![Firmin DeBrabander. Smog hangs over a construction site in Weifang city, Shandong province, Oct 16. 2015. Air quality went down in many parts of China since Oct 15 and most cities are shrounded by haze. [Photo/IC]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/deberbander_china.jpg?quality=83)
Professor of Philosophy Firmin DeBrabander, Maryland Institute College of Art, has joined the growing list of greens who think “autocratic” governments like China are better climate custodians than Democracies.
Why is climate change such a hard sell in the US?
June 8, 2017 12.36pm AEST
President Donald Trump on June 1 took the dramatic step of removingthe U.S. from the Paris climate agreement – the product of many years of diligent and difficult negotiation among 175 nations around the world. Recent polls reveal that six in 10 Americans oppose Trump’s move. However, a significant portion of climate skeptics remain – especially among Trump’s base and the Republican politicians who cheered this move.
The unfortunate truth is that environmentalists and their allies have failed to ignite widespread passion around climate change. And now they are faced with an administration stridently opposed to environmental regulation, slashing the EPA’s budget drastically and reversing President Obama’s climate change initiatives.
…
Learning from the past
I suspect that because of all these hurdles, climate change is not liable to be solved by democracies. Autocracies might do better – like China, for example. Given the severity of its current air pollution – a veritable “airpocalypse” – China’s government does not need to be prodded or persuaded to act; the necessity is obvious, and urgent. And China has the ability to take dramatic measures on climate change and act quickly – just what scientists are calling for – dragging the people with them. This is, after all, the nation that lifted half a billion people into the middle class in a single generation.
…
Read More: http://theconversation.com/why-is-climate-change-such-a-hard-sell-in-the-us-78794
China in particular has a long and shameful track record of pollution and disregard for the environment; cities choked with smoke, toxic waste dumped into the nearest convenient lake. Communist China has a long history of utter disregard for the needs of ordinary people.
DeBrabander’s claim that Dictatorships like China “might do better” at handling climate issues than countries whose governments are accountable to the people is absurd.
Did not read past college of art.
You don’t know what great philosophical musings you are missing.
Nor does he wish to, Phillip!! And I’m with him.
The screaming irony behind all this is that DeBrabander is quite correct! Dictatorships are always going to be “better” at all sorts of things, many of which DeBrabander might approve of, like cracking down on climate deniers. They are also very good at things that he might not like, like deciding what is “art”.
I wonder if he really wants to live in the land of “… and then they came for professors of art and I did not speak up because …” Except you will never convince him that in his “enlightened” dictatorship such a thing could be possible.
wws, I agree.
A dictatorship exists only for the dictator. He/she will only do what it takes to subdue or otherwise keep the people quiet.
Yeah…
Why read anything else?
There is only one thing that dictatorships and autocracies are much much better at: Crushing all dissent and imposing ideological orthodoxy on a population.
And of course once all dissent is crushed, they can do whatever they want, which is why the environment always ends up worse in dictatorships than it does in democracies.
Now of COURSE this professor loves that, because that is his only true goal all along! His so called “environmentalism” is simply the vehicle he wishes to use to ride roughshod over those he views as the ignorant peasantry in this country.
Another of the Blitherati Bed-wetters!
Did not read past conversation.
+1
+300,000,000 (Chinese still in energy poverty)
Bryan A, that is considered a plus.
How do idiots like DeBrabander get to be professors? China has a terrible environmental record. The truth is rich, free societies have the cleanest environments simply because “rich” people demand it (also rich societies are the only ones that are free…except for places like Saudi Arabia).
Because the business of “education” has become indoctrination into every ridiculous progressive (but I repeat myself) theory that can be imagined.
Because no one else will hire them and universities and colleges need “someone” to put in front of basically meaningless courses. Not saying “art” isn’t important, but I will say the courses aren’t.
The US started cleaning up its problem areas (Los Angeles, Cleveland, etc) at least 35 years ago!
No doubt citing Soviet Russia, the Eastern Bloc and China as prime examples of good environmental custodianship 😉
It’s easier to list well running dictatorships that work better than most democracies. There has been one in modern times.
Lee Kuan Yew transformed Singapore from a dump to a global power house while, at the same time, reducing poverty to almost nothing.
Yes, but God help you if you get caught chewing gum in that citystate
It is not by chance that the only example of a ‘working’ benevolent dictatorship is a city. Anything larger than that becomes too unwieldy for a central authority; even a good one. In larger areas and populations, there are simply too many decisions that need to be made quickly and accurately for a central authority to handle, whether it is a dictatorship, committee or congress. The system becomes less efficient and more mistakes are made, some with huge consequences.
