DescentBB

Interesting article on the topic: Link

I tend to agree with the majority of the article... do you guys see "sustainability" becoming a dogmatic religion?

snoopy wrote:Interesting article on the topic: Link

I tend to agree with the majority of the article... do you guys see "sustainability" becoming a dogmatic religion?

Nice word salad there. What exactly is the article trying to say? That our educational system is making dumb decisions and it's adversely affecting students? That for all the selfrighteous posturing done by the progressive crowd, it's really not much more than that - a "moral and ethical high ground" fashion statement with no meaningful investment or result?

hardly see the orthodoxy that Will rants about, but I do see a tendency towards empty gestures with no well-thought path to GET to sustainability. I have no problem with the concept of such, but divesting some minuscule share of stockholdings doesn't really advance it. Further, demanding immediate changes to energy supply aren't practical. Interesting topic, one I deal with a lot, to the dismay of my more progressive friends.....it's a shame that Will has to step in and muck it up with his whiney brand of conservatism.

If slick is so worried about my input that the bulk of his opinion is dedicated to a preemptive attempt to diminish mine from having effect I guess I must be doing it right.

my bad, slick didn't get the joke, i should have used a smiley or something, but I guess even if he did it was a shot none the less.

I do believe there is an orthodoxy to sustainability. This goes against Will's anti-regulation free market capitalist orthodoxy. He's not wrong in some of his implications, but rather than addressing the issue of necessary long term sustainability, he wraps it all in hippies and starts punching. He mocks the idea that institutions even study the issue. He even mocks using capital as voting power.

If conservatives like Will don't join in the search for solutions to the very real issue of sustainability, either dirty hippies are going to win or we're all going to lose.

well put, Vander, or as I sometimes put it(given that I spend a bit of time in Central PA), the Amish are going to have the last laugh on us yet.

this whole matter gets back to that long thread about the non-sustainable nature of capitalism. Hard core capitalist ideologues like George Will don't like to face that realization, but if we continue in a non-sustainable paradigm, we're all screwed.

There is another issue that people don't seem to realize is going to be a future problem, if not a problem already. Most people are starting to get it now that we have a huge wealth inequality in our country. But now there's a new wrinkle, ownership. Not only is most of our country's wealth concentrated in the top 1%, now a bigger and bigger chunk of that money is going into the pockets of foreign nationals, not Americans, who don't have any loyalty to the U.S. at all. How long before that little detail impacts the world status, power and economy of the U.S.?

not sure I see your point. Wealth has been spread world-wide since, like, forever.The Rothschild family(nee in France) bought into many American businesses, years ago. The House of Saud has owned US stakes for decades, and the Seagram family from Canada bought controlling interest(and later sold it) in DuPont. I thought you were getting to the disparity in ownership of the resources(land, water) as opposed to mere wealth. That WILL become an issue.

callmeslick wrote:not sure I see your point. Wealth has been spread world-wide since, like, forever.The Rothschild family(nee in France) bought into many American businesses, years ago. The House of Saud has owned US stakes for decades, and the Seagram family from Canada bought controlling interest(and later sold it) in DuPont. I thought you were getting to the disparity in ownership of the resources(land, water) as opposed to mere wealth. That WILL become an issue.

Those people you name were not the Chinese, nor were they ever invested as heavily in America as the Chinese have been doing. We will soon NOT own most our own manufacturing, NOT own our food processing companies or NOT lot of other important production facilities either. Many former American companies are now owned by the Chinese and it's part of their plans. The Chinese even just bought the Segway company of all things. What do you think will happen to this country if the process continues Slick? I think we'll be pwned by the Chinese in the not so distant future.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2 ... p-america/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/bus ... d/2369565/

http://economyincrisis.org/content/made ... wned-china

plenty of capital from this side of that pond in play, TC. Color me non-panicked.

Then, you don't know the Chinese. They are more like us than even we are and look were we got.

the Chinese still haven't sorted out whether they wish to be Communist, Capitalist or something in between(like most of the rest of us). They just made a big deal out of closing a few hundred golf courses, and seem to be veering back towards collectivist thinking, but they have become addicted to the US consumer markets. That will be an odd relationship for a while, complicated futher by their designs around control of the entire South Asian economy.....
which, interestingly, gets us to the driver for the TPP deal, which has as its entire goal circumventing that domination.

callmeslick wrote:...
which, interestingly, gets us to the driver for the TPP deal, which has as its entire goal circumventing that domination.

Right. The policy you haven't read, written by powerful greedy bastards, has nothing but altruistic results as a goal.

You don't say that because you find yourself defending that policy in another discussion...

Damn, I'm in agreement with Will on this one!

Will Robinson wrote:

callmeslick wrote:...
which, interestingly, gets us to the driver for the TPP deal, which has as its entire goal circumventing that domination.

Right. The policy you haven't read, written by powerful greedy bastards, has nothing but altruistic results as a goal.

You don't say that because you find yourself defending that policy in another discussion...

no, maybe I should have clarified, that is the STATED goal.