I just find it not very appropriate to have a group named “herman goering…”
It is odd that Hitler and Göring are quoted as if they were great thinkers or persons that u wanna compare things to.. It is taking things out of the context and mixing them with a new ideology.
U could use statements from every person. It is just interesting that some people feel that they have to use exactly these.. To me this is suspicious..
Andy, it seems you don`t understand this initial post, which towards the end specifically quoted Goering and explained why - to show how rules use our reflexive tribal reactions (alleging foreign enemies and appealing to patriotism) to manipulate us into giving them greater power.
Goering explains that this is what the Nazis did, and the initial poster (hjmaiere) makes clear that the same thing happened in the US with the case of 9/11 - and argues that all of the concern about “climate change” is generated by elites, and therefore not “real” - other than a real attempt to deceive and manipulate us:
“Of course the critical-analysis-shunting effect of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center was milked for all it was worth. The predatorial classes managed to use it to manipulate the U.S. government into invading and occupying an entirely unconnected and militarily debilitated country, not to mention institutionalize warrantless wiretapping and torture. But a threat to the tribe doesn’t have to be a traditional foreign enemy to be useful to the predatory class”…
I agree with hjmaiere completely about 9/11. I would go further and say that the policy of division and tribal conflict has been even more expertly played - witness how fear of gay marriage won Bush the 2004 election, and how his administration and Republicans have also peddled fear of unwed mothers who want abortion, fear of enviros and fear of immigrants.
But puzzlingly, the same group has NOT been peddlingly fear of climate changes - rather, that must be a conspiracy by the whole world (that hates our freedom and superior economy and can really be concerned about climate change, but must simply be using it as a way to take over the US economy) and by enviros and other America-haters at home (whom we should be very afraid of).
Clearly, the parasitic/predatory class now in power has decided to act as a roadblock to action on climate change, but why - is it because they are the true clear-eyed, honest leaders? Or are they just protecting their own economic interests, which are very closely tiied to fossil fuels - and happy to help them to continue to get a free ride on GHGs at the cost of everyone else?
Ego, I would say that Austrian thinking doesn`t lead at all to your conclusions, even given your premises.
If there were clear and enforceable rights relating to the atmosphere then the enforcement of those rights and the differences in preferences among bpeople would lead to changes in economic behavior, including voluntary transactions, investments in technology that reduces how one`s activity infringes on others, etc.
Finding ways to enclose various commons and to minimize inefficiencies inherent in externalities to private behavior are what have driven the success of man, from an evolutionary perspective and up to the present. (See Yandle and Ostrom)
I see no reason why figuring out how to establish rights and rules realting to our use of various commons - from the oceans and regional ecosystems to the atmosphere means anything like a restriction of choice.
Obtuseness : “the quality of being slow to understand” : I guess that if you use a fancy synonym for stupid, then you’re not hostile…you’re a lawyer ?
I don’t think I’m discussing your good faith. I’m saying that your position doesn’t match reality (no GW) and is not consistent with libertarian principles (‘gov’t is essential’ you say).
I’m not sure what you mean. I am free to tell you you’re wrong (since this is not the mostly green and totalitarian mass media). And you in turn are free to prove me wrong. However, I wouldn’t say I’m interested in persuading you, only in showing how weak your position is.
You think GW exists and will lead to catastrophe because state ‘experts’ say so. Let me ask : What do state experts say about, for instance, central banking ? And, do you believe them ?
Stephen Forde, you make a fair point regarding the burden of proof and the civil nature of the problem. I’m reminded of Rothbard’s comments in his Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution, where he wrote:
The basic libertarian principle is that everyone should be allowed to do whatever he or she is doing unless committing an overt act of aggression against someone else. But what about situations where it is unclear whether or not a person is committing aggression? In those cases, the only procedure consonant with libertarian principles is to do nothing; to lean over backwards to ensure that the judicial agency is not coercing an innocent man. If we are unsure, it is far better to let an aggressive act slip through than to impose coercion and therefore to commit aggression ourselves. A fundamental tenet of the Hippocratic oath, “at least, do no harm,” should apply to legal or judicial agencies as well.
I’m not completely sure how I feel about this stance, though I certainly do see its merit. My only concern is that if we follow Rothbard here, we would undoubtedly be placing the entire burden of the impacts of climate change on the victims, and allowing those who benefitted from their suffering to escape all accountability for their actions. I suppose the question is one about the nature of the burden of proof. If we knew that anthropogenic climate change were occurring, and that it was going to cause damage, but didn’t know exactly what the damage would be, we would likely not be able to hold anyone to account in court with our current standards of proof. But we know that damage will be done, and who would be doing it! I’m just uncomfortable saying that in such a case, we should be restricted from any sort of intervention.