People like Firmin DeBrabander love the idea of a Central Authority because they believe that everyone should live a very specific way, regardless of their personal needs and circumstances. This belief is so strong that they are apparently blind to the atrocious and bloody track record of Centralized Authority found in human history. Against all rationality, they hold on to the myth that ‘it could work with the right people in charge’, ignoring the reality of the complexity of the world, and the impossibility of any one authority ‘choosing well’ across that vast spectrum.
A large part of the success of the United States is due to its diversity of decision making authority, from federal to state to county to municipality to individual. As the last four gradually give up their power to Washington, the greatness of this country diminishes.
Singapore was unique in that it paid its politicians similar to what is paid business leaders. This meant that there was plenty of competition internally for office, and the politicians could not easily be bought. The result was that Singapore ran similar to a business, where the objective of the government was to make money for Singapore as a whole, rather than to pander to special interests groups. When a decision needed to be made, it was made to maximize benefits to Singapore, rather than to benefits friends of the government.
For example, it is not unusual in the US to spend millions of dollars to elect a politician for an office that pays hundreds of thousands of dollars. This makes no sense on the surface. If the politicians in question were making fair, honest decisions to the benefit of the taxpayers, then it should make no difference who gets elected, and there should be no reason to spend million to gain public office.
However, the reality is that those in office do not act in such a fashion. Rather they end up channeling funds based on favoritism and ideology rather than to benefit the taxpayer, and in this fashion some groups gain advantage over other groups, in excess of what they might have to invest to elect a favorable candidate.
In effect, politicians are on the take, but instead of handing them money directly, it is done indirectly via campaign contributions and policy decisions, to the benefit of specific groups rather than taxpayers as a whole.
jclarke – that is why we should divide the US into at least 5 separate countries as soon as possible.
The original purpose of the Senate was to protect the interests of the states from the federal government.
Most, perhaps all of the ceding of authority to the federal government can be traced to the Senate changing to popular vote instead of being appointed by state governments.
The exception that proves the rule. On other hand, read about the Chinese Communist regime here. http://tinyurl.com/y7w39hn4
I have Chinese friends who are Falun Dafa practitioners. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have a clue. The Dinosaur media doesn’t report on items like this about Glorious Socialist Workers Paradises.
The Chinese love stability and hate instability. One interpretation is that the Falun Gong tried to intimidate the Chinese government.
China has a nasty history of religious cults rising in revolt and causing huge misery. link, link, link
The Falun Gong were just plain stupid if they couldn’t see the entirely predictable results of their actions.
Commie Bob, What the Falun Gong were protesting was the persecution that was already happening. It would be hard to say that the demonstration made any difference in their treatment in the long run. The party was already freaked out because so many people had already taken it up and had already decided to destroy them.
By the way, I wonder if the professor will volunteer to have his organs cut out of him while he is still alive in order to help a poor needy rich high-ranking government official.
Singapore:
“Singapore’s economy is one of the most open, and thus competitive, markets in the world. According to the 2011 World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index, Singapore is ranked first in the world for doing business – ahead of Hong Kong and New Zealand. Singapore is also ranked third in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report behind Switzerland and Sweden.”
http://www.economywatch.com/world_economy/singapore/structure-of-economy
Singapore has government involvement in the economy but it is very open and very business friendly. Another dictatorship that worked economically was Chile under Pinochet. They took an economy that was a disaster from Allende’s communism into a fairly wealthy, successful country by introducing free-market reforms. Like George Washington, he stepped down from power voluntarily. Unlike George Washington, like the Chinese, he did not act as a kind leader to any opposition (to say the least), however, the man on the street was quite free. Still, he was quite popular even after he stepped down until it was found out that he stole lots (and lots) of money. Such is the way of even more benign dictators.
China’s economic growth came from introducing a large measure of capitalism into the communist system. With government officials and the People’s Liberation Army owning many of the businesses and any independent entities tightly controlled, it is now more of a fascist or crony-capitalist state in many sectors of the economy. It still kills or imprisons those it takes a dislike to and is very corrupt. It is also probably the biggest polluter in the world right now, since the Soviet Union has fallen.
Another party freak-out was caused by the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. The Falun Gong knew how that had turned out when they decided to demonstrate in 1999.
As far as I can tell, the Chinese middle class is not oppressed. Compared to where they were a few short years ago, they are much better off. There are now more middle class people in China than there are in America. link
China has its problems some of which may be intractable. We’re seeing something like the same thing with President Trump vs. the Deep State. link Given China’s communist history, my wild ass guess is that its deep state is much deeper and more swampy. I wish them luck. When you try to drain the swamp, the swamp drains you. Nietzsche 🙂
I seem to remember the Aral sea was one of the largest fresh water lakes in the world. Thanks to communist environmental oversight, it is a mere fraction of what it was and is considered one of the worst environmental disasters ever.
great stewards those socialist/ communist dictators.
