New Leader Of UK's Green Party: Nuclear Power Is The Betamax Of The Energy World

[Turborama]

Last edited Sun Sep 30, 2012, 04:29 AM - Edit history (1)

We need to stop being distracted by this techology and focus on promoting and investing in renewables

Natalie Bennett
guardian.co.uk, Fri 28 Sep 2012 11.41 BST

In my first month as the new Green party leader, I've spent lots of time talking about pressing economic and social issues...

=snip=

So I think it is worth spending a little time talking about why nuclear power is the Betamax of the energy world - a technology that was briefly in the hunt, but now could be ready to fade away into a museum curiosity. And you don't have to just believe me on this - consider this recent front page from the Economist.

=snip=

First, it is immensely and unpredictably expensive. Even a group called Supporters of Nuclear Energy is now questioning the cost of nuclear to the UK. Paying £165/MWh for power from Hinkley Point would make new nuclear more costly than either onshore or offshore wind - a cost that would be felt in the pockets of millions of already hard-stretched British households.
The two European Pressurised Reactors, as proposed for Britain, now being built in Finland and France, are both already running four years behind their construction schedule, and at roughly double the original budget. The French National Audit Office recently recommended that the programme - the very one Britain is looking like signing up for - be abandoned.

Second, it is slow to build - very, very slow. The four new nuclear reactors built by EDF since 1990 have taken on average 14 years to completion and 17.5 years to come online. That's not nearly quick enough to meet Britain's needs, either for power or for emissions reduction.

Third, it is by its nature monopolistic. Enormously expensive and, technologically, immensely complicated, no community would be able to decide to install one even if they wanted to. Local communities aren't going to be able to install one to boost local education spending in the same way that a Scottish Green party councillor is suggesting with wind turbines in Aberdeenshire.

Fourth, it isn't renewable. Arguments are many and varied about the supplies of nuclear fuels and how long they might last, but whatever figures you accept, the fact is we're talking about a quite limited supply. But the wind and the sun are never going to run out - at least not in a time frame we have to worry about.

Full article with lots of embedded links: http://guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/sep/28/nuclear-power-betamax-energy-world?cat=environment&type=article

[Confusious]

1. Bad comparision

Betaxmax was a superior format.

It got done in by cheap, lower quality knockoffs.


So what he's saying is nuclear is a superior format for generating energy, and everything else is cheap and lower quality by comparison.

I don't think he wanted to say that.

[Turborama]

2. Natalie is a woman

And she was using Betamax as an example of a tecnology that has been relegated to being a historical artifact, it's obviously not a literal comparison.

[Confusious]

6. Of course it's not literal

It's a piss poor comparison.

The only reason it stop being used was there were cheaper and poorer quality alternatives.

Not because it was crap.

PS. Lots of things have been relegated to historical artifact. She could have picked something that was replaced by something better or faster, like the buggy and the car. Or the Hindenburg and the plane. Or the sailing ship and the steam engine.

If she knew a little tech history, she would understand why it got relegated to history, and probably wouldn't have used it. But it's too much to ask political leaders to know about history and tech.

[Turborama]

8. An example of a technology that has been relegated to being a historical artifact

Last edited Mon Oct 1, 2012, 10:45 PM - Edit history (1)

<--- That's where the comparison began and ended.

Even more simply...

Betamax---> Dustbin of history

Nuclear power---> Dustbin of history

What about the rest of the points she makes? Or is the calling for nuclear power to suffer the same fate as Betamax as far as you got?

[Confusious]

11. I usually don't read Luddite screeds

I find it a waste of time, since I won't agree, at ALL.

I don't agree that it is heading toward the dustbin of history. A lot of good has come from it.

There are many uses for nuclear isotopes, and the only place we can get them is from nuclear reactors. You can argue the amount that may be around, but dustbin of history, I don't think so.

Besides which, there are many promising new nuclear technologies which make them safer.

Of course, I expect to hear "you can never make them safe" but that just shows you haven't read up on them.

I fully expect the green party and all the Luddites to be out protesting fusion plants once they get those operational. They generate radiation and nuclear waste, and I know how you hate those.

Of course, there would also never be an accident with a fusion plant, and unlimited energy is hard to turn down.

[Turborama]

14. I don't usually reply to posters who only comment on post titles

And clearly haven't read the post, which you've just admitted to doing.

You see, by not reading what she wrote you've totally got the context wrong and gone off the rails by focusing on just one word.

Ironically, I read the subject line of your reply and skipped straight to reply.

BTW I remember you said something in the 1st edition of your 1st reply about Natalie being ignorant. Another irony is that you're openly admitting that you're wilfully keeping yourself ignorant of what she actually said.

Also, you seem to like throwing "luddite!" around as if it's an insult, whereas on DU it should be taken as a compliment.

Here's a piece which will explain why, if you can be bothered to read it...

The word ‘Luddite’ is thrown around as an insult – but the truth, writes Simon Basketter, is that Luddism was a working class movement that struck fear into the hearts of the rich: http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=27658

[Confusious]

15. Luddites

Early 19th century workers who didn't like the industrial revolution.

Kinda like the horse and buggy makers smashing up the car factories.

Funny that socialists would defend them, without the industrial revolution, no capitalism, and since no capitalism, no socialism to critique them. We'd all be sewing our own undies, or our moms would be, since there would probably be no rights movements of any kind.

(mercantilism was the dominate economic force before the industrial revolution, capitalism is something that is an outgrowth of the industrial revolution. Capitalism has not existed forever)



But Broadly and from the dictionary: people who don't like technological change.

As for my first post, I find it rather petty to go back and critique an unfinished work.

I commented on something that stuck out like a sore thumb. That being, the comparison to betamax. Another poster informed me of the full contents of the article, at which point I decided I had no interest in reading it.

I tend not to read things like posts about conspiracy theories, Luddite screeds and right wing rants. It's a waste of time, which has been proven time and time again. (of course, if I want a laugh, I read them)

[Turborama]

16. Right, so essentially: "I throw ad hominem attacks at writers who's work I don't read"

"And will go with the urban-dictionary definition of Luddite instead of reading who the Luddites really were, and why they were working class heros".

Got it.

This is exchange is obviously a waste of time and I give up on you and it.

On edit: Confucius is probably spinning in his grave.

[Confusious]

22. Urban dictionary?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/luddite

broadly : one who is opposed to especially technological change

I didn't know merriam-webster was the new urban dictionary.



I gave a little history, you ignored it in favor of your dogma.

You're entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts.

[tama]

23. Winners write history

And the capitalist technocrats have turned turned the 'Luddite" into a magic word of negative association, as you use it: your opinion's are "Luddite", backwards, stupid, ridiculous. You use the word "Luddite" and the laughing icon to express your superiority, your power over other people, to humiliate others. Your technocratic control. You are not speaking to others, not listening, having an discussion. You are talking only to yourself to convince yourself of your superiority.

It is inconceivable to you that "Luddite" works as magic word of oppression only if you don't know the real history of Luddites, and what they really were fighting against.

[Confusious]

26. I used the laughing icon to express my amusement

I use words as a descriptor.

