When the resulting cry is “everyone here is wrong but me”, you might want to rethink your logic. In the entire 6 pages of this thread, I have yet to see any factual evidence to back any, any, of your claims.
Try it.
Oh absolutely, but one that an honest authoritarian would not see as an error in debate.
Well there is evidence that government fiat can make things happen. If we step away from electric cars or a moment,Brazil has become energy independent thanks to government mandated use of biofuels. Kinda makes you wonder how things would be in the US if the government had made a similar push for electric cars. But I know, being rid of fossil fuels and our dependence on oil.
[QUOTE=Eric the Green]
Baloney. People failed to require them to develop and make them.
[/QUOTE]
I…don’t even know what to say to this, its so silly and full of misconception. I’ll leave it at companies did develop and attempt to produce the things, and the market (a.k.a. people) weren’t interested in buying them. Certainly, if you could have convinces a lot of Americans (or Europeans, or Japanese, or Indians, etc etc etc) to pay a lot more money for a vehicle that performed a lot worse than ICE technology vehicles then companies would have been happy to build the things. But people, mainly not being idiots, didn’t want costly vehicles that performed worse than the cars they were already driving. Odd, I know.
I have driven a Tesla…have you? And yeah, it works great. For $100,000 you can get a car with the performance characteristics of a mid-range sports car. And that’s the BEST AEV on the market today. The top of the line, that gets something like 200 miles on a charge and can do that going 80-100mph (this is all from memory)…something a car costing anywhere from $60,000-80,000 LESS can do. Probably why you don’t see a lot of high end Tesla (or even their lower end) cruising about, ehe?
It’s not a matter of just building more and the price will magically come down to make them competitive. See, companies can do this thing called ‘cost projection’, where they can make predictions about ‘if we sell X million of these things then the costs to manufacture due to scale will be Y’ and can create a plan to take advantage of that. But the costs for AEV don’t scale downward at the high end because, well, the technology Tesla is using relies and exotic materials like those rare earth metals I tried to discuss with you earlier and that you claimed (still no cite) that the US also produces in quantity. AFAIK, China and, IIRC Brazil.
I did…and I said it was full of shit (actually, I said ‘horseshit’ to be accurate). And that’s when I posed that link to Motor Trend to see if you’d bother reading through it to fight your ignorance. Your link was the equivalent of a 9/11 Truther posting a link to Loose Change while mine would have been to Popular Mechanics, debunking the ridiculous. If you don’t believe Motor Trend then simply Google ‘Debunking GM killed electric car’ and check out some of the links for yourself.
Try reading what I actually write. I didn’t say electric cars are or were a fantasy. Again, if you are going to debate in bad faith then there is no point in continuing this farce. You had several days to respond and then you respond with this tripe?
I’m sorry, but there is so much wrong and inaccurate here that it’s making my head hurt…and really, what’s the point? I’m not fighting your ignorance here, since you don’t WANT to have your ignorance fought. And my guess is most everyone else reading along can look at the above and pick it apart in their sleep.
If ‘market forces’ jumped up on your leg and started humping it you wouldn’t know what they were. Again, this gets back to a basic misunderstanding on your part of how any of this, even the simplest aspect, works. You don’t even know enough to understand that you ARE positing a conspiracy theory.
That’s both funny and a bit sad, to be honest. When you want to learn some stuff and then come back and debate I’m sure there will be plenty of 'dopers willing to do so. Honestly, I don’t see any benefit in continuing this except to make fun of you…and I generally stop feeling good about then when it’s clear that the person I’m discussing this stuff really, truly doesn’t get it, and probably never will.
-XT
Not really. Biofuels are a much easier transitional technology than batteries. The main reason Brazil produces more biofuels than the US isn’t about the oil industry, it’s about the sugar industry.
And like I said, Sweden (arguably one of the if not the most “progressive” countries in the world) has been making cars for decades, but not electric cars. With so many progressive countries in the world and no electric cars until recently, it’s absurd to claim that the US didn’t produce one earlier because the government wasn’t “progressive” enough.
Hmm. How to proceed?
Let’s start with this: if I now provide a site from a respected university’s English or Philosophy department that supports my assertion, would I be guilty of the logical fallacy of an Appeal to Authority?
