![pope-francis-environment-encyclical[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/pope-francis-environment-encyclical1.jpg)
Naomi Klein has been invited to attend a top level conference at the Vatican, to advise leaders how to fight climate change and dismantle capitalism.
According to The Guardian;
Naomi Klein and Cardinal Peter Turkson are to lead a high-level conference on the environment, bringing together churchmen, scientists and activists to debate climate change action. Klein, who campaigns for an overhaul of the global financial system to tackle climate change, told the Observer she was surprised but delighted to receive the invitation from Turkson’s office.
“The fact that they invited me indicates they’re not backing down from the fight. A lot of people have patted the pope on the head, but said he’s wrong on the economics. I think he’s right on the economics,” she said, referring to Pope Francis’s recent publication of an encyclical on the environment.
Release of the document earlier this month thrust the pontiff to the centre of the global debate on climate change, as he berated politicians for creating a system that serves wealthy countries at the expense of the poorest.
Activists and religious leaders will gather in Rome on Sunday, marching through the Eternal City before the Vatican welcomes campaigners to the conference, which will focus on the UN’s impending climate change summit.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/28/pope-climate-change-naomi-klein
The madness of this latest development, is Capitalism is the single most important factor which has made the wealth of rich countries possible. Dismantling Capitalism would not make poor countries rich, it would make rich countries poor.
As for non capitalist societies being better stewards of the environment, what a busted myth that is – if you want to see truly horrific levels environmental destruction, you need look no further than the old anti-capitalist Soviet Union, which is now practically a byword for pollution, inefficient use of resources, and environmental degradation.
Yes…. everyone knows poor countries have better environments. Just look at the mess Norway, Canada, the USA etc have made of theirs. And look at the lovely environments of India, China, Indonesia, Eastern Europe etc etc.
Its a no brainer. Capitalism has to go.
Their objectives are aligned – poorer countries see greater subscribership to the church. I am reminded of this classic line in Dogma:
Actually the Pope is pandering to the poor and the poor are going over to Pentecostalism in the Americas 8,000 per day according to a Vatican article. They are shifting gears in marketing.
http://ncronline.org/news/pentecostal-phenomenon-latin-america
You forgot Somalia, Haiti, Sudan, Bolivia, Venezula…
& You forgot the most successful low carbon, anti-capitalist economy of all….North Korea
Here she is predictably falling in the trap of complaining about the Three Gorges Dam.
They want a shift to renewables, but protest against the single largest generator of renewable energy on planet earth (100 TeraWattHours per year). Currently generating power for the people of China. Wikipedia claims that the dam will pay for itself in 10 years.
But Naomi Klein doesn’t like it. I suspect that she doesn’t even know why she doesn’t like it.
She has this to say, “Last week, Nelson Mandela presented a report assessing the global impact of mega-dams, projects traditionally seen by the World Bank as necessary pre-conditions to joining the global economy. The report, published by the World Commission on Dams, found that the projects were dramatically increasing migration flows—1.2-million people will be displaced by China’s Three Gorges Dam alone.”
Oh, Mandela, is he another engineering and economics expert like Ms Klein?
So, she is in favour of destroying big oil and big coal and big gas. But also big hydro.
Basically big anything. And anything that creates (evil) profit.
Which basically means that only boondoggle subisidy eating bullcrap is allowed.
They don’t even know why they hate the western industrial infrastructure.
Let’s run the world on incense sticks and hopi ear candles.
Well, it can’t have been Nelson Mandala. . He died on December 5, 2013.
Her problem is that she can’t even understand that if you make rich people poor, they can’t afford things like electricity, or taxes from which subsidies are sourced. No rich = no subsidies, or has she discovered magic pixie dust that creates money or of thin air, in which case the Greeks and EU could use her services.
The problem with environmental nuts on the left is that they will oppose any source of energy that actually works and is cheap. That’s the main reason they oppose hydroelectric and nuclear. If solar or wind became economical, they would oppose them too. That’s because cheap sources of energy allows the population to increase, which is the worst sin possible against Gaia.
err as much as I loathe Klien
there were some serious issues with landslides n quakes from the massive amount of water held in that dam I believe? they scaled it down.
and then the people displaced might also feel miffed?
where did they get shoved to? filthy cities n poverty?
Let’s see now, Pachauri, Al Gore, and Naomi Oreskes OUT!!! And IN!!! with the Pope and Naomi Klein (huh? Who’s she?) , whose instant, hive-heroine, super-star status has nothing–ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!! HEAR THAT YOU DENIER-SCUM “MERCHANTS OF DOUBT”?!!! (look Naomi! (I’m talkin’ to Oreskes-not you Naomi), you don’t own that phrase so buzz off, you’re just a has-been non-person now!–deal with it!)–with Naomi’s (talkin’ about Klein now) FOX-NEWS, hot-babe good-looks or her in-your-face, Pol-Pot weltanshauung, as the new, Papal side-kick, occupying the same ecological niche, in the landscape of the Holy See, as Huma Abedin occupies in Hillary-land.
And I’m sure this Pope-and-Naomi, “Communications Strategy”, Hi5-magnet brainstorm must have seemed a real agit-prop masterstroke, to the hive’s shot-callers, when their useful-tool Gruber-clones hyped it up in the inner-sanctum of the hive-bubble, and everything. And so one can only take a delicious, schadenfreude pleasure in our betters’ inevitable chagrin now that their haymaker, flim-flam “best-shot” is blowing up in their faces, as the whole world recoils in amused astonishment at the spectacle of the Pope’s Kardashian-grade zany-weirdness, in this matter.
So can’t someone just spritz a little holy-water on these slithering, pit-spawn Beelzebubs, who have gotten their hooks into the Pope, and rid us, once and for all, of this whole grinning, death’s-head “HORROR!!!”, already?
Oh how I love your posts. Dang you’re good. 👍
Yeah, mike,
Plus some.
But – in future – don’t hold back.
[snip…a bit over the top -mod]
Auto
I had such high hopes for this Pope, only to be so disappointed.
Same for our current President.
The squandered opportunities are heartbreaking.
What a waste.
“Same for our current President.”
Really, he’s lived up to every one of mine.
It’s a sad day when the Pope needs to enlist advertising to get his message across. It is also telling.
When the Pope sells Christianity, he has no need of anyone’s help to get his message out.
When the Pope dumps Christianity in order to sell warmed over socialism/communism then no amount of help will get people to pay attention.
I wonder if this pope would have supported Lech Walesa’s Solidarity Movement in Poland like Pope John Paul II did?
“I wonder if this pope would have supported Lech Walesa’s Solidarity Movement in Poland like Pope John Paul II did?”
I don’t think so. With this step, Pope Francis has shown his true colors finally. He is really a stronger supporter of marxism and the new green eco-religion than of the Catholic Faith.
reminds me of indulgences that used to be (as far as I know its gone, not catholic myself) practiced.
sorry hit post too soon, meant to add I am talking about the “scandal” in the 1500s over them.
This is getting beyond embarrassing for Catholics. Who is advising Francis because it sure ain’t the Holy Spirit.
Check out John Schellnhuber here: http://notrickszone.com/2015/06/27/schellnhuber-boasts-of-having-skeptics-excluded-from-participating-in-drafting-laudato-si-encyclical/#sthash.diCdpFm9.dpbs
Also in the mix is Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, George Soros has funded him for years and is on the advisory board, http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/1006.
Lash has just received $400,000 from the 2015 Blue Planet Award. http://www.af-info.or.jp/en/blueplanet/introduction.html. He is also director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and was working with Ban Ki Moon on manipulating the Pope a few weeks before the encyclical.
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/04/explainer-what-we-know-about-the-popes-encyclical/
“On the 28 April a meeting, entitled “Protect the earth, dignify humanity: the moral dimensions of climate change and sustainable development”, took place at the Vatican.
An agenda listed appearances from UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and US economist Jeffrey Sachs.
According to the website, the summit had three goals:
to raise awareness and build a consensus that the values of sustainable development cohere with the values of the leading religious traditions, with a special focus on the most vulnerable;
to elevate the debate on the moral dimensions of protecting the environment in advance of the papal encyclical.
and to help build a global movement across all religions for sustainable development and climate change throughout 2015 and beyond.”
Sorry Jonathan Lash’s name crept in there, rather than Sachs. He is World Resources Institute and is heavily involved in the run up to Paris. All in the same game but he didn’t get the Blue Planet award… yet.
..you’re, right, Antonia…I always thought climate change had to do with weather conditions…NOT capitalism..or ANY OTHER -ISM…I ponder, where IS THE HOLY SPIRIT OF DISCERNMENT, in all of this falderol ?
maybe it is?;-) some grappa in the wine? too p*ssed to figure hes duped?
@ gentle tramp ( love the moniker), He has no true “colors”. Look at Klein’s statement: about the “pat on the head”. If I would have said that about a Pope 35 years ago I would have been ex communicated! He is , sadly, a puppet just like Obama. Just read who truly wrote this horrible Popal statement. The fact that cheap energy would elevate the poor to higher standards of living, health and education etc and his denial (oops) of that simple fact is the saddest thing I have ever seen. I am glad I left the RC behind many years ago.
In a addition to being a puppet, the pope may also aspire to be a puppeteer among the powerful who lust for more power in their push for globalism. Isn’t the lust for power one of the seven deadly sins?
I look forward to their friendly debate about abortion. Naomi is a hard core feminist as well as communist. But I suppose that is redundant.
Naomi Klein has a solution to climate change and it goes like this: punitive taxation; massive wealth re-distribution; the abolition of free trade and free markets; a state-enforced end to to the “cult of shopping”; the whole to be supervised by a New World Order of selfless illuminati (who presumably resemble Naomi Klein).
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100117165/only-a-totalitarian-new-world-order-can-save-us-now-says-naomi-klein/
Why not Al Gore? He already travels the lands with a “christian version” of his talks – whatever that means… do christians need some special language, like a retarded kid or something?!
He speaks in tongues.
Forked tongues.
And we know who is going to get forked.
