The Current State of the World thread

General Discussion
381

Wow nice response. You seem intelligent. I just want to say 2 things.

I believe it shouldn’t be the schools responsibility to teach those things that I mentioned, it should come from the family (biological or otherwise). And yet you still see people exiting the education system who lack all of these things to some degree (creativity, problem solving skills, and caring for fellow people). And I believe it is because of the system that encourages negative values in order to be “successful” by their definition. Children are taught (indirectly) that being successful means having money and possessions, and that having excess is a sign of great success. They’re taught that it is a matter of seeing how much paper you can stack, and all of the glamor of popular culture. If you were really attune with the way things are in culture for young people like me, then you would know this. Half of the people my age are brainwashed, and the other half are jaded and burnt out. It is all a ripple effect, and it is all just symptoms caused by a larger problem which is the system.

And the other thing I wanted to mention is the reason why we have not yet switched to clean energy. The technology is there, right now it exists. It might be inconvenient in its current state, but it can be developed to where it can be more efficient (and definitely better for the environment). But it is not made a priority because the priority isn’t to protect the environment. Hell the priority isn’t even to give the consumers a better quality product with more sustainability. The priority is $$$. Profit. Plain and simple. So the dilemma isn’t that clean energy isn’t available or attainable, it is that the oil and energy companies are making too much money the way they’re doing things right now.

And I don’t hate the world. I love it. I’m not just a cynic anymore (I used to be). I have actually begun being more active in my community, supporting people who are trying to change things for the better, and learning as much as I can on current circumstances and solutions.

I heard some speaker somewhere the other day, and he said something along the lines that you aren’t a victim of the world. You are the world. So if this is true then whatever hope I have means that there is hope for the world. And if I have any good in me, then the world isn’t all bad.

382

Clean technology is in the early adopter stages

The technology needs to be cheaper and/or a more comparable substitute to what it is replacing before more people make the leap. Thank you money saving incentives from the state and federal government and a growing environmentally conscious consumer base for coaxing companies to making the change.

383

I will say that mandatory military service would make people much more appreciative of the supposed freedoms we have. However doing something like that is grounds for a situation that could breed the wrong ideology really fast.

Autocracy:

Authority is derived through heredity.

People have no choice in the selection of their rulers and no voice in making of the laws.

Results in arbitrariness, tyranny, and oppression.

Attitude toward property is feudalistic.

Attitude toward law is that the will of the ruler shall control, regardless of reason or consequences.

Democracy: A government of the masses.

Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of “direct” expression.

Results in mobocracy.

Attitude toward property is communistic — negating property rights.

Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.

Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.

Republic:

Authority is derived through the election by the people of public officials best fitted to represent them.

Attitude toward property is respect for laws and individual rights, and a sensible economic procedure.

Attitude toward law is the administration of justice in accord with fixed principles and established evidence, with a strict regard to consequences.

A greater number of citizens and extent of territory may be brought within its compass.

Avoids the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy.

Results in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment, and progress.

Is the “standard form” of government throughout the world.

A republic is a form of government under a constitution which provides for the election of (1) an executive and (2) a legislative body, who working together in a representative capacity, have all the power of appointment, all power of legislation, all power to raise revenue and appropriate expenditures, and are required to create (3) a judiciary to pass upon the justice and legality of their governmental acts and to recognize (4) certain inherent individual rights.

Take away any one or more of those four elements and you are drifting into autocracy. Add one or more to those four elements and you are drifting into democracy. — Atwood.

This used to be in the Military training manual.

With that said, Freedom ain’t free, but be prepared to pay for any ill actions taken to preserve that freedom.

384

Many people are not capable of cultivating your three ideals of what education is, for many potential reasons. It’s not really a matter of who is to blame for them not making it out educated, it’s just casualties of what is a cruel world. Whatever the reason, many people don’t get the help they need in order to help them succeed. But many people do get help and end up succeeding, even if it takes them a long time. Which side of the coin did I end up on? For me it’s obviously the bright and shiny side. But what if I was in a different world with much more hardships? I have no idea if I would have even lived or gone on to do anything more than menial labor at best.

I don’t disagree, society is not making it a major priority to move to sustainable energy. However there is a big push in research and development all over universities, governments, and private companies (who only want $cash$) to push forward with all the major changes required for better energy efficiency. The problem is like I said a combination of inconvenience and massive infrastructure changes required. If major companies don’t step up and take control of the renewable energy market, someone else will make them pay where it counts, perhaps later than you’d like, but it will happen.