I’m with you there, the destruction of the Aral Sea can be seen online and is a must look. I’m not sure where you are posting from, but this sort of thing can happen in a “democratic” country where the media is extremist. And a classic example of this are the drying lakes to the east of California, “Green” California is destroying several communities by draining their lakes and leaving behind a wasteland of toxic windswept dust bowls. There is a movement for Eastern rural communities to secede from California and I am rooting for them.
I live in Australia and can tell you we have plenty of these green doorknobs as well…and shocker media like the U.S. believe me when I say the barrier reef is fine, it took a small hit way up north due to the latest El Nino and the main issue there is low water levels due to the wind direction effect of the El Nino. Low water level equals less protection to the corals from ultra violet rays. The reef is already noticeably repairing itself as is always does after every El Nino. The corals evolved 100s of millions of years ago at a time when the Co2 levels were approx.. 2500 PPM, we are now at 400PPM, after everything we could throw at it and the recovery of the planet from the little ice age and the increase of Co2 is below a paltry 100PPM….!?…..Do they seriously expect an intelligent human to believe we are facing runaway GW holocaust shock horror, or that the corals are all going to die because of the Geological near record low 400PPM Co2…. Fucking hell? The photos the greens triumphantly showed around the world to prove the vast damage to the reef by global warming were of a cyclone damaged reef in the Philippines. This reef is also self repairing.
Thanks, I love reading the comments here, please keep on kicking guys, it make me feel a little better that you are here. Have a look at those “Dried up Californian Lakes’ on Google. Very Aral-esque.
Soviet Russia and the environment… yes… how is the Aral Sea these days?
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/aral_sea.php
Don’t forget North Korea. No place on earth can match their success in battling ‘Light Pollution ‘. Also have a great record on Ozone producing Trees, simular to Haiti.
Sounds like a proposal to convert to dictatorship if democracy does not get you what you want for environmentalism. Or, just good old Fascism works for some. But generally, dictatorships without an electorate spend enormous resources on survival via keeping in power and not being assassinated.
But is that not the UN and the New World Order is?
Yes.
UN Environment: Climate Initiatives Platform
Property: Non-profit Organisations
Compact of Mayors
Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy
Global Covenant of Mayors includes:
C40
CDP Cities
ICLEI
WRI
With funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies
At:
http://climateinitiativesplatform.org/index.php?title=Property:Non-profit_organisations&until=Fleets+for+Change
Also click on search > for various organizations information.
It’s this common refrain ….. “I love democracy, as long as everyone chooses to live exactly the way I say they should. I can deviate from this model when it pleases me.” This is also known as “The Mantra of Leonardo DiCaprio” ……
Jake
+ lots.
St. Leonardo has, it seems, always got right up my nostril.
My left nostril, naturally.
Auto
Today’s left love diversity so long as everyone thinks the same as them. It’s no wonder they love dictatorships and hate democracy.
Borrocks!
China ‘promised’ to leave Scarborough Shoal inside the Philippines Exclusive Economic Zone in 2012 and within a day reoccupied it and has never left since. China agreed to ‘share’ resources in the South China Sea and then filed their cartoon ‘9-dashed line map’ with the UN in 2009, claiming all of it for themselves. China destroyed thousands of acres (over 3000 to be more exact) of pristine coral, severely damaging the maritime environment of the South China Sea to build artificial islands with airfields and naval facilities to project military dominance over ‘their’ South China Sea…not much consideration of the environment in that move and absolutely NO meaningful criticism from the likes of ‘Greenpeace’. Then PRC President (dictator) Xi Jinping promises not to militarize the artificial islands in 2015 while visiting Washington, DC, then militarizes them with fixed artillery pieces, surface to air missile storage facilities, combat aircraft hangars and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment by late-2016. Now China has ‘promised’ to reduce CO2 emissions by 60+% by 2030…amazing! So, tell me, who in their right mind believes or trusts China to do anything it says it will? Try asking Tibet, the Uighurs, Hong Kong and Taiwan how that’s worked out for them so far…or maybe the students at Tiananmen Square. Pure Foolishness.
Greenpeace will commit sabotage and piracy only against those that won’t fight back.
I’m reminded of when Anonymous tried to take on the Mexican drug cartels. The hackers threatened to release the list of all of the cartel’s funders if one of their friends wasn’t released. The cartel replied that they would shoot ten people for every funder revealed. The hackers quickly caved in.
Protests only work when going up against people who will not fight words with bullets.