Global Warming aka Climate Change has always been a political cult to depopulate the planet and take money from the wealthy to spin it out to the poor. It is an act of doing ostensible good, but in fact it is doing deep and disturbing evil to the poor. What an incomprehensible and toxic mix this is… What an evil, awful mess. I feel like I am suffering the Cassandra paradox.
It is so evil, unscientific and overwhelming I just do not know what to say. I just don’t.
This is one of the similarities between socialism and global warming.
Those behind both only care about feeling good about themselves. The fact that they are causing misery for billions and death for millions just isn’t important.
“The fact that they are causing misery for billions and death for millions just isn’t important.” I disagree; these are essential.
Right there with you.
Maybe I am judging from appearances, but I think the Vatican needs an exorcist.
You are not alone Paul. My very Catholic friends are dismayed at what is happening.
What?
The Pope couldn’t find a catholic idiot?
Skeptics, the new witches?
Well, the will need to burn something for lights…
Whale oil was the preferred lighting fuel pre industrialisation.
Only if they can do it without releasing any CO2.
From Club of Rome, and Ehrlich, and Earth Day to the IPCC, Gore, and all the rest of the AGWBS, this has been Watermelon Politics. The Marxists never quit, they just change tactics and disguises.
You forgot to trace back to an earlier doomsdayer – Rev. Thomas Malthus, the original dismal economist.
Unfortunately you are very right. This really has nothing to do with the saving the earth or clean environments. This has to do with power, and wealth re-distribution. It always has been. So there is no point trying to win the academic argument. Just to keep exposing this ideology for what it is.
“This really has nothing to do with the saving the earth or clean environments. This has to do with power, and wealth re-distribution. It always has been. ” CoR and UNFCCC published these facts several decades ago – they’re referred to as conspiracy theories by the majority, whose vocabulary is restricted to disinformation memes. They have no meaning in the delusional paradigm of a benevolent government that exists for the welfare of its citizens.
The problem is that they are also succeeding. A global socialist tyranny is rapidly approaching, in my view.
One doesn’t have to look further than the economic travesty in the Pontiff’s homeland, that leftist paradise where I understand they’re critically short of toilet paper, in spite of price freezes. It is astonishing that the real substantive threats to religious freedom, economic prosperity and health do not appear to be a leading Vatican focus in contrast to the modeled threat from the UN IPCC, Figueres et al. There is sea of black to attend to, and it isn’t fossil fuels.
“I understand they’re critically short of toilet paper, in spite of price freezes.”
They are critically short of toilet paper because of, not in spite of, price freezes.
No surer way to reduce supply, than fix the price of something below the market.
Absolutely Menicholas. I was really considering the excessive demand imposed by the ideological propagation of bow locks.
The toilet paper shortage is a feature in Venezuela. The Pope is from Argentina. Let’s hope he’ll travel to Venezuela and check out how marvelous Marxist equality of outcome works in a formerly developed nation. All the capitalists in Venezuela will soon be living in Miami. The oil industry is crashing there, because there is no motivation to maintain equipment and corporate infrastructure, leaving the Venezuelan government unable to subsidize it’s own people or to support that other Communist paradise, Cuba. Crime is becoming rampant, refugees are leaving. Another great example of a “people’s paradise.”
Have you ever tried to exchange an Argentine Peso for anything outside of Argentina?
Is this a joke? The Church, Catholic or Protestant needs to stay away from the “climate debate” as it is a pack of lies. The Church deals in “truth”, correct? Shame on the Pope.
Well, he is prophesized to be the last Pope, isn’t he? He seems to be doing his best to bring that about, by pushing all sane people away from the Vatican.
Yes, madness is upon us. The Pope cannot apparently see that this is the most antihuman push since Eugenics. The result of this policy is not universal wealth it’s universal poverty, and universal welfare dependence – the end result is a communist state. Pope Francis, have a look back, see how well that’s worked in the past! Catholics are good at the past.
I would like to remind Pope Francis of an old saying.
Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.
Stop then preaching welfarism, when what is really needed is work, and work is created by ….you guessed it, wealth. Have a look next door to Greece and see where the take from the rich, give to the poor welfare society gets you.
Maybe the church should start at home and divest itself of all of its monies and property.
Amen to that!
another Amen
Hypocrites, Is the catholic church still one of the riches organizations in the world?
A Case of Conscience is a science fiction novel by James Blish, first published in 1958.
Blish respected Popes and Jesuits.
Franciskus is a decent man. But off of save ground.
Hans
I’m a little off topic, but Johann reminded me of a scifi book dealing with religion and science:
“A Canticle for Leibowitz” by Walter M. Miller, Jr
Great read, intelligent and inventive.
Wholeheartedly agree. One of my favorites. I re-read it every two or three years.
Fiat Lux!
IMO the best apocalyptic novel ever written.
I third the enthusiastic endorsement of Canticle. It was a great book many decades ago in the cold war; perhaps soon to be re-recognized.
Catholics are supposed to integrate reason, not sacrifice it to the ideological Zeitgeist. For some catholics this papal hotch-potch of platitudes will be another heavy burden, another treason of their church.
That book is one that has stuck with me for 40 years. It is what got me interested in epistemology. I had been thinking about it recently with all of this nonsense from the Holy See. One would think that the heresies embedded within Marxist thought, would be apparent to any theologian. And then there is that “error in equation 16” …
@ DesertYote, “Holy See”?. More like the Wholly Blind”.
It’s all in line with Technocracy. Use science to control the world. Of course, guess who decides what science is or what science is denial. Hmmmm … It began decades ago. While you all argue amongst yourselves over minutia, the technocrats are winning the game.
We need to be a little careful in the reflex defence of capitalism.
It is wonderful how far capitalism has brought us.
But it is worrying to see where capitalism is taking us. Fewer and larger multinational corporations are aggregating and accumulating businesses and economic sectors at an alarming rate.
Combined with ‘Free Trade Agreements’ and their dispute resolution tribunals we are fast approaching a point where a few corporations will control the world.
If you were worried about your ‘one world order’, there it is.
Your screen nic’s a little obvious. Your ignorance of what capitalism is (and isn’t) is just as obvious.
According to many communists I have debated, there is pure communism, and everything else is a form of capitalism.
Crony Capitalism exists within Socialism and Communism.
markx commented: “…We need to be a little careful in the reflex defence of capitalism…. is worrying to see where capitalism is taking us. Fewer and larger multinational corporations are aggregating and accumulating businesses and economic sectors at an alarming rate….”
That’s where anti monopoly laws come in. Unfortunately it seems even the courts are controlled so that may not be a saving grace. The fact remains that Capitalism (in various forms) in economy and standard of living is the most successful “ism” today. Free market rules and the only reason anyone would want to do away with it is to gain control of people.
Since it’s impossible for a monopoly to form without the help of govt, anti-monopoly laws are unnecessary. What’s needed instead is to get govt out of the business of helping selected companies and industries.
Yes, anti-trust ant-monopoly laws are a must. In fact, the whole edifice only works because of a myriad of laws an regulations, starting with the most basic rights of property and regulations of currency, and going through to the more complex laws of debt, banking, transactions and employment.
”Monopoly cannot form without government help’
Good in theory, fails in fact and logic.
Someone is always better managed, smarter, better connected than the next guy. His business grows (and gets more efficient!) and out competes all. New ideas are copied and bettered, new competitors undersold. Suppliers are locked in … etc..
Eventually this one entity controls most of its own niche, then expands into other areas.
Everyone is happy, because prices of good are cheap…. except for the fact there is only one place to look for work (in any particular field), and worse, most of the profits move offshore, not into the community where they were generated.
Re ‘markx’, nope, not a statement of politics, just a differentiator: there seem to be a surfeit of Marks around here. 🙂
Good in theory, perfect in practice.
Even if a company is better managed, the bigger it gets, the more managers it needs and hench the average quality of those managers goes down. Beyond that there are the inefficiencies of scale which prevent large companies from competing with smaller companies on either quality or service.
As to connections, they are meaningless unless they are with the govt, in which case it is govt that is the problem, not capitalism.
As to niches, you ignore the ability of customers to substitute one product for another if one company starts charging too much for it’s product.
If the company gains market share by keeping customers happy, there is no problem for govt to solve.
Once the company starts raising prices, competitors show up to take away market share.
Agree – CONgress works to enrich the Int’l Corps (especially to limit/stop competition with regulations) and the Int’l Corps, who own most of the media, support the gov’t via propaganda to the willing ignorant.
TPP is a perfect example that will screw citizens and reward Int’l Corps.
Capitalism is organic. It comes into being on its own. It was not invented by anyone and is not imposed on anyone. Try to suppress it and it just continues underground. It can’t be abolished any more than human nature can be abolished.
All other economic systems are artificial and authoritarian.
Tyranny is organic too in social animals, the human societies that are relatively free of it are fortunate, but few and always under threat.
Tyranny isn’t an economic system. But economic systems other than free market capitalism are inherently tyrannical.
Give people freedom, and free markets happen.
markx
I hate to tell you this (well, not really) but corporations come and go. The innovative process inherent in capitalism ensures that corporation survive only as long as they provide “best” service.to the public.
It is when government begins to “support” certain corporations that they become a drain and a bane on the people. It is not corporations that are leading us into the dismal future you foresee but big government that must control everything — ruining everything.
I always find it amusing to remember that what was once one of the biggest corporations in America made — buggy whips.
Go back just a few years and review what happened to some high tech corporations that looked like they were on their way to ruling the world.
Eugene WR Gallun
US Steel, Alcoa, IBM, RCA, Zenith, Bethlehem Steel, Reynolds Aluminum, NCR, GM, …..
It’s not capitalism that is creating fewer and bigger corporations. That is 100% the work of govt.
Under a capitalistic economy, most of those big companies would quickly die a well deserved death.
How come Microsoft survived Windows 8?
Some corporations are too big to be accountable to the market.
The costs of switching away from them means they have a built in resistance to competition.
“How come Microsoft survived Windows 8?
Some corporations are too big to be accountable to the market.”
