, it isn’t your land, so why bother to care for it?

22

The attitude of “all or nothing”, refusing to accept a partial solution, refusing to give an inch, is common in the environmental movement. I was having this discussion Friday with my Environmental Law professor.

The problem is that sometimes the extreme policy shift you might want is so politically infeasible that you might never get it. If you’re settling for nothing short of a total solution, then the problem continues (or even worsens) while you’re holding out. If the problem is severe enough, and the consequences of letting it continue are so dire, than perhaps something is better than nothing.

If the environmentalists had refused to settle for anything less than the end of coal-fired power plants, they’d still be waiting today. Their own movement made hydroelectric problematic, and the petroleum price-spike made cleaner oil-powered plants infeasible. So the moderates in the environmental movement settled for a half-measure. Now the plants are still burning coal, but they have stack scrubbers or use low-sulfur Wyoming coal, and these measures have succeeded in greatly reducing harmful emissions. If they’d stuck to their guns, and groups like the Sierra Club and other radicals had blocked these partial solutions and continued to fight for an extreme solution, the air quality would be much worse today. Problems don’t stop existing while you look for a solution.

And knowing a few people in the labor movement, I know there are competing interests involved. I’ve read a couple cases in Environmental Law in which regulations basically made an entire industry or process economically infeasible, or even simply impossible. Entire towns have lost their jobs. The more extreme the solution, the more extreme the consequences, and not all of them will be intended.

23

Because we can’t, of course, try using a bit less power. I mean, what would happen if Wal-Mart didn’t keep it’s banks of lights blazing all night behind locked doors?

I’m not saying solutions arn’t complex. I have some pretty big beefs with the environmental movement- especially when a bunch of rich hippy kids run into third world countries and set up completely unworkable systems that end up either screwing over humans or creating more environmental damage then there was in the first place. But if you are looking for a solution that doesn’t hurt somebody in some way, your not going to find it. Until we come up with cold fusion, either we give up our excesses or sombody takes the fall for them. Just because it doesn’t happen within our borders doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen or it doesn’t matter.

24

A valid point. People cry about the rainforests but fail to realize that the reason that these countries are cutting down the rainforest is because they are trying to develop economicly. Who are we to tell them that they must live like ancient Myans and Aztecs instead of joining the 21st century?
I think that there are some people who see the glass as half full and there are some who see it half empty. One person sees a homless person and thinks “my god! What kind of world do we live in?”. The other realizes that the world is not a perfect place and that some parts of the world do not have all the benefits of the modern age and yet we are still so much better off than we were at any other time in history.

elucidator - A liberal idea or goal that cannot be implemented and only succeeds in making everyone worse off is no better and possibly much worse than the conservative viewpoint that it should never have been tried in the first place. I’ll give you an example - We could put an end to polution tomorrow if we closed down every polluting factory in the country. But for every factory that closes, there will now be an entire town without a job. Every action has a cost, regardless of how nobel the intent.

Exion - To a certain extent we do live in a gated community. I think overall the neighborhood is improving, but it is still dangerous in many places.

25

“Do you know who makes all those motherboards that your Microsoft products run on? It isn’t white folks in Seattle. Does the term “maquiladora” ring a bell? Granted, maquiladora’s arn’t completely evil, but the standard of living they provide isn’t exactly what we think of when we think of the ‘tech boom’.”

Are you sticking by your original statement about all our wealth being built on the backs of people in other countries? How about some statistics about % of motherboards built in Mexico? You don’t know much about electronics if you think this is so. Try Taiwan, China, Malaysia. But that’s hardly the point. Had the software industry not be CREATED in the US, what would those people be doing? Maybe making cheap party favors for 1/4 the salary.

As for the maquliadoras, people FLOCK to those factories. Why? Because the folks who run that country have kept it a backwater and making $10/day (or whatever) is better than they can do in the rest of the country.

26

Well again, now you’re talking about a measure which society presently views as too extreme to be politically feasible. Coercive reductions in energy usage are not viewed favorably by many people, so that’s a solution that is not likely to be attempted any time soon.

If, however, you stop subsidizing these power plants with government money, and allow the market to work as it would naturally, then the cost of energy will go up. When it goes up, energy consumers will naturally adjust by using less of it. If they don’t, then we’ll reach the plant’s maximum capacity, and they will raise prices until demand falls back down to their supply. Meanwhile, necessity being the mother of invention, we’d have the best minds working with renewed fervor on a way to get more bang for their buck, to increase energy efficiency and thus profits.