Feel free to offer any reasoning you like, but make the first word either “Yes” or “No”.
We may not be in much disagreement here. I’ll bet we agree that regulations that require transparency in the markets are a good thing generally as they engender trust in the markets. And that we need to get Glass-Steagall or something like it reinstated so bankers can’t gamble with depositor’s money.
Where we might disagree is that I think CDOs are a bad idea and should be legislated out of existence. I realize that they were intended as a way of protecting against losses in conventional deals (such as selling or buying a mortgage-backed security) but they’ve been proven to have waaaaaay too much potential for disaster because they can increase the risk on deals so greatly.
Another potential area of disagreement would be that I think the government has a legitimate interest in keeping the finance industry structurally sounds and set up in a way that it contributes to other parts of the economy. Right now, for example, the derivatives market (CDOs are a kind of derivative, financial instruments that are so named because their value is derived from other financial instruments (see: mortgage backed securities) is 20 FRICKING TIMES the size of the ENTIRE WORLD ECONOMY. Cite.
What that tells me is that the financial industry is playing with Monopoly money, but when things go south as they inevitably will, those poor butthurt too big to fail financial firms will come to us expecting us to trade our real money that we earned by the sweat of our brows for their monopoly money so they can stay in yachts and polo ponies.
It’s insanely stupid, but so long as Wall Street owns the government (which is ANOTHER problem with our outsize financial industry) things are not gonna change.
Government policies that direct Wall Street firms to reinvest their “hard-earned” capital in companies that actually make things and provide non-financial services to people, rather than higher-yielding but based on nothing much financial instruments, would be an EXCELLENT way to jump start the economy.
I’d like to see the bottom rung of poverty for any individual be a room, enough food to eat, enough electricity to stay warm, and basic cable Internet so they can access the internet and learn things. And view porn, of course, as that may keep the number of sexual assaults down. Our present social safety net is a collection of tatters and rags. No health insurance, you go to the emergency room if you get really sick. No guarantees of having shelter or enough to eat. I’m REALLY surprised that robberies and violent crimes are so low in America. We are getting much better treatment from the poor than we deserve.
Missed the edit window, but would like to add that I figure you know what CDOs and derivatives are, but everyone reading this thread might not know.
Not necessarily. If your cite contains supporting information, arguments, etc., then no, because they can be examined on their merits, just like any other argument. if your cite is just that “Ben Bernanke is a wise economist and agrees with me about the economy” without any further details, then yes, argument to authority. If your cite is, “Ben Bernanke argues that we have to shore up the big banks because their colllapse would ruin the financial system because banks are on the hook for mortgage-backed securities that are the basis for many CDOs,” then no, not an appeal to authority, because we can examine that assertion.
Thusly, “people over 20 have examined these issues and are far above these freshmen screeds in wisdom” with no further backup is an appeal to authority.
What he said.
Of course nobody ever said that.
What was said was that people over 20 who have examined these issues are far above these freshmen screeds.
But hey, if the only way you can argue is through blatant strawmen, then go ahead.
Whatever floats your boat.
I agree with pretty much all of this. And if “progressives” limited their ire to bankers and financiers who make money by manipulating a system created almost entirely by government interference in the first place, I’d be okay with that.
But they don’t. Progressives rail against “the rich” as a single, monolithic block, as if success and wealth are contemptible in and of themselves. And I detest that attitude.
I don’t know any bankers. But by virtue of my career, I know a lot of people who became very wealthy building real companies that sell real products to real people. Mostly scientists and engineers. These are all quiet people who stay out of the spotlight, but some of them are very wealthy - e.g. low hundreds of millions of dollars. They are generous, and good to their employees, and have undeniably made the world a better place.
When I hear people complaining about “the rich”, I think about these people I know. In my world, the bankers are the exception. “The rich” are made up of people who worked hard and got what they deserved, and provided careers and lesser riches for tens of thousands of other people in the process.
I know a few rich lawyers, and a bunch of idle rich who inherited money, but they’re inconsequential. An unavoidable side effect of a system that, in general, works well, and has produced the greatest advances in science, technology, and quality of life that humanity has ever experienced.