Microsoft does not exist in a laissez faire free market, but rather in a corporatist environment. (Mussolini’s favorite term for “fascism”) Even though Microsoft reached a dominate position in operating systems, they still are losing market share now. Apple, Linux Flavors, Chrome, and of course Android on devices are all eating into Microsoft’s market. Why even version 10 is going to be free they say. Imagine a free Microsoft OS version 10 years ago.
Next you will see Open Office or other office software knock out the cash cow of Microsoft. That will take some time also as we humans hate change.
You’re free to walk away from any corporation. You don’t have to work for ’em, you don’t have to buy their products.
The same can’t be said about government.
You have to wonder what value there is in buying an OS (even the $60 I paid for a full license of Win 7 Pro) when you can get Linux (and others) for free?
MS survived Win 8, because Win 7 existed, and they’ve done a lot to make Win 10 better, including giving it away.
But what few realize is how much Windows helped Intel pay to develop the advanced process and very powerful processors, Intel needed volume to do that, and a common hardware and software platform provided that volume. And how many software business made million and billionaires because that same volume existed.
BTW, if you want other, Oracle will give you their version of RedHat for free, supports extra
https://edelivery.oracle.com/EPD/LinuxWelcome/get_form
you need to sign in, but those accounts are free as well. You can even download their Virtual Machine platform for free (Xen), same deal, then you can run lots of machines all at the same time.
MCourtney;
In your limited view, does a single bad product always doom a company? If so, how did Ford survive the Edsel?
Eugene WR Gallun,
I do agree that in the long term imbalances work themselves out and unsustainable businesses, corporations, and even systems of government will fall. Hell, even something as big as Soviet Communism (whatever it really was) fell, and that only took 50 years.
My problem is that most of us have not got 50 years to wait while the imbalances magically right themselves. By the time they do, a few generations have borne the brunt and suffered.
It is just possible there may be a middle way, the right balance of regulation, antitrust control, and freedom, and the devout don’t realize that is currently going on and is the magic mix which really makes their ‘wonderful free market system’ work.
MarkW June 29, 2015 at 8:52 am said: In your limited view, does a single bad product always doom a company? If so, how did Ford survive the Edsel?
Because they were big enough, had enough cash reserves, could get more favorable financial terms, were too big for their financiers to let fail, could afford more and better lawyers, could pressure their creditors to wait…..etc
Exactly the point being made. Get big enough, and the natural laws of ‘free competition’ no longer apply.
Sure, big corporations do make wrong moves, don’t make right moves, don’t always see paradigm changes coming …… but the bigger they are, the more chance they have to survive and recover.
And the big ones ARE surviving.
The world’s top 200 corporations account for over a quarter of economic activity on the globe while employing less than one percent of its workforce.
http://www.ips-dc.org/top_200_the_rise_of_corporate_global_power/
You may think this is a good thing, and perhaps occasionally wonder why all these ‘corporation favouring’ Free Trade Agreements are deemed so important.
I’m not too sure it is a good thing, and I know who those FTAs are really for.
It is some kind of strange mania that causes people to blame the private sector when governments create protection rackets, exchange favors for money, create regulatory boondoggles that drive investment into larger blocs of more influential lobbying power, and create international rules that favor partners.
Which is wearing the leash and which is holding it are not so obscure. Start by counting the numbers of soldiers, police, judges and jails on each side.
You are confusing Corporatism with Free Market Capitalism. The former relies on the Power of State to manipulate the market. The oft decried Monopoly can not exist in a free market, but is the expected result of a manipulated market. Marxists always use the results of market intervention as justification for market intervention.
@DesertYote:
I’m sorry, but that is just not correct. In an absolutely “free” market, monopoly is nearly inevitable. This isn’t speculation, it is the observed fact of economic history.
There is a huge body of economics devoted to exactly that point, BTW, from as early as Adam Smith in The Wealth Of Nations.
The basic error of your position is using “expected result of a manipulated market” as any kind of evidence for why it would not happen. Monopolists work very hard to assure THEY manipulate the market. Most all of the anti-trust laws are aimed particularly at preventing them from doing just that manipulation of markets that lead to such monopolies as Standard Oil and, more recently, Microsoft (they were found to have behaved as a monopoly in court…).
You are quite correct that Corporatism comes about when Free Markets are dead. It is the end game of a type of Socialism where attempts to manage the markets leads to the Corporations “buying the laws they want” in exchange for doing some things the Governments want. (There is also the Fascist example where The Government directly tells the corporations what to do, in exchange for monopoly or oligopoly positions in the “managed markets” – and yes, Fascism and National State Socialism are both kinds of Socialism – Lange Type Third Way Socialism in modern terms).
So yes, worse than a free market is the Socialism or Socialism Lite of Managed Markets as they always force a few megacorps to run things under government ‘guidance’. What works best is what the USA had from about 1950 to 1980: The Mixed Economy with minimal regulation. That is what folks usually call a ‘free market’, but it isn’t. It is a lightly regulated market with anti-trust laws.
In short: There is a long list of ‘horribles’ in forms of economies that starts with Communism and runs through Fascism and other Socialisms. A little better is the Laissez Faire Market Economy (what is really ‘free markets’ but it is subject to the failure of competition via trusts, monopolies, and cartels / collusion). When lightly regulated to prevent the “ruin of the commons” and forbid monopoly practices, cartels, trusts, and collusion, you get an optimum. Unfortunately, that optimum is prone to breakdown into a “3rd Way Socialism” (or Progressive Third Way) with too much regulation and with government picking winners and allowing oligopolies to dominate. (Where we are now, both in the USA and EU; and with the “corporatism” you rightly pointed out is a worse situation…)
FWIW, I spent a few years getting a degree in all this stuff… I can dig out my text books (still have them!) and cite chapter and verse if needed.
E.M.Smith
I bet when you dig out your old textbooks there will be none in there by von Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe, or Block.
The Austrian School of Economics has shown that in a laissez faire free market totally devoid of governmental interference that monopolies are nearly impossible. The case most often made by Keynesians is that there are certain “natural monopolies”. Even those are government grants.
The Myth of Natural Monopoly
https://mises.org/library/myth-natural-monopoly
E.M.Smith June 29, 2015 at 12:48 am
Like the U.S.-EU Free Trade Agreement (TTIP) perhaps which favors only the big Corporations who have successfully lobbied (bought) the Administration and Congress and the European Commission?
Sorry E.M, but the myth that free markets always lead to monopolies has been disproven in so many ways that only those who prefer myth to reality still believe it.
All companies try to manipulate the market, as do all workers. Manipulating their environment to their own advantage is what humans do.
The secret is that everybody is manipulating, which prevents any one manipulator from taking over.
Sure, some companies can gain an advantage by becoming more efficient than their competitors, but this advantage is always temporary. The competitors are also seeking ways to become more efficient, additionally, as a company grows, inefficiencies of scale begin to dominate. As a company grows it increases it’s workforce, thus by the law of large numbers, the average skill of it’s employees will approach average. Additionally there are more layers of management between the decision makers and the workers.
E.M.Smith– You’d be much better educated in economics if you: dug out your old Keynesian Econ books, put them in your BBQ grill, poured 1/4 cup of gasoline on them, set them on fire and then roasted marshmallows to make S’mores. At least that way, you’d get some utility from those worthless Econ books you apparently read.
After eating your S’mores, go to your computer and download Ludwig Von Mises “Human Action”:
http://www.cmi-gold-silver.com/pdf/humanaction.pdf
Cheers!
markstoval June 29, 2015 at 3:44 am
The Myth of Natural Monopoly
https://mises.org/library/myth-natural-monopoly
That is an surprisingly poor article to use as a reference in this argument.
It is simply an article about the failure of the misguided idea that governments/authorities granting monopolistic franchise rights to utility companies for up to 25 years, while the said government extracted a hefty fee for that right. Donald Duck could tell you that ain’t gonna create efficiency or cheaper utilities for anyone.
And the first example of a ‘large monopolizing corporation” is the Gas Light Company of Baltimore in the era when electric lights were coming on the scene?
That ain’t big, and it was not a matter of out-competing others, it out-politicked them. In the manner of going in with a gun and robbing people actually.
So, I guess we are in some agreement that the government granting of monopolies to utility companies is not such a bright idea. I would argue that no-one ever thought it was, and the ‘theorizing’ was just a simple matter of excusing a robbery and the disguising future planned ones.
No-one will dispute that new technologies and competition have often resulted in the demise of a technology or a business. It has probably happened hundreds of thousands of times. That does not mean large corporations can never dominate a market or a business segment.
And, you don’t necessarily need a monopoly to dominate a market, and stifle the chances of competition arising. Two or three big companies dominating the market is likely just as bad. Unspoken agreements to maintain the status quo, great pressure on suppliers to accept poor payment terms, and the constant squeezing out of any little competitor and the soaking up of other market segments. Goods are not necessarily cheaper to consumers, and even if they are, the ‘great gains in efficiency of scale ‘ must mean someone is out of a job somewhere in that community that was previously had a bigger mix of suppliers amongst it (for they too are consumers).
By the way, there are some lovely bits of ‘hand-waving’ in there too:
.
Big is always better, eh? And best utilization of capital is the yardstick? Perhaps depends how much benefit flows back to the community, and how much profit goes offshore.
And this following tells us not only that big is inevitable (hey, that’s MY argument, right?) but it is also better for us! (BTW, I’m a bit doubtful about that last bit)… and everyone gets a job in the new system?!! That’s odd, where went the economy of scale?
And this sums up the article:
.
Well, there ya go. It is all OK after all. It just may take a few lifetimes to level out.
Those 200 firms now dominating the world economy must have just been lucky (and, I theorize, many of them will continue to be ‘lucky’).
EM Smith and his textbooks are, (IMHO) undoubtedly correct in this matter. It is a simple matter of logic.
In an absolutely “free” market, monopoly is nearly inevitable.
You probably need to ask yourself who is pushing so hard on the idea that ‘free market capitalism’ is the answer to all problems. (Well, it is if you are already big enough).