China ‘promised’ to leave Scarborough Shoal
===================
in every agreement, make sure to read the fine print. China kept their promise. they left. they never promised they would not return.
the fine print for China’s CO2 reduction is in how its is calculated:
1. CO2 2030 vs CO2 2000
2. (CO2 2030 / GDP 2030) vs (CO2 2000 / GDP 2000)
Everyone assumes China will use formula 1, because that is what the west is using, but in point of fact China uses a different formula. What they are using is Formula 2, which is better known as CO2 Intensity. This is a measure of how much CO2 is required to make $1 of wealth. What China is saying is that by 2030 they will only be creating 60% as much CO2 for every dollar of wealth created.
And this is a trivial target to keep, because the GDP in 2030 will be huge as compared to the GDP in 2000. China will reduce their CO2 intensity because it is simply good business, to increase efficiency so that it takes less energy to make the same amount of money. However, since their GDP will increase from 2000 to 2030 by many times over, their TOTAL CO2 will increase many times over.
In other words, China is playing the West for idiots, because we are not using the same formula as they are when calculating CO2. And the politicians in the West are so desperate for a deal, they have completely glossed over this point. And the press in the West is so politically correct, they are incapable of analyzing the obvious end result of this deception.
You got it, ferd. The Chinese are playing us like a fiddle, using CO2 as the bow. The greenies look at China with rose colored glasses and blinders on.
fred,
So 44 got sold a pup – willing buyer, willing seller, no doubt!
Does the US really want to be shown as gullible?
I don’t think so – hence Mr Trump’s exit from the Paris Stitch-up.
Well done DJT.
Now stay out.
Auto – hoping the government we in the UK elect today will follow.
‘Hoping’ – but, sadly, not ‘expecting’.
Similar games are played worldwide with various measurements of national health, wellbeing, etc. For example, infant mortality is calculated differently by every country, which means that meaningful comparisons are next to impossible. Having looked at some of the formulas and criteria, there are several Western countries whose rates would be significantly higher if calculated using U.S. methods. Many developing countries are likely significantly underestimating their rates, because of calculations and poor/incomplete data. I think that the U.S. should strive to improve all our metrics, but in at least some of those metrics, we are only ranked low because we are not “adjusting” our data set as much as other countries.
Call me idealistic, but I think everyone should be playing (and calculating!) by the same rules.
Perhaps it is not that dictatorships are better stewards of anything. History demonstrates this plainly to ant rational person. Perhaps it is just that climate fanatics are actually a tiny minority who can’t stand it when they don’t get their way. And are so obsessed with getting their way that democracy just doesn’t matter unless it happens to agree with their demands.
Parse error at ‘ant’.
….parse error….I hate auto “suggest” from so called smart phones….thanks for catching that.
When we had our London smogs and the like, at least we no past experience to draw on. China knew exactly what would happen, yet it went ahead without a thought for the environment until things became so bad it had to do something. These people are just willfully stupid. Yes, a dictatorship might get things done more quickly, as long as it is the right kind of dictatorship, but that’s something you cannot guarantee.
..and this climate extremist also skips over the part where for multiple generations the same Chinese ruling party killed many tens of millions of its citizens by political violence, starvation, work camps and brutal resource rationing that favored high party officials. And that the suppression of creative ideas and intolerance for dissent made breaking out of those literally deadly government failures a multi generational failures extremely difficult. But he doesn’t care. He knows everything about climate and only wants his way no matter what cost.
And can’t see that China has no intention of doing anything he wants. They are just so polite about how they tell him to “go xxx yourself” that he doesn’t recognise “no” for what it is.
Ogden Nash summed it up rather well in a poem referring to the Japanese (not exactly flavour of the month in the US at the time of writing!). It applies pretty well to the Chinese though perhaps with more inscrutability and marginally less smiling:
How courteous is the Japanese;
He always says, “Excuse it, please.”
He climbs into his neighbor’s garden,
And smiles, and says, “I beg your pardon”;
He bows and grins a friendly grin,
And calls his hungry family in;
He grins, and bows a friendly bow;
“So sorry, this my garden now.”
Excuse it, please.
===========
this happened to me twice vacationing in Japan. Once I was quite forcefully elbowed out of the way, another time had to jump for my life out of the way of a car driving on the grass in a park. Both times the Japanese said “sumimasen” (excuse me) as they went past.
He doesn’t care that tens of millions died… or he is seeing the way forward for the whole world?
Well, we are all dead eventually, in the long run.
But the watermelons seem to want most of the rest of us dead in the short run, to get their religiously decreed 500-750 million global human population.
And most of those will be willing slaves – and concubines – for the elites – ‘Al Gore the Fifth’ and peers.
It was ever thus – until about 1850 or so, in some countries.
I suspect it still is that way in some countries.
Seems a bit pessimistic for a Thursday, so let us strive to stop it.