I also know a number of people, some of which call themselves “progressive”, who are actually rather mediocre. They are lazy, and bad at their jobs, and yet they think that they are entitled to the fruits of other people’s labor merely by virtue of existing. And I can hardly resist my contempt when I meet these people in person and have to listen to them rail against “the rich”.
Okay, now you’ve lost me. Subsidized cable internet and pornography for the destitute? Are you serious?
Sure. Well, not SPECIFICALLY pornography. Just don’t BLOCK porn, as I’m SURE the bluenoses would, if given half a chance. Here’s why. Basically, Internet access goes up, rape goes down, across the board. Seems like it’s an excellent crime preventer. Add to that the greater access to job listings, ability to communicate with employers, etc., Internet access is a GREAT investment. And I strongly suspect it would promote social cohesion s well. Probably would not cost a hell of a lot. Hell, make those cable monopolies that are keeping us just 26th in the world in terms of Internet access speeds pay for it. They have the money.
Do we have to pay for a computer for them, too?
Personally, if someone is such a loser that they A) Can’t find work to pay for their own porn, and B) Can’t resist raping someone without access to pornography, I don’t mind footing the tax bill to stick their ass in prison. I’m not going to hold out hope that buying them a computer and a cable modem is going to turn them into a productive member of society. I’m all for not letting people freeze and starve on the streets, but I don’t see any reason to subsidize their entertainment. Let them go the library if they need internet.
On a separate note - I’ve seen that little statistic about the US’s average internet access speed a lot. It’s meaningless bullshit. The only real advantage of super-high-speed internet is fast download of high-definition video. All other internet traffic is orders of magnitude smaller in comparison. We’re not going to fall behind economically because people living in Bumfuck, Kansas can’t watch Netflix. A slow connection works just fine for actual productive uses of the internet - high speed just makes for better (or quicker) entertainment.
Sorry, I already know all I would ever learn from you. Maybe others seem to have more luck with you; so be it. There was certainly nothing in this post to respond to.
To bastardize John Keats: Money is truth, truth money - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Once you come to terms with that, you would be surprised how many things start to make sense. You don’t even need to abandon your moral or ethical conscience; you just rest it on the foundation of the marketplace.
[QUOTE=Eric the Green]
Sorry, I already know all I would ever learn from you. Maybe others seem to have more luck with you; so be it. There was certainly nothing in this post to respond to.
[/QUOTE]
I’m sorry (for you) as well. You can lead a horse to water, but it’s more problematic to try and beat it to death midstream while trying to check it’s teeth to see if it’s a good gift. If the stream is really fast, you might not be able to change to a new horse either, and then where will you be?? Up the creek without a saddle…
Ado. Hopefully you will find more fertile grounds in your next debate, since it seems no one really wants to play with you anymore here.
-XT
I agree strongly with OP that a stronger progressive movement is needed in America. I also agree with his detractors that OP showed much ignorance in the thread and, worse, unwillingness to learn.
I’ve not followed the Occupy Wall Street movement but Googling just now I find only an unfocused call for revolution. Inchoate confusion may have been healthy early on, but OWS seems a failure if this is all they have by now.
It’s easy to find a group of Americans who all agree major changes are needed. Less easy is to find any within such a group who agree on which changes are needed! :smack:
So you’ve got all these young, healthy, unemployable people sitting in rooms with nothing to do, and you’re willing to subsidize their housing, their food, their clothing, but you think they should spend their time at the LIBRARY? You REALLY think that will HAPPEN? Here’s what I think will happen: they will hang out on the street and drink and take drugs a lot. Probably a lot would even if they had video games, a computer and Internet access. Hell, the Internet access and the computer are the SMARTEST elements of this plan! You wanna just have these kids hang about? Go watch “A Clockwork Orange.” There’s your kids if you don’t give them something to do.
Not an essential part of my argument. But gotta be up to gaming speeds, at the very least.
I’m not quite sure where they’d get the money for drugs and alcohol if they can’t afford the Internet - but in any case, yeah, you’re absolutely right. There’s no reason to provide a safety net, it will just sap them of their motivation and turn them into useless deadbeats. I had a moment of liberal weakness there. Fuck them if they can’t find a job, let them starve.