We really need a new progressive movement in America

Great Debates
122

Of course they do; that’s the whole problem. Prices went up because of Mid-East troubles, because commodity traders bid them up. You are parsing words; you know what I mean. Parsing words is just a delay and obstruction tactic by someone who doesn’t want to admit that things need to be changed.

I wasn’t talking about the market, however free it is. I was talking about free-market policies. Wasn’t that clear? Pay attention please.

I don’t need to be an expert on commodity trading to know it isn’t necessary (since many things are traded without it) and that it is ripping us off with prices that have nothing to do with cost or demand.

I already did; public utilities. Again, you’re not paying attention. You just assume I am silly and don’t read what I write.

Why do you ask these irrelevant questions? Other countries are already leaping ahead of us in these fields. But fossil fuel companies exist in all these countries too; it takes time to overcome their pressure and the inertia of doing what has already been done; just like on this board it is hard to break through the inertia of people who think economic activities have to be carried out forever the way they are being done today.

123

That’s not a big problem. Certain standards of support can be made, like signatures on a petition, or votes in the previous election.

No, it’s a system where those with lots of money DO NOT decide who runs for office.

124

They don’t need to make their obscene profits. If we force them to be cut, instead of adding to them through tax breaks and subsidies, we won’t have to pay so much. If they are already making obscene profits, there’s no reason to assume they will have to charge more to get money from another source, if the first source is cut off.

It’s not all that complicated either, and it won’t happen if we sit around and worry that fixing it will cause some disruptive effects. Ruining the planet has already been far more “disruptive,” and it will get much more so. Some people will have to switch jobs, because oil companies are too stupid to convert on their own. That is their own fault. We should not be held hostage to the convenience of a few fossil fuel company CEOs. That’s really the only thing that will be disrupted by this shift.

125

Reading this thread has been maddening. Eric the Green, I’m going to take a guess that you don’t like the current group of Republicans. It’s one thing to disagree with someone on policy positions, but the Republicans have gone far beyond that with their behavior and rhetoric and the way they practice politics. I would agree with that completely. They disgust me, and I find it troubling that they have so much support.

Here are some specific Republican behaviors that really upset me. I have a feeling you’ll agree, but I don’t want to put words in your mouth.

[ul]
[li]Disparaging individuals or whole groups of people because they disagree politically. “Liberal” is used like a slur. “San Francisco values”. Pat Robertson saying natural disasters happen because of gays and lesbians and feminists. Sarah Palin and her “Real Americans”. How many times did we hear during the Bush years that disagreeing with him or the wars was treason, or providing aid and comfort to our enemies? Grassley calling Obama “stupid”.[/li][li]Instead of arguing from a set of facts, just asserting their gut or their god is right. Abstinence-based sex education. opposing gay marriage.[/li][li]Not considering the consequences of their policies. The Iraq war has to be the big one here. It’s been a disaster, and one that could easily have been avoided. The debt ceiling manufactured crisis is another. The Bush tax cuts could fit here too.[/li][/ul]

But here’s the thing. You are doing the exact same things. If the Republicans shouldn’t be treated seriously because of their behavior, then why should you be?

Talking about the virtues of “right-thinking people” (aka people who agree with what you’re saying) is totally the Sarah Palin “Real Americans” move - people who disagree with you must be wrong-thinking. You’ve directly called half the country idiots, uninformed, and lazy. If you want to convince people to join your cause, insulting them starts you off on the wrong foot.

You’ve said several times that the solutions are simple and obvious, that everyone knows that needs to be done. You’ve also said several times that you are “right” and just left it at that with nothing to back it up. If you want to convince people to join your cause, just asserting that you’re right isn’t going to do it.

You’ve been asked a lot of legitimate questions about things you’ve said, and people have pointed out possible negative consequences of your ideas. Instead of answering the questions or demonstrating how the pros outweigh the cons, you wave it all away by calling people obstructionists and say that the things just need to be done. It sure would have been nice if Bush thought through what would happen after taking out Saddam though, wouldn’t it? Asking “how are we going to pay for two wars when we have this giant tax cut” just seems prudent doesn’t it, and not obstructionist? It cuts both ways. Just thinking about this tactically, you’re trying to win people to your side. That means they’re not on your side right now. They’re bound to have questions about your policies and how they would work. Right? They shouldn’t just take you at your word with no evidence; that’s what’s wrong with Fox News, right?