Auto
Sorry I’ve bad closed blockquote.
Marx and Engels to my knowledge never put a monetary vale on environmental considerations.
Their labour theory of value put no value on pristine nature.
It is problematic as to whether Communist countries including the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union would have been parties to global environmental treaties on ideological grounds.
As Soviet Russia was in a strategic race to ” bury ” the West, why would it have co-operated with it in a global agreement that inhibited Russian energy interests?
Pure Marxists saw nature as something for the great proletariat to conquer and put into the service of humanity.
Is there a problem with posting comments ? Mine hasn’t appeared
The only purpose of ‘Climate Change’ / ‘Global Warming’ has been to create an unelected and unaccountable global government – rather like China is. Coupled with that aim is the intent to bring an end to advanced economies and transfer wealth to third world countries – fequently, if not predominantly, undemocratic. (See Copenhagen Treaty)
Thankfully so far democracies have avoided that – although it has to be said that the EU, which has stealthily removed democracy and democratic accountability whilst leaving the appearance of democracy, has been seen by many as the prototype or experiment of how to do away with democracy without the public realising until it is too late. (Hence Brexit)
The only surprise is that a watermelon has now come out and stated that democracy won’t achieve their aims for climate control – for which, read it hasn’t yet been able to overthrow democracy and replace it so we now need to change the narrative yet again.
As an aside, it is quite revealing that snowflakes / watermelons appaluded Obama’s avoidance of democratic decision-making using presidential powers but vilify Trump for making use of the same powers to begin to reverse the damage that Obama set in motion for the US.
I hope voters vote sensibly, again, this time and May does what she is supposed to. Will be an interesting few days.
EU, which has stealthily removed democracy and democratic accountability whilst leaving the appearance of democracy
================
exactly. The European Commission runs the EU via regulations agreed behind closed doors. The European parliament then gives the stamp of approval to the Commission’s decisions, making it all appear so democratic. The People’s Republic of Europe.
The only purpose of ‘Climate Change’ / ‘Global Warming’ has been to create an unelected and unaccountable global government – rather like China is. Coupled with that aim is the intent to bring an end to advanced economies and transfer wealth to third world countries – frequently, if not predominantly, undemocratic. (See Copenhagen Treaty)
2nd paragraph Thankfully so far democracies have avoided that – although it has to be said that the EU, which has stealthily removed democracy and democratic accountability whilst leaving the appearance of democracy, has been seen by many as the prototype or experiment of how to do away with democracy without the public realising until it is too late. (Hence Brexit)
Exactly
Okay…..If an “end is brought to advanced economies” then from just where, exactly, would the wealth spring forth that is to be transferred to third world countries?
ThomasJK: Wealth transfer is a tool to be used on the way global control. Once they’ve transferred the wealth to themselves they won’t much care what happens to the third world countries.
ThomasJK… You are assuming they are capable of thinking that far ahead :>)
Firmin DeBrabander writes,
“Autocracies might do better – like China, for example. Given the severity of its current air pollution – a veritable “airpocalypse” – China’s government does not need to be prodded or persuaded to act; the necessity is obvious, and urgent.”
And my ‘Bald-faced lying propagandist’ detector goes full DEFCON 1 . . I can’t believe he does not know he referenced a blatant contraindication of willingness to act, as justification for thinking there is a willingness to act . . Come quickly, Jesus . . ; )
It’s all so easy when it’s all been decided for you…
The only purpose of ‘Climate Change’ / ‘Global Warming’ has been to create an unelected and unaccountable global government – rather like China is. Coupled with that aim is the intent to bring an end to advanced economies and transfer wealth to third world countries – frequently, if not predominantly, undemocratic. (See Copenhagen Treaty)
Thankfully so far democracies have avoided that – although it has to be said that the EU, which has stealthily removed democracy and democratic accountability whilst leaving the appearance of democracy, has been seen by many as the prototype or experiment of how to do away with democracy without the public realising until it is too late. (Hence Brexit)
The only surprise is that an alarmist has now come out and stated that democracy won’t achieve their aims for climate control – for which, read it hasn’t yet been able to overthrow democracy and replace it so we now need to change the narrative yet again.
As an aside, it is quite revealing that climate alarmists applauded Obama’s avoidance of democratic decision-making using presidential powers but vilify Trump for making use of the same powers to begin to reverse the damage that Obama set in motion for the US.
The author can’t distinguish pollution from CO2. All the Chinese have to do is clean up the air. The US has largely accomplished this goal. Using this weak argument, the US has already solved the climate change problem. Therefore, no Paris agreement needed.