Well I mis-judged you a bit, sorry about that.

A history lesson in Cynicism has been an interesting read for me in the past:

edit: I’d also like to point out, just because a person is not capable of all aspects of education, they can excel at other things.

385

It’s not a matter of want my friend. It’s a matter of necessity for everyone. For the future of the planet.

386

Hydrogen is much much more expensive than gas still.

Diesel is actually the cleaner and more efficient of the two gases.

Solar was absolute ass until the last couple of years iirc because we have solar panels with extreme absorption rates. (But we aren’t going to use them. Morons in Washington and Bejing want to subsidize poor efficiency solar panels making investment in superior solar panels not a desirable choice)

Geo is very limited

Recently America (lol why don’t we use this??) perfected a system which extracts thousands of gallons of methane gas from landfills, and we have developed cars which run on methane which are of comparable efficiency and in power to gas operated ones

We have in recently developed new high tech windmills which are much more efficient at generating energy, but we haven’t made them. (Car companies like GM Chrysler Ford could have refitted their power plants to mass produce these and other green tech like solar and recoup their loses, but didn’t because of political games)

In 2009 a company in Norcal developed a machine which turns compost and other organic waste into ethanol they can sell to oil companies at a fixed rate. Which means apartment buildings, houses all could pitch in to produce hybrid fuels of octane and ethanol bringing prices down and increasing efficiency.

More importantly we have nuclear reactors that use up all the radioactive material and only leave harmful waste that is dangerous for a few years rather than 200000 years.

The technology can all pay for itself really quickly and profits will be made. The thing is, time. The people of this country are not willing to sacrifice when the technology is there.

I remember when GM said around the time the Prius came out that they had been working on an electric car for some time, but where not going to release an electric car because current batteries are not efficient enough and to expensive. The Volt comes out which is superior to every electric out there, but doesn’t sell.

I think its just politcs. Not price

387

The max electric range of the Volt is ~50 miles. So without a gas hybrid engine, most reasonable electric cars are not affordable to me, because they don’t offer the mileage I require on a daily basis.

Electric car batteries are still made out of materials that get hot while charging, this means they need to cover it with steel, a heat sink if you will, but this is also bulky and heavy, reducing the amount of battery available. Reduced total range.

Batteries are also expensive and wear out over time. Need to be replaced. Next generation of batteries will be better.

Batteries currently take a long time to charge.

Hybrid or electric cars cost more than say a Honda civic.

One doesn’t really save on a Civic Hybrid. a Civic costs 16,000 to 17,000 new, a Civic hybrid costs 23,500 to 24,500 new. Interest and taxes not included, $6,500 more for a hybrid minimum.

If the Civic has 28 mpg city and 39 mpg highway, versus hybrid which has 44 mpg either way. Averaging 50/50 or 40/60 city and highway driving (given commuter conditions) is not unreasonable where I live. So that could mean 34.6 MPH with a 40/60 split. 34.6 mpg versus 44 mpg to over-come a $6,500 cover cost would take…
10,000 miles commuting per year:
10000 miles / 34.6 mpg = 289 gallons per year
10000 miles / 44 mpg = 227 gallons per year

289 gallons per year * $4.00 per gallon = $1156
227 gallons per year * $4.00 per gallon = $908

Computes to a whopping savings of $248 per year.

At a cost increase of $6,500 / $248 saved per year = 26 years to gain back that cost of a hybrid civic versus a normal civic. So unless cost of Gas goes up exponentially or the cost of batteries go down, I can’t see the reason why any one individual would purchase a hybrid right now, given an alternative.

edit: Check my assumptions, did I do something wrong or can it take 20 years to earn back the difference right now? I could implement a cost increase on gallons for every year, but I’m not sure where I could get that estimation.

388

I understand, i didn’t mean to say that electric cars are better than gas cars. i meant to say the volt is the superior electric car out of everysingle electric car minus the tesla supercar.

389

The short term cost (not limited to just money) is probably still too high to justify swapping to it.
I bet many of those things you mentioned are still in the prototype stage and need to be researched more or early stages (2009 - 2 years isn’t a long time) where it’s still costly to implement and make.

Give it ~10 years.

