X-Message-Number: 28033
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 12:19:32 -0600
From: "Anthony ." <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #28030
References: <>

> Message #28030
> From: "egg plant" <>
> Subject: RE: CryoNet #28026 - #28029
> Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 17:05:53 +0000

> Well, Wal-Mart had a better year than Haiti.

Why do you think that is? Anything to do with how Wal-Mart distributes wealth?

Haiti remains the least-developed country in the Western Hemisphere
and one of the poorest in the world. Comparative social and economic
indicators show Haiti falling behind other low-income developing
countries (particularly in the hemisphere) since the 1980s. Haiti now
ranks 153rd of 177 countries in the UN's Human Development Index.
About 80% of the population lives in abject poverty, ranking the
country second-to-last in the world for that metric.

Nearly 70% of all Haitians depend on the agriculture sector, which
consists mainly of small-scale subsistence farming. The country has
experienced little formal job creation over the past decade, although
the informal economy is growing.

Under the second Aristide administration and the Alexandre-Latortue
administration, difficulty in reaching agreements with international
sponsors denied Haiti badly needed budget and development assistance.
In addition to these geopolitical obstacles, another major impediment
to development during the last 20 years has been the repeated episodes
of violence that have rocked the country. While there was relative
calm under the governments of Fanmi Lavalas, this may not have been
sufficiently long-lived to convince foreign investors to commit
significant capital to Haiti.

Consequently, the country has experienced shortages, severe trade
deficits, and periodic high inflation during this 20-year period.
Reports have suggested that most of Haiti's flow of foreign reserves,
during at least the last five years, has come from a combination of
remittances from the sizeable expatriate community and taxes on
incoming phone calls.

>A capitalist would change this
> situation by enriching Haiti, a socialist would change this situation by
> impoverishing Wal-Mart.

This is a caracture of these ideologies. As for enriching Haiti,
capitalism has done fuck-all. Wal-Mart would hardly be impoverished by
socialist policies - instead, the company's workers would not be so
harshly exploited, and the rich execs would pay higher taxes.

> >Remediation technologies are always one step behind the > pollution.
>
> Not true. You name the air pollutant, nitric oxide, Sulfur dioxide,
> anything, and there is less of it in the air now than 20 years ago. The
> water is cleaner too.

I'll take an example from Canada, which is where I currently live:

(from Natural Life magazine)

By ramping up its heavily polluting coal plants, Ontario Power
Generation has already doubled its emissions of air toxins (like nerve
toxin mercury and six cancer-causing substances) between 1995 and
1999. The further planned increases in coal-burning are expected to
bring the increase to 153 percent between 1995 and 2012.

Here's an example from the USA (from the National Resources Defense Council):

Current Clean Air Act: Dangerous levels of soot and smog are causing
thousands of premature deaths, hundreds of thousands of asthma
attacks, and other illnesses each year. The Environmental Protection
Agency and states must clean up dangerous soot and smog and ensure
that most citizens breathe air that meets public health standards by
2010. Current law requires deep reductions in power plants' sulfur
dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions within this decade to meet these
public health standards. In September 2001, EPA told the industry's
main lobby group, the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), that existing
law would cut power plants' soot-forming SO2 pollution from 11 million
tons today to 2 million tons by 2012, and cut their smog-forming NOx
pollution from 5 million tons today to 1.25 million tons by 2010. (See
notes and table.)

The Bush administration plan would delay deadlines for meeting public
health standards, allowing violations of soot and smog health
standards to continue until 2015 or later. Power plant pollution cuts
would be delayed and diluted. Tens of millions of people would be
denied healthy air, even as late as 2020 and beyond.

http://www.nrdc.org/air/pollution/fclearsk.asp

Air pollution emissions have been reduced in some countries, but
unless there is a global effort, pollutants will continue to wreck
havoc with our health and environment.

Show me a significant drop in air pollution in your country, and then
explain how this drop has been enough to safeguard health and the
environment.

> >Global warming indicates the global effects of our
> >ideologies.
>
> There have been times when the Earth has been much colder than now, there
> have been times when it was much warmer,

So what? Just because the Earth has gone through temperature changes
that does not mean that we have done nothing to effect global
temperature or environmental quality and sustainability.

>I have no reason to believe the
> exact temperature it's at right now is the absolute perfect temperature.

That is because there is no perfect temperature. But poor political
decisions and industrial irresponsibility are harming our world and
health.

> No one doubts there is a link between dirty air and lung problems, but the
> air is getting cleaner,

I'm not convinced. and if it is getting cleaner, it isn't fast enough.

> that is one reason that in all of human history
> people live longer now than they ever have.

The reason why life-expectancy levels in the West are around 75 years
is because we have cut infant mortality rates. Our "air getting
cleaner" is not a reason. Indeed, look to the life-expectancy rates of
people in poor countries and you will see that they are the same as
pre-industrialisation. They have not benefited from our "cleaning of
the air".

> >but overall, your assertion that air and water are cleaner
> >today looks to be wrong.
>
> If I'm wrong then name one pollutant of the air or water that has increased
> over the last 20 years, just one.

I don't have a global picture of things and I doubt you do too, so to
answer your question, agricultural pollution (salinization,
pesticides, etc) increased water pollution in some parts of the world
(like China). You can see increases or decrease depending on in what
part of the world you are looking, and what history you are measuring
against, or to quote a report from sciencemag.org

"The future adequacy of freshwater resources is difficult to assess,
owing to a complex and rapidly changing geography of water supply and
use. Numerical experiments combining climate model outputs, water
budgets, and socioeconomic information along digitized river networks
demonstrate that (i) a large proportion of the world's population is
currently experiencing water stress and (ii) rising water demands
greatly outweigh greenhouse warming in defining the state of global
water systems to 2025. Consideration of direct human impacts on global
water supply remains a poorly articulated but potentially important
facet of the larger global change question."

Regardless of increases and decreases, pollution is a problem - this
is the point, and i doubt that you would argue that pollution is not a
problem. And how best to solve the problem? Do poor countries need
more resources to cope with cleaning-up our mess and theirs? Who has
the resources to do this?

> The pie is growing because the economy is about as far from a zero sum game
> as it is possible to get.

Finite resources means that there is no "win-win" situation. If you
believe that the richest 200 people in the world take nothing from the
poorest 36 countries in the world, you are deluded. wealth and
resource concentration do indeed take away from others.

> >Unless we use the Earth's resources more carefully, the pie > is going to
> >be even smaller.
>
> Then why are commodities, steel, copper, coal, cheaper now than they were 30
> years age using real inflation adjusted dollars; even gasoline was cheaper,
> 60 cents a gallon wasn't cheap if you only made $4000 a year.

This would be due to advances in finding these materials and using
them, creating less waste. Unless you're implying something absurd,
like coal and copper just keep appearing out of nowhere?

> >Do you think that the worlds 3 richest people worked harder than the
> >populations of the 36 poorest countries?
>
> Number one on that list is Bill Gates, he has about 40 billion,
> he probably uses .01% on himself, the rest is invested in his
> software company.

That doesn't answer my question.

> And by the way, Gates's wealth would be closer to 80 billion if he hadn't
> already given so much away, mostly to help the third world.

Unfortunately, it is not enough to just send money to the poor - you
have to alter the conditions which create that poverty in the first
place. E.g. policies that protect workers, program that educate
children, preventing devasting wars, etc.

> >Will the free market magically re-create the finite
> >resources we're using?
>
> As a matter of fact it will because the most important recourses are
> brainpower and hard work.

I reject your assertion.
Brainpower & hardwork are not the sole purview of the "free market".

> As virtues go equality does not rank very high,

I assume you are referring to wealth rather than gender, sexuality,
race, or rights?

> you can't have too much
> justice or intelligence or kindness but   > you can have too much equality.

How so?

> People say Steve Jobs is worth 5 billion, they mean there are investors
> willing to pay 5 billion for his interest in a computer company and a movie
> studio. Suppose Jobs sold out to Mr. X and gave the 5 billion to the poor,
> then you'd be complaining about Mr. X. I don't think you'd stop complaining
> until the government owned it.

I'm not interested in government ownership, though it is interesting
you try to paint my as a socialist.

> What you're talking
> about is taking the controls of the wealth creation machinery from those who
> have shown great skill in operating it into the hands of those who don't
> know the first thing about it.

Not at all. I'm talking about the massive (& growing) rich-poor gap as
being an impediment to the kind of future cryonicists and any human
(who isn't one of the few rich) would want to live in.

> That is no way to cure world poverty.

But there are ways to alleviate it and make it less horrific.

> >Of course if you believe "the Singularity is nigh" you might > just prefer
> >to go full-steam ahead in the expectation that the super-AI will clean up
> >our mess and find nice ways of doing things.
>
> Yes that's my philosophy, and even without the Singularity the people of the
> future will certainly be better at solving problems than we are, just as we
> are better at it than the people of 1906.

Yes, rather than addressing problems now, we can always wait until
we're dead, then someone else has to deal with them.

Anthony

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