+100%
Yes, John, I agree. I don’t understand the prof’s logic. We see real pollution in Chinese cities, yet the prof thinks that communist China is better at reducing pollution??? The democracies have basically cleaned up the rivers and air already, and we can always do better. But when people equate what the West once called pollution with CO2, they’ve lost me.
What they see is a central government telling people how to live and what to believe – that desired goal alone blinds them to everything else.
Conflating real pollution and the fake pollution CO2 is just one of the many tactics and ways of lying they use. In order to make the completely beneficial, life-giving gas seem “dirty”, they have to pretend that it is a pollutant. Their tactic only works with brain-dead True Believers though. Damn democracy is so convenient for these watermelons.
inconvenient.
I’d suggest that he and all of his alarmist buddies pack up their bags and relocate to China to carry on their “good fight” – see how that works out for them.
It’s polling day in the UK. I am voting for a dictator (how else does one chose a dictator in a democracy?)
The only surprise is that an alarmist has now come out and stated that democracy won’t achieve their aims for climate control – for which, read it hasn’t yet been able to overthrow democracy and replace it so we now need to change the narrative yet again.
As an aside, it is quite revealing that climate alarmists applauded Obama’s avoidance of democratic decision-making using presidential powers but vilify Trump for making use of the same powers to begin to reverse the damage that Obama set in motion for the USA
Thanks Old England…you covered everything that I was thinking when I read the bs said by that idiot.
For most on the left, the only thing that matters is the goal. How one gets there isn’t relevant.
This was stated in the book “Limits to Growth” 45 years ago.
“China …. This is, after all, the nation that lifted half a billion people into the middle class in a single generation”.
They did so by doing exactly the OPPOSITE of what is proposed. They saw what had been achieved in HongKong, and rolled out the model across the nation. That is, they set the people free, economically at least, and dropped most economic measures of central direction. And of course they reaped the rewards.
And only after the ‘West’ had spent about 10 generations finding out how to do that. Nearly all the accumulated knowledge of the industrial and scientific revolution is free to use by all and so it is possible to become middle class in one generation.
For years, I’ve had a number of young leftists touting the superiority of economic systems in third world countries. As evidence they point out how much faster the economies of these countries are growing.
My counter has always been that it’s easier to play catch up than it is to lead.
For example, imagine a farmer in Iowa replacing a 20 year old tractor with a new one.
Now imagine that the 20 year old tractor is shipped to a 3rd world country where a farmer there uses it to replace a team of oxen.
Which farmer’s productivity increased the most?
Just to put the cat amongst the devil’s avocados – is he maybe confusing (or not) socialist regimes versus more right-wing regimes?
The basic difference being that, very simply – right wing schemes encourage people to get personally wealthy/rich and left wing places make everyone (apart from The Ruling Elite of course) universally and equally poor.
So, take a trip round your own city and you will see nice tidy well kept streets & houses (where the obviously rich people live) and also you will see run down, unkempt & litter ridden streets where the ‘poor’ people live.
IOW, you need to be rich to be clean and tidy. It gives you spare cash/money to pay someone to (proverbially) sweep the streets, paint the houses, mend the roads etc etc
Same for a planet possibly.
(Oh the Hubris, everyone is out to save the planet. This is *NOT* Planet Hollywood/StarWars whatever. Just fix your own back yard and the planet will be fine)
And this is where China right now, on the rpoad to getting rich and is hence a very bad example. China is going from being dirt-poor to getting rich. In the meantime, street (air) cleaning is on hold until they can afford it. It was the same in England and the US
Again peeps, be very careful of getting cause & effect the right way round……
A lot of China’s economy is state owned, so I would hesitate to call it a “right wing” nation. The private economy tends to carry the communist part of the economy, its just China had the sense to allow more private economy than the Soviets did.
China’s state-owned zombie economy;
https://www.ft.com/content/253d7eb0-ca6c-11e5-84df-70594b99fc47
State Owned Enterprises (thousands of them controlling all primary industries and economic sectors in China), funded by State Owned Banks who can only lend to State Owned Enterprises, while unregulated ‘Shadow Banks’ lend to true free enterprise, private economy sector businesses. All SOEs and SOBs controlled by the wonderfully efficient and non-corrupt, ‘win-win’ CCP! Talk about a house of cards. Stand-by, CO2 will be the least of our worries soon enough.
Pete,
I can only surmise you are relatively young.
You see, I am ALSO from Newark, only my birthplace is in New Jersey.
When I was growing up the rich had tidy streets but so did those of us with little money and no servants.
More to the point, the very poor minority community was unfortunately segregated BUT IT WAS ALSO CLEAN AND TIDY.
In the previous generations, the Irish and Italian neighborhoods that my immigrant grandparents settled WERE CLEAN AND TIDY.
I’m afraid you are going to have to find a different reason for lack of pride in a neighborhood.
