A Blank Spot on the Map

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Markets and government

Markets can improve society, markets are not perfect, government can improve markets and government is not perfect.

Friday, February 24, 2006

Common Ground

Robert,

What you don't understand about me is that I don't care which party controls our government. All I want is real people who have the our country and its people best interest in mind. The current administration certainly does not function to the best interest of this county and its peoples long term interest. As they say a politician thinks about the next four years and the upcoming election while a statesmen thinks about the future. I want statesmen not politicians running our country, democrat or Republican I DON'T CARE. We have mostly politicians and they are more likely beholden to their donors then their country and people. That is THE NUMBER ONE problem in our country today, IMHO. Not terrorist, not the war in Iraq, not global warming, not the huge debt, not the philosophical differences between the parties but money corrupting the democratic process.....but the politicians love dividing us over the lesser issues. At some point the best way for the American people to do better by themselves and their country is to find common ground and unite against the current political system. Otherwise we'll continue working for 50 cents on the dollar while the politicians waste our money making poor policy. Reading blogs like this its apparent to me that most Americans aren't up to the task. They'd rather claim the problem is with the 50 % of other Americans who don't vote like them the seeing the problem with how our politicians come to power.

The best answer..IMHO...publicly funded elections.....OK now I got that out ...who ever wants to can call me a moonbat wacko bleeding heart, hate the soldiers, hate my country, far less patriotic then you, socialist, Leninist, Stalinist, Maoist, communist one worlder.....yeah that we'll further the debate.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Why I want global warming to be true

When I ask myself the question why I want global warming to be real I conclude the following;
I want global warming to be real because I want to believe that the laws of physics and nature are very precise and some what predictable. I don’t want to believe we could get something so basic as the spectrophotometric properties of the CO2 molecule wrong. I want global warming to be real because I am a believer in the utility of the scientific method in spite of all its imperfections. For the IPPC report to be completely off base would say something very detrimental of our scientific institutions, our scientist and maybe of the scientific method itself. Call it faith if you will I call it trust as it is based on true past experiences. The scientific method has brought us atomic bombs, kidney transplants, the Mars rover, the human genome project and this here internet. The only way the IPCC report could be wrong is either for some massive conspiracy amongst scientist ( who I consider some of the most honorable and self less of just about any profession) or it could be wrong because of some massive communal error of evaluation which seems unlikely considering the number of people working on the project. The bottom line is I want to believe I know the truth and the facts as they really are because I understand my best bet in responding to reality is not to deny reality but to face it head on knowing the truth. We as a civilization won’t survive if we don’t understand the truth and facts of the world around us.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Democracy versus Free markets

Remember when I asked you to ask yourselves why you didn't want global warming to be true? Your reply below hits the nail on the head. Of course your logic is reversed. You assume global warming is a grand conspiracy to impose more socialist rules.

Of course its not a grand conspiracy . Its fully factually documented in our best science journals. The truth of global warming that you hate is that it implies that your simplified view of the world is off base. The belief that free market capitalism always works best when unregulated is bunkum. The reality of global warming reveals that an unbridled system could ultimately result its own destruction. Capitalism...the free market has no answer or self correction to things like climate change. Regulation and planning are needed. That doesn't mean people proposing regulation or planning are socialist or communist only that they are realist. The fact is that a truly unfettered free market system is completely incompatible with democracy. True democracy will never allow for the "true free-markets" the conservatives envision. We will always have a mixed economy and the sooner the neocons realize that the sooner we can come together to promote real democratic solutions while encouraging a fair and "free market".