Earth Day: A Day Worth Celebrating? (part 2/5)

http://aynrand.org/EarthDay40 -- "Sustainability" vs. capitalism? Overpopulation? Resource scarcity? Environmentalism has a warped view of economic production and is hostile to progress, argue Keith Lockitch and Onkar Ghate.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Ayn Rand
• Onkar Ghate
• Keith Lockitch
• Don Watkins
• environmentalism
• Earth Day
• green energy
• alternative energy
• sustainability
• capitalism
• carbon footprint
• cap and trade
• global warming
• oil
• green jobs
• ecology
• Earth Hour
• Rachel Carson
• Al Gore
• Paul Ehrlich

[TheRosa63]

interesting, you are true on alot of points but you forgot that only a true free market will do that, you didn't allow for selfishness and greed by some to control supply artificially to keep prices high and to control people.the desire to rule over others, deliberate attempts to interfere with this free market. the desire to own it all. it has nothing to do with money with these type of people who have more than they could ever spend it is about power.they interfere with wealth creation.

[ymirfrostgiant]

"they think the world is going to run out of oil... but this is not how market works"

Of course not, it's how geology works you dumbass.

[diaverde09]

@conradjulian As the means of production improve, less gold is required to purchase a product. Gold is just the representation of a currency's intrinsic value. Gold would not have to be carried around by each person. It can be represented by a solid currency, such as the Liberty Dollar, or coins that can represent smaller amounts of gold, so that efficient transactions can take place. Depopulation would not improve the intrinsic value of gold.

[dwilcomb]

The argument made in this video is missing the point. Sustainability of fossil fuels as an energy source is not predominantly about supply limitations. (Yes, increasing cost of production per unit energy will drive the market to develop alternatives.) The real sustainability issue is how long we can dispose of the waste products of those fuels at an ever-accelerating rate without tipping the scales on a complex and finicky environmental system. (Is that the hum of nuclear reactors I hear?)

[conradjulian]

Objectivists can't get their story straight. They want to chain humanity to the gold standard precisely because, unlike fiat money, gold is a finite resource which we can't increase in supply, at least not easily. Logically Objectivists should advocate depopulation as a way to make sure the survivors have enough gold to function as a practical form of money. Yet they ridicule people who claim we don't have enough of other resources to go around. Go figure.

[hitssquad]

@justintempler "we extract oil for it's energy value"

What if that were not true?

[Psy500]

-Continued-

So capitalism has a poor track record in effectively using resources for the benefits of humanity and the free-market has a poor track record of having any long range logic as business cycles proves that date back to the beginnings of capitalism and a function of capitalism including free-markets as capitalists would need perfect information to avoid busniessness cycles yet they don't thus business cycles are inevitable thus free-markets can't logically plan long range.

[Psy500]

Value comes for labor, if value came from the human mind computer would cost more today then in the 1980's as more human mental effort goes into building them but computers are cheaper because less overall value goes into the production per unit thus supporting the theory that labor is the source of value in human society. Thus why there had been commodity devaluation which capitalism had tried to overcome by production demand (basically brainwashing consumers into consume more).

[justintempler]

For some reason you have this disconnect, thinking that being an enviornmentalist and capitalist are contradictory. They don't have to be.

Look at:

The Ocean Energy Institute, founded in 2007 by Matthew R. Simmons of Simmons & Company International, is a think-tank and venture capital fund addressing the challenges of U.S. offshore renewable energy.

[justintempler]

There's plenty of $200/barrel oil in the Alberta Tar Sands if you don't mind turning an area the size of Florida into one big toxic waste dump. Good luck using the water afterwards for agricultural food crops.