Edit: Wow I completely forgot I have group paper to write on something similar: can technological development “expand” the resource limits of the physical world to accommodate current rates of population growth?

390

Well yea, there’s lots of research into better batteries.

  1. Batteries that charge more quickly while retaining their capacity. Lithium Iron Phosphate for instance (probably going to be in laptops soon).
  2. Batteries that don’t get too hot while charging. This allows them to get rid of the steel shielding/heat sink around the battery, significantly reducing weight.
  3. Batteries that are better to throw away and/or recycle.
  4. Batteries that repair themselves to improve total capacity over a longer lifetime.
391

If that story Fox is running about Occupy is true, that’d be quite sad. Though it’s from a hidden source and is Fox News… so meh.

Capitalism doesn’t encourage isolationism though (at least proper capitalism), and being competitive and “greedy”(as you put it) aren’t bad values, they’re motivators and engines behind innovation and self improvement. Capitalism isn’t the problem, the problem is the thing we have right now that people are claiming is capitalism (which is generally something between crony capitalism and outright fascism masquerading as something more open and fair).

It seems rather amusing that you open your post by lamenting about people’s ignorance and stupidity, yet in the middle of the post advocate deriding and ridiculing groups that don’t share your own ideology.

392

Link or summary?

393

I know why the world is in the shit hole. I blame these people:

[media=youtube]GKjep3xvCOQ[/media]

Man I can’t believe that shit. That alone is the reason why the world sucks giants amount of ass. If you’ll excuse me, I will bring balance to this bullshit by posting how Jagger rolls:

[media=youtube]Je8MXiwmNIk[/media]

Moves like jagger leads to a shitty pop song? God damn it, the least they could do was write a blues song. Too bad they don’t have a guitarist like Richards otherwise their shitty music wouldn’t have led to the global financial meltdown. All these bullshit videos about the illuminati and Jay Z but nobody sees fit to point out much damage they do to the world. Fucking Nonsense.

394


Summary: Claims ex-ACORN (not sure why the emphasis is on the ex-ACORN part though) people under new organization ( New York Communities for Change ) are running behind the scenes organization and fundraising for Occupy. The implication the writer is trying to put forward appears to be “more proof the whole thing is just left-wing astroturf”

More notably, the story claims that they’ve been hiring people to act as protesters to pad the movement and have been sending operatives door to door to raise money for the United Federation of Teachers and for an anti-PCB campaign and then diverting the money towards Occupy related activities.

Like I said though, the presentation seems a bit sensationalistic, and the sourcing makes it hard to gauge how believable the article is though.

395

Looks like FOX News/Republicans may have a vendetta on them. Look at what happened in 2009 with them

396

Obama announces help for student loans

too bad it’s still a dumb fucking plan all in all. But it helps. Now you just pay like 15% of your income, for 25 years, after which you can stop paying. So yeah, you’re still in debt for pretty much half your fucking life.

oh and riot cops started arresting and clashing with people in Atlanta and Oakland.

397

As long as nothing is done about problems within many of these public education institutions, and as long as the transactions are handled primarily by third parties who have very little interest in negotiating cost, the student loan problem will never actually be fixed.

398

the main problems are that loans are GUARANTEED. If you dont pay your loan back, the bank gets the money from the government (read: taxpayers). So they have NO reason to not loan out money. And because of all these loans, the colleges/universities just increase tuition.

In my country, for awhile there was a law that stated colleges/uni’s could only get 11% of their income from tuition. That got abolished, and tuition costs skyrocketed right after. We need to have the governments step in and fucking cap tuitions period. And student loans should have next to no interest (or at least a one time interest fee, then no compounding it ever again, so you’re not spending 20 years just paying off interest). It’s not a fucking mortgage.

399

Looks like the fate of Europe and beyond is in the hands of Zee Germans… again.

400

Obviously yeah, that’s a big part of the problem (wasn’t guaranteed/mandated lending part of what caused the housing bubble too?). I’m generally more of a small government guy, but I still actually mostly agree with your suggestion, as any other fix to the system is beyond the scope of of any reasonable change ( essentially I think the core problem boils down to upfront costs being handled by a disinterested third party, which essentially stifles price negotiation between provider and consumer and cost based competition between providers. That happens to be one of the big issues with healthcare too incidentally. Unfortunately, there’s no realistic fix to that problem, only ways to bandaid it with mandates and regulation, at least as far as I can see. ).