(But I agree with most of your OTHER opinions!)
It doesn’t cost anything to pick up your front yard.
No, you’ve got it backwards. Culture is important in creating wealth. The people who live an orderly life, getting married, keeping up their houses, working together with their neighbors to improve their surroundings, watching out for their neighbors’ kids, working hard, etc. become well-off. Even if they start off in poor areas, their children will be much better off. It has been true for generations of immigrants to the US and even blacks in the US in recent generations after slavery and blatant discrimination were eliminated. Now we see blacks and whites regressing as the orderly social mores dissolve and institutions like marriage and the church weaken and problems like drug use and crime attack the family and the neighborhood.
(To put it simply, the streets are cleaner because people don’t throw their trash in the streets.)
The professor happens to be either a fascist or a communist. I’d say communist is more like it.
There are 3 forms of extreme left wing socialism, namely, fasc1sm, Naz1sm, and commun1sm. All can trace their roots to the extreme left.
It is one of the successes of the left, to have rewritten history so successfully that the ordinary person considers fasc1sm and Naz1sm to be examples of right wing ideology when, in truth, they are actually examples of left wing ideology..
For example, one of the most famous fasc1sts is Mussolini, His roots are firmly set on the left. Viz: per Wikipedia
Do not allow history to be rewritten. The left should be called out for its very ugly past.
Mussolini invented Fascism because Marxist Communism went too far in controlling everything by owning and distributing everything, and he thought Marxist Socialism was too lax in its leading toward Communism. Fascism adopted the Marxist Socialism along with Capitalism where the people owned everything – where in Communism the people owned nothing and the State owned it all – but it had to be controlled extremely by taxation and regulations on what is produced, how much is produced, the quality of what is produced, what wouldn’t be allowed to be produced and the prices had to be set as the people were required to buy what was produced. Therefore, the 3 principles of Fascism are 1. Everything in the State. 2. Nothing outside the State. 3. Nothing against the State. the fuller definition is in the link…
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fascism
Nonsense.
Political illiteracy.
Nazism and Stalinism are both evil, but only their effects are the same, not their political make up.
“The left should be called out for its very ugly past.”
And for their ugly present.
If their goals and methods are the same, then they are the same.
A better conclusion would be that both extremes, when they will not listen or allow any dissent, dissolve into very similar methods of corruption and total governmental control. The third branch of this tree of extremeties, pure anarchy, actually turns out quite similar, as local big men gather power, become corrupt, and dominate local and regional affairs.
It’s not left versus right. It’s absolutism versus compromise. Any absolute is going to have these problems.
Griff,
Shutup and let the adults talk. You might possibly learn something.
Why do you assume Griff’s goal is to learn something?
Griff,
Is someone who throughout his life considered himself a socialist (as Mussolini did – reread the quote) not a man of the Left? And was he not a Fascist during the last part of his life? If you think that Fascism and Nazism were rightwing, check out Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. (Not that I agree entirely with Goldberg – Nazism was a strange mixture of Left and Right (which is why it was initially supported by bona fide conservatives like Fritz Thyssen); but as Hannah Arendt recognized long ago, Nazism and Bolshevism i.e. Communism had a lot in common.)
Nothing tells you more about the lack of academic quality in some higher education circles than a professor of philosophy saying dictatorship is better than democracy. Hitler and the Nazis ran the greenest government in modern history, it was just people the fuhrer and his gangsters didn’t much care for – especially if they were Jewish, Polish or Russian etc etc.
Doubtless if the green extremists ever came to the power they so clearly desire all the deplorables and climate skeptics would be rounded up and disappeared in short order. As several people have pointed out, the worst of dictatorship always arrives with true belief unamenable to reason.
Personally I think ordinary people, including us deplorables, tend to arrive at sensible judgements through the ballot box – a sort of political law of large numbers.
Fellow Deplorable…You do realize that several historians have linked Fascism in Europe to President FDR whom actually shared their ideas. Hitler saw what FDR’s cousin Theodore Roosevelt did about his Conservation Policies for forests and natural wonders and by the time FDR came into power giant land grabbing of the western states were under Federal control because of “Teddy” and Hitler was doing that in Germany to control natural resources as FDR’s “New Deal” was doing. Teddy started the first Progressive Party in the USA and Conservation was his biggest land theft of the Western states. The Republicans of today are actually the Progressives of Teddy’s time that we call RINO’s. Those Republican Progressives sided with the New Democratic Party of FDR that went far left for that era that all want more government control over everything. That’s why they never want to give up any established programs that are funding the Federal Government. When you see McCain, Graham and other RINO’s hanging onto things like Obamacare, not building the “Wall” a pathway to citizenship for Illegal Aliens and other “Progressive” ideologies, they want the power of control over the citizens and bigger government. “Liberal Fascism” by Jonah Goldberg is full of great information from documented sources.