Your grocery store every week (well our local stores do) have sale papers where they sell some items near zero profit, and other items in the store have a profit margin, so the store can make a profit on your total order, yet the competing stores sell those same “loss leaders” with a profit, is that unfair?
Now, I live in NE Ohio, use to be full of steel mills, most are gone now, except specialty steels, The ones that went out of business were put out because foreign steels were sold below cost, and were subsidized by the government (I think), with the intention of running US mills out of business, that’s dumping, and I believe the government did get involved, and added a tariff as penalty.
Microsoft included a free browser (once browsers became a required app) in their OS (which wasn’t free), this was viewed as anti-competitive by Monzilla because they charged for a browser. If you want to be picky, MS did the same thing with the GUI, FTP stack, any number of things, some they got by buying a company that specialized in that area, some by developing it inhouse. Being in the software business, that’s normal, you add functionality to your product, sometimes you charge more for it, sometimes you don’t, and sometimes you do at first and then later on include it for free. IMO there’s nothing wrong with this, MS sells more OS’s when they provide the latest functionality, even if a different company sold it as an add on to previous versions of the OS that did not include it. Plus in the case of OS’s you didn’t have to use Internet Explorer.
Most of the minicomputer manufacturers are gone, as a side note I interviewed with DEC and got a ride back to the airport in one of their helicopters, which was pretty cool. I didn’t get the job, I made too much without a degree compared to their degreed engineers, they decided it would cause internal strife. But anyways, most of the workstation manufactures are out of business, they were out competed by PC makers, who are being pressured by gaming systems, and smartphones, the lesson IMO is compete or die, this is capitalism.
Now it has it’s warts, again IMO this is where the government, to keep the game fair, keep the cheats out. Fair is somewhat subjective, cheating not so much. An none of the other options has done so much for so many, including a guy with working class parents who didn’t go to college who didn’t have any connections to power.
“We need to be a little careful in the reflex defence of capitalism.”
No we don’t. it’s the most underappreciated cause of prosperity in our modern world. It is constantly critiqued and under attack. it’s also mis-represented, such as what you are doing. “capitalism” has nothing to do with statist attempts to invoke some supra-national world order. Try again, but first read up on economics.
And now we have a Pope who believes in the economic ignorance that turned Argentina from a first-rate country to a second-rate one. We need to be a little careful in the reflex defence of anti-capitalism.
About Argentina ( and Brazil, Chile etc +1000
The UN.
Public Choice theory (the economics of politics) handles that quite nicely. Wherever there is consolidation in an industry you will find the heavy hand of regulation. Just look at Obamacare and the consolidation of both the health insurers and hospital groups. Businesses will enlist the help of government to crush their competition. Look at taxi cartels around the globe trying to crush Uber using government thugs to make criminals of ordinary citizens. And if that is not enough government itself will criminalize the most benign of behaviors, like smoking a weed or carrying a bit too much cash.
Capitalism is about cooperation not competition. How else does the panoply of items in your home get there but if people did not cooperate with each other on a massive scale every minute of every day. If they were locked exclusively in fierce competition as in a battle nothing would be created. So, the meme of ruthless competition is a myth and should be replaced with “competing to cooperate” which is the process of entrepreneurship and management skill.
Think also for a moment about the Church and other institutions, are they also competing to cooperate? Well of course they are. They are not exempt from the laws of economics but at the same time they can be woefully ignorant of them as well. Uninformed people of goodwill are usually called fools.
Huge, monopolistic corporations = bad.
Huge, monopolistic government = good
Irony meter = pegged
I’ve always been fascinated by those who claim that in order to fight monopolies, we have to turn control of everything over to the biggest monopoly of all, government.
Worse still is they do it with Laws, that while hard to get put on the books, they’ve next to impossible to get removed!
I’ve lost track of the number of people I’ve talked to who actually believe that govt is more responsive than big business.
In reality, since businesses are greedy, they want as many customers as they can get. This means they will do what they can to cater to as many as possible.
Govt on the other hand only cares about 50%+1. Any votes above that level are superfluous.
And then there is govt bureaucracy, that can’t be fired and has an unlimited supply of other people’s money to spend, so it can’t ever go bankrupt.
When you have a run-in with a monopolistic corporation, you can complain to government. Governments have acted against abusive monopolies in the past. But when you are mistreated by a monopolistic government, who can you go to for help?
You left out Huge, monopolistic labor unions.
Louis, why would a govt do anything against a monopolistic company?
It was govt that created that monopolistic company in the first place.
Eustace Cranch June 29, 2015 at 4:04 am:
EC (Eustace Cranch) Practicality/logic Module = non functioning.
A bit more like this, perhaps:
Huge, monopolistic corporations = very bad.
Huge, monopolistic government = also bad, probably worse, but very much depending on the government., and how it deals with providing a functioning economy to all levels of society.
Louis Hunt June 29, 2015 at 10:05 am
When you have a run-in with a monopolistic corporation, you can complain to government. Governments have acted against abusive monopolies in the past. But when you are mistreated by a monopolistic government, who can you go to for help?
Exactly, Louis.
We need someone to control those corporations, and so government does do that now. But more and more they are moving beyond national laws.
On your latter point, try to maintain or improve upon the semblance of (corporate funded) democracy we now have. 😉
That is not the result of capitalism. Capitalism means free, competitive markets. Government interference in, and over-regulation of, markets has produced the situation that you speak of. Large multi-nationals are always the primary benificiaries of government action.
Capitalism is great when played by established rules. It’s problem is that the refs are bought off. When was the last time a monopoly was broken up in the USA. Bribes to govt are the way businesses operate in many countries.
Max
“When was the last time a monopoly was broken up in the USA”
The FTC shouldn’t allow them to be created through the purchase of another business. But if you are successful and become the standard, I don’t think they should be broken up, accept for the most agregious violations.
For instance the Microsoft browser wars, they deserved fined and some sanctions, but was petty jealousy for the most part.
What did Microsoft do that was bad?
Do you believe that automakers should be forced to sell cars without radios?
She’s not that hot. And neither are her views/statements/whatever…
Hotter than the other Naomi…
The only Pope Mao can do to improve the human condition is promote contraception and leave science to scientists.
my favourite excerpt from Rosie Scammell’s Guardian piece is “The ***imminent arrival of Klein within the Vatican walls has raised some eyebrows”. “imminent” makes Naomi sound so important, doesn’t it?
anyway, as for the “Activists and religious leaders will gather in Rome on Sunday, marching through the Eternal City”, the organisers involved all the usual suspects under a “One Earth, One Family” umbrella – WWF, Greenpeace, 350.org which i read somewhere sent two islander “climate warriors”, etc. & they claim to have assembled 5,000 in St. Peter’s Square, says Rosie Scammel in a follow-up Guardian article.
google has no pics of any numbers remotely in the thousands, and the only pic in the One Earth, One Family second photo gallery on their website with any sizeable numbers is clearly the regular Sunday crowd in St. Peter’s Square waiting to be blessed by the Pope. in fact, it has the tag ““I finally saw the Pope”. the first photo gallery on the page has no crowds, just small numbers with the WWF, Greenpeace, Solar, Migrants Lives Matter banners & the like:
OneEarthOneFamily.org – Photo Galleries
http://oneearthonefamily.org/
29 June: Guardian: Pope Francis’s environmental message brings thousands on to streets in Rome
Vatican officials to discuss climate change and environment with scientists and activists including Naomi Klein
by Rosie Scammell in Rome
Alongside Klein and Turkson, the conservation group WWF has been invited to this week’s Vatican conference and had a strong presence at the rally on Sunday, described as a “historic event” by Samantha Smith, leader of the organisation’s global climate and energy initiative…
Activists at the One Earth, One Family event broke through the silence enveloping early-morning Rome with singing and chanting, waving paper birds high over the central Piazza Farnese before marching to the Vatican…
While a few hundred people began the multifaith march, holding banners and sheltering from the sun under giant paper leaves, organisers said about 5,000 were present at the end of the march in St Peter’s Square…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/28/pope-francis-environment-rome-naomi-klein-climate-change
Ah the Guardian…
Did you catch the recent article that claimed extraterrestrials might come to earth and eliminate the human race to protect the planet from AGW? “Scientists say…”
To paraphrase the immortal Twain, there are lies, damn lies and the Guardian
Didn’t Hollywood just make a movie with that as it’s premise?
who do you think controls obama???
CIDSE has the July 2-3, 2015 Vatican program as of June 26, 2015
Conference People and Planet First: The Imperative to Change Course
http://cidse.org/articles/rethinking-development/conference-people-and-planet-first-the-imperative-to-change-course.html
Scroll down to the Program PDF
Day One, Session One 11-12:30
Naomi Klein, Author (Canada)
Amazing. They just keep returning to Karl Marx like moths to a flame. With the same results every time.
They are absolutely convinced that this time they will get it right, because this time they will be the ones in charge.
Very succinctly put. Every generation believes your statement.
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”….Pres Obama
The Pope is suppose to be saving souls not the earth.
No, now his job is to save the Earth FROM the souls. Understand?
The driver in every company is to generate a monopoly, it is only possible for a monopoly to flourish under the shelter of regulation.
Big monolithic corporation that use lobby are no better than the Communist equivalents.
This is the tension in any capitalistic system and the drive from the left is to add regulation which concentrates economic activity, code for monopoly and the right should have the desire to disassemble regulation to allow the blowtorch of competition to disassemble the inefficient forming monopolies.
The Pope and Naomi Klein?
A marriage made in heaven….
Look lower.
Look lower…….lol!
My new hobby is asking progressives why they consider the pope to be an authority on the subject of climate change, but not on the subjects of gay marriage, contraception, or abortion.
That’s a pretty valid point, I wonder how the Holy See will view eco-evangelism after the EPA requires them to upgrade their churches and cathedrals to Energy-Star standards.
I’m watching a slow death of the country (U.S.) I once cherished.
Bernie Sanders is apparently giving Hillary a run for her money on the Democrat side.