If you feel I used them to express superiority, that's your problem, not mine.

You placed the ball in the field of history, something which I read about constantly, not because I have to, but because I enjoy it. I know who the Luddites were, what and when they did what they did. I also know the times and places of the economic theories which you cite. Again, that you didn't is not my problem, it's yours.

It's called education, which you seem to be hostile to.

A discussion generally assumes equal knowledge on both sides. If you feel like you're being talked down too, I suggest, again, that's your problem and not mine, and that some education would help.

Real education, not some picture of the world run through multiple streams of dogma and identity politics.

don't need definitions like "socialism" and "capitalism" from theorists to understand their immediate situation and what is at stake, what technocratic capitalistic ownership of means of production means for their lives. Theoretical notions are developed to describe past and present situation, they are always post-fact.

[Turborama]

33. You've got some cheek with your hypocritical accusations

You're the one who's ignoring what was written in the article and instead sticking to a dogma of throwing inappropriate ad homs (Luddite) because of the passing use of the Betamax term.

You also ignored a historically correct article which would have educated you who the Luddites were.

The irony is amazing. You got her use of the Betamax term wrong (in fact tried to redefine what she actually meant) and in your attack used Luddite as an insult showing how little you really know.

You really should read about the history of the Luddites, you're just making a bigger fool of yourself.



Additionally, you have openly admitted to just blatantly ignoring and not even reading both of the articles I have shared.

Purposefully keeping yourself ignorant, wow, what sort of dogma is that?

As Confucius famously said, "Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you."

Another irony.

(Yes, that is the correct spelling of his name. Perhaps it was a typo when you joined DU and you meant "Confusion"? It's amazing, really. You accuse the author in the OP of getting her history of Betamax wrong and at the same time prove your ignorance of the history of the Luddites, multiple times, relentlessly. With that taken into account, "Confused" does seem very apt.)

Thanks for helping keep the OP kicked for anyone who may have missed it, BTW.

For anyone reading this who is interested in learning about the Luddites, here's another couple of links...

What the Luddites Really Fought Against

The label now has many meanings, but when the group protested 200 years ago, technology wasn't really the enemy
By Richard Conniff
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/What-the-Luddites-Really-Fought-Against.html?device=bbery

A short history: http://www.ludditelink.org.uk/history.php




(Edited to fix some errors I missed - it's really difficult posting on DU with a Blackberry, my only means of getting online at the mo.)

[Confusious]

38. Three people have agreed with me so far on the betamax term

If you use an analogy, you should probably make sure your message is going to get across.

When I read the betamax analogy, and since I knew what betamax was, that was what came to mind.

You don't seem to want to accept that. You seem to think that I should have thought something else, even though I had the benefit of knowledge of what it was, how it worked.

You seem to think I have to adhere to her interpretation, nothing else is acceptable.

Seems rather authoritarian to me.

LUDDITES:

The industrial revolution started of with small factory owners, and only later got to the big factory owners. The luddites wanted to protect their interests, the making of textiles within the guild system.

As Ogilvie (2004) argues, the guilds negatively affected quality, skills, and innovation. Through what economists now call "rent-seeking" they imposed deadweight losses on the economy. Ogilvie says they generated no demonstrable positive externalities and notes that industry began to flourish only after the guilds faded away. Guilds persisted over the centuries because they redistributed resources to politically powerful merchants. On the other hand, Ogilvie agrees, guilds created "social capital" of shared norms, common information, mutual sanctions, and collective political action. This social capital benefited guild members, even as they hurt outsiders.

The guild system became a target of much criticism towards the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. They were believed to oppose free trade and hinder technological innovation, technology transfer and business development. According to several accounts of this time, guilds became increasingly involved in simple territorial struggles against each other and against free practitioners of their arts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild

So really, we just replaced one master with another, not some high minded "freedum" with slavery. They also weren't "heros of the working class" most people were still peasants. They wanted to protect their privileges.

If anything, at that time, a "hero of the working class" was a freaking peasant.

PS. "do unto others' is the golden rule, and every civilization has had it own form. Egypt had a form, 1500 years before Confucius. "Now this is the command: Do to the doer to cause that he do thus to you."

PS. You're defending the scribes and handwritten books, when everyone could be reading, and learning, from books printed on a printing press.

[tama]

41. Just asking

How do you understand "demonstrable positive externalities", and "flourish" of industry? And how does social capital of guild members hurt "outsiders"? Who were the outsiders? Was social capital of guilds primarily responsible for slaving peasants? Or are the "outsiders" somehow related to "free trade and technological innovation, technology transfer and business development", which sounds like the usual neo-liberal blather?

Ogilvie is praised as "intellectual heroine of modern classical liberalism" (http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/sheilagh-ogilvie-classical-liberal-heroine).

"Classical liberalism is a political ideology, a branch of liberalism which advocates individual liberties and limited government under the rule of law and emphasizes economic freedom." "According to E. K. Hunt, classical liberals made four assumptions about human nature: People were "egoistic, coldly calculating, essentially inert and atomistic".[15]" "There was a revival of interest in classical liberalism in the 20th century led by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.[8] Some call the modern development of classical liberalism "neo-classical liberalism", which argued for government to be as small as possible in order to allow the exercise of individual freedom, while some refer to all liberalism before the 20th century as classical liberalism.[9]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

Is your own ideological background same as Ogilvies?

[Confusious]

45. Answer

A) quality - Some quality controls, but they controlled the entire city, so you had no recourse for shoddy manufacture
B) skills - kept skills to themselves, no outsiders. If you wanted to learn something, you had to go to a guild.
C) innovation - If they didn't like it, they suppressed it. Kept to more "traditional" methods, even if they were inefficient.

D) free trade - pretty much the same thing as A. you had to buy from the city guild, no going somewhere cheaper.
E) technological innovation - Same as C.
F) technology transfer - Same as B.
G) business development - really didn't care about expanding business if times were good.

They basically kept information to themselves, which happened during a time of no "intellectual property" stifling technological development. If there were no "intellectual property" protected by nation-states, the same thing would happen. I would agree that patents and copyrights are too long, but I think that it is necessary.

Just because I may agree with something someone says, or it was in an article, doesn't mean I subscribe to everything they say. That is a fallacy.

PS. Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto also criticized the guild system for its rigid gradation of social rank and the relation of oppressor/oppressed entailed by this system. From this time comes the low regard in which some people hold the guilds to this day. In part due to their own inability to control unruly corporate behavior, the tide turned against the guilds.

I'm assuming that if Marx says it, then you'll agree with it, whereas, if Ogilvie says it, you won't.

[tama]

47. I don't agree with either Marx of Ogilvie nt.

[Turborama]

46. LOL! So, if 3 people agree with Donald Trump that makes him correct about the President's BC?

errr... OK

Or, it just means there are 3 other people who also only read the subject line and - just like you - totally missed all the other much more important points she was actually making.

I don't want you to "adhere" to anything, I'm just stating a fact that she wasn't likening nuclear power to Betamax in any way other than they should share the same fate.

She didn't compare the two technologies in any other way, even though you are adamantly arguing she did.

Anyone who reads this thread can plainly see that.