I think so too, and I rationalize the idea in the following way:
In any human group there will be wise people and fools. When presented with a choice to make in an election or referendum, the fools will not know which of the available options is best and, therefore, will vote randomly. By the law of averages, then, if any large group consisted entirely of fools, there would be an equal number of votes for each of the available options and the outcome would be completely indecisive.
However, if the group also contains some wise voters, they will know which option is the best one and will vote for it, thereby creating a majority in favour of that option.
Since this is a statistical principle, its effectiveness will depend on the size of the voting group: the larger the group, the more reliable is the majority-decision as a guide to what is the best choice to make and, conversely, the smaller the group of voters, the less reliable it is.
Since a dictatorship is essentially decision-making by one dominant voter, that is the smallest possible voting group and, therefore, the least reliable as a guide to which option is best in any instance.
My conclusion: Democracy is almost always superior to autocracy as a method of producing wise collective decisions and the magnitude of its superiority increases with the size of the voting group.
The problem is that some problems have easy and obvious solutions that ultimately make the problem worse.
For example, it seems obvious that if the problem is poverty, the solution should be to pass out free money so that those who are poor would no longer be poor.
However 70 years of history shows that this solution only makes the problem worse.
The problem now is that those who have gotten used to free money, will vote against any politician that proposes shutting down the flow of free money.
Actually, when I was in school the general opinion of thinking sociologist, historians, etc. (I’ll leave out the political scientists… they were all avowed dictatorial socialists/communists) was that a dictatorship could be either the best or the worst form of government, depending on the dictator. Pure democracies weren’t bad so long as you were not part of the minority. This left, by default, a democratic republic as the ‘next best’ and the safest form of government.
MarkW June 8, 2017 at 9:08 am:
I don’t think that’s a special problem for democracy. Autocrats have a long tradition of making unwise decisions that ultimately make the problems which they were intended to solve worse.
I think democracies are generally less fallible than autocracies because groups are potentially able to take a more comprehensive view of any situation and process more relevant information than a single person can.
Joe Crawford June 8, 2017 at 10:22 am
In order for a dictatorship to be the best form of government, I think the wisdom (or intelligence, if you prefer) of the dictator would have to be consistently greater than the combined wisdom/intelligence of the population which the dictator rules. That is an extremely unlikely occurrence.
“Democracy” means, literally, “government by the people”. I think that means government by all the people, not just by a majority. Therefore, any political system which automatically divides the community into a majority of winners and a minority of losers cannot be a pure democracy, in my view. I think such a semi-democratic system (such as our current representative democracies) is still be superior to a dictatorship though, since that automatically divides the community into a minority of winners and a majority of losers.
Humanity has not yet evolved a purely democratic kind of political system that accommodates all points of view harmoniously, but many other species already have done so, such as insect-colonies and the vast community of diverse individual cells that constitutes the human body, for examples. Perhaps significantly, these evolved natural communities all work on decentralized principles of decision-making, whereas human systems normally operate on centralized ones entailing authoritarian coercion, which is wholly absent from natural communities.
China, The USSR, Mussolini’s Italy, Nazi Germany, Franco’s Spain, Castro’s Cuba, Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, Ho Chi Minh’s North Vietnam, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and of course, N. Korea, never did much for the environment. They just butchered tens of millions of people.
Funny how the intellectuals forget these details of leftist ideals (with the exception of Franco of course).
It is part of the left’s rewriting of history. They have been very successful at it, so for example most people associate fasc!sm and Naz!sm with the extreme right, when in truth, they are examples of extreme left wing ideology.
We should not allow history to be rewritten in this way, as I observed above.
Weren’t the intellectuals especially selected for early butchery?
You’re absolutely correct. The intellectuals saw through the farce being forced upon them and had to be eliminated, to keep them from educating others to be against the rulers objectives. Those in power wanted deaf, dumb, ignorant and blind sheeple that would do what they are told without questioning it… kind of like the Drones of our population following their Democratic Party Queen Insects. Individuals with opposing thoughts were killed in most of those cultures. Now those same Drones want all opposing thoughts made against the law and are shutting people out from talking.
If the choice is between living free in a “polluted” world or living in a totalitarian dictatorship and a clean world, I will take the former.
But of course the choice is nonsense – the totalitarian states have always been dirty and more polluting, precisely because they are not free.
Dictatorships may be fine if they agree with your views. I wonder how the good Prof would feel if the dictator felt that all professors of philosophy should be sent out to do something they thought useful like breaking stones or digging for coal?
That actually happened when the ‘Red Guard’ got loose in China.