Despite the proven failures of socialism, the leeches want more of it.
Beats working for a living.
I hope Bernie Sanders wins the primaries. At least he is honest about his socialism…
I would love to see a debate between him and Ted Cruz for example…
Ted Cruz is a Masterdebater….
I would feel sorry for Bernie if he had to debate Ted Cruz. It would be reminiscent of a cuisinart in action.
JPP; “Ted Cruz is a Masterdebater….”
I think the Pope will disapprove. You know that causes blindness…
Climate Change and anti-free-market economic philosophies share the same metaphysical premise that polical elites have both the right and the ability to effectively control economies and climate through the initiation of force.
Morally, ethically and empirically this premise is fallacious.
The CAGW hypothesis has, for all intents and purposes, already been disconfirmed, as the physics and empirical evidence show CO2 forcing will likely only generate around 0.75C (+-0.25C) of warming by 2100, plus or minus whatever the sun and other natural variables decide to do between now and then.
Such a minuscule amount of CO2 induced warming is far from catastrophic and almost an order of magnitude less than CAGW hypothetical projections.
Moreover, it’s morally reprehensible to restrict fossil fuel use in developing countries as it will perpetuate and exacerbate poverty, and greatly inhibit infrastructure and economic development.
Economically, empirical evidence is irrefutable that societies with the freest markets and the highest level of individual freedom do the best.
For the Catholic Church to embrace centrally controlled economies and Climate Change is morally and ethically reprehensible and will ultimately have a very negative impact on the Church and society.
“Moreover, it’s morally reprehensible to restrict fossil fuel use in developing countries as it will perpetuate and exacerbate poverty, and greatly inhibit infrastructure and economic development. ”
I agree. There are 50 million Americans living at or near subsistence. 75% of Us are living pay check to pay check.
So I ask Francis: how will cutting consumption help most of us, especially those on the absolute margin?
Sarastro– There are roughly 1.2 BILLION people in the world that still don’t have access to electricity…
What economic effect do Statist CAGW acolytes think their fossil fuel restrictions will have on these 1.2 billion people?
Because of: US’ movement away from a free-market economy, $18.3 trillion national debt, monetary inflation, $2 trillion/yr in compliance costs, fiat US$, a gigantic bureaucracy, and roughly 43% of GDP being spent by the federal/state/local governments, US living standards are tanking.
At the start of the 20th century, total federal/state/local government spending only accounted for 7% of GDP….
Had $100+(?) trillion (who knows what the actual number is) not been squandered by the US government and left in the private sector over the past 100+ years, imagine what the US standard of living would look like; it boggles the mind…
And so it goes… until it doesn’t.
Klein is one of McGibbon’s 350.org cultists.
To you, Klein , I say……. “TOWARDS 700ppm !!”
CO2, greening the planet, and feeding the world.
I will return to the Catholic Church when the Church returns to being Catholic.
+100
Yes, this a million times over. Thank you for concisely positing the problem so many American Catholics have with the Church.
I’m about ready to officially renounce my Catholisism.
Who would have thought that the Papacy would become a useful idiot position? Editors of Nature and Science, although strange, you can see how that happened.
I’m developing a notion that maybe it’s a false flag operation and the most clever capitalists are using the useful idiot strategy, coupled with useless idiots, to waste their time on this great big pile of nothing while they get on with being capitalists, i.e, dangerous though the idiots are, they’re less dangerous than they could be while they’re totally occupied with pretending to fight against carbon dioxide (and they still buy fuel too). We’ll see after Paris.
philincalifornia: “….I’m developing a notion that maybe it’s a false flag operation …”
I wish that were true but it’s more sinister than that. Quote from page 75 of the Club of Rome’s 1990 publication entitled The First Global Revolution……
“In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea
that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit
the bill…”
The COR is a group of VERY wealthy and influential people that believe man isn’t capable of self government, Capitalism is the scourge of world economy, and a world government led by appointed bureaucrats (UN) is the only savior. They have control of the media, universities, most governments, and the money to pull it off. Look how far they’ve come already. The EU is a start. The only thing in the way of their plan now in the US is the Constitution and they’ve already sidestepped most of it. Most people claim “conspiracy theory” when confronted with these facts but they have been completely open with their plans. Most people just think it’s too preposterous to be real. It is real.
METRO UK, June 2, 2015
“We’ve got six months to save the world or we’re all doomed”, according to Jeffrey Sachs
Three upcoming events to put this over according to Sachs are:
Funding for Development meeting in Addis Adaba, July 2015
Adoption of new Sustainable Development Goals, New York, Sept., 2015
UN Climate Change Conference, Paris, November, 2015
http://www.metro.co.uk/2015/06/02/weve-got-six-months-to-save-the-world-or-were-all-doomed-5227137/#item-attachment_5025449
This situation just keeps getting worse!
We all knew that the runup to Paris was going to be big. Get the popcorn ready, we haven’t seen anything yet!
Strikes me the recruitment of the Pope and the theatre he is now providing, is a pretty clear indication of how poorly the “Cause’ is selling.
The desperation of our paid “helpers” is becoming immense.
For having wasted billions and after attempting to savage what few freedoms we still have, they are going to have to admit there is no catastrophe. Never was a human fingerprint on climate, measured anywhere.
When you heap scorn,derision upon people who are simply asking for their due, in this case an explanation of the CAGW panic, it is unlikely the scorned are going to be polite and forgiving when you are exposed as charlatans.
The wine has turned to vinegar the roses are dead in the vase..cold is seeping in..
Followed by angry citizens looking for our promised Global Warming.
It seems to be going better for them than in 2009, when the world had bigger fish to fry.
The slightly warmer 2014/2015 has them erasing the ‘pause’, and they redoubled the heavy-hitter panic talk – ‘we must act now’ with not hint of irony that we didn’t act in 2009 and the world didnt end.
It still wont.
Also, they’ve wheeled out bogus health ‘science’ on the harm of heat, apparently heat waves will hit us and the next generation will be too dumb to get out of the hot sun. They are now layering junk science on top of junk models to make junk health predictions. And nobody in the media save for a few maligned ‘skeptics’ calls out the BullStones.
Alarmists wont admit they were wrong, not for decades.
One quibble with terminology:
“Capitalism” is the term Karl Marx used for his strawman parody of the free market.
Yeah,
Excellent quote in there from the boy Friedman:
Phil Donahue’s question of the disparity between the “haves” and the “have-nots” is better framed by which countries “have” economic and individual freedoms vs those that “have not”…
People who live in countries that “have” economic and personal freedoms do much better than those that “have not” these objective virtues.
The economic empirical evidence showing this reality is unequivocal.
Yu da man Milton!
What they are really objecting to is the Pareto Principal or the 80-20 rule; It’s like objecting to E=mc^2. Mankind has always accumulated wealth and 80% of that wealth has always been held by 20% of the population and it follows that .2^3 is .008, .8 ^3 is .51 and you have the famous 1%er’s..
What’s wrong with the 99%’s is that there isn’t one pie, there’s as many pies as people can think of and get people to want to buy, want to make more money, be more valuable.
The problem is some don’t want to (or can’t) do that, and complain about people who are making more money than they do.
The real scandal is that the Papacy would align with Schellenhuber who calls for a global population reduction to a “carrying capacity” of one billion people or less. Furthermore, “Merkel’s Holdren” proposes a series of unelected global tyrannies to supervise the mega-genocide he proposes.
http://tarpley.net/
How do these freaks of nature think they’re going to eradicate 6 Billion people?
Oh, hold on a sec … !!!
in a followup, Rosie Scammel has organisers of the rally mentioned in the Guardian link Eric Worrall has posted, claiming attendance of 5,000. i don’t think so:
29 June: Guardian: Pope Francis’s environmental message brings thousands on to streets in Rome
Vatican officials to discuss climate change and environment with scientists and activists including Naomi Klein
by Rosie Scammell in Rome
Alongside Klein and Turkson, the conservation group WWF has been invited to this week’s Vatican conference and had a strong presence at the rally on Sunday, described as a “historic event” by Samantha Smith, leader of the organisation’s global climate and energy initiative…
Activists at the ***One Earth, One Family event broke through the silence enveloping early-morning Rome with singing and chanting, waving paper birds high over the central Piazza Farnese before marching to the Vatican…
While a few hundred people began the multifaith march, holding banners and sheltering from the sun under giant paper leaves, organisers said about 5,000 were present at the end of the march in St Peter’s Square…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/28/pope-francis-environment-rome-naomi-klein-climate-change
***nowhere in google images of the One Earth, One Family rally have i seen any sizeable crowd whatsoever. greenpeace also involved, it seems, & elsewhere i read that 350.org sent a couple of islander “climate warriors”.
in the first photo gallery on One Earth, One Family’s own website, there are no crowds whatsoever, just some WWF, Greenpace, Solar, Migrant Lives Matter banners & the like.
in the second photo gallery, there is one photo of a crowd, with a caption “I finally saw the Pope” but it is evident that is the regular Sunday crowd that congregates in St. Peter’s Square for the Pope’s blessing, & has nothing to do with the rally.
OneEarthOneFamily.org – Photo Galleries
http://oneearthonefamily.org/
So this latest talk-feast will “debate climate change action” well maybe but one thing we can be sure about, it won’t include a free and open debate about what appears to be the current Pope’s alarmist obsession with the quasi-religious man-made warming orthodoxy. Pierre Gosselin recently identified some of the flawed reasoning underpinning the Popes Encyclical:
In another article a few days ago Gosselin explained how:
Sadly with each passing day Francis is identifying himself as a menace to mankind’s efforts to create a more prosperous world in which all people, including the desperately poor, can enjoy the health and well being that freely available, affordable energy brings.
His ambition is clear – he wishes to make people equal. He is the first, though, to center that equality around abject poverty – the least difficult economic condition to achieve by human effort and which is a goal that nobody would choose on their own. Hence the need for wielding the Papal pulpit. It is no surprise the faithful are often referred to as “the flock”. He is an idiot – a very useful idiot.