126

And how do people organize petition drives if they’re not allowed to raise money?

Basically, the only way to become a “major candidate”, and thus be allowed to have funding, is to already be one. Catch-22.

127

This would appear to be a system that utterly disenfranchises minorities.

If homosexuals, for example, can’t get the prerequisite number of signatures on a petition, they are not allowed to campaign against DADT during an election. Is that correct?

Such a system would seem to be horrific and guarantee the tyranny of the majority. Under the present system, if a group is passionate about about a single issue that most of the population are ambivalent about, that group can sway policy by promising to campaign on that issue. This gives representation to groups, such as homosexuals, that make up a tiny percentage of the population yet have group specific issues that the rest of the populace largely don’t give a shit about.

Under your system they lose that one protection from tyranny. By requiring that Male homosexuals, who constitute just one person in 200, obtain 1% of the electorate to sign a petition on their behalf before they can begin campaigning and lobbying, you have doomed their cause to failure.

Of course maybe you propose that a group can campaign and lobby with 0.5% of the electorate’s signatures. But in that case we are right back to the problem that Smapti highlighted: anybody who wants to can readily campaign and has to be given government funding to run that campaign.

How precisely do people with lots of money prevent me from running for office?

So you are proposing that the state implement a profit ceiling? Is that correct?

Ahh, yeah, there is. The first source is free. There is no way they can get free money from another source without reducing profits.

By combing the removal of subsidy with a profit ceiling you have also set an investment ceiling. There is no longer any advantage to investing in the most efficient and profitable businesses, and that includes share trading. That is guaranteed to result in charges to consumers being increased.

This isn’t graduate economics. Once a business reaches your profit ceiling, there is no longer any advantage in increasing productivity. Productivity will stagnate leading to a decreased supply and increased costs.

It is far more complicated than your understanding of it.

So you are blaming an illiterate Mexican immigrant for losing her job due to your scheme. As though she has some control over the long term plans of the oil company he works for.

Sure, she’ll be out a job once you implement your scheme, that is her own fault

Nice.

128

Or, maybe you just aren’t very good at convincing rich people they should be poor so that some arbitrary group of poor people will be slightly less poor?

129

No, I think he’s talking about the tendency of people with wealth and power to hold onto it as long as possible. It takes about a hundred pounds of carefully sculpted straw to turn it into what you said. But you don’t stop there, you toss in buzzwords for flavor.

For instance, this: “…some arbitrary group of poor people…”. Nice slur, “arbitrary”, it brings tones of unreasonable and pointless classification, but is supported by sheer vapor. Any particular arbitrary group you have in mind? Armenian-Americans? Left handed people? Gingers? Or did you just sling that in there to give it a little extra sting without any risk of substance?

130

Did anyone say they need to? They will continue to try to.

There’s every reason to assume they will charge more to maintain profits. That’s what happens when subsidies are removed. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=costs+rise+after+subsidy+withdrawal

You have a remarkable gift for oversimplification. I’m not disagreeing with any of your points on the environmental impact of the prevailing regime - but killing off the oil companies doesn’t just impact ‘some’ of their employees - it impacts everyone.
Where is the power to run your computer, heat your home, run your fridge coming from? How did the food in your cupboards, the clothes on your back, the clean drinking water in your kitchen come into existence? How does your workplace, your local police department, your local hospital function?

131

Eric, if your debut performance is any indication, you’re gonna save me a whole lot of typing. Pip, pip, good show, that, carry on. And welcome to the Monkey House.

132

Yes, that’s quite apparent.

Exactly. If they were so obvious, they would have been adopted. But they haven’t been adopted. Therefore they are not as obvious as you seem to think.

This is exactly the opposite of true. Your proposals are too vague even to discuss.

Responding to the suggestion that banning the oil business might be deleterious to the economy by saying the government needs to do things for us shows, as I said, a severe lack of understanding of how things actually work.

Regards,
Shodan

133

I probably ought to clarify - I’m not saying the current dependence on fossil fuels is a good thing - only that any proposed solution that begins “It’s simple - we just need to…” is very likely to be deeply flawed.