Anyway, I stopped talking about that ages ago and have been exposing your determination to ignore anything that threatens your preconcieved ideas (dogma) and dismantling your spurious "Luddite" ad homs aimed at anyone who disagrees with you.

And now you're insisting that at the time of the Luddite revolution the working class didn't exist, they were "just peasants".

=snip=

For Katrina Navickas, author of Loyalism & Radicalism in Lancashire 1798-1815, they were working class heroes. Trade unions had been banned in 1800 and here was another way for workers to defend their livelihoods.

There's no doubt that the Luddites have been romanticised, says Dr Emma Griffin, author of A Short History of the British Industrial Revolution. They are thought of as the first workers to destroy their machinery, yet this had been going on for years. What marks the Luddites out was that they were better organised than their predecessors, she says.

But both historians agree that today's use of "Luddite" is wrong. To use the term for someone who ignores Twitter or refuses to move from analogue to digital TV is a complete misrepresentation, says Griffin.

"We use it for people who are hostile to technology, who don't want to get a mobile phone," she says. "But what concerned the Luddites about technology was that it was going to cut their wages."

=snip=

Navickas makes a point of correcting people, albeit in a lighthearted way, when she overhears them misusing "Luddite". And yet she is thankful for the frequent sloppy usage, as it keeps these textile workers' memory alive.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17770171

Working class history is generally accepted to begin with the enclosure of English commons, and the generation of paid industrial labor in manufactories in Holland and England.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_class

=snip=

The process of enclosure began to be a widespread feature of the English agricultural landscape during the 16th century.

=snip=

The enclosure movement probably peaked from 1760 to 1832; by the latter date it had essentially completed the destruction of the medieval peasant community.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure

PS the reason I mentioned the golden rule as stated by Confucius is you, "Confusion", attacked her for using a bad analogy but went on to throw Luddite around as an insult, thereby using a bad analogy yourself.

Get it now?

PPS Scribes vs printing press? WTF are you on about now?

Please carry on, this is really amusing, and it's giving me an excuse to read some fascinating articles.

[Confusious]

49. You seem to have a hard time understanding me

Reading problem? 3 other people seem to understand what I was saying, you still DO NOT.

It's called analogy,

a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based: the analogy between the heart and a pump. (Oh, I forgot, you don't like dictionary definitions)

Her comparison is between betamax being (which it isn't) a retired tech, and so should nuclear.

THAT WAS NOT MY FIRST IMPRESSION. THREE OTHER PEOPLE SAW IT THE WAY I DID, so it seems the fault is not with me, but with you.

YOU SEEM TO KEEP THINKING I'M COMPARING THE TECH, WHICH I AM NOT.

I AM SAYING THAT INSTEAD OF THE COMPARISON OF TECH THAT IS OR SHOULD BE RETIRED, I SAW IT AS SOMETHING (BETAMAX, NUCLEAR) THAT WAS REPLACED BY SOMETHING (VHS, RENEWABLES) CHEAPER AND OF LESS QUALITY.

IT DOESN'T"T MATTER WHAT SHE WROTE, I JUST COMMENTED ON THE SUBJECT LINE. WHY DO I HAVE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE WHEN THAT COMPARISON IS ON THE SUBJECT LINE, AND THAT'S WHAT I'M COMMENTING ON?

Jesus, can you freaking see now that I've used big letters?

1832; by the latter date it had essentially completed the destruction of the medieval peasant community.

1832, luddites 1812. 20 years to go.

PS. Trade unions - Made during a time of war. In this country, Habeas Corpus was suspended during the civil war.

Trade Union acts were repealed in 1823.

[Turborama]

55. Hey, Confusion, take a deep breath and read what I wrote again...

" there are 3 other people who also only read the subject line and - just like you - totally missed all the other much more important points she was actually making."

Another deep breath and then this...

"IT DOESN'T"T MATTER WHAT SHE WROTE, I JUST COMMENTED ON THE SUBJECT LINE. WHY DO I HAVE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE WHEN THAT COMPARISON IS ON THE SUBJECT LINE, AND THAT'S WHAT I'M COMMENTING ON?'

Did you see what happened there?

You agreed with me.


Anyhoo...

"Working class history is generally accepted to begin with the enclosure of English commons" "The process of enclosure began to be a widespread feature of the English agricultural landscape during the 16th century." <--- This is the debunking of your spurious argument that the working class didn't exist at the time of the Luddites.

"The enclosure movement probably peaked from 1760 to 1832; by the latter date it had essentially completed the destruction of the medieval peasant community." <--- Medieval peasants were in sharp decline and were a tiny minority who would shortly be extinct, as opposed to the working class being a rapidly growing majority.

In conclusion, this is an irrefutable destruction of your abject history failure when insisting that the Luddites couldn't have been working class heroes as the country was full of peasants at the time and the working class didn't exist.

Nice try, though, grasshopper.

[Confusious]

56. I actually looked at the article and it was what I expected

The same points over and over again, plus new ones

Reliability. That made me laugh.

Fuel sources. There's enough nuclear fuel to run the world for thousands of years.

"IT DOESN'T"T MATTER WHAT SHE WROTE, I JUST COMMENTED ON THE SUBJECT LINE. WHY DO I HAVE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE WHEN THAT COMPARISON IS ON THE SUBJECT LINE, AND THAT'S WHAT I'M COMMENTING ON?'

"it doesn't matter what she wrote" as in, it's not necessary for me to read the article to understand the comparision she was trying to make BECAUSE IT WAS ON THE SUBJECT LINE.

I commented on the subject line because it was a bad analogy, and didn't make me think in the direction she wanted me to think. It made me think of something else.

Reading the article wasn't necessary for that, and reading the article afterwards wasn't necessary either because it's just a rehash of the same old complaints.

In conclusion, this is an irrefutable destruction of your abject history failure when insisting that the Luddites couldn't have been working class heroes as the country was full of peasants at the time and the working class didn't exist.

They didn't like the fact that the factories used unskilled labor. They thought there should be apprenticeships. Apprenticeships were only offered by the guilds. And the guilds were crap.

BTW all these words = peasant

Other terms for "peasant"

Aloer
Campesino
Churl
Cotter
Fellah
Free tenant
Hari
Honbyakushō
Kotsias
Kulak
Muzhik
Nóngmín
Pagesos de remença
Peasant farmer
Peon
Serf
Smerd
Ṭǎran
Tenant farmer
Vecin
Villein

A sharecropper could be called a peasant.

If they weren't skilled labor, they were peasants.

[Turborama]

62. Wow, not only are you moving the goalposts...

...you're taking them to a secret location.

Broadening the definition of peasants to include international versions + your own definition of what a "peasant" was in Victorian England to suit your argument is a bullshit move and is simply pathetic.

You clearly need to educate yourself about the working class in Victorian Britain.

Of course, whether you do or not is entirely your call.

[Confusious]

64. So let me get this straight

You don't want the dictionary definition (from merriam-webster) of luddite,

but you insist on a strict dictionary definition of peasant (a member of a class of persons, as in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, who are small farmers or farm laborers of low social rank. )

Or you just want to define the words the way you like them.

