• 11 Posts
  • 365 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Are you referring to your question about my ideals or values, respecting distribution of benefit from land usage?

    I’m referring to this one:

    ideal that land is natural and should benefit everyone equally.

    Do you disagree with this?

    I have framed the conversation around my skepticism that Georgism meaningfully contributes to leftism or functions as a leftist tendency

    The goal of leftism is to create a better, more progressive society. With that means that the “end goal” of the state must be determined, which means the income, whether monetary/resource based/etc must be determined as well.

    You can’t have a state that doesn’t have a defined input/output. So if you want to meaningfully contribute to an ideal leftist society/government, one such meaningful contribution is solving the government’s input/output problem.

    Taxing land is one such solution to this problem.

    including lands, being utilized socially and also toward benefit that is private.

    Under georgism, all land gets taxed regardless of who owns the land, how they own the land, whether it is private or personal, and regardless of whether or not private property still exists.



  • Georgism tends not to augment leftist theory or objectives

    And like I already said, not every policy is implemented to solve every problem.

    Georgians want landlords and business owners to be taxed such that …

    And this is a sweeping generalization. Not all georgians agree on every aspect of georgism. There are georgians that want to keep a pure “free market” capitalism, there are those that want a mixed economy, and those that want socialism or communism in addition to georgism.

    It’s not a one size fits all camp.

    ideal that land is natural and should benefit everyone equally.

    Do you disagree with this?

    Leftists want to abolish profit

    This is also just a sweeping generalization. Just as with georgism, leftism isn’t something that can be defined by a simplified, sweeping generalization. Leftists are a diverse group.

    You’re not talking about policy, which is where the actual conversation is at.


  • Not every policy is implemented to solve every problem. So listing all the things georgism doesn’t solve is a moot point.

    No matter what, the state needs a source of income. And georgism is to my knowledge the least bad of all options, all of which are bad.

    The rules on who can own what land for what purpose, private or personal is independent of the rules on how tax is collected.



  • It’s not even just that people don’t know about the green party, it’s that we are stuck with a voting system that is inherently biased against 3rd parties being viable.

    If we can switch to a better voting system like STAR or approval, it would be far better for the green party.

    And the existing parties would have to compete for once, which would go a long way towards making them not dumpster fires.


  • Because current technology hasn’t figured that out yet. It sure as shit isn’t EV’s

    So they’re a lot of shit here, but this is the most egregious. EVs are not a solution to climate change, they’re a bandaid used in an attempt to fix internal bleeding at best. Any environmentalist that is even slightly informed knows as much.

    Transportation only makes up a quarter of all emissions. We need something that will apply to and reduce emissions from all sources, not just one. A carbon tax is the most effective way to do that. The whole point of capitalism is that it is a race to the bottom for the lowest cost product, and we need to use that. Currently the profits are privatized and the costs (carbon) is socialized. That needs to change, products need to reflect their actual cost, including the cost to the habitability of our planet. If that were to happen, companies would actually start to give two shits about it instead of just virtue signalling over it. Other countries have implemented carbon taxes to great effect, and we ought to follow suit.

    But beyond that, there is more to it. Going by sector:

    Transportation Emissions - We already have the technology to cut this. The first step is to reduce unnecessary travel. If a job can be worked remote, then it should be worked remote. If it can be hybrid, then it should be hybrid, etc. Few companies are willing to do so due to the lack of financial incentives, so those financial incentives need to be created, and that’s where a carbon tax comes in. With that, and a law allowing corps to drop office leases early, it would overnight decrease the need for transportation and therefore emissions.

    Then there is private life transportation, going to your local supermarket, community center, etc. The biggest thing that needs to change here is zoning law. There needs to be significantly more mixed use zoning, and high density zoning. If it takes only a 10 minute walk to do your local errands and spend time with your community, then people won’t use a car as much, and cars are by far the worst offenders of transportation emissions aside from shipping. There needs to be more bike/walkability infrastructure to make it safe (it’s a dangerous shit show now), so that people can get where they need to without using a vehicle or risk getting hit by one.

    Beyond that, public transportation needs an overhaul. Electrified rail transportation has existed for over a century. We have the technology to implement this on a far wider scale than we currently have. And none of it needs vehicle batteries.

    Electricity Generation emissions - Contrary to your belief, wind and solar are not bullshit. They make up a huge chunk of the EU’s power generation. Every single watt of which is far more carbon efficient than anything fossil fuel based. Not only that, but wind and solar aren’t the only options for renewable/low carbon energy. Hydro electric has been around for forever, it’s clean, it’s safe, and it’s plenty powerful for entire cities. Plus it comes with the benefit of often being able to be used as a battery to help make up for the deficiencies of wind and solar.

    And I agree that we should be building nuclear power plants. They’re safe, clean, and powerful. We should have and could have completely replaced all of fossil fuels with them by now if we started building them en mass in the 70s.

    As for the rest of the sectors, a carbon tax would work just the same. Corps would actually seek to reduce the use of fossil fuels so they can lower their taxes. If corps are financially incentivized to reduce emissions, they absolutely will do so. Part of that “the rest” is heating/cooling, which is made significantly easier with heat pumps and stronger insulation regulations/incentives.