Papal Epicyclical.
Perhaps all Francis is doing is trying to fulfill the prophecy of him being the last Pope?
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/10/17238040-are-cardinals-electing-the-last-pope-if-you-believe-nostradamus
And on the same day, the Dalai Lama teamed up with Patti Smith.
This is an age of strange alliances.
What’s next? Lady Gaga and Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-33303900
So now Francis now supports anti Israel policies?
“In summer 2009, on the occasion of the publication of the Hebrew translation of her book The Shock Doctrine, Klein visited Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, combining the promotion of her book and the BDS campaign. In an interview to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz she emphasized that it is important to her “not to boycott Israelis but rather to boycott the normalization of Israel and the conflict.”[37] In a speech in Ramallah on 27 June, she apologized to the Palestinians for not joining the BDS campaign earlier.[38] Her remarks, particularly that “[Some Jews] even think we get one get-away-with-genocide-free-card” were characterized by an op-ed columnist in the Jerusalem Post as “violent” and “unethical”, and as the “most perverse of aspersions on Jews, an age-old stereotype of Jews as intrinsically evil and malicious.”[39]”
I am not a fan of religion, be it old school or new. I trust the world to survive well without a lot of help.
All the theorizing about free market and capitalism and the invisible hand is nonsense if you don’t make the distinction between an entrepreneur and a pirate and that governments are rightly formed to protect their citizens, property, territory and industry from the pirates. Pirates often sail under false flags which explains why so many conflate corporatism with capitalism. National Treasury’s and Central Banks have allowed three card monty games to be passed as “financial instruments” in banking for so long that it may require a return to the gold standard to sort it all out in the long run.
Government is a Pirate and protector of Pirates.
Taxation is theft. How much more piratical can you get?
Simon you are being no less a Utopian than the Communists of whom you complain. We citizens who wish to not be molested by pirates will band together in political agreement to pay by some formula for the nuclear aircraft carrier to protect our right to be free of pirates. Pirates beware! We would be stupid to ban together, pay for the carrier, and hand control of it to unelected friends of the pirate!
Free markets don’t mean political anarchy.
Since individuals have a right to self defense, they have a right to band together and hire someone else to provide that protection for them.
Yeah, They form political and territorial connections to “provide for the common defense”. It’s called a sovereign state. The state derives it’s “just powers from the consent of the governed” It all rings pretty familiar and there were no invisible hands writing it.
You do realize that you aren’t making any sense?
Fossil sage makes perfect sense (to me, at least) .
‘The whole thing works because of sets of rules, and systems to regulate them’ (Hey, isn’t that called a government?).
So any dispute is simply over to what degree does the government really need to be involved.
Those who say “not at all” are more deluded than those who say “completely”. At least we have seen examples of the latter system function for 50 years or so before collapsing in a sorry mess.
(Many in here seem happy with that timeline, it is probably about how long a gigantic corporation would take to get out-competed or out-moded…. but only through the righteous forces of competition, of course!)
Don’t ever worry about all that anti-capitalism stuff. You cannot fool the market in the long run. The truth will out in the end. There is no magic about money or credit. Markets will crash eventually if too many investments are built on sand. You can theorise till the cows come home – cold money facts will eventually prove or disprove your theories.. Just read a book which I can recommend : “Why We Bite the Invisible Hand” by Peter Foster.
I find it interesting (and encouraging), though, that it looks as if the so-called “quantitative easing”, if applied intelligently and moderately, can somehow prevent a real global depression (like the 1930’s). Is it applied “Social Credit??”
While what you say is true, the problem is that the eventual ‘win’ of the market comes sometime after the complete collapse of the society into ruin after all the wealth is squandered, capital stock worn out or destroyed or moved to China, and the money as store of value has turned to dust. I’d rather avoid that process…
There is a very long history of “bubble and crash” and an almost as long history of “Socialism to Poverty”. (See USSR, Fascist Italy, National State Socialist Germany, Khmer Rouge, Maoist Red China pre-market economy, Argentina, Brazil during Socialist runs – yet Brazil as market economy grows fast, and so many more…)
And that is why I’d really really rather not have to wait for the natural end game… it comes in about 50 years and I don’t have that long…
You won’t have to wait 50 years : I’ll hazard the guess that all the billions of dollars of bad investments in alternative energy over the last 15 years will cause a stock market crash very soon. They were expecting oil prices to keep going up to begin making the investments profitable about now – but, alas (or hallelujah), look at oil prices now.
AndyE June 29, 2015 at 2:59 am
The downturn has already begun. The market crash I expect will be seen in September.
The proximate cause in the US? Insurance companies (ObamaCare) are gobbling up all the excess cash produced by the decline in oil prices.
Martin Armstrong predicts the month of the crash as October.
Keep an eye on Greece. If it defaults, it could easily start a world wide banking collapse.
Andy, I have no doubt whatsoever that the market will sort itself out in the long run.
The only problem I have is such natural cycles may take 20, 40, or 50 years … enough to c ruin generations.
It’d be nice if we could balance it out a bit better in the meantime.
Right now we are seeing more wealth than ever accumulate into fewer hands.
So what? Wealth isn’t limited, money is a proxy for human labor in a barter system, and the population keeps growing, I’d be surprised if total wealth has risen as fast as population has.
Why haven’t we seen anyhing like the 1930’s depression since then (i.e. for over 80 years)? I had uncles then desperate for work, but unable to find any for years. I believe capitalism has evolved since then – governments somehow manage to short-circuit the “natural cycles” you talk about. How do they do it? We can point to various actions which served to create the credit necessary for economic growth. I really think no economist is able to pinpoint exactly how it happens. Credit equals money, right? Or is that wrong?Economic orthodoxy will not accept what is happening – but happen it does. Quantitative easing? Funny money? Social credit? Adequate, generous unemployment benefits?
(Sorry for repeating my comment below,
I used it a couple of days ago)
In a new role the Pope is now being cast,
Making more use of his communist past,
To destroy the world’s economy,
And create a UN hegemony,
But how long can this ‘man made’ thing last?
http://rhymeafterrhyme.net/global-warming-and-the-catholic-church/
Virtually all the money sent to Vatican comes from the surplus available from capitalism. How could he not understand that?
Sad to say that a lot of it comes from little old ladies/widows/elderly Social Security income. They were always sending letters to my elderly widowed neighbor wanting more.
Get rid of capitalism? Perhaps this Pope could lead off with a garage sale of all the treasures in the Vatican.
And ALL material treasure came out of the ground from the stone to the gold. Apparently Gaia is not offended if you dig stuff out of “her” as long as it does not burn.
Hmm Naomi has an interesting biography. Interesting family history. That’s all I can say about that. If the writing isn’t on the wall with this one then.. What a circus performance this is going to be. i don’t think anybody important could take this seriously though thank God. No pun intended.
Hmm. I see what you mean. If it works, Naomi Klein is against it.
Here’s a very negative review of NK’s book, on Reason magazine:
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://reason.com/archives/2014/09/16/naomi-klein-changes-nothing&sa=U&ei=bnWRVYihGdGoogS6hYGYBQ&ved=0CBYQFjAA&sig2=CuCmygdXP1_heVR0snaQlQ&usg=AFQjCNHAW4zrFwuszy8QqxSXBfItxUDHzQ
From Wiki – “Klein’s fourth book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate was published in September 2014 The book puts forth the argument that the hegemony of neoliberal market fundamentalism is blocking any serious reforms to halt climate change and protect the environment.”
Perhaps her efforts might be better discussing female bishops (or lack of) with the Pope?
“neoliberal market fundamentalism” is just the Chicago school of economics. If she thinks it’s capitalism, she has another thing coming.
Naomi Klein and Cardinal Peter Turkson; a couple of ignoramuses.
just watched the film ‘KIngsman’. Bwa haha! The evil climate change activists trying to depopulate the planet. Does that sound likely ? I’d say yes!
This is good news. No one with half a brain will believe the pope anymore on anything.LOL
It seems to me that Pope Francis is probably a very poor judge of character and talent when it comes to serious secular issues.
When the curtain finally falls on the AGCC farce, it will also fall on this papacy.
OK, so every time the current Holy Father makes this sort of very non-infallible decision, as a traditional Catholic I feel obliged to offer my coffee mug suggestion as compensation (like “carbon credits”)”
http://www.fidelitybooks.com.au/Hugh/GalileoMug.jpg
I thought this response might help balance the ledger. Sorry I can’t do the click on bit.
Miranda Devine
–, Sunday, June, 21, 2015, (1:35am)
CLIMATE alarmists are cock-a-whoop over Pope Francis’s much-anticipated call to action on global warming.
Yes, the leader of the world’s 1.8 billion Catholics, agrees with Kevin Rudd. The planet is in crisis, and climate change is one of the greatest moral challenges, the Pope has written in his first solo encyclical. Man is to blame and fossil fuels are bad.
It couldn’t be a more political document, designed to ¬influence the upcoming UN ¬climate summit in Paris later this year. Christiana Figueres, the UN’s climate change head, has called it a “clarion call to guide the world”.
Looks like everyone’s a papist now.
Alarmists are revelling in what they hope is the discomfort of the climate sceptic, or agnostic faithful, especially the Prime Minister.
“Hopefully this is Tony Abbott’s come to Jesus moment on climate change,” Greens leader Richard Di Natale said
“If Tony Abbott won’t listen to the science, I only hope he will listen to the leader of his church and see the light on climate change,” said independent MP Andrew Wilkie.
The same people who have flayed Abbott for taking orders from Rome, supposedly, when it comes to women’s ovaries or same-sex marriage are now ¬demanding he obey the Pope and start spraying windmills across the landscape.
Sensibly, the PM ducked questions last week. After all, no disrespect to the Pope, but he has no authority on these matters. His is just another opinion.
And at a time when Christians are being slaughtered in the Middle East, you have to wonder at the use of this significant statement of papal teaching for what surely is a less pressing concern.
How could a refugee fleeing the medieval brutality of Islamic State in Syria or Iraq feel anything but abandoned by the Pope’s preoccupation with mythical “climate refugees”.