All that being said, I see your point, and I think it’s a good one. However, one thing you said puzzled me: that it is impossible to know that someone will commit a crime in the future, and so people should not be held accountable for future damage. It seems to me that in talking about committing a crime, one is referring to the action which brought about a particular rights violation. In the case of climate change, the question seems to be about whether a rights violation will occur, and what the precise nature of that violation will be. The action, on the other hand, has already occurred. If climate change will violate rights, then it seems that in regards to a given contribution, the crime has already been committed.
Regarding the idea of a criminal threshold, I’m not sure I agree with your characterization of the issue as one where a person crosses the threshold so that everyone before him is innocent and everyone after is guilty. It seems to me that the capacity of the atmosphere to accommodate radiative forcings without producing harmful effects is, in a sense, a natural resource. Further, in our current living situation, people need to use some of that “space” in order to live even the most minimally sufficient lifestyles–after all, we emit CO2 when we breathe.
The debate over what constitutes a legitimate appropriation of a resource is far from settled, and I won’t try to do it here. But I submit that at the very least, I should not be deprived of a natural resource that I need to live by someone else’s appropriation, where they used the resource for something comparatively unimportant (I know how difficult it is to say that something is objectively unimportant, but I think it’s reasonable to say that some things are clearly less important than living). So I don’t think that all emitters of CO2 should be held accountable after the threshold is crossed; those who are forcing the climate in only those ways necessary for some minimally acceptable lifestyle are innocent in my eyes. But the exact implications of a proviso on appropriation for discussions of accountability aren’t clear to me so far.
You made the point that under some alternative system of dealing with climate change, insurance and legal firms would have incentive to figure out the precise nature of the climate change phenomenon in order to best serve their clients. But I see no reason that such research couldn’t be done now (unless you’re suggesting that the IPCC is crowding out private research). In fact, several people have tried to use the court system to fight climate change. The problem, as you pointed out, springs from the uncertainties involved in assessing the damage, and also from the issue of standing. Given that the damage hasn’t been caused yet, and we can’t know its nature before the fact, it’s been thus far held that there’s no basis for pressing charges. But as I said earlier, I find this somewhat disconcerting.
On your point about modelling, I’ve expressed somewhat similar concerns in the past; you might be interested in this: http://libertarian-left.blogspot.com/2008/01/do-you-believe-in-global-warming.html
Hi, I’m new to these boards and would just like to weigh in on the issue.
I would also like to refer you to page 75 of the Club or Rome’s 1991 report: First Global Revolution
Having some formal scientific education(in biology - currently in 3rd year) but not enough in this specific field to qualify the arguments used in this discussion, I would just like to say that there is much more debate among scientists than is generally perceived. As in all fields of science, there is no uniform view on the subject. Proponents of anthropogenic global warming, however, have many advantages over opponents when presenting their case before the general public. The very issue, proponents claim, amounts to the gravest of existenial crisises that man can face - our very existence depends on whether we can act now. Whereas opponents urge caution and more research(as if there isn’t enough amirite?) - undoubtely proponents want more research too(it’s what scientists live for).
To be honest, I have trouble committing to either side on the issue simply because I cannot ascertain the validity of eachother’s claims. But I will say this, I am opposed to all governmental action in this affair. If individuals feel the need to use fluorescent lightbulbs and reduce their consumption of carbon products then all the better for them.
No, I do understand the initial post, just do not find these comparisons to be appropriate..
I wonder if you supposed “Left Libertarians” see any similarities in “fighting global warming” and “fighting global terrorism”? Both socialists and neocons have pretty much invented crises that can be solved if only (suprise,suprise!) we give up certain rights and freedoms. Well forget that. Any problem that the free market and thus free people cannot solve either does not need to be solved or in fact, cannot be.
Andy, Hermann Goering’s words on how the Nazis managed to capture German state by the use of appeals to patriotism in the face of alleged external and internal threats provide important lessons that bear repeating - and are certainly almost spot-on for how the Bush administration has manipluated US public opinion and put political pressure on opponents.
The relevance of those words on climate change is another matter. Who are supposed to be the Nazis here - the rest of the world, with the valiant Bush being the good guy?
Certainly there are rent-seekers and power seekers who are happy to try to find a way to ride and manipulate a wave of public concern. That there are such people is simply a fact life that we always have to deal with, especially if the state is involved - and is a good reason for the general Austrian and libertarian approaches for limiting government in favor of voluntary, private and coordinated efforts.
But the concern about rent-seeking simply doesn’t tell us that there is no real problem. And those who are concerned about rent-seeking should not allow themselves to be caught up in a tribal reaction against evil enviros - which the slightest scratching will inform that this is indeed an attempt to manipulate, but by the entrenched fossil fuel interests who want to protect their present privileges to freeely use the atmosphere as a GHG dump.