134

Actually, Eric is dead right on this point and you are dead wrong. There are a number of things we clearly and obviously need to do that we have not done. For example:

  1. Cut down our use of oil and move to less polluting energy source. There’s only so much oil in the world, we are having to drill deeper and deeper to get it, we WILL run out and LONG before that happens, the price will go through the fricking roof. Can’t say exactly when, but it’s coming, so let’s get moving, cause it could be coming sooner rather than later. You are stupid if you do not understand this. You are also stupid if you do not see why it’s wise to move to less polluting sources, considering all the data on global warming.

  2. End corporate control of the US Government. To put it simply, both the Republicans and Democrats are wholly owned subsidiaries of the financial industry, because Congressmen now need to seriously whore for money in order to campaign, and the financial industry has all the money. It’s obvious we need to change that if we ever want to call ourselves a democracy without putting ironic quotes around the word again. Sure, all sorts of difficulties lie ahead, but anyone who challenges this notion is either in the pay of the finance industry, or seriously addled.

  3. Get the middle class prosperous again. This will probably mean government pressure to raise wages, as all those productivity increases everyone has been crowing about have meant that employers don’t need so many employees, and hence have not been hiring or raising wages, either. if you think giving money to the rich will result in economic benefits “trickling down” to the middle class, you are stupid and ignorant, or as is the case with most elected Republicans, corrupt.

There are several other similarly obvious points I won’t bother to make right now, thing is, Eric is RIGHT. There are a lot of things that clearly, obviously, could be done and need to be done to get America on the right track, and it’s not some hazy inability to see the solution that’s the problem. Hell, even the majority of Republicans agree with most of these points!

The only point where I part way with Eric is that I see a large part of the problem is caused by our corrupt public officials.

And no problem with calling people stupid on this board. The stupid people get their information from Fox News and the mainstream media, who are pretty much in the business of keeping them stupid nowadays. They don’t read this message board.

135

Eric is (well, mostly) right - it just sounds like he thinks it’s terribly easy to do the things he’s right about.

The human race has pretty much painted itself into a corner in many ways at this point - and getting out of that predicament is going to be painful whether we choose to do it, or wait for circumstances to impose it upon us. We’ll do the latter, I expect.

136

[QUOTE=Eric the Green]
Of course they do; that’s the whole problem. Prices went up because of Mid-East troubles, because commodity traders bid them up. You are parsing words; you know what I mean. Parsing words is just a delay and obstruction tactic by someone who doesn’t want to admit that things need to be changed.
[/QUOTE]

No, they don’t. You are what we commonly refer to as ‘wrong’. Speculators speculate (I mean, duh) on what they THINK the price will be in the future on a given commodity. They base their expectation on what they think that price might be in the future on various factors. In the case of oil, little things like ‘will there be a war in the region’, or ‘will Iran stop selling oil to Europe’ or ‘will production levels start to come back up in Libya during this time period’…to name but a few. They absolutely don’t set the price.

Going further, OPEC, the oil cartel, doesn’t even ‘set’ the price…not technically. They set production, which INFLUENCES the price. They have a much larger impact on the price than ‘speculators’ do.

I’m sorry that you think I’m parsing your words as some sort of obstruction tactic (:p), and that by doing so it points out some really basic flaws and misunderstanding you have about how all this stuff actually works. If you want to remain ignorant of this stuff, and continue to make it clear you ARE ignorant about even the basics, then that’s your lookout…it’s not exactly going to make folks all warm and fuzzy about your ideas for radical change, however, if it’s clear you don’t have a clue what you are talking about. Learning even the basics of how this stuff ACTUALLY works would give you several insights into what could or should be done to ‘fix’ a lot of the problems and issues you are wanting to discuss, what regulations make sense and which ones wouldn’t work or would be counter productive…or even destructive…to what you are trying to achieve.

You don’t know what you are talking about, and you want me to pay attention? You said ‘The speculators can charge anything they want now’, which is what I was responding to in the part you quoted. If you want to talk about free market policies, then we can certainly talk about them, though I’m not exactly sanguine about your understanding of that topic either.

So no…it wasn’t clear…you made a statement that speculators can charge anything they want now…which is a ridiculous statement, good only for laughs. If they could charge anything they wanted then THEY WOULD DO SO. They don’t because they can’t…because ‘the market’, which is basically you, me and everyone and every entity that buys stuff, wouldn’t pay any arbitrary price set at the whim of speculators. You wouldn’t pay that one billioncagillionsccillionshoobydofentillon yen for that barrel of oil.