What political reality prevents you from doing coercively, you may be able to accomplish simply by withdrawing artificial influences on the energy market. I’m no fan of WalMart, in fact I despise them thoroughly and refuse to shop there, but if we start telling them they can’t run their lights at night because of energy conservation, how long is it before some gov’t official is telling me I can’t fire up my computer and log onto the SDMB at 2am, or I can’t set my timer to tape late night shows on my VCR?

(The better way to get Walmart to shut off those lights is with property rights…are those lights being on all night reducing your property values? Get an injunction. And for a novel theory, isn’t light a particle, at least some of the time? If it’s a particle, and it enters my land, that’s common law trespass to land. Sue them and make them face the economic costs of their actions, and they’ll adjust their practices accordingly, money is the only thing the Kroenkes and Lauries understand. In fact, they have so much political influence in my town that regulating them would never be successful, whereas less coercive measures have a better chance of success.)

27

Is it your contention that every country could be rich and prosperous with standards of living/salaries like the US if they were properly managed? That poor management is the primary barrier to such a world?

This seems to fly in the face of everything I ever learned about macroeconomics. Could you elaborate?

Enjoy,
Steven

28

Steven:

No, they don’t have to be properly managed, they just have to not be mismanaged. There’s a big difference. It is my contention that people, if left with enough freedom, will generally produce a prosperous society.

What have you learned about macroeconomics that says some coutries are destined to be poor? Would your macroeconomics courses have predicted that Hong Kong and Singapore would prosper? Taiwan? How about Argentina in the early part of the 20th century? Did they predict Argentina’s demise later on?

It’s not clear to me that macroeconomics has a great track record of making economic predictions. If you have some good examples, I’d be geniuinely interested in hearing them.

29

You forgot to include “pointless thread hijackers”. Oh wait. That’s you.

30

I’m not speaking of any particular macroeconomic theory, or predictions. I’m using the word in its most basic sense, the science of describing how resources map to use by consumers. As an analysis of the scarcity problem on a global scale. It is my contention that not every country has the resources, human, natural, or other, to become prosperous as the US has. I’m not speaking of Hong Kong or Singapore, or any other specific case. I’m saying there aren’t enough resources on the planet for everyone to have US, or even near-US, standards of living.

It seems to me that the US couldn’t be where it is if there were no cleap labor sources. If each of these countries we currently use to produce party favors or where we have maquiladoras were to suddenly start demanding higher rates of return for the labor of their population, what would happen to the US? Could we afford it? I don’t think we could.

I think, barring some miracle breakthrough along the lines of Star Trek’s “replicator” technology, that US standards of living simply can NOT be global because the resources simply aren’t there. It doesn’t matter how well they’re managed or how poorly they’re mismanaged. To take Iraq as an example, strip away their oil and what do they have to sell? What do they have to buy with? Educate their population and let them work in service industries? Fine, how are you going to fund the education? Run a deficit? Fine, who is going to let you purchase goods if your currency is so devalued by your massive deficit that it literally isn’t worth the paper it is printed on? The US is fairly unique because a large portion of our economy is services. Goods are produced elsewhere for the most part. The design of those goods, the marketing and distribution of those goods, those are the province of US based resources. The actual production is moving more and more frequently overseas to keep costs down.

What resources are you suggesting are being mismanaged and how could they be utilized to make these countries profitable? Remember that agriculture is an extremely low-margin business and if they start to try to compete in higher margin-businesses(such as IT) then they’re going up against the global marketplace(their internal markets just don’t have the money). Basic economic theory dictates that with limited resources you’re goint to have the “haves” and the “have-nots”. When we expand this to global scales it seems clear that the US is one of the “haves” and I just don’t see how we can avoid there being “have-nots”.

Every country has opportunities, that is true. And with good management each country could be improved somewhat, but I don’t believe the earth has the resources necessary for the US levels of per-capita wealth and standards of living to become universal.

Enjoy,
Steven

31

Facts, eh? Ooh, we’ll have some of them!

Cleaner? I think pollution samples of pristine wildernesses (the few that are left) would suggest otherwise. There’s far, far worse things than soot. Take mercury for instance…

Richer? Well I suppose that depends on how you measure such things. Want gold? Does the planet have more gold than it used to? No, didn’t think so. Are a few billion TVs fair trade for rain forests? Sorry, but the only wealth that counts is that what we can’t replace and that’s bio-diversity. And we all know what a vote winner and concern for world leaders that is.

Healthier? Again, depends on how you’d like to measure it. Figures from healthcare in the western human societies hardly give a fair representation for the entire planet.

A tiny percentage of the surface of the planet.

A few celebrity cases hardly compensate for a clearly identifiable trend of increasing extinctions.

Unfortunately the majority of forest management is still done by good old slash and burn. And who determines what’s a healthier forest? Are you confusing ‘health’ with ‘profitable’?

Unfortunately due to their proliferation they emit more pollution than ever before. Still, them being powerful makes up for that, eh?

We all need to hear the success stories, but as long as they ignore THE BIG PICTURE they all just come across as spin. Sorry, no good news here.

32

Steven:

“To take Iraq as an example, strip away their oil and what do they have to sell?”

How do you explain Hong Kong or Singapore? Tiny, tiny city-states with absolutely no resources. And they were quite poor as recently as the 1950s.

No doubt the US takes advantage of cheaper labor elsewhere. In some cases it’s a choice between mechanizing or going for cheap labor and the latter wins out. If you look at the Semiconductor industry, most of the front end mfg (wafer level, less labor intensive) is done in the US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan or Korea. The back-end mfg (package level, more labor intesive) is often done in the Filipines or Malaysia. And if you look at Korea, they started out competing in the back-end manufacturing in the 70s/80s, then leveraged that to become highly competative in the front end. Consequently, wages rose considerably. Malaysia is in the process of trying to do the same thing.

33

Steven:

“To take Iraq as an example, strip away their oil and what do they have to sell?”

How do you explain Hong Kong or Singapore? Tiny, tiny city-states with absolutely no resources. And they were quite poor as recently as the 1950s.

No doubt the US takes advantage of cheaper labor elsewhere. In some cases it’s a choice between mechanizing or going for cheap labor and the latter wins out. If you look at the Semiconductor industry, most of the front end mfg (wafer level, less labor intensive) is done in the US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan or Korea. The back-end mfg (package level, more labor intesive) is often done in the Filipines or Malaysia. And if you look at Korea, they started out competing in the back-end manufacturing in the 70s/80s, then leveraged that to become highly competative in the front end. Consequently, wages rose considerably. Malaysia is in the process of trying to do the same thing.

34

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is a port city. Over 30% of its working citizens are in trade or are in some way dependent on traffic(goods, or people) through their country. Nothing wrong with this, as I said, the US has a mostly-service based economy as well.

Still, one has to assume a limited market for such services. There is a limit to how many goods the Chinese need to import or can afford to import. Hong Kong is in direct competition with other port cities and if traffic continues to flow through Hong Kong, clearly it can not flow through other port cities. The net effect of Hong Kong’s success is to decrease the opportunities for success of other port cities in the area, regardless of how well they are managed. If another city in the area began taking business away from Hong Kong, thereby developing their own potential and getting them closer to the standards of living/earnings per capita that you say could be universal with competent management, then I can’t see how they could get this business without taking it from Hong Kong and thereby keeping Hong Kong from achieving the goals of high living standards and per-capita wealth.

Singapore is pretty similar. Mostly services(67%), although they deal more with financial, business, and other services(35%). Again, there are only so many times I need my checkbook balanced. The market which created the wealth in these countries is, by virtue of them satisfying it, denied to other countries, even if their rulers are not horribly mismanaging the country.

To give you an idea, here is the US

That is a really damn high purchasing power per capita. I don’t see that being a global reality, no matter HOW good each country’s leaders are. I believe there just plain isn’t enough to go around. I’m also quite skeptical about the ability of the planet to support the deforestation/strip mining that would be necessary to build global infrastructure to the level of the US, not to mention the fossil fuels which would be necessary to fuel these constructions.

Like I said, I have no doubts that these countries would be improved if their leaders weren’t incompetent/corrupt, but I think it is most definitely not the only problem, probably not even the primary thing keeping them down. Just a lack of opportunity because a market for their goods/services just doesn’t exist or is being filled by someone else.

Enjoy,
Steven

35

Answering the OP:
If you choose to look at how mankind deals with enviromental issues, then the answer is: Yes, we have greatly improved. To give you an example, 30 years ago in my home country, all that was needed to start a huge infrastructure project was to draft a blueprint and send it to the public office in charge of the matter. Usually they would just say “Go ahead”, without any further discussions. Today it’s not that easy. Third world countries doesn’t live by these standards, but they have to go the same steps as we did in order to get to where we are today.