TokyoTom, I posted further up this thread about the solution to this “problem”, but I don’t think we are going to agree.
From what I’ve heard the concensus among scientist is not nearly as sound as the statist planners would like us to believe. In any event, what do you propose we do?
Don’t any of you “left libertarians” see the similarities between the calls to “fight global warming” and the calls to “fight global terrorism”? Cause I got to tell you from where im sitting they seem like pretty much the same thing. That is to say they are both drummed up crises that can only be solved if we (suprise,suprise) give up certain rights and freedoms. The fact of the matter is, if a free market and thus free people cannot solve a problem it either does not need to be solved or it in fact cannot be.
Exactly.
Juan:
Sorry; I’m definitely not saying that you are stupid. You are obviously smart. But you are obviously hostile, and I do think that as a result you keep missing the point - even when it is the chief point of hjmaiere’s post You say:
I thought it was clear that the allusion to nazism underlined the totalitarian features of ‘enviromentalism’.
Was that even remotely his point? He says:
Specifically, a threat to the tribe will very reliably invoke people’s instinct to shut off their own individual critical analysis and submit to tribal consensus. In our evolutionary past there were situations where this instinct was critical to the survival of the tribe as a whole, but as our ability to survive extended beyond a hand-to-mouth existence, such instincts increasingly served as a mechanism of intra-tribal predation. The predatory classes thus establish, concentrate, and institutionalize political authority by routinely invoking threats to the tribe. … But a threat to the tribe doesn’t have to be a traditional foreign enemy to be useful to the predatory classes. An icon of imending moral decrepitude or the environmental catastrophy du jour can be just as effective.
hjmaiere is trying to first show that, because of our tribal nature, we can easily be misled by claims of threats to the tribe, viz., even smart people can be manipulated. He then show that this is exactly what the Bush administration has done. Finally, he argues that elite predatory classes are trying to do the same thing with respect to alleged environmental crises by trying to stir up a wave of fear and manipulating those who believe it to be real, for their own benefit. Okay, there may be some who fit this bill, at least in part, but hjmaiere is not arguing that everyone who is concerned is part of the elite, predatory class - rather, he is implying that practically everyone is being manipulated. He is saying that we need to be careful of being manipulated by elites via tribal reactions; you helpfully display a tribal counter-example, by presuming that hjmaiere is acting like you, in pretending as if everyone who professes a concern about climate change or our shared environment is a totalitarian. Haven’t you just proven his point about tribal responses mess with our critical facilities?
Another example of how you miss the point is here:
TT: The solutions are being proposed by a MUCH wider swath than those “enviros” whom you hate so much.
You: Hm. So this is not about truth, but about numbers ?
TT: Don’t be deliberately obtuse. The point is that you dismiss all others by simply focussing on a strawman - the evil enviros, who aren’t in charge of anything, anyway.
You also claim to have won an argument when you say we should do away with subsidies, when it’s a point I’ve made elsewhere many times, over an over.
You also keep throwing out sweeping, conclusory unsupported statements like this, and refuse ever to engage when I try to explain what I mean - based on any number of staunch Austrians and libertarians:
You don’t care about the rights of the individual. You’re interested in protecting the ‘enviroment’ by violating individual rights, through government, wich is essential (so you claim).
your position … is not consistent with libertarian principles.
Finally, as you yourself conclude, you are not interested in persuading me, but only in showing how weak my position is. In short, you are treating me as an enemy, and are not interested in productive engagement, but in defeating me - but since you refuse to try to understand what my position is or my reasons for it are - you are really not attacking me, but a strawman, and an unsupported one at that.
Fine; you can have a war. But I’m not going to join it.
hjmaiere, will you be responding to my last post?
Coppperhead, welcome to the boards. While I’m not a “left-libertarian” but a ridht-wing, socialist enviro-fascist totalitarian libertarian, let me attempt a quick response.
Sure, I see similarities between the calls to “fight global terrorism” and the calls to “fight global warming” - but they seem to be rather shallow similarities to me. Is it the same set of elites that are behind both?
The first case seems to involve a narrow set of US interests aligned with US and ME fossil fuel interests and defense contractors that appeal to US patriotism and exceptionalism; the second is global and says that the US needs to cooperate with the rest of the world in addressing shared problems realting to shared resources (the atmosphere, oceans etc.) and the problem of poor governance and development in the poorer areas of the world.
Is there a serious problem with terror, other the one we helped to create and can’t resolve by the use of military force? Are there serious issues relating to the demands that modern markets and technology place on shared but unowned open-access resources, or with respect to poverty in the third world resulting from corrupt governance and thievery that benefits partiicular elites and ethnic groups?