[tama]

66. Peasants are working class

just like craftsmen, industrial workers etc. Russian revolution fucked up from the beginning because the Bolshevik party elite of corrupt technocrats started fighting against peasants who wanted all the power to councils.

[Confusious]

67. Didn't I say

Peasants are "working class heroes?"

PS. My exact works "If anything, at that time, a "hero of the working class" was a freaking peasant."

The freaking is for emphasis.

[tama]

71. Yes you did

and the context where you said so gave the impression that you were trying to create division between peasants and artisans. Luddites were not fighting against peasants, they were fighting against government and bankers and wage slavery, and peasants supported Luddites, not government and bankers.

[Confusious]

72. Luddites were part of the guild system

Working to uphold their own privileges and power.

They had about as much in common as the white collar worker and blue collar today.

[tama]

82. Guild system can be criticized for some things

but artisans generally owned their means of production and could barter with their products for food and raw materials with peasants on equal basis without threat of violence. Guild systems were based, as said, on social capital, not on financial and industrial capital which depend from threat of violence and government hierarchy, and some forms of creating that social capital remain to this date, e.g. joyrneyman tradition which is very much alive and strong especially in Germany. Apprentices travel around for a long period and work for free for anyone needing their professional assistance. The guild system social capital was based on code of honor to guarantee quality of products and respect for other members of community.

Compare that with capitalistic industrial production logic which demands that products are made not to last but to break down so that there is continuous demand for more products of poor quality.

[Confusious]

83. So we should go back to the barter system?

I don't think that would really work. I should depend on the goodwill of strangers?

Some systems only work when there are fewer people. With 4 billion+ people on the planet, we all can't be hunter-gathers.

Pretty soon, about 3.5 billion of us would starve.

Same with the barter system. Some people just aren't going to be needed. What is the rocket scientists going to barter with the farmer for?

What is the theoretical physicist going to barter for? Who needs his work.

The barter system works for IMMEDIATE needs, not future needs. Of course, if you don't like progress, then it's a win.

The barter system also works good when you have a society of low specialization. How many of us can grow thier own food, fix their own car, do woodwork, cook, fix their own computer, etc etc etc.

[tama]

87. I like gift economy best

but I'm not rejecting other systems that are based on golden rule. This may be hard to comprehend, but I'm not suggesting any top down system or suggestion as "solution". There are many good ideas worth discussing and testing. I have studied horticulture enough to know that it works and can feed and cloth and medicate all of us. It's very good to know that at least something works, if not actively obstructed and destroyed. That is not rejection of other things that we don't yet know if they can work sustainably and for the benefit of all of us.

I can grow a potato and a food forest, and what I don't need for my own consumption I would happily share with others. I like rocket scientists, not least because they can build rocket to thwart a meteorite that would kill my children or their children. I like theoretical physicists that enable rocket scientists and share their visions about mathematical mysteries of nature with us. They make our world richer, and if I have a potato to give them, why wouldn't I give?

[Confusious]

92. Would everyone?

Not everyone is as giving, as exampled every day in the news.

It only takes a few to ruin Utopia for everyone.

PS. Would you keep giving if you got nothing in return? Someone came and took from you every day, without helping or sharing? How do you enforce sharing? There are sure to be people who do not want to, and will take what they can when they can, given the opportunity.

It's not a believe that people are "evil" it's a learned experience in human nature. Some people are like that.

[tama]

94. Maybe so

but should we let those few stop us from trying?

Of course I can't give what I'm not given. This life is a gift, all that nature freely offers is a gift.

Freedom of association is also a beautiful principle. If some individual is ruining a community, they have freedom not to associate with that individual and that individual has freedom learn from that experience and seek another community that might accept him as member.

[tama]

18. Luddites are socialists

Freedom from wage slavery.
Freedom from capitalistic ownership of means of production.
Freedom to use technology to serve humans instead of humans serving capitalistic technocracy.

[Confusious]

20. HAHA

Luddites were socialists
Freedom from wage slavery.
Freedom from capitalistic ownership of means of production.
Freedom to use technology to serve humans instead of humans serving capitalistic technocracy.



Luddites - 1812
socialism - 1827 AT THE EARLIEST
capitalism - ~1850

[tama]

24. People who live it

don't need definitions like "socialism" and "capitalism" from theorists to understand their immediate situation and what is at stake, what technocratic capitalistic ownership of means of production means for their lives. Theoretical notions are developed to describe past and present situation, they are always post-fact.

[Confusious]

27. You know someone who was alive from 1812?

Wow, that person must be what? 200 years old?

Theoretical notions are developed to describe past and present situation, they are always post-fact.

Like marxism right?

[tama]

29. Yes, like marxism.

People who have lived in gift economy, anarchy, socialism, communism did not need those concepts. Only when people were forced into feodalism, capitalistic wage slavery etc. and their way of life was destroyed, it became possible for Marxist etc. theory to name what was lost and what will follow after capitalistic self-destruction.

[Confusious]

30. You seem to think having a small part of something

means you have the whole thing. it doesn't.

There are thousands of parts in an engine, having everyone means that the engine runs, otherwise, it doesn't, or it tears itself apart.

Same with history. Thousands of people coming up with ideas, ingratiated into a whole. Just because some tries something that seems similar in some way, doesn't mean they had the whole idea as we see it now.

It also doesn't mean that things are the same as now. There were no capitalists in 1812 as we now know them. The dominate economic theory of the time was mercantilism, which is a far cry different then capitalism.

The industrial revolution started of with small factory owners, and only later got to the big factory owners. The luddites wanted to protect their interests, the making of textiles within the guild system.

As Ogilvie (2004) argues, the guilds negatively affected quality, skills, and innovation. Through what economists now call "rent-seeking" they imposed deadweight losses on the economy. Ogilvie says they generated no demonstrable positive externalities and notes that industry began to flourish only after the guilds faded away. Guilds persisted over the centuries because they redistributed resources to politically powerful merchants. On the other hand, Ogilvie agrees, guilds created "social capital" of shared norms, common information, mutual sanctions, and collective political action. This social capital benefited guild members, even as they hurt outsiders.[14]

The guild system became a target of much criticism towards the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. They were believed to oppose free trade and hinder technological innovation, technology transfer and business development. According to several accounts of this time, guilds became increasingly involved in simple territorial struggles against each other and against free practitioners of their arts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild

So really, we just replaced one master with another, not some high minded "freedum" with slavery. They also weren't "heros of the working class" most people were still peasants. They wanted to protect their privileges.

If anything, at that time, a "hero of the working class" was a freaking peasant.

[tama]

31. As you say

history is tapestry of various narratives and the whole can never be fully expressed in words. What we can do is be as fully aware of the whole as possible as seen from the present ("think global&quot , make our ethical choices, follow our hearts and to choose accordingly which narratives we want to keep on telling and how to share them.

Your narrative is to show contempt to Luddites and now also to "freaking peasants", to support and validate the narrative of technocratic progress. I'm not antitech, as I write this on computer, but I see that narrative as alienated from basics of life, blinded by faux sense of control over nature. In my narrative there is a hierarchy of dependencies.