“There has been a tragic rise in the number of migrants seeking to flee from the growing poverty caused by environmental degradation,” he writes.
“Sadly, there is widespread indifference to such suffering.”
Yes, the Pope prays every week for an end to the war in Syria, and on Friday, he met the head of the Syrian Orthodox Church to lament the “terrible trials” of Christians in the Middle East. But none of that gets the global media attention of an encyclical written in the language of the green Left, that criticises market economics, and sounds the doomsday alarm.
“The Earth, our home, is ¬beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth,” is one of the more peculiar claims.
Yet a quick scan of the 10 most-polluted places on Earth finds that not one is in the ¬developed world. Instead we see Ghana, Indonesia, Ukraine, Zambia, Russia, Nigeria and Argentina. The fact is that prosperity and progress leads to less pollution and more care for the environment. It’s in rich Western countries that people have the luxury of clean waterways, recycling bins, and catalytic converters.
What’s more, the Pope’s concern for the poor in developing countries is at odds with the UN’s climate demands.
It is the poor who are hit hardest by the electricity price rises that result from cuts in ¬energy consumption.
Pro-life advocates are aghast that many of the climate alarmists who are claiming the Pope as their own are Malthusians and misanthropes — to them, people are the problem and the solution is population control, which of course is the antithesis of Catholic teaching.
Two of the Pope’s environmental advisers for the encyclical, for instance, were Jeffrey Sachs and Hans Schellnhuber, known for advocating abortion, contraception and sterilisation.
But, as a Catholic and an ¬optimist, I suspect the Pope is engaging in Jesuitical trickery.
When you read the encyclical, you see that climate change is a minor player, despite the media hype.
In 44,000 words, the word “climate” appears just 18 times. This is illustrated in a word cloud by the Catholic News Service, in which the size of a word correlates with the frequency of its use: “climate” is not visible. “Human” is the largest word, followed by “God”.
That is the cleverness of this popular, enigmatic Pope He has used climate change as the “bait” to lure the chattering classes, the godless and the Gaia worshippers.
He gives them a bit of climate sustenance, then whacks them with a full-frontal attack on moral relativism.
“We have had enough of ¬immorality and the mockery of ethics, goodness, faith and honesty … There can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself,” the Pope writes.
He is down on abortion, contraception, embryonic research, sex changes and digital media, which gives “rise to a new type of contrived emotion which has more to do with devices and displays than with other people and with nature”.
He is all for the family, which he calls “the heart of the culture of life”.
So now that the Pope has the ears of the world, he’s relentlessly hammering us with ¬unabashed Catholic teaching, sugar-coated with populist ¬environmentalism.
Genius bait and switch.
Look who queues up to bury the most successful system ever, wanting to replace it with their own failed models? Back to being told what to think and when to think it. Back to superstition. These are momentous times. I don’t think they will win, as I think people will smell the rat, but this is a particularly revealing moment. I expect next to see strong attacks on democracy, as those who know best seek their own ascendancy.
as for the rally mentioned in your Guardian link, here is Rosie’s followup with the organisers (WWF & Co) claiming 5,000 attended. i don’t think so:
29 June: Guardian: Pope Francis’s environmental message brings thousands on to streets in Rome
Vatican officials to discuss climate change and environment with scientists and activists including Naomi Klein
by Rosie Scammell in Rome
Alongside Klein and Turkson, the conservation group WWF has been invited to this week’s Vatican conference and had a strong presence at the rally on Sunday, described as a “historic event” by Samantha Smith, leader of the organisation’s global climate and energy initiative…
Activists at the ***One Earth, One Family event broke through the silence enveloping early-morning Rome with singing and chanting, waving paper birds high over the central Piazza Farnese before marching to the Vatican…
While a few hundred people began the multifaith march, holding banners and sheltering from the sun under giant paper leaves, organisers said about 5,000 were present at the end of the march in St Peter’s Square…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/28/pope-francis-environment-rome-naomi-klein-climate-change
nowhere in google images of the rally have i seen any sizeable crowd whatsoever. greenpeace also involved, it seems, & elsewhere i read that 350.org sent a couple of islander “climate warriors”.
in the first photo gallery at the One Earth, One Family website, there are no crowds whatsoever, just some WWF banners, Solar banners, Migrant Lives Matter banners & the like.
in the second photo gallery, there is one photo of a crowd, with a tag “I finally saw the Pope”. it is evident that it is the regular Sunday crowd who congregate in St. Peter’s Square for the Pope’s blessing, & has nothing to do with the rally.
OneEarthOneFamily.org – Photo Galleries
http://oneearthonefamily.org/
So…she who doesn’t like advertisers is now going to be in the position to use advertising tactics on us that she despises when it’s coming from corporations. *SMH*
She’s the anti-capitalist capitalist. Her religious superpower is annoying people into submission.
If you want to see what effect unrestricted capitalism has on the environment take a visit to Beijing and breathe in nice and deep. Government controls eg the clean air act by far the most efficient way of reigning in the excesses of the free market.
You mean no regulation, not “unrestricted capitalism.”
Unrestricted capitalism?? Seriously?? I’ll remember that when the Chinese.gov starts “suppressing” environmentalists.
“reins”- what goes on a horse
“reigns”- what a king does
“rains” – what it does on the planes, in Spain… when they are out of their hangers
“hangar”- where the planes are
“hanger”- where your coat is
🙂
Plains are that place in Spain on which the rain rains.
Sunnuva gun, Eustace! Never noticed that one and I’ve worked for 2 aerospace companies and one aircraft manufacturer where I got paid to wander around the hangars. Near as I can recall, that’s the first time I’ve ever had cause to write the word and I got busted right out of the gate. Thank you sir! :o)
The very first link is wrong; it leads to a sign-up page. please correct
Klein is an economic idiot. She has no clue what capitalism is. It’s pretty simple. Income drives spending. Spending creates sales. Sales create jobs. Jobs create income. Repeat. That’s it. Capitalism.
And “sales” are anything that a person (or business) produces for sale, from books to tree trimming, from steel to scallop fishing. Nursing. Bridges. Engineering. Whatever it is you do. “Goods and services” in macroeconomic parlance. The output of a nation.
What Klein is woefully unaware of is that 70% of the spending in this country is by households, ordinary people who want jobs, and need them to sustain themselves and their dignity. But they need income before they can spend.
And what she doesn’t understand is that the process I describe in the first paragraph is “pro-cyclical.” It goes in one direction only. The federal government, on the other hand, can act counter-cyclically during a downturn, which our federal government has failed to do since 2009. Only the federal government can act counter-cyclically and increase spending by congressional appropriation (without any debt to children and grandchildren). And without requiring an income*.
Look at the process I describe in the first paragraph. If households don’t have any income, or are saving their income to pay off debt (“deleveraging”), then the only entity in this capitalist country of ours that can spend to increase sales which create jobs is the federal government.
But we’ve elected idiots in Congress who don’t know that, who think that the “national debt” is something we have to pay back (or pay down), and who think that federal government deficits are actually harmful! When they’re not. (The European countries that gave up their sovereign currency for the Euro are not so lucky.)
===========================
* Anyone who thinks that the US federal government needs income before it can spend (that it needs tax dollars), I invite you to look at the US Treasury’s consolidated bank statement for the end of fiscal year 2014, which is September 30th. This is the federal government’s (US Treasury) bank statement for the year. I’m not making this up. It’s two pages.
Look at “TABLE IV – Federal tax Deposits.” Total taxes received were $2,599,739 million, or $2.6 trillion. (We’ll ignore “TABLE VI – Income Tax Refunds Issued,” which would make the number even smaller) That’s it. A measly $2.6 trillion. If you think that pays for the government, you’ve got bats in the belfry.
Now look at “TABLE III-A – Public Debt Transactions.” The federal government–NOT the Federal Reserve–issued $69,813,829 million, or $69.8 trillion in new US dollar instruments. The accountant’s term for it is “public debt” because they record it on the right side of the ledger sheet under “Liabilities.” It also redeemed $68,727,941 million, or $68.7 trillion. What they bought with it goes on the left side of their ledger sheet under “Assets.” The difference, btw, is what the federal government allows us to keep. It’s called the National Debt, or “Public Debt Outstanding.” It’s in our bank accounts. Yours and mine.
So do not, under any circumstances, think that federal taxes pay for anything. They don’t. Their purpose is to regulate the economy in a fiat system like a thermostat. Economy ice cold? Cut taxes, increase spending. Economy red hot? Increase taxes, cut spending. The US federal government can never go broke.
This is why Naomi Klein’s assertions are insane. She has zero understanding of how things work. And now she’s over in Italy, which gave up the Lira for the Euro, talking to people who do not understand the American system of capitalism, and is going to regulate ours from afar? The Climate Change people running the UN know about TABLE III-A – Public Debt Transactions. They’re after the US federal government’s money-making machine.
True, the government can never go broke. But the money CAN become worthless.
Assuming you’re talking about USD, only if USD are not longer required to pay taxes. Then, why would anyone need them and, therefore, work to get them?
Ain’t gonna’ happen, M Simon, unless idiotic and foolish congressmen and senators default the US currency (like the Russians did in 1997 or 1998 when they didn’t have to). We are a sovereign nation with a sovereign currency. Too bad Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, and all the idiotic Democratic and Republican candidates, don’t know this.
GDP=Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports
About now I remember the description of fox hunting as “The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable”.
While it seems to be missing from the encyclical I leave this comment open to adaptation.
The Catholic Church, like the Church Of England, are heavily invested in ‘Carbon’.
Since the value of ‘Carbon’ is now much lower than when they originally invested their money, they will be relentless with the AGW propaganda.
However, you only have to look at the paedophile scandal inside the Catholic Church and the criminal conspiracy to protect those embedded deviants to understand what you are dealing with here. The criminally insane.
The Catholic Church has a very well documented history of comfortably aligning itself with the worlds most destructive, criminally insane powers.