And yes, our technology has improved, we are richer than ever, and we care more about “strange people far away” than we did before. Ironically, it’s also our increased wealth that has made it possible for so many people to have time and money to spare to engage in “liberal” issues.
However, if you ask the question: Does this mean that we, as humans, are doing well on this planet? - then the answer is: Not necessarily. This goes to what mtgman touched above.

Today we have a western world of 1 billion people very dependent of high consumption, and an additional 2-4 billion, mainly in the Asian/South American region, of emerging consumers striving to reach the consumption level of the west.

The point is, we all live off this planet for “free”. And we can only continue to enjoy our way of life as long as this planet got the natural resources for us to do so. Whether that’s oil, wood, metal or fertile land, as soon as we start running out it’s all downhill. Take note of the fact that I do not say that we are in trouble when our resources are all “spent”, in fact our resources will never be completely depleted. Our trouble will start when we do not have enough resources to meet overall demands (increasing demand vs. production)

This means that it’s neither population growth, nor pollution, which some day will be threatening our way of life. While they are both potensial “killers”, they will emerge later on.

The big question is: Are we on the wrong or right track today? Well, imagine the world 100 years ago. Then go forward until present time. Are there more or less natural resources available today than it was 100 years ago? Are we using more resources this year than Mother Nature manages to regenerate? With a few exceptions, we are on a spending trip, and some day we will run out of tracks.

Now excuse me, I’ll have to go out and buy something. :slight_smile:

36

This is the ‘zero-sum game’ philosophy, which is completely wrong when it comes to economics, because the economy is not a zero sum game. Wealth is created, not just distributed.

Here’s the reason why global wages are lower than U.S. wages: Because other countries are not as productive.

Why aren’t they as productive? Because they expend energy non-productive things. Because they keep destroying their infrastructures through wars and kleptocracy. Because their populations are not educated, and thus make poorer decisions. Because the lack of infrastructure makes it more expensive to build factories and keep them supplied. Because political instability and protectionism limit foreign investment.

Auto workers in the U.S. don’t make $40/hr because God smiled upon them. Nor do they make that kind of money because of unions, or ‘progressive’ laws. Auto workers make good money because they get to leverage hundreds of millions of dollars in heavy equipment, because they are part of an organization that efficiently builds assembly line goods of high quality, and because they are skilled enough to make their labor worthwhile.

Create the same conditions in other countries, and their wages will rise as well. A better example than Hong Kong might be South Korea, which was an economic basket case for a long time until it started building an infrastructure and educating its people.

37

Sam, I know it’s not zero-sum. BUT, there is a limit, surely you can agree to that? I personally think, barring great advances in technology, it is beneath the current per-capita wealth of the US.

Enjoy,
Steven

38

I agree with mssmith who are we to dictate that they cant join the rest of the world and actually start to have a reliable economy. I do think the rainforests have their place in the world, and in moderation they should be conserved, but otherwise its not our place to force them to live behind the times.

39

I guess the only reason ecology is associated with lefty wingy is because ecological concerns necessarily mean regulating business, curtailing business, and, yes, God forbid, actually interfering with business. A true Republican will squeel with porcine rage at such blasphemy.

Basicaly, you’re talking about people who would rather make money than breathe.

And, Sam are regards adopting the American “system” as a key to happiness and prosperity, it mightn’t be as universal as you seem to think.

White folks arrived here and, albeit inadvertantly, committed the single most destructive act of genocidal germ warfare ever. They found themselves in a virtually uninhabited cornucopia of natural resources…I mean everything! timber, water, iron, copper, bisimuth, fertile deltas, the whole magilla. Thousands of miles away from Europe and its wars, nothing but room to expand and every conceivable advantage known to man. You seem to think the “American way” is the source of success. I seem to think they couldn’t possibly fail.

Take a place like Haiti: miserable pisser of a place. Exhausted soil, rocky, infertile, not even deposits of guano, for chrissake. Even if we could send an elite squad chosen from the finest Chamber of Commerce in the nation to write thier constitution, they’re still fucked. In our whoop-de-doo global economy, if all you got is labor, you’re international road kill.

40

Elucidator:

Regarding your argument about the US and it’s natural resources, how about Brazil or Russia? Why aren’t they as prosperous as the US if all it takes is land and resources. And how about Singapore and Hong Kong? No resources there. None. I hate to keep harping on Singapore and HK, but come on guys-- they had NOTHING. Ports, yes, but every coutry with a coastline has ports.