Wednesday, August 1, 2012



An Inspiring Reality Check



13 comments:

  1. True statement. I wish more Americans understood it.

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  2. We've been victims of comfort for a long while now.

    Train in the tunnel.

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  3. There's rarely a time I don't get in the shower and feel that lovely strong hot water and don't think about those people who've never had this luxury.

    No, most Americans don't appreciate any of it.

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  4. Nice Ft, Nice, given that many of us worry whether or not they have an X-box and the latest game.

    I had a friend who was diabetic and bitching about how he couldn't afford to get one of those monitoring machines... but he sure as hell had a 50" plasma TV. I wanted to slap him.

    Cheers!

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  5. @ Ducky who said... "We've been victims of comfort for a long while now.

    Train in the tunnel."

    This true. Unless we realize that which produced and sustained this situation in the past so we can effectively adapt and modify the model to the present so as to allow for its continued reality we are destined to...

    I'll let you all finish the sentence.

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  6. Ducky is a REAL conservative, Les.

    He thinks we should all go back to chopping wood with a stone axe, and carrying water up the hill from the stream in a wooden bucket.

    Probably thinks we should eat nuts and berries picked off the trees too -- and whatever game we could catch -- with our bare hands.

    Nothing like getting back to basics is there? --- NOT!

    ~! FT

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  7. A SERIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION:

    Why is it that leftists always seem to want to bring those who live well DOWN, instead of wanting to ELEVATE the lowly to greater HEIGHTS?

    Please try to confine your answers to a thousand words or less. ;-)

    I can't wait to read the essays sure to come flocking in.

    ~ FT

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  8. There isn't enough resource available in the world for 1.4 billion Chinese people to consume like Americans. I'd be very surprised if there were any way of substantially improving the material circumstances of the 3rd world without curtailing some of our excesses... not least because many of our material advantages arise from low cost imports, which depend on comparatively cheap manufacturing costs abroad. If conditions there improve and workers demand better conditions and pay, our comparative wealth must lessen.

    Some economic growth through more efficient use of resources is possible, but don't expect it to happen on the scale required to supply everybody with American standards of living.

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  9. Thanks for an honest, responsible answer, Jez. You have stated the classic Marxist-Communist-Liberal-Progressive-Socialist view very nicely.

    That is:

    The "pie" is just so big, ergo it must be divided into smaller and smaller pieces in order to accommodate everyone in the world "equitably."

    The wretched of the earth can never advance until the mighty have been toppled, brought low and destroyed.


    That is the mentality that brought about the deaths of well over a hundred-million innocent souls -- and still counting.

    Such thinking has obviously given an enormous boost to the advance of Civilization.

    My my my my my!

    "When WILL they ever learn?"

    ~ FreeThinke

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  10. What I said has nothing to do with absolutely nothing to do with politics, FreeThinke.

    The amount of resources available is sadly not a matter of preference, we are genuinely constrained by geology, physics etc. There is a theoretical maximum annual crop of wheat, for example.

    If it's true, it's true! Whether you're a capitalist or a communist there might well be no means of producing enough to furnish 7 billion people with American lifestyles.

    Only a fool would overlook physical reality in deference to his political affiliations.

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  11. Too many people?

    Obviously time for another Great Flood.

    Start building your ark.

    Oh, and by the way, where is it written that everyone in earth must live in the style to which the richest and highest achieving nations have grown accustomed? Marxist concepts of "equality" are so daft.

    We are not responsible for the breeding habits, political predilections and economic policies of 1.4 billion Chinese or however many Indians, Pakistanis, Middle Easterners, Africans and Americans South of the Border there may be.

    Why we should be expected to give up what have gained -- which is what Marxists are urging on us -- is a mystery to me. We all have to play the hand that life dealt us -- not steal cards from those who've had better luck in the distribution.


    "Do not go gently into that good night.
    Rage against the dying of the light ..."



    And of courser your position is political. I've never heard anyone of a conservative disposition aver any such theory.

    Let to our own devices some creative genius will doubtless find find ways o overcome every one of the limitations you see looming large in the background.

    In centrally planned economies, the "pie" never grows it just gets smaller and smaller -- the mutually shared poverty, misery and degradation Winston Churchill talked about.

    I do support voluntary austerity measures where everyone with a brain and a conscience pitches in by exercising thrift and frugality. It's fun -- because you know you're "beating The System" when you stop being stupidly wasteful.

    There are thousands of good small ways to economize. Putting centrally-controlled thermostats in private houses is NOT one of them.

    ~ FT

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  12. "where is it written that everyone in earth must live in the style to which the richest and highest achieving nations have grown accustomed?"

    It isn't, I was answering your question. You said "why x rather than y", and then you complain that the answer doesn't say "z". I agree with you that it was a restrictive question.

    "Le[f]t to our own devices some creative genius will doubtless find find ways [t]o overcome every one of the limitations you see looming large in the background."

    It is very easy to calculate an upper bound to the annual global crops. The required amounts of light, water and land per ton of crop are known. Are you claiming that there is no theoretical maximum? That is, in my opinion, ludicrous.

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