1) Ecosystem as whole is not dependent from humans, but humans are part and dependent from the whole of the ecosystem.
2) Freaking peasants are the "primary production", hunting, fishing, gathering, horticulture, which is dependent only from 1)
3) There are the various layers of secundary etc. production which are dependent from 1) and 2), but primary production is not inherently dependent from secundary etc. production, although it can be violently forced into dependence through pyramid-like social hierarchies we call civilizations. And the more bigger and complex the power hierarchy grows, the more blind and alienated from basics of life the top of the technocratic hierarchy gets. Power corrupts. Technocratic power is not interested in spreading autonomous technology like small community scale windmills etc. sustainable energy and microgrids for local self-sustainability, not organic agriculture and permaculture food forests but Monsanto-type monocultures that deplete top soil and ground water and destroy biodiversity. What it is most interested in contol mania of all the production layers below it that it robs and technology of control and destruction.

[Confusious]

39. So is english a second language for you?

I can give some leeway if it is, since again, you seem to have misunderstood.

Your "narrative" is that I have contempt for peasants, which I do not.

I used "freaking" for emphasis. To highlight the point. To make it stand out.

Do I have contempt for luddites? yes, because they were people analogous to capitalist today. They were guild members trying to hold on to their privileges at the expense of others, and holding back progress.

As for the rest of your post

1) no argument
2) peasants were slaves.

3) From what I can tell, since most of it is in some form of postmodernist babbel, is that you seem to think there is some sort of conspiracy to keep people from technologies that don't really exist, or are so current that they are expensive and normal people can't afford them. (Which wouldn't be a conspiracy, just the market in action, since new tech ALWAYS costs an arm and a leg. I also get the feeling that you think it should be given away for free. What about the people who spend time and energy working on it? Don't they count? Or only certain people count? Or only your dogma counts?) The last part seems to be a desire for a total upheaval of current society, analogous to "the great leap forward" in China, which was a total failure.

The Great Leap Forward: Mao broke everyone up into little communes, thinking that it would be great to get back to their "roots." Output dropped, quality dropped, millions died.

So I'll have to disagree on that point.

[tama]

42. To answer your questions

I'll pass the "postmodernist babbel", "conspiracy" etc. distraction as cognitive dissonance strawmen. Your implied question about patent rights and copyright, if I understood correctly, can be rationally answered. Yes, from my anti-capitalist point of I oppose the notion of "Intellectual Property".

Last part was purely descriptive take on most fundamental material dependence relations. No prescriptive ideology or political program was implied, so your leap to Mao is a sidetrack strawman. In order to have rational discussion about ethical prescriptive ideology and political program we should start from some mutually accepted ethical axiom, e.g. Golden/Silver rule if that can be agreed on.

[Confusious]

44. Well, if you would speak english, we could

But you seem to have fallen into what I would call "postmodernist lingo" for lack of a better word, and it makes nigh impossible to understand you.

[tama]

48. Defense mechanisms

My English is good enough to understand that you are using "Luddite" and "Postmodernist lingo" as defense mechanisms against ideas you don't want to comprehend or accept.

Do you deny that primary production of human cultures is dependent from the ecosystem it is part of, but not vice versa? Yes or no?

Do you deny that secundary production is dependent from primary production, but not vice versa? Yes or no?

[Confusious]

50. secundary or secondary?

A) YES
B) what is secundary production?

You need a point.

[tama]

53. Secondary

Production within an economy can be divided into three main stages: primary, secondary and tertiary.

Primary production

Primary production involves the extraction of raw materials (e.g. coal, iron, agricultural commodities). Raw materials can be:

Extracted – e.g. coal, iron ore, oil, gas and stone

Harvested / collected – e.g. fish

Grown – e.g. timber, cereal crops

There is little value added in primary production. The aim is usually to produce the highest quantity at lowest cost to a satisfactory standard.

Secondary production

Secondary production involves transforming raw materials into goods. There are two main kinds of goods:

Consumer goods – e.g. washing machines, DVD players. As the name implies, these are used by consumers

Industrial / capital goods – e.g. plant and machinery, complex information systems. Industrial and capital goods are used by businesses themselves during the production process.

In the secondary production sector, value is “added” to the raw material inputs. For example, foodstuffs are transformed into ready meals for sale in supermarkets; metals, fabrics, and plastics are transformed into motor vehicles.

There are many different industry sectors in secondary production. For example:

Construction
Electronic instruments
Pharmaceuticals (drugs)
House-building

Tertiary production

Tertiary production is associated with the provision of services (an intangible product). As with the secondary sector, there are many tertiary production markets. Good examples include:

Hotels
Private healthcare and education
Accountants
Tourism

http://www.tutor2u.net/business/gcse/production_stages.htm

Do you agree that higher levels of production are dependent from lower levels of production, but lower levels of production are not dependent from higher levels?

If you do, we have established enough common ground to proceed to next point. Which is, when higher level of production destroys lower level of production (e.g. mining uranium and other raw materials for building and using nuclear plant and destroying primary production capacity while doing so) it is behaving self-destructively. Like cancer that devours the host organism it depends from.

Next point, if we are still on same page, is open question: how to organize our society and ways of life to live sustainably instead of self-destructively, if that is what we want?

[Confusious]

54. I might disagree what belongs in what category

But yes, I agree with that.

(e.g. mining uranium and other raw materials for building and using nuclear plant and destroying primary production capacity while doing so)

Uranium is not special. mining it is no different then steel, copper or anything else that is mined.

Next point, if we are still on same page, is open question: how to organize our society and ways of life to live sustainably instead of self-destructively, if that is what we want?

I'm sure we'll disagree there. Not on living destructively, but the best ways of living sustainably, what we may have to give up, what we won't and what we can't. How, why when and where.

[tama]

59. Very good

At this level of discussion minor details, such as what belongs in what category and what differences there are between mining various metals are not important.

You mentioned Golden rule, and I assume you support using fission energy to power up grid. The question is, would you accept uranium mine built where you live, so that you would either lose your home or the quality of life would drop significantly where you live? Or where other members of your family live, relatives, friends? Would you just say, hey, in the name of technological progress I will happily give up my home so that others can use fission energy and the economy has better chance of growing?

What about the people you don't have personal relation with? Would it be more acceptable to build uranium mines just in distant places where you don't personally know anyone, even if the locals oppose the mine and prefer to keep their homes?

[Confusious]

60. Like I said uranium mining is no different then any other mining

Gold mining uses cyanide to separate the ore from the earth.

Uranium mining they simply dig up the earth and dump it in a truck.

Same with with any other mining.

I live in the city, so they would have to displace quite a few people to do that. 20 or so miles outside of town is one of the largest copper mines in the in country. Across the street, under the football stadium, is a nuclear reactor.

We don't have any streams, so the tailings won't get in the river. The nuclear reactor has been here since the 60's, and my aunt lives about a mile from it. My cousin seems OK, if not a bit annoying. But I doubt that's from radiation.

As long as the workers are protected, which they can be, and the rivers and ground are protected, which they can be, I have no problem with it.

Of course, I wouldn't want anyone to loose their homes over it, and if the locals had problems with it, I would probably agree with the locals. I would have to check to see if the company had a good track record.

Most of the complaints about uranium mining stem from the early days of mining, current technology and rules can allow safe mining for the workers and the environment.

[tama]

61. A current example hereabouts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talvivaara_Mining_Company

[Confusious]

63. That's a nickel mine

That does uranium as a by-product.

The problems they seem to have is they are using an unproven tech to get the nickel which is causing pollution with a government that isn't monitoring them closely.

They should have tested the tech more throughly before getting started, and the government should have monitored them more closely.

[tama]

65. Should and should

but the fact is that they are doing it for money and power and don't give a fuck about people and environment.

[Confusious]

68. Do you things things like this should never be done

i.e. mining, we should never mine for anything, because we can never control the outcome (say "there will never be an accident&quot so we shouldn't do it at all?

PS. We all work for money, so I really can't fault them there. I can fault them for not taking proper care. I take proper care when doing a job, so should they. If they can't, they shouldn't be doing it. (One of my beliefs is that primary sources should be controlled by the government.)

Part of the entire problem is that no one has come up with an alternate system.

People seem to be stuck in Capitalism/Communism both which don't work in a pure form, because people are people. If people were somehow "Pure" for lack of a better word, we wouldn't need any law, and both would work in a pure form, but people aren't, so they don't.

[tama]

70. No we don't

Majority of humans are still subsistence farmers who use money very little or not at all. People who develop free-ware software don't work for money. Parents who take care of their children don't work for money. Friends who help each other don't work for money.

Of course the logic of money as debt and interest wants and needs to continually expand into all fields of life and monetize all relations, divide and conquer.

Alternate system? Just stop causing the problem, start from banning interest.

[Confusious]

73. You can't get away from money

The majority of the world's population lives in cities these days. Worlds population became more Urban the rural in 2007, so you're wrong there. Every country in the world, with the exception of failed states such as Somalia, prints it's own money.

People who develop free-ware software get paid by other means. I use linux, and have for 15 years, so I know all about it. They may develop this or that, but they have other jobs, or they get paid though other systems then direct payment.
i.e. the people who work for Red Hat software charge for support.

They don't just do that and hope for support from somewhere.


A parent still has need for money, whether the other parent is working, or they receive welfare or some other form of help from other family members who do work and receive money.

Friends who don't help each other don't remain friends long, they also have other jobs, which pay the bills.


The statement "Just stop causing the problem" isn't going to fix anything.

[tama]

77. Of course you can get away from money

it may not be always easy, but more and more individuals and intentional communities resist and refuse to participate in ruling monetary system, and/or develop alternative monetary systems that are not based on debt and interest.

People who live self-sufficiently free from the monetary system cause not much problems to others. People who have been made dependent from ruling money system are the problem, as they need to trouble and control others to get fed.

It's just a very simple fact, but understandably very hard to accept for people who are made dependent from ruling money system and cannot imagine anything else.

[Confusious]

79. A few people can get away from money

But working for a whole system, for everyone? I don't put my faith in fantasies. I'm to much of a realist. I spend time looking at people, and what motivates and drives them.

Doing that on a national scale would be a failure, and unworkable.

Another "great leap forward."

[tama]

81. What is fantasy

is that system based on cancerous growth can continue indefinitely. As we see everywhere, the system has now nothing more to offer but more robbery, race to the bottom, austerity, riot cops and police state control. And people everywhere are resisting and fighting back.

You are correct about national scale as the system is global and so is the revolutionary process against it. The process takes many forms on national and local levels as expected under the maxim of "think global act local". OWS was inspired by and learning from many experiences in many places, and on it's turn the Occupy! meme and tactic also spread globally.

"Working for money" is primarily a psychological issue. Most of us are made dependent from the ruling monetary system, but much fewer work or want to work just for money as primary motivator. People do things they like to do and consider important enough to do, with or without money.

You live in America, which is socio-psychologically probably the most monetized current culture there is, and that can affect your perceptions and thoughts about people in general and what motivates and drives them. But we know from many experiences from Russia to Argentina etc. that when the monetary system collapses and people are not being paid, they don't stop working and doing things they consider important for the well being of community. Would you? How important is your job for the community, would you keep working if you wouldn't get payed?

[Confusious]

85. "Working for money" is primarily a psychological issue.

Is it?

Some systems only work when there are fewer people. With 4 billion+ people on the planet, we all can't be hunter-gathers.

Pretty soon, about 3.5 billion of us would starve.

Same with the barter system. Some people just aren't going to be needed. What is the rocket scientists going to barter with the farmer for?

What is the theoretical physicist going to barter for? Who needs his work?

The barter system works for IMMEDIATE needs, not future needs. Of course, if you don't like technology, then it's a win.

The barter system also works good when you have a society of low specialization. How many of us can grow their own food, fix their own car, do woodwork, cook, fix their own computer, etc etc etc.

Money is a tool for high specialization societies like ours. Again, if you don't like it and would like us all to go back to living in mud huts, it's a win.

I wouldn't be so happy to see a monetary collapse. A lot of people would die. It would probably be anarchy for a while, and then rednecks would play king of the neighborhood.

[tama]

88. Anarchy

See my response above to those questions, just a comment on anarchy.

I'm an anarchist and I have experience of living in anarchic communities. Anarchy means building social capital and relying on social capital, being friends. The opposite of playing king of the neighborhood.

[Confusious]

91. Communties

Not nations.

one person can't be friends with 4 billion people. One person can't know every little bit of human knowledge these days.

[tama]

93. Networks of communities

The communities I'm familiar with have strong ties of friendships to other communities all over the world, people travel around and visit other communities, move around and live in many communities during their life, building social capital. So when the main building in a community that I lived in burned, other communities offered their help and support. Not just the people with personal ties to the community in trouble, but through those people communities as whole, also people who had not known about that community before they heard that they could use some help.

The key for building social capital and networks of communities and friends is that the communities don't need to compete against each other for resources, as they are either living relatively self-sufficiently or learning to do so.

Such communities and networks can use their surplus production also for large scale technological cooperation projects without coercion from authoritarian hierarchy. So if they wanted to build a space city for rocket scientists and theoretical physicists, communities with surplus power to give would first build a factory to produce e.g. community scale renewable energy technology so that more communities could produce surplus to build and power space city. All this is possible in terms of gift economy.

Nation states are entities based more on competition than on cooperation, so they use the resources they extract from those below in pecking order to uphold the pecking order. Weapons, surveillance tech etc. control mechanisms are the first priority of power hierarchies competing against each other and oppressing working classes.

[BarackTheVote]

28. Beta is actually still an industry standard in TV broadcasting n/t

[bemildred]

4. It fits her purpose, since she is bashing obsession with new technologies.

"Because they are better".

It's a sound point, not every new technology needs to be tried out, or commercialized, our job is not to reach utopia tomorrow, not to exaust all the possibilities as quickly as possible, our job is to survive so the game can continue tomorrow.

[Confusious]

5. Which ones shouldn't?

electricity -> electron tube -> radio -> television -> computers

electron tube -> transistors -> integrated circuit -> computers -> networks -> Internet


I suppose you're talking about nuclear power.

Well dealing with nuclear power has given us insight into the effects of radiation.

The short list: Space flight, smoke detectors, xrays, measurement devices, nuclear medicine, sterilization, Quality Control all rely on that insight.

It's never as clean cut as some Luddites would like to make it.

If they every get fusion working, that experience will be valuable. We will need to understand how to deal with radiation to tap unlimited amounts of clean power that it will provide.

Where do you think we should have stopped? the transistor? the electron tube?

Which technologies would you pick out to stop right now? How about stem cell research?

[bemildred]

9. Nukes come to mind immediately, various weapons systems, thalidomide.

Do you really think that's a difficult question?

There is nothing at all that guarantees new technology is good, a lot of it is crap, people can see that it's crap, it doesn't require an education or experience.

[Confusious]

10. It doesn't require education or experience

Figures.

Yes I think it's a difficult question, because I have education and experience.

Thalimide did do some good. It tightened restrictions on testing of drugs and pesticides. Thank god for that. What would have happened if something even worse got through? Right now it's being tested as an anti cancer drug.

Various weapon systems is debatable. A lot of tech is driven by weapon systems. Steels, electronics, even the internet.( I guess you need education to get that reference). Do we spend to much on weapons? Yes. Should we stop looking at new tech? No.

Nukes, as in nuclear weapons, is your only debatable one.

It doesn't take education and experience. Sounds like the republican attitude toward science. Or a new age Luddite.

[Zorra]

12. Where do you think we should have stopped? the transistor? the electron tube?

We should have stopped waylong before that.

At the sword.

[Confusious]

13. Luddite? Nt

[tama]

19. What do you know about luddites?

It was popular resistance movement of working people against industrial slavery that was crushed by capitalist state violence and mass murders.

[Confusious]

21. Again

Luddites - 1812
socialism - 1827 AT THE EARLIEST
capitalism - ~1850

[Turborama]

34. Following that "logic"...

Trees have only been in existence since humans started being able to name them.

[Confusious]

37. Really? You're going to go with that nonlogic?

Last edited Tue Oct 2, 2012, 05:33 AM - Edit history (2)

Trees are a physical object.

Marxism, capitalism, Anarchy are ideas, formed by humans, implemented by humans.

If humans didn't participate in them, they wouldn't exist, except as words in a book, or an idea in someones head.

Facepalm indeed.

[Turborama]

40. Yet another logic fail, how embarrassing for you!

I didn't think I needed to spell it out for you (or maybe I did but just couldn't be bothered and just hope you'd get it).

The point you missed is that something (plant, animal, mineral, gas, concept, whatever) isn't created at the date of its nomenclature.

Let's take one of your fallacies as an example...

"capitalism - ~1850"

No. Capitalism did not start in 1850. Capitalism in one form or another has actually existed for millennia.

[Confusious]

43. No, the theory hasn't existed for millennia

the form hasn't existed for millennia.

The dominant economic theory was Mercantilism.

Mercantilism is the economic doctrine that government control of foreign trade is of paramount importance for ensuring the prosperity and military security of the state. In particular, it demands a positive balance of trade. Mercantilism dominated Western European economic policy and discourse from the 16th to late-18th centuries.

Which is opposed to capitalism, which says the government should stay out.

Before that was feudalism, which is an economic and political theory in which only the rich are the aristocrats.

You really should read up on these things.

PS. just because you have a steam engine doesn't mean you have a internal combustion engine, though the two use some of the same parts.

Just because there is an exchange of printed money doesn't mean it's capitalism.

[Turborama]

51. Looks like you've got some reading to do...

You might be able to find this in your local library (if not, it's available on Amazon)...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0273639641?ie=UTF8&force-full-site=1&ref_=aw_bottom_links


"The Sumerians invented temple capitalism; the Assyrians made it multinational; the Phoenicians evolved controls; the Greeks leapfrogged with an entrepreneurial model that replaced it; the Romans perfected a robust blend of autonomy and regimentation that flourished for four hundred years. Foundations of Corporate Empire puts all this under a microscope."

Richard T. Pascale, associate fellow, Templeton College, University of Oxford

"In this well-researched and highly readable book, Moore and Lewis persuasively argue that many of today's global economic institutions and structures are not as new as often proclaimed but the product of a long evolutionary process. Their conclusion that a historical perspective provides important clues about the future of globalization is thought provoking and worthy of broad debate."

Cornelis A. de Kluyver, Dean, Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management

"This fascinating book should serve as a timely reminder to those who seem to think that tomorrow can be managed with scarcely a backwards glance to yesterday. Compulsive reading for businessmen and politicians."

Sir David Rowland, President, Templeton College, University of Oxford
"A fascinating and important work, which deserves to be widely read."

Professor Alister McGrath, Oxford University

"Foundations of Corporate Empire offered me an eye-opening insight into how we have come to do business as we do. If you truly want to understand capitalism as we know it, read this book. Beyond any reasonable doubt, it proved to me the old saying that the more things change the more things stay the same."

Professor D'Aveni, author of Hypercompetition: Managing the dynamics of strategic maneuvering

PS it's actually bad form to post an excerpt of something without a link.

[Confusious]

52. Jesus

Moore and Lewis persuasively argue that many of today's global economic institutions and structures are not as new as often proclaimed but the product of a long evolutionary process.

long evolutionary process. Of course, I've been saying that, but again, you don't listen. You can find form and function, but not as we know it today, and you seem to want to apply to yesterday.

Jesus.

Kind of like modern humans haven't always existed. But you seem to say they have.

You're calling chimpanzees humans.

PS it's actually bad form to post an excerpt of something without a link.

I gave it multiple times, you just keep ignoring it.

[Turborama]

57. Something else I wrote you need to read again...

"No. Capitalism did not start in 1850. Capitalism in one form or another has actually existed for millennia."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1450136

"Kind of like modern humans haven't always existed. But you seem to say they have."

No, I don't seem to say that at all.

"You're calling chimpanzees human"

Nope, I have never ever in my whole life called chimpanzees human.

[Confusious]

58. The exchange of printed money doesn't make capitalism

"Kind of like modern humans haven't always existed. But you seem to say they have."

No, I don't seem to say that at all.

"You're calling chimpanzees human"

Nope, I have never ever in my whole life called chimpanzees human.

Again, it's called an analogy.

From the perspective of the German Historical School, capitalism is primarily identified in terms of the organization of production for markets. Although this perspective shares similar theoretical roots with that of Weber, its emphasis on markets and money lends it different focus.[34] For followers of the German Historical School, the key shift from traditional modes of economic activity to capitalism involved the shift from medieval restrictions on credit and money to the modern monetary economy combined with an emphasis on the profit motive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Free-market_capitalism

In social science, the understanding of the defining characteristics of capitalism has been strongly influenced by German sociologist Max Weber. Weber considered market exchange, a voluntary supply of labor and a planned division of labor within the entreprises as defining features of capitalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Free-market_capitalism

Division of labour is the specialization of cooperative labour in specific, circumscribed tasks and like roles. Historically an increasingly complex division of labour is closely associated with the growth of total output and trade, the rise of capitalism, and of the complexity of industrialisation processes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour

Of course:

Division of labour was also a method used by the Sumerians to categorise different jobs, and divide them to skilled members of a society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour

But it wasn't capitalism.

