"The regimes I spoke about where usually nationalist regimes wich needed to tax imports very heavily to encourage an industrial production to satisfy the internal market, while forcefully stating wage raises (wich were obviously resisted, sometimes by the local dumbasses who owned companies, sometimes by the smart foreigners who owned companies).

This was what the US feared. That we use the same tools they used to become an even mildly developed country."

Dude, take an economics class. Infant industry practices aren't good for anybody, especially the people pf the country. These programs fail because they produce inferior goods. What happened to the Trabant after the end of East Germany?

Dude, take a History class.

These practices were stomped upon by US-aided military coups.

Wrong. They did it in socialist African countries and in Asia as well as Latin America. The US did support coups, but the US has supported free trade since the end of the Second World War. These economic policies fly in the face of that ideology.

Not to mention it's silly to suppose that America could have such total economic control of a foreign nation. I think you give Latin American leaders too little credit.

I suggest you take a non-crazy history class. Not a slavish, jingoistic, America-can-do-no-wrong class, but at least one that admits America can and does do right.

Right by whom?

That's what capitalism is all about. I don't care what happens to anyone else, I just care about myself being in the best shape as I can be.

And the US has done a pretty good job at that, even taking this last crisis into account.

And of course they did it. For the time it took the US to rally the troops, at the very least.

Ok, I've got a lot of responding to do. I'll take it one post at a time. =)

""If you sit around and don't do anything, you quickly become poor."
-chrispiminis"

This wasn't meant to imply that third world countries are lazy. It was meant to show that the natural state is poverty and not wealth. The 0 point is absolute poverty, it isn't some random level of wealth, below which is unacceptable suffering, and above which is luxury.

I would get involved in the sustainability argument more, but it's been done futilely before and I've apparently got a lot to respond to already. Put shortly, you do not take into account technological advances in your model of sustainability. People have been predicting the fall of civilization since Malthus, and probably before him, but technological advances have always increased the carrying capacity of the world. The developed world is much more environmentally conscious than it was a century ago.

"Surely, to use this kind of analysis, the zero point would be death from starvation? Extreme povery, but where you just manage to cling painfully to life until you die in early adulthood from the effects of your critically weakened immune system, would be a point or two above the scale..."

Sure. I think I can accept that definition. It's absolutely terrible, but it's not so different from the conditions currently developed countries experienced centuries ago.

"I recall hearing a story on the radio a few years back about an experiment that was, by pretty much all accounts quite successful, in Cambodia, in which the US gave Cambodia the same sort of trade terms as China (maybe even better) when it came to textiles, but with the caveat that Cambodia institute all kinds of labor reforms. It was evidentily quite successful. The Cambodian textile workers enjoyed much better working conditions, and wages, the wider Cambodian economy benefited because these workers had more money to spend, and the textiles, because of their favorable trade terms, were just as inexpensive to consumers in the US as those made in other places."

What exactly were the reforms? I'm not exactly a classic libertarian because I still hold that governmental action is necessary in the management of public goods and regulation is necessary in industries with externalities. I also believe that government action has the potential to do good, but I mostly dismiss it because I believe that very rarely is it so well designed and planned as to be able to compete with the efficiency of the free market. Sounds like a successful policy was enacted, and it certainly does sound like correlation is causation in this instance, but I'd have to know more about the entire situation.

So I agree with you that laissez-faire capitalism can be improved upon by conscious and concerted action, but I remain skeptical that it can be done efficiently at this point. I don't think economic thought has considered enough variables for us to be able to accurately predict the real ramifications of each policy.

"Free market economy is the way the most advanced nations (First it was England, then the US, then Japan, China) screw over the least developed.

The US has had countless and still has plenty protectionist measures regarding their production.

Once that production is secure, they told the whole world that the way to be a developed country was free market economy. "Look, we do it, and we're developed!" Yeah, right. You do it NOW that you're developed, but you didn't develop because of it, or even in spite of it, you developed without it."

No, I'm afraid you can't really call those nations free market economies. While they are generally laxer in terms of business taxes (China?!), their governmental presence shows they are clearly mixed economies. I don't think a single nation employs laissez faire capitalism on the national level. You pinpointed the problem right there with American protectionism. That's exactly it. There's no reason a firm should want to keep a nation or a people down, especially in the face of intense competition. There would just be no way to sustain it in the long run. There does exist reason for one nation to keep another down, but only through us vs. them justification. On the global level, it's inefficient to use such practices, but nationalism makes it possible to justify such action by placing more value on "us" than on "them", which makes it economically viable. A firm unhampered by nationalistic duties in a free market with ample competition is economically driven to develop on a global scale of efficiency.

I missed a couple of points, but I think I addressed the main body of argument. Phew. If you feel I haven't addressed a point adequately, bring it up again and make sure that I do. =)

"I say let's run this world of ours into the ground." -invictus.

it appears you will get your wish friendo

Except he won't. The world will not be run into the ground within the lifetimes of any of us.

"the easter islanders could not escape their island. we can escape our planet."
so the answer to our plight is space travel? really?

"I think the strongest arguments for the existence of human civilization are Beethoven's Ninth, Mahler's Sixth, or Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet."
oh no, those are great. going back to my earlier example, I'm sure the easter islanders made some great art. but we'll never hear about it, because they're all fucking dead.


But if all of us are dead... what will it matter? No one will be around to have forgotten us. Note that I'm playing devil's advocate here I don't want to see humanity go extinct. But I am saying that even if it was absolutely inevitable that we were going extinct I would stand before God or whoever and say, yes, humanity was worth it, look at what we have produced, what greatness, what valor, what emotion we have conjured because of civilization. As puny as it may be versus the entirety of the universe, it is worth it, more worth it than to live indefinitely as ignorant hunter gatherers until the sun explodes or the squid evolve or something. To quote an Italian proverb: "It is better to live one minute as a lion than a hundred years as a lamb."

I'm not saying humanity will go extinct.
ok well I kindof am.
what I'm saying is the longer civilization is allowed to exist, the harder it will be for the people who have to live after the crash.
and if it goes on too long, maybe no one will live.

why do you assume hunter gatherers are ignorant? I just dont get why you think civilization is the culmination of human existence.
so you're saying the aborigines, the native americans, the indigenous of africa, of europe, the middle-east, asia, pacific islands, south america, the carribean, etc, never made anything of beauty or worth until civilization came along?

sixth sentence should have a "?"

"I just dont get why you think civilization is the culmination of human existence."

No, no one gets why you don't think that. Is it wrong to say that civilization is superior to barbarism? Are we that nutty with political correctness and tortured idealism has reached a point where CIVILIZATION itself is thought of as evil?

This is beyond absurd.

why is it absurd?

please put forth an actual argument, that contributes to the discussion, and if you can muster it, refrain from calling me a douchbag

Why waste my time arguing with someone who thinks civilization is wrong? If you really beleive what that Endgame book has indoctrinated you with, then turn off the computer, go into the woods, and pick berries.

It's nice to see that when pressured a little, you stand by your points, and present, well worded, intelligent, reasoned, logical arguments, and you dont resort to personal attacks, or duck out of the debate.
how honorable.


If I thought picking berries in the woods would change anything I would.
I do so on occasion, but only because I enjoy it.

*douchebag.

my 'e' is sticky

I am not like my fellow cilivizer Invictus and will respond to you.

Yes, hunter-gatherers are/were ignorant. Ignorant means not knowing things. They do not know as much about the universe as civilization does so that makes them ignorant. Some more ignorant than others, but all ignorant all the same. This is because civilization, not only unlocking expanded artistic enterprise (by this I mean specialization... in a hunter-gatherer society Mozart would have been chasing bison instead of composing.. assuming he could compose since there would be no paper, music theory, or instruments besides one or two.) I digress. Not only by unlocking expanded artistic enterprise, but by increasing our knowledge by leaps and bounds AND on top of all that making our lives longer and safer. As if that weren't enough, there are MORE of us humans to share in this wonderful experience we call life with civilization. Is it without problems? Absolutely not. Civilization is nothing more than an attempt to solve problems. Solutions create new problems, to be sure, but the result is always progress.

Hobbes, Hobbes, Hobbes.

Civilization is good because it allows humans to have humanity. Not that its not there without civilization, the problem is that wihout civilization, its dormant, barely tapped, still locked away. Indeed, it is what separates us from the animals. If you are spending all your time looking for food and finding shelter, then you're just like an animal, except you pass the time at nights by playing your reed flute instead of play-wrestling with your siblings as other mammals do. Oh wait, except you do that too.

What makes civilization great is that you get to do all that and more. And more and more and more, more than you can ever imagine. I'm sure the hunter-gatherers were not totally miserable, in fact I'm willing to bet as least some of them were genuinely happy. But we are humans, and we are smart, and we can solve our problems. One thing these hunter-gatherers were not ignorant of were their problems, so they began to find solutions and civilization has been the result.

I do find your viewpoints ceaselessly interesting, Sicarius... but what baffles me is your inflexibility. After each of these successive arguments you concede a few points, but by the next discussion you seem to have forgotten your concessions. Whoever suggested that you walk on the other side for just a while had a very good point. It is always good to do that. There's nothing worse than a stubborn fool who won't EVER change his beliefs or even consider the possibility of the other view. You're not totally guilty of this, Sic, but you're hanging on the edge of it. Other people we know on this forum are guilty as charged... and unfortunately, probably proud of it too.

ok I think we're getting into a tangent.

and honestly I dont really want to unravel all that. but my response to that is this.
we ARE animals

anyway, it seems like my biggest roadblock is people saying, what right do I have to tell people they cant live in cities, that they shouldnt be able to watch monday night football and drive to the grocery store or vacation in bermuda.
I realized that it's the wrong question.

so I ask you this
what right do YOU have to destroy the earth?

Sic, you have to pick one. Either we are animals, and therefore eveything we do is natural and no different from the termites that build gigantic mounds in Africa. Or we are destroying the earth with unnatural creations and, because they are unnatural, we are something different from the animal kingdom (I did NOT say superior, just different).

As far as my rights... If I'm an animal, I have the exact same right as every other animal to do what feeds me and pleases me. If I'm something else, then Darwin applies at the highest level as clearly my species is the most fit and might makes right in Darwinian terms.

"what right do YOU have to destroy the earth? "

Again, technology has always kept up, we now have 6 billion people, a number that scientists never thought could be reached. The earth isn't destroyed. Prove to me the earth is going to be destroyed.

@Draugnar to play devil's, or perhaps Sicarious' advocate...

If we are animals, and I think on some level I agree that we are, then yes of course we have the right to do whatever we want. That's true regardless of whether you think we're animals or not actually. But that doesn't mean that everything we do is a good idea. In Darwinian terms, we can do all sorts of things but if it leads to use dying out because we made some poor decision, then I guess we were an evolutionary dead end, and clearly we not in fact the fittest. Darwinian evolution cuts both ways, plenty of, in fact most, things die out and aren't in fact successful, even if they look like they should be at first. It could be that we humans while we appear to be "the mightiest," whatever that means, at the moment, are ultimately doomed unless we change the way we live.

To go back to that George Carlin quote earlier, he's expressing an idea that I've had many times, and that others have certainly had before him. The planet will be fine, there's little chance that we could do enough damage to the planet that nothing else will ever live here (Nuclear weapons might be the exception to this, though even there I imagine there are some extremeophiles in undersea volcanic vents and stuff like that that might manage to hold on), but we can easily change conditions on the earth enough that WE are screwed. Live on the earth will probably be ok in the end, it'll adjust, new species will adapt and grow, but WE may not be able to adjust enough to the new conditions to survive.

I don't agree with Sic's premise that civilization is inherently unsustainable, but I do agree that the way we're living RIGHT NOW almost certainly is.

sorry that should be "LIFE on the earth will probably be ok in the end..." not "Live."

We can do what ever we want so long as we are prepared to accept the consequences. In the grand scheme of things there is no such thing as morality or right or wrong. The universe is entirely indifferent to our actions.

@spyman you put it much more succinctly than me but that was the point I was trying to make. That "as long as we are prepared to accept the consequences" part is key there.

One of the problems with these sorts of discussions is that we have different ideas about what sort of consequences we think are likely to occur, or what sort of consequences we are prepared to accept.

I am not a primitivist but I can think of a couple of arguments for primitivism that are quite rational, even though still open to argument.

1. Humans would be happy living a hunter gather lifestyle.
2. Life on Earth would last longer if we did maintain such a lifestyle.

@spyman - please provide proof of premise 1. I most certainly would not be happy living a hunter gather lifestyle. And I defy you to prove that a majority of people would. You can't because the majority of people would die of hunger and/or disease.

Premise 2 is also false because there is plenty of life on earth that will maintain just as it has for millions of years. The earth will be destroyed when a cosmic cataclysm (sun supernovas, large enough meteor collides and destroys it/knocks it into a death spiral, etc.) and that is when life will end. Life always finds a way. Human life, however, probably would last longer in a sustainable lifestyle. But we don't affect all life on earth, despite our hubris.

"If I'm something else, then Darwin applies at the highest level as clearly my species is the most fit and might makes right in Darwinian terms."

That's incorrectly applied Darwinism. Evolution doesn't say if one species is "fitter" than another because selection doesn't happen on a species-wide scale. Fitness is on an individual level. =)

"Nuclear weapons might be the exception to this, though even there I imagine there are some extremeophiles in undersea volcanic vents and stuff like that that might manage to hold on"

You are correct. In fact if every nuclear warhead on Earth were detonated, while humans would be very much dead as would the vast majority of life on Earth, the damage done would barely scratch the surface of the Earth and at the very least bacteria would undoubtedly survive, if nothing else. It would be a shame if it happened, but it goes to show how insignificant the damage we can truly do to our planet. That doesn't justify unsustainability, but it's definitely quite humbling.

@spyman
1. I think in our modern world of super stimulus, we are significantly happier than hunter gatherers, in the pleasure sense of the word happy. Perhaps there lies some secret satisfaction, but in a measurable sense, happiness is more abundant in the modern world. Everything is a super stimulus, an indulgence, of what would once have been meagre. Everything we have is geared to reward our pleasure centres more... and definitely more than hunter gatherers. We have cheesecake instead of nuts, people look better and sexier than ever, language and humour has been developed far beyond it's functional level and far more than primitive art, despite what some might say. Video games, television, cinema, roller coasters, and other such things offer emotional engagement and stimuli upon demand. Scarily enough, chemists have synthesized fentonyls that are over 30,000 times stronger than heroin. I would say that the argument for primitivism might be the exact opposite of what you say. I would say that most of it is a reaction to the immense indulgence of the modern developed world. It's all too good, too much. There is definitely a sort of addiction to it all. Try to get kids to eat berries and nuts instead of candy, or try to get them to play games with dried beans instead of Halo.

2. Life on Mars would be impossible if it were not for the scientific advancements we are due to make. And why stop there? =D