Topic: What is the opposite of "Fuck you, got mine?" - page 2. (Read 13393 times)

Rassah,

First of all, you need to stop getting hung up on your insistence that biodiversity is not wealth. To argue in such a way only implies that less biodiversity has equal value to more biodiversity.

Now, regarding corporations, governments and property ownership: What the government actually does is the result of different government organizations and processes, comprised of politicians, the EPA, the National Parks system, law making, bills, voting, lobbying, etc. There are successes and failures. You are making the mistake of arguing that government is the problem, rather than arguing that some processes and components are not working as effectively as others. This is not an argument for no government - it's an argument for more strength and power within certain divisions, and less vulnerability to greed, and a more and better understanding of natural processes.

With regard to property ownership, you seem to think it's the solution. You aren't factoring in the ignorance of the property owners, and how they apply what they know to solve their personal goals, completely independent of larger and more holistic solutions. Please don't be so naive.

My parents were both biologists, so I grew up with the knowledge of biology, evolution, speciefication, biodiversity, and how it was all related from a very early age (I asked a lot of questions when I was little, and my parents, being good parents, always answered, without dumbing it down to a kid level). Now, granted, I am not a biologist, and don't know nearly as much as someone with a degree would, but I think I know enough to understand what you're getting at here, thanks.
That said, it was still pretty off-topic for you to bring a nature ecosystem concept into a discussion about wealth, accumulation thereof, and sharing (voluntary or otherwise). At the very least, your biodiversity is not owned by anyone, and thus can't be called wealth at all. It is something people rely on, benefit from, and would do better if it was preserved, but to put it bluntly, biodiversity is something everyone mooches off of, hoping they can get as much out of it while it lasts, without anyone owning or taking responsibility for it. It's a classic tragedy of the commons scenario.
If you can somehow explain to me how biodiversity is wealth, I'm all ears. (*points to avatar pic*)

Another thing to consider: our current system of national parks and oil leases (you may have heard this before, as I've mentioned it in another thread).
In our current system, land (your natural biodiversity) is publicly owned by the government (or, to put it another way, by a bureaucratic group that works hard to avoid any responsibility). When an oil company wants to drill, it gets a temporary lease for a plot of land. The lease is given with certain environmental safety conditions, which have been passed into law. Who gets those laws past do you think? People who care about the environment, or the money rich oil companies? (Easy question I'm sure). The oil company comes in, pumps out all the oil, and once the land is useless to them, just packs up and leaves. Thanks to the lackluster "environmental protection" laws, or the so low as to be almost useless fines they may have to pay, they often leave the area in a pretty nasty condition. The task to clean it up? That's left to the government. So, tax payers foot the bill to clean up the mess, while whoever allowed this drilling to occur is working full time to avoid taking responsibility. If that wasn't bad enough, tax payers don't want to pay taxes. Especially if it's to clean up someone else's back yard. And especially if they live in one of those oil rich states where the politicians keep promising to cut taxes.
So, really, you end up with a profit-hungry business borrowing a plot of land no one owns or wants to take responsibility for, after which no one wants to bother paying to clean it up.

A slightly more libertarian alternative would be to directly sell that land to the oil company (and maybe charge then a ton of property taxes on top of it), and have them take full ownership of it. If it gets trashed, you have one single entity to blame. And if they do trash it, their incentive would be to clean it up as fast as possible, just so that they can resell it to someone else, and stop losing money on useless land and high property taxes. Even if that land was already privately owned by someone else instead of a government, and that owner just leased it too, you can bet that the owner would be a hell of a lot more diligent at keeping an eye on it than a government. Maybe that's your problem here: you think the government's responsibility is to the people instead of the corporate lobbyists.

Murkylogic is almost nearly correct here. He just seems to think that biodiversity include oil and copper and there was a claim that ecosystem services are derived from oil and copper. Furthermore, he can't really put together two and two and figure out that the act of harvesting oil, and then burning it, do have damaging effects on ecosystems, and thus ecosystem services.

Rassah, I never claimed that island biogepgraphy is wealth. I pointed out those terms to you so that you could gain some knowledge by engaging in research. That's very clear in my post where the terms appeared. Would you like me to recommend some books for you to help you better understand the ramifications of what you argue for?

Now I understand why you continued to badger me for the past six months! You made false assumptions about my motives. It's best if you don't do that when engaging in discussion or debate. I hope you've learned your lesson. Now we can move on.

FirstAsshat considers the position that private ownership of all resources will act to preserve them to be false. He advocates, therefore, the existence of a State to preserve and hold in reserve for future generations, all natural resources. Trophic cascades and island biogeography, he sees as consequences of private mismanagement of land resources, and ecosystem services to be the true "wealth" of the land. He has yet to explain what ecosystem services mineral resources such as oil and copper provide in the land, however.

Wtf? O.o Did I miss something on another thread? I'm still just wondering why trophic cascades, ecosystem services, and island biogeography are considered wealth, as opposed to natural resources or theories that can be used to generate wealth.
And also wondering wtf any of this nature stuff has to do with FY,GM. If it like, "Fuck you, dolphin. I got my fish"

I understand perfectly. What I continue to not get is why you consider those concepts acceptable justifications for slavery and (mass, even near-genocidal) murder.