How can one be surprised. A neutral observer might call this The Age of the Oligarchs. Even Wikipedia has it right: “… power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, education, corporate, religious or military control.”
Western democracies, after a long a winding path, have rejected rule by the people. The Church merely reflects this 200-300 year process(es) of rejecting self-rule. The Church is simply wanting to be part of the ruling oligarchy instead of an outsider. Remember, the Pope was elected by a super-majority of the Church Cardinals meaning the Pope is just a member of a group that includes Baghdad Bob, Josh Earnest and all the rest of the press secretaries. I.E., he’s the public spokesperson reflection of the organization he represents.
The most likely outcome, for the US, is a form of government similar to China’s bureaucratic capitalism or whether they’ll simply skip on to a variation of he Nazi’s “statism”. However, the effect on the non-oligarch class will still mean having to learn to live under totalitarian rule.
It will play out on it’s own time scale but this will not end well.
One of the best essays that you can read on the root of our problems with the socialists/greens is:
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard31.html
Poverty must be maintained at all cost!
I see the science ignorant socialist pope intends to remain science ignorant.
The pious but ignorant asking for guidance from the godless but clueless.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2015/06/20/the-sickening-encyclical/
Pointman
Perhaps someone should send the Pope King Cnut’s throne. He may need it.
It is the irony motherlode: the side that claims to be helping the poor, that claims to be helping the environment, that claims to be good for the economy, and that claims to have science and truth on its side is in fact the polar opposite of all those things. And finally, we have the Church, which is supposed to stand for all things which are good weighing in on the side of evil instead. How this will all play out is anyone’s guess.
It is a dog’s breakfast without a doubt.
“When the enemy is making a false movement we must take good care not to interrupt him”
The heat and noise surrounding the Pope’s letter and subsequent campaigns is making it increasingly clearly that the discussion is a political and economic (rather than scientific) one. This is good for us. It will make it clear to the middle-ground that the supposedly lunatic conspiracy-theorists weren’t quite so lunatic. There WAS a form of political end-game hidden behind the science, and this WAS about establishing some form of centrally planned / controlled global economic model.
The clearer this becomes, the less tolerant electorates will become of being asked to acquiesce, the more questions they will start asking – and the more likely it is that a reappraisal of the scientific basis for these extreme political demands will kick off.
Which will probably bring us back to where most of us sit. Yes there have been temperature increases – but not as much as the manipulated data suggests. Yes, some of it is caused by human activities, but probably not as much as claimed. Yes, there may be more to come, but probably not too much and certainly not catastrophic. Neutral to lukewarm.
Australia and Canada are a little ahead on this political journey. There seems little wavering in UK cabinet, but there is scepticism on the back-benches which could start to play in the run up to the EU referendum – given the EU’s gung-ho attitude and inherent belief in regulation and control. GOP control of both houses is moving the US in the direction of a more questioning stance – something which will inevitably be escalated by the current papal bull.
In short, let the left make as much noise as possible about rebuilding the world economy and dismantling capitalism. Really, let them get on with it. The more extreme the better. That’s where the political “consensus” will start to fall apart – and the apparent scientific one will follow.
thomam,
” the discussion is a political and economic (rather than scientific) one. This is good for us. It will make it clear to the middle-ground that the supposedly lunatic conspiracy-theorists weren’t quite so lunatic.”
I agree with with your analysis. I have a caution for you to consider: Do not underestimate the power of popularism amongst the stupid. This exactly why the USA was set up as a republic and not a democracy. Mob rule by a brainless mob is the inevitable outcome.
To markx I would like to say that there appears to be trend to concentration of financial wealth but I think there is a dynamic that is being ignored. When some company makes a new innovation, it will control a larger portion (miniscule as it may be) of the world’s financial wealth. When lots of companies are making lots of innovations, financial wealth is being concentrated. But not all wealth is financial. The real gain to society is from the innovations. In order for these companies to accumulate a larger portion of financial wealth, they must sell more innovation to society as a whole. At least that’s the way it seems to me that it should work in theory. I think the biggest problem is that it is easier for companies to get a bigger portion of the world’s wealth by influencing government rather than by innovating.
Dismantling capitalism is going swimmingly in Venezuela. Can’t even get toilet paper. Is this what Naomi has in mind?
Well, it does save trees……so they can be burned as renewable fuel in the UK.
Would they like a tranche of Greek debt instead?
“Who should we call in as an independent and unbiased adviser”
“How about a political activist?”
“Get her in.”
Yes, the Catholic Church used to be much more successful and powerful as well when most people lived in poverty, infant and child mortality was two out of three, disease and hunger were rampant and the average lifespan was below 30. Is this what the Pope and Naomi Klein want to bring back?
The Catholic Church operates more hospitals than anyone Gus. You can hate the Church, that is up to you but to say something so absurd in a dialogue about legitimate policies of finance and economics puts your comment on the hate fringe.
Okay, how about a straight up hospital tax instead. It is far better to be direct and truthful than to join the end around campaign of lies and attack of even the notion of fact checking.
What Klein and the Pope find objectionable is the notion that good can be spontaneous, without the need for a guiding hand from above.
Neither Klein nor the Pope can fathom how billions of people acting out of their own self-interest can create something that benefits all.
Yet this is precisely why we have billions of humans. A society of individuals is greater than the sum of its parts.
The great danger to society comes from those that would seek to subvert the rights of individuals in the name of “the common good”. In this society becomes a slave to noble purpose; a New Crusade is the result.
John Stossel calls it “spontaneous order.”
Disturbingly, the Pope has gone thoroughly whack-a-doodle and leaped into the pit of political snakes.
Portland Mayor Hales has zero to offer but his shady political position atop a city so foolishly far left it has it’s own lampooning TV show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RriKEK09SVo
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2015/06/pope_francis_invited_charlie_h.html
“Portland Mayor Charlie Hales is one of 16 mayors from around the world invited to meet with Pope Francis next month as part of a global summit to discuss climate change and human trafficking.
The July 21 event at the Vatican is sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Science, according to a press release.”………………
The church is free to lead by example. May I suggest every Sunday morning the Vatican Swiss Guard be posted in every church to confiscate wealth from every one who attends and pass it back out as every one leaves according to the pope’s decree.
Let them not air condition or heat their churches, let the clergy walk, bike or take public transit where ever they go.
The world is headed for climate crisis alright–a crisis of climate science driven by government and advocacy science in the complete absence of fact checking and science process for model evaluation. It’s fast approach runaway advocacy science.
I wonder how long it’ll take before Naomi Klein chafes against the Catholic Church’s gender inequality in management roles, stance against abortion, stance against contraception, stance against gay marriage?
Or will she hold her nose and help enable that organization to continue its socially Conservative agenda by providing them the new tools of fear and guilt (oh, Lord, forgive us our Carbon Sins), and inspire yet another new generation of guilt-driven Catholics.
I find it hilarious.
This pope is a disgusting liar, in my humble opinion. Yes, disgusting.
Not to mention a money grabbing hypocrite.
What’s five thousand people in St Peter’s square anyway? Most of them were tourists?
There is plenty of money being spread around to sponsor these kinds of events and who is furnishing this money?
I am Roman Catholic. Mostly non-practicing, but Roman Catholic nonetheless. One of the last remaining reasons why I still considered myself an RC, is that I respected how the church always stood its ground. It considered issues long and hard, then made its carefully considered statements on the given topic then stood its ground.
Now, it made a couple of mistakes, but have eventually admitted to one, the Galileo incident. I can live with that. Then there is their stand on woman in the Church, which makes sense in the context of societal norms 2015 years ago, but makes no sense today. But, I can live with that, with the expectation that someday the Church will get it right.
What I can’t live with, is the Church making statements that skirt the truth like the encyclical does. When they make statements that are technically correct, such as (paraphrased) “many scientists believe that CO2 causes CAGW”, which then implies and supports the obviously completely incorrect conclusion that CO2 does actually cause CAGW, then I have a problem. This is willful ignorance.
The Church should have examined all the sides of the issue thoroughly. There is no reason why they could not do that and have seriously done their homework. But I believe that they know both sides of the issue, and chose to go with what they know to be a lie. To me this is willful ignorance. The Church has willfully chosen to join in a major and obvious lie.
That I cannot live with. Regardless what they expect to gain in terms of supposed “social justice”. A lie is a lie. And that lie has harmed and will continue to do harm to people, the rich and poor alike.
I have to say, that I will never return to the Roman Catholic Church.
Terry,
The political import is enormous. The theological significance is miniscule. The Church is made of of flawed people, like every other institution, family, and organization. There are a collection of highly flawed people steering the CO2=evil bandwagon and since this is such an obvious lie, the truth will come out, eventually. There are MANY within the Church who have,are and will continue to speak out on this central issue. You ought to contribute to the pressure to ensure that the CO2 = growth ideas prevails.
WRT to theological side, this letter is just an encyclical, and theologically is carries no special weight that will stand the test of time in terms of it teaching.
So you are battling with your political desires and your desire that the bishops, priests, and the Pope will align with your thinking on an array of issues. They never will. There will always be a gap between the what some in the church hierarchy think and what you think. Desiring thousands of people to abide by your opinion ( mine too ) is a waste of your good will and precious time.
The church, as a whole, is not particularly blameworthy. Neither is Francis for that matter. He is just listening to the dominant world view. I don’t and you don’t believe it to be true. But most scientific organizations have come out to support the view that CO2 is the boogyman.
The problem is that the Church is popular and influential and when it goes against your desires you are ticked off. So your natural response is try to diminish its influence by leaving in protest and making a public statement to that effect. You are not hurting it. You are just angry and rightfully so. They just became very popular amongst an alien crowd. I suggest you write thoughtful and polite letters to your priest, your bishop and the Pope, your friends etc and explain where the error is most visible.
You obviously understand the issue. It seems to me that you need to take the most potent action. That is by you undermining the CO2 = evil concept. I suspect you could be very effective if you chose to do so.
Do not fight windmills, or run from them. Walk in the front door, and carefully jab a crowbar into the gears.