I’m not saying you have to be an expert…I’m say you need to understand the basics to be able to talk about this stuff and not sound like an idiot who doesn’t know a god damned thing. You don’t know even the basics, and you are making assertions about solving all our problems. No one but someone who has your same political leanings and ALSO is ignorant about even the basics of how this stuff works is going to listen to you. A lot of intelligent liberals or progressives who DO know the basics are going to dismiss you out of hand, even if they generally agree with your political world view…and you aren’t going to understand why they are dismissing you until you take the time to learn the basis about the subjects you are expounding on and giving ‘solutions’ to ‘fix’ the ‘problems’.

:stuck_out_tongue: So, your example of price fixing boils down to ‘public utilities’. I guess I wasn’t paying attention, as I couldn’t believe that this was the sum total of the evidence being brought to bear to support your conclusion there. You can be sure that after this post I’ll be paying even less attention…thanks for helping me out there. Wouldn’t want to waste my time.

They weren’t irrelevant…I was trying (in vain) to get you to think and use your mind. Basically, your assertion here boils down to a conspiracy theory…a GLOBAL conspiracy theory…by the big oil companies to keep people using oil instead of changing to electrical or fossil fuels. And to fix this vast conspiracy is to have the government, by fiat, force a switch to non-fossil fuels based transport. Is that a good summary of what you are getting at, or did I fail to pay attention again to your sketchy plan? I mean you want to ‘Make fuel efficiency standards so high that only electric cars (or at first, hybrids) can meet them’. Would this be only for new cars or for all cars? Let’s assume you aren’t completely crazy and say it’s only for new cars. Which leads to…how would manufacturers meet the demand and produce all those electric cars or hybrid cars (and only top end high mileage hybrid cars, since many non-hybrid cars get better gas mileage than some hybrids)? How would people be able to afford these new cars? What effect would this have on the poor and middle class who might not be able to afford to spend $30-40k on a new car?

And that’s just to start…there are myriad questions, none of which are ‘irrelevant’ that could, should and would be asked about such a ridiculous plan before anyone would take it seriously. And answering with vague assertions of a global conspiracy while demonstrating a keen lack of anything resembling even basic knowledge on the topic is less than ideal in getting anyone to listen to what you are trying to say…at least getting anyone who has even a passing understanding of things like commodities trading, economics, hybrid and electric vehicles, the free market…and any of the other subjects you’ve chosen to not only discuss but to attempt to put forth (vague, to be sure) ‘solutions’ to the ‘problems’.

It’s hard to solve anything if you don’t even understand the basics.

-XT

137

Actually, calling other posters stupid is a problem. Don’t do it again.

138

I agree with most of this, but I do not want one more third party on the left that competes with the Democrats.

As long as most Americans like and admire the rich, and as long as many imagine that they will get rich before they die I do not see this platform winning national elections.

139

My apologies, I was using a third-person sort of “you” … no offense was intended. When I said “no problem with calling people stupid on this board” it was because, as I later stated, I don’t think stupid people read this board, hence no posters were targeted by my post.

140

The entire OP is a great big straw man so why don’t you step off?

But if you like more specifics:

We have that already. We don’t live in a laissez faire capitalist economy. What else would you like to mix it with?

Vague and meaningless. Define “need”?

You can’t take money out of politics because politics and economics are intrinsically tied together.

Again, vague and meaningless. There are already a shitload of Federal regulatory agencies and laws. And what is it about “corporate personhood” you think you would like to change?

Contradictory. There is an inherent conflict between providing security and surveillance and freedom. Too much of one results in a police state and too much of the other results in anarchy.

Also contradictory. The religeous right also has freedom of speech and religion. You should be supporting First Amendment sepration of church and state.

Overly simplistic.

Contradicts your views on “corporate welfare” as it pertains to the clean energy industry.

Helps them do what? Protect them from what? Are you talking about social safety nets?

More corporate welfare.

Not to mention if you make transportation costs cheaper, we will just burn through fossil fuels more quickly.

We already have a progressive tax structure.

Government needs money to do the things we need it to do.

Why should my taxes pay for that stuff?

141

Bolding mine.

HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! Think again. I’ve been reading this board for a little over 5 years. :smiley: