Reply #13: You have many excellent points...

[BanTheGOP]

...that actually render some of my arguments open for debate. My positions, however, may not be based on hard engineering principles, but with an understanding of the detrimental cost of human advancement.

The profit motive has been the single biggest progenitor of human greed, territorial expansion, and an heretofore irreversible divide between the haves and the have-nots.

And you can't have a valid living wage without ensuring that the rich do not get richer. Why have few people make billions of dollars at the expense of millions of poeple making peanuts?

With energy, it is more than the environment. Of COURSE wind, solar, and thermal have a near-zero impact on the carbon footprint. But energy such as you describe can be manipulated so that the rich do not have to pay (via subsidization of the rich), but the poor will always pay an ever-increasing part of their low or non income to such endeavors. With a progressive, socialized approach to energy production, we can integrate true economic growth with an emphasis on human need, not corporate/repblicanist greed.

And China may be a big country, but they will not attack the US. I trust the Chinese far more not to attack the US than for the US to attack China, for instance; most DU'ers would agree as a matter of fact.

And hiring medical health is a slippery slope. That's why it must be nipped in the bud and severely penalized. I will have to disagree with you there with no recourse on coming together on that.

All in all, I think it's a matter of relativity, but also a matter of human evolution. The republicanist/ capitalist model of property ownership, exclusion, and environmental destruction is rapidly being replaced with the progressive/socialist model of community property, inclusion, and environmental standards that enhance the longevity of the planet and its living beings.