I assume that explanation was slated for later in the thread, but you got bored.

A normal person can follow the logic about the little fuzzy animals. I really don't know why you cannot. A normal person can parse the meaning of trophic cascades, island biogeography and ecosystem services and figure it all out. I really don't know why you cannot.

Imagine this: You visit a bar, and meet a lovely young lady. You agree to head back to your place to finish the night off in style. Just as you're about to get going, she starts putting her clothes back on, and tells you that you should finish things yourself. She even suggests that you put on the Penthouse channel to help.

Would you not be a little upset with her?

You got me all exited that I was going to finally learn the secret to why you view the little fuzzy animals as more important than your fellow humans...

To continue this post, please deposit 0.25BTC in the address below.

Who owned the Brazilian Atlantic forest when it was being destroyed?

I don't recall any referral identifiers in the URLs I posted. What a suspicious and paranoid individual you are. And for about the tenth time, I told you that it is not my responsibility to write whole treatises on the subject, especially when there are well written books by PhDs far more versed in the subject matter. I have introduced the concepts. The interested reader should then proactively seek to educate themselves, rather than make demands on others for their education. Frankly, you have a very strange attitude.

Please demonstrate where you see the affiliate link in any URLs I provided.

I've been badgering you to finish what you started. But apparently, even providing wikipedia links is too much work. You prefer to get that Amazon referral mojo going, I guess.

And as I said way back in August,

Then why the fuck have you been badgering me to explain those terms to you for six plus months? Especially since I already did here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1073879

Oh, for fuck's sake:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem_services
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_cascade
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_biogeography

It took me literally thirty seconds to search these terms, and another thirty to paste them in here. Why was this so hard for you to do, FirstAsshat? (don't bother answering, I likely won't bother clicking the "show" link)

Oh, by the by, you still haven't explained what ecosystem services crude oil provides, sitting in the ground. I don't expect you to, though, so that's OK.

Your remarks simply are not demonstrating any level of comprehension on your part. The three terms in question would be (as already mentioned) a great starting point for you to better understand these concepts. Instead of going down the nonsensical path of trying to sound like you can intelligently debate this, just go read a few books on the subject.

It is not.

You should think about the human species with a historical perspective. More than 2000 thousands years ago, Brazilian lands were already populated by native tribes. They recognized wealth in the biodiversity of the environment where they lived. E.g. if a native male were able to fish a great quantity of fish, he would be a wealth man. If a tribe could obtain a great quantity of manioc, they would be a wealth tribe. The tribes lived for many years attacking each other regarding the quantity of wealth held by each. Of course this is not the only reason for the attacks. This serves to illustrate that wealth was recognized in the biodiversity before the human specie develop complex economic models.

Another interesting example is the Brazilian Atlantic forest, which was almost destroyed by the economic progress and urbanization. What was left is protected by the state. If the state did not interfered, this peculiar kind of forest which is only located in Brazilian east coast would not exist anymore. All the potential wealth which could be obtained from that biodiversity would vanish forever. This would be catastrophic for the Brazilian ecosystem. The Atlantic forest holds a rich diversity of fauna and flora which cannot be reproduced anywhere in the world.

I recommend this article if you want to learn more about the Atlantic forest:

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/893

You mean trophic cascades, ecosystem services, and island biogeography? How much does each of those cost?

Quoted for truth (and justice!)

Please. You are comparing mathematical concepts to physically extent resources. You're engaging in a contrivance of wordplay. Biodiversity is a term which describes a healthy and abundant variety of species within a given ecosystem. It's akin to metal rich ore deposits.

This geographical region has more metal rich ore deposits than this one. This geographical region has more biodiversity than this one.

Also, the post in question discusses ecosystems and ecosystem services. However, it's noted that the brunt of your argument is in discussing the syntactical and semantic use of a single term, as it's the only counter-argument you can come up with. Also, did I not provide three terms for you at the end of the post? Don't let your lack of understanding cause you to stick to a weak argument.

How much is a color spectrum worth? How much is a range of 1 mile to 100 miles worth? How much does acceleration from 1mph to 10mph worth? Biodiversity is a diversity of bio organisms. It doesn't say what kind of organisms, how they are related, or anything like that. It's a descriptive concept, not a thing. I know you are trying to pin a value on the ecosystem, or something like that, but that's also not something that is quantifiable. It's waaaaay tooooo vaaaaague. 5,000 salmon are worth something. Clean water to sustain them is worth something. Food to feed them is worth something. One lifeform containing data is worth something. A nebulous square meter of space with some living things in it are not worth anything. Not until we calculate the sum of their individual parts, anyway.

Besides, if your entire point is "Don't focus on profits, because you'll ignore and thus destroy the environment," that point is moot. If people want a clean and vibrant "biodiversity," that is exactly what they will pay for, whatever it may be, because "wealth" is not accumulation of green papers or bitcoins, wealth is accumulation of what people want. A lot of people on the socialist side, with bad images of fat cats in top hats, tend to miss that point.