    And the last bit, we are pouring shit loads of money into fossil fuel subsides. That’s money that is artificially keeping fossil fuels cheap in comparison to renewables, which is preventing renewables from gaining better traction. Those subsidies need to end as soon as possible and instead handed over to renewable projects.

    Now for some specifics.

    It sure as shit isn’t EV’s, our power grid can’t keep up with normal usage, let alone millions of EV’s, lack of places to charge them, people held up on trips because their batteries are dead.

    Like I said, we should be reducing car dependence which will in turn reduce the load on the power grid. And the battery life/distance/charge time is getting better and better each year. But to the extent that our society is stuck with cars, EVs are and always will be better than ICE cars.

    Freight that can’t move because the only electric trucks that exist can go about 400mi then need to recharge for 10+ hours

    We have the technology to build electrified rail. Granted we need way more of it, and existing rail needs to be electrified, but we are not stuck with trucks. And a 400mi range is plenty of range to go from a train depot to the end destination.

    You think the supply chain was destroyed by COVID, that wouldn’t even compare.

    I don’t give two shits about the supply chain. The habitability of our planet is far more important. We can, for now, still have both. But not for long.

    instead we fund the deforestation of hundred of thousands of acres of farmland to put up useless solar panels

    We don’t need to deforest at all for solar. Single unit family homes are able to have most/all of their electrical needs handled by roof panels, and there is plenty of wasted space on commercial buildings in cities and in parking lots.

    themselves don’t have a long duty life, are toxic as hell, can’t be recycled, and then what?

    If solar panels are “toxic as hell”, just wait until you hear about these things they call fossil fuels. They’re quite literally destroying and poisoning the planet.

    The same people that bitch about “sustainability” want to recycle, but not paper,

    We should be recycling paper. I am bitching about sustainability. And I am telling you we should recycle paper. I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking to that could lead you to this impression.

    bitch about clean natural gas

    There is nothing clean about fossil fuels.

    When the “solution” to a problem creates 3 more in it’s place…it’s not a Solution.

    We are in a deep fucking mess over this crisis. We can either go with the painful option, or the extremely painful option. The painful option is to fix it, the extremely painful option being doing nothing/minimally acting.

    If things continue the way they do, there will be millions, potentially billions of migrants as a result of climate change. Where do you thing those people will try to go? They’re gonna try to come here. Republican policy of fucking the environment with a cactus will directly lead to more migrants.

    Do you like nuclear war? I don’t either. And I’d rather not have the doomsday clock tick closer to midnight because Iran lost access to potable water and decided war is a good option. I don’t know about you, but I have zero desire to die in the potentially upcoming water wars.

    3 small problems is better than one giant one that will end society/humanity.






  • Many people today believe the world is overpopulated and that we are running out of natural resources.

    the increasingly popular notion that the growing global population will eventually overutilize our planet’s finite resources.

    contrary to the Malthusian claims of contemporary leftists and climate alarmists, population growth and resource scarcity do not share a causal relationship.

    The entire article is based off of this idea. But it is not the main concern environmentalists have with overpopulation.

    The main concern is that population is tied to greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, and damaging consumption. Every person born will lead to a lifetime’s worth of greenhouse gasses, water and air pollution, and contribution towards habitat loss.

    They fundamentally do not understand environmentalist concerns, that’s the factual issue with the article. The rest of it is grossly misleading:

    The more people there are, the more opportunities there are for education, collaboration, and innovation that can benefit everyone.

    Here they try to correlate population with solutions to consumption growth.

    Take sand for example. Our sand consumption is positively correlated with population growth, yet this article would have you believe the reverse. It’s simply not true, more people is leading to more sand consumption, which brings habitat destruction.

    the median quality of life across the globe has dramatically improved over the past few centuries, in no small part due to human ingenuity.

    The quality of life for the humans in the Wall-e universe has markedly improved.

    Measuring quality of life in no way measures the damage of overpopulation.

    Matter can neither be created nor destroyed,

    Another grossly misleading statement on the article’s part. While matter can’t be created or destroyed, it can be (effectively) irreparably altered such that it is not ever usable again.

    He points to the Simon Abundance Index, a measure of the relationship between population growth and the abundance of 50 basic commodities, to make his case.

    Then there is shit like this, comparing population to market availability. It ignores that the market is not a measure for environmental damage, or the depletion rates of resources.

    Recall the 2015 Paris Climate Accords in which nearly 200 nations and the European Union nominally committed their economies to reducing dependency on fossil fuels and reducing carbon emissions while incentivizing investment in inefficient means of energy production.

    This is misleading because the efficiency of green energy sources is that they don’t destroy the planet. And they completely fail to understand that.

    prominent Democrat politicians suggesting Americans should have fewer children are further iterations of this ethos — save the future by not building it.

    Having fewer children doesn’t mean there would be no future. Having fewer children is one of the easiest ways we can reduce green house gas emissions.