Just think that we have this romantic notion regarding cooperation and consensu when evn the most primitive tribes in the Amazon or New Guinea rainforest will defend what they consider is their property.

So not sure what model is best, but willing to look at something.

What other suggestion for organising society which supresses this greed emotion? I suggest that in those societies a very strong patriarctical or matriartical society exists.

Where “do as I say” is the dominant trait.

Perhaps GE modification has a use by replacing the greed gene with a more benevilant one.

Off cource in all people except me. Dont want to be compliant.

which is the whole problem. No one wants to be compliant.

Not all societies function the way the western capitalist competitive societies function. The ones that don’t have been swallowed up because the western model IS competitive, and if you try not to compete you lose. Sort of like being a pacifist when the other guy really really is going to beat the bejeezus out of you and take everything you own. You either abandon the pacifism or abandon everything you own.

Capitalism of the sort we have competes for energy and resources in a big way. It isn’t the ONLY way humans can organize themselves, it’s just the most effective way to compete that we’ve found.

BJ

not takepayers.

Hey we ned that neat feature on this blog where you can edit your own comments after posting!!

Interesting view point said I would say, with rose coloured glasses.

Fortunately I’m a realist and while my view might be construed as “sad and tragic” it is reality.

We build a front of consensus and cooperation yet it is based not on achieving anything but platitudes where the strong dictates to the weak.

The reality is neither party is happy. They may coexist, but happy about the outcome?

You tell your children they cannot eat a snack before dinner. While they might agree with the command not to (even see reason for it) that is not consensus or cooperation. It do as I say.

Consensus would be if you allowed them half the snack they desired.
Cooperation would be if both parties agreed to the compromise of consensus.

Take climate change.

The farmers in Greenland through this warming period are happy because they can now farm organic bovine instead of reindeer.

Now the islanders on an atoll in the South Pacific are unhappy as threatened higher ocean levels due to the warmer climate are going to flood them from their atoll.

Cooperation and consensus would say to move the islander to Greenland.

Would both parties be happy about that?

Passing laws in parliament is cooperative? Only to the point where it feeds the “whats in it for me” syndrome.

All of mankind is greedy. Be it the mega rich capitalist who has more money and power then they know what to do with, to the benificiary who sponges of fellow takepayers.

Greed rules mankind. No other species on this planet has that emotion to the level it has developed in mankind.

And because of this emotion all cooperation and consensus is only to the point of self fulfillment.

Greed based not purely on monatory value but peer recognition, power over others, etc.

“While the interchange beween BJ and Mouldwarp is interesting, it shows that as a species, humans cannot cooperate for any common good.

I order to cooperate one needs consensus. Something this debate lacks.”

I suppose the whole edifice of civilisation, which I believe is built finely on the balance between cooperation and competition, is actually the result of pure competitive forces? What a sad and tragic world view! I never sought consensus within my family about anything, but we cooperated just fine. I rarely seek consensus at work, yet we cooperate to produce just fine. My family, my work and my nation are all built on cooperation that is not based in consensus. Indeed, our parliamentary system is classed as ‘adversarial’, yet it is only the cooperation between MPs that gets the laws passed - without consensus. Children are cooperative and competitive by nature - for the common good. It is only nurture or lack of resources that breeds the competition that ultimately destroys the common good.

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DamonLaut 2004.pdf

The difficult issues with cloud coupled GCR flux are principally that there is no way to determine what correction (if any) is required on account of it. Clouds warm and cool both, depending on where they are and when… and there is no correct cyclical correlation with the planet’s encounters with the spiral arms of the galaxy.. Nor is there strong information relating to the solar flux. There ARE unknowns here, but the known explanation works fine thanks.

The sin, in all of this, is that we are resisting putting a price on the commons. That is all that really matters. In a religious worship of economic growth such as ours this is a very great sin, a mortal sin.

The market cannot do anything but destroy things that are free. It will use the “free” resource preferentially and inefficiently in place of anything that costs money. I do not care if the price is paid to governments, other people or used for toilet paper and shredded. If there is a cost and it is enforced on all equally, the market preserves…

If there isn’t, it destroys.

In the end this debate isn’t really about science at all.

A lot of people became wealthy using the current system. They like it a lot. They don’t want anything changed and a price on the commons WILL change things in ways that make a lot of folks who distrust big business happy.

So be it. I don’t care. Big Business, Big Brother, Big Populations, Big Government, Big Religion… I don’t care WHO makes a profit or a loss as long as there is a fair price on the use of the commons. That single measure puts the market in charge of enforcing sustainability. Its absence demands that the invisible hand must destroy every part of the commons it can reach.

People framing this as left vs right are just wrong.

BJ