Economics USA - Sustainable Development

[ComradeSephiroth]

The guy playing Bush forgot his Bush mask! :P

[UphillBattle17]

who is the host? he's soo cute. omgz xx

[muttkat]

Subways in cities,birth control,traveling in trains(not the ones going to the fema concentration camps)would help the earth.Europe and the us had reduced their population growth but countries like india,middle east etc. let their populations go wild.Quit spending so much on war and spend on things that are more important.

[Advocate1234]

We are never going to run out of resources. Never. Oil wasn't even a resource 200 years ago. The deepest mine ever built is 10 miles. It is 4000 miles to the center of the Earth.

Capitalism is the ONLY sustainable economic system. The Soviet Union used more resources to produce the same goods in America, which used less resources.

[ranaafzalpk]

Its really funny.

[antonov11]

so funny...on 8th minute the guy squicked like a bird!!lol..not bad

[erasedcitizen2008]

This video is a good example of the saying "a little bit of knowledge is dangerous."

Capitalist Economics cannot be discussed without agreement on some very fundemental concepts. Among these is Private Property.

Most of the world's environmental damage is caused by the lack of private ownership of property. Government is the problem folks

[crock703]

bullshit. ABC company buys cheap land somewhere for $10 an acre, extracts or manufactures on it, then closes after a generating a net profit of $100 per acre.

Clean up for $30 per acre, net profit = $70 per acre

Sell it for $2 per acre, net profit = $98

Sit on it and let it rot while paying a small property tax, and watch reinvest your profits elsewhere.

Why not just lease land w/ provisions? Or have competing land maintenance Co's monitor & protect public land?

[erasedcitizen2008]

Crock, I just returned from Socialist Vietnam where they did land reform in 1987. They now allow their citizens to lease land from the State for 20, 30, and 50 years; depending on your party affilation. If there was ever a system that proves the value of private property it is this one. 20 year leased land looks pretty much like a dump. 50 year looks not too bad, but not great either. There is just no incentive to take care of it, it's not theirs.

Your example, would need more discussion.

[crock703]

Developing countries are going to look the other way and give preferential treatment to leasers over neighboring persons, b/c they want the capital to keep moving and/or they're just corrupt. Even if the State chooses not to monitor land leasers, they'll certainly ignore the lamentations of affected neighbors.

Comparing a mess of a developing country to the United States is a more flawed example than my own.

[erasedcitizen2008]

Crock, More on this subject. The beauty of the market is that no government will force you to take care of your land, you will want to do this yourself because you will profit from it. If one citizen violates the property rights of one or more citizens through misuse of their private property, then citizens would have legal recourse through the court system. We have plenty of examples of how government has not solved problems, from clean air to water. Private ownership is the answer.

[crock703]

And in the instance of a near-bankrupt land owner, what happens? A company mines gold or uranium, leaving behind a uranium or asenic polluted aquifer. Neighbors can sue, but if the company is bankrupt, what difference does it make? Even if there is a high-profit use for the land remaining after being mined, it will sit & rot until most similar but non-mined lands become are too expensive by comparison.

That may be 50 or years. All the while, those people's health and property is destroyed.

[crock703]

Considering that most public lands are rural, the land's neighbors are typically poor, the cost to those people of investigating/testing & litigating such cases could just be out of their reach. Maybe charities will pro bono the whole thing, but that is a giant assumption.

These hardcore free market libertarian ideas are good in theory, but the way we recklessly implement them w/o public warning and w/o monitoring their development is ludacris. This is why the housing market became distorted.

[crock703]

I've worked on the periphery of two different public land management groups. A country one at a public park/lake, and once with the National Park/Forest Srvc.

Both were fantastically maintained, the former at an outrageous cost. The latter (90% of which is all fire fighting/prevention funding), was managed much better. The reality is, we could keep those lands well hosted & maintained by essentially private park maintenance groups.

[crock703]

If the problem is that the State fails to sue land damagers, the solution isn't to sell the land to someone that will. The solution is for the State to act just as any private owner would, & sue. Why don't we do that? Because ideologues hobble government. I'm obviously not saying govt is fully competent & capable often - just that these bumbling free marketeers are only perpetrating self-fulfilling prophecy while being intellectually-dishonest & proclaiming it to be govt's natural product.

[crock703]

Let's not forget the obvious downside of pure private ownership - that people may NOT act purely w/ the preservation land equity in mind. Any rich Howard Hughes, Bill Gates, whoever, could buy Yellowstone Park, decide the lost visitor revenue is worth the price of pristine isolation, and then carve a 200ft likeness of his/herself in the face of Half Dome Rock, or to blast Niagra Falls into a wicked tube-slide water park - or just ban black people from visiting.

[erasedcitizen2008]

Crock,

Let's agree that we disagree. It is impossible to carry on a debate about private property using this method. Your examples, have various flaws in thinking but I believe your intent is good. I am in England at the moment and a bit jet lagged. Put some of your passion into learning about individual liberty. Let me know if you are interested in reading something to shape your opinions.

Regards,

Erased

[maxgangsta16]

hahah bluebeard2... this is a school economics project.. all done by students

[bulletscankillu]

funding 4 this projet has been given by Annenberg/CPB foundation

[bluebeard2]

Their lumberjack association head looks more like a young college student, who confuses 'the association' with 'the company', rather than the 'Chairman of the Canadian Lumberjack Association", an apparently non-existant organisation.

[gossman666]

hey!! richard is supposed to be bald!!