[tama]

69. Same shit, different names

Peasant of Athens revolted against oligarchy that was robbing them through debt and interest and that struggle resulted in Solonian democracy. A slave society "democracy". A class society. A class of parasite owners and oppressors and the slaves - classical slaves, feudal peasant slaves, capitalistic wage slaves, etc.

Division of labor goes way back: anthropological study shows that practically in all hunter-gatherer human cultures men hunt, women cook. Now feminism is fighting against that original division of labor.

[Confusious]

74. Division of labor in manfacturing

Not in general.

A slave society "democracy"?

Are you saying democracy is a slave society? If so, what would you like it replaced by? Autonomous collectives?

There used to be laws in this country against usury. They should be reenacted.

[tama]

78. That's the origin of the Greek word

And more generally, as long as you are dependent from ruling monetary system, you are both slave and slaver. Wage-slave of your employer and slaver of those who e.g. grow pick the bananas you buy from supermarket.

Ruling monetary system is not free social contract under Common Law, but Commercial Law that has been enforced on us.

[Confusious]

80. I always like how you ignore things you don't like

and pick out the things you do. I'm a realist. I have to take both into consideration.

The entire social contract has been enforced on us, which we have to accept, whether we like it or not. (Just so you don't go all "you hate the social contract" shit, I agree with it.... It needs some work, but I agree)

But on the other hand, it has given people greater social mobility then ever before. Doesn't matter whether it was Rome, Egypt, China, or the middle ages you were a serf, and stayed that way for the rest of your life, and that's the way it was.

No voice, no rights, no hope.

You seem to want to dump the baby out with the bathwater in favor of.....what?

[tama]

84. It's not ignoring

but being aware and conscious about what things deserve attention and what things just make you feel afraid, angry, frustrated and powerless. Yes, greed is running rampant and many people are behaving badly, we all know that. But instead of concentrating on complaining about the negatives, I believe it is important to discuss and understand the causes of bad behavior and give attention to positive and hopeful things.

I don't understand what you mean by social mobility. Do you mean by that ability to climb the ladders of power hierarchy and pecking order - with the implied necessity of creating and upholding power hierarchy? Or geographic and social mobility to choose where you want to live, which community you want to be part of and what you want to contribute to your community?

[Confusious]

86. Social mobility

The ability to be a member of any class.

There is a pecking order in every animal species, with few, if not one or two, exceptions.

We're humans, there will always be a pecking order, hidden or visible, unless we evolve (as in genetic change) out of it.

To not think so is delusional.

(As an aside, the Russians tried to do away with the pecking order in the army after the revolution. Didn't work out so well. Also tried in the government. That turned out to be "some are more equal then others.&quot

[tama]

89. I don't believe so

And your belief is not supported by biology and anthropology.

Did you come to believe so extensive study of biology and anthropology, aware that even one piece of contrary evidence would falsify that theory, or as justification for your position in power hierarchy?

[Confusious]

90. You should believe so

It's not a belief, it's fact.

Pecking order = behavior in chickens

Dominance = pecking order, by another name

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_%28ethology%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_hierarchy

Dominance hierarchies occur in most social animal species that normally live in groups, including primates. Dominance hierarchies have been extensively studied in fish, birds, and mammals. Dominance hierarchies can be simple linear structures, which often arise from the physical differences among individuals in a group in relation to their access to resources. They are also influenced by the complex social interactions among individuals in the group.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecking_order

It is a basic concept in social stratification and social hierarchy that has its counterpart in other animal species, including humans. Still, the term "pecking order" is often used synonymously; the "pecking order" was the first studied example of the social hierarchy among animals.

As I said before, pecking order may or may not exist is smaller groups, but it always exists in larger groups.

A like minded group might find some "balance" without a pecking order, but there will always be someone most people respect more then others, listen to more then others, even when that person is wrong.

It may be an invisible pecking order, but it is still there.

PS. I said few exceptions. An exception to the rule does not invalidate the rule. You would have to find 51% to invalidate the rule, which you will not find.

[Brickbat]

17. I thought the same thing when I read it -- superior performance undercut by cheaper and crappier

products.

[Serve The Servants]

32. That was my first thought too after seeing the headline NT

[4th law of robotics]

75. That was my thought too

"Nuclear power is the superior technology but instead we're going to replace it with cheap crap masked by superior marketing!"

If she wanted to go that route referencing the Zeppelins in comparison to airplanes would have made more sense as they were technologically inferior and the image most people have of them is the Hindenburg.

That would have been a superior analogy for her purposes (not that I agree with her).

[Confusious]

76. Yea I thought of the Hindenberg and airplanes too. nt

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. K&R But that was a very bad analogy. The leader of a political party really needs to be more

thoughtful and better prepared in their statements. "Nuclear power is like..." is, or should be, an off the shelf statement that every member of the party has down pat.

[green for victory]

7. Maybe she took a holiday in Germany

German Solar examples:

Solarpark Lieberose

Solarpark Waldpolenz

Solarpark Alt Daber

Solarpark Kothen

Many Many more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany

How did Germany come to lead the US in Solar Energy?

If the United States really wanted Energy Independence "we" would have had it now,
or at least "we" would be trying...

BTW: When was the last time anyone heard the Mainstream Media mention Fukushima?
The US could have dominated...


Solar Two used molten salt, a combination of 60% sodium nitrate and 40% potassium nitrate, as an energy storage medium instead of oil or water as with Solar One. This helped in energy storage during brief interruptions in sunlight due to clouds.[1] The molten salt also allowed the energy to be stored in large tanks for future use such as night time—Solar Two had sufficient capacity to continue running for up to three hours after the sun had set.

Solar Two was decommissioned in 1999, and was converted by the University of California, Davis, into an Air Cherenkov Telescope in 2001...

"We're proud of Solar Two's success as it marks a significant milestone in the development of large-scale solar energy projects," said then U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson.
"This technology has been successfully demonstrated and is ready for commercialization. From 1994 to 1999, the Solar Two project demonstrated the ability of solar molten salt technology to provide long-term, cost effective thermal energy storage for electricity generation.", Boeing

On November 25, 2009, after 10 years of not producing any energy, the Solar Two tower was demolished[1] The mothballed site was levelled and returned to vacant land by Southern California Edison. All heliostats and other hardware were removed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Solar_Project

[Turborama]

35. Thank you

Amazing how no-one else is actually responding to what she was really talking about and instead getting distracted by her passing reference to Betamax.

She made some very valid points which not one detratcor has been able to argue against.

Something I wrote a few years ago I think you'll find interesting: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=203056&mesg_id=203056

[Tikki]

25. Well, I've never known of anyone dying from cancer, sick with thyroid or prostate disease..

from watching Betamax. But Betamax's shelf life was infinitesimally shorter than that of the
damaging waste by-products of the nuclear industry.



Tikki

[Hutzpa]

36. She's lost already

Nuclear power is the way forward, ha, it is a disaster waiting to happen.

#See Japan.

When you don't have it, you don't have it, no amount sideways is going to get you there.