Are you seriously suggesting that appeals to “fight global warming” are really just disguised attempts by everybody - those who hate our freedoms and our economy - to take over the US?
Or are those people asking us to give up our freedom, or asking us to cooperate in addressing shared problems? When ranchers start talking about whether they should take joint steps to manage the range, when farmers discuss ways to manage and share water resources, or when fishermen do the same with respect to protecting fisheries, are they engaging in an act of collective theft of the freedom of those who don’t want to go along?
The fact of the matter is, if a free market and thus free people cannot solve a problem it either does not need to be solved or it in fact cannot be.
The fact of the matter is, free markets and free people are already quite busy trying to address climate change, quite apart from trying to prod governments. But we DO have governments - what, precisely, are we supposed to do about them? Why can’t we push them to, for example:
Aren’t these things that require us to actually fight for greater economic liberty from the state?
Sure there are some rent-seekers looking for favors - that’s rather quotidian but it’s obviously worth paying attention to. But don’t let the fact that your hackles rise at the suggestions that (i) we have various problems of varying degrees of concern that are the result of the lack of effective private property rights and (ii) and climate change looks like one of them distract you from the rather evident and very effective rent-seeking game that has already been played in the US over the past 30 years by the fossil fuel interests.
THERE BE RENT-SEEKERS, you say. Yes, indeed - but that doesn’t absolve us from the responsibility of looking at cases where markets, because of a lack of clear or enforceable property rights (or government ownership), do not allow people to work out their differing preferences.
Ego, are you really comfortable with the stance that children don’t represent anything more than the actions of their parents, at least to the extent that the resources used by a child are morally equivalent to the parents using those resources for themselves? I’m not saying you’re wrong, it just seems like a really weighty thing to say.
Copperhead, I guess I do see some similarities between concern over climate change and concern over global terrorism. It does seem like public officials have had a lot to do with the discussion, and many of the proposed solutions are ones which are inherently reliant on central planning and increased government control. I assume that’s what you were trying to tease out? But what’s your point? Public officials are also involved in discussions about the crisis in Darfur, and most of the proposed solutions are also state-oriented, interventionistic, and in many ways imperialistic. As far as that goes, I’m behind you 100%; libertarians need to resist the urge to see things in the terms in which they are painted by our government officials, who tend to have a completely different way of seeing things than we do. But that doesn’t mean that what’s going on in Darfur isn’t a problem. And neither does it mean that climate change isn’t a problem. Where rights are being violated, it’s our responsibility as libertarians to come up with positions regarding the proper response to those rights violations. That doesn’t mean a state-backed response, or anything in particular. But it does mean that at the very least, we need to take a position, and back that position up with reasons that reflect the nature of the issue being discussed. It’s not a coherent position to say that “If climate change were happening it wouldn’t be a problem because climate change isn’t happening.” Nor is it a coherent position to say “Libertarians don’t need a position on climate change because our opponents’ positions don’t reflect libertarian ideals.”
As far as I can tell, you have fairly restated most of my thesis, but I seem to have failed to fully communicate its implications. For now I will only re-emphasize that although specific people benefit from specific government policies, what I wanted to draw attention to is the accumulation and institutionalization of political authority for its own sake. Some politicians might honestly mean well—their concern over the environment or the less fortunate might be genuine—but this is completely irrelevant. The predatory classes operate by taking advantage of people’s instinct to conflate institutionalized authority and the voice of tribal consensus.
*The State, that is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly, also, it lies, and the lie that creeps from its mouth is this: “I, the State, am the People.”**—*Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra
The politicians who are purportedly concerned with anthropogenic climate change and the politicians who are purportedly concerned with U.S. policy regarding Iraq tend to be the same people. It is no coincidence that they have had so much success rallying attention to the former cause while simultaneously being so politically impotent regarding the latter, even though in theory they enjoy plenty of popular support and legal standing regarding the latter, and even though addressing the latter would also just happen to have a huge and immediate impact on fossil fuel consumption.
The politicians’ courses of action regarding any issue, and the issues themselves, are instinctually selected first and foremost for their service to the further accumulation and institutionalization of political authority, because politicians and the self-imagined intellectual elite instinctually conflate such authority with the establishement of tribal consensus.
There was one other, bigger example of political hypocrisy that I wanted to bring up as evidence, but it deserves its own thread…
Would you mind explaining how my position, wich is that of the minority, and wich is backed by solid reasoning, is as tribal as the position of the believers in GW, who believe in non-problems for emotional reasons ?
Are you being obtuse ? In this thread it was me who borught up the point of equality before the law, while you complained about the subsidies for big oil and ignored the subsidies for ‘eco-friendly’ firms.
You say 1+1=3. I say you’re wrong. You conclude my intention is to treat you as enemy. Not very rational, are you ?
As to your claim that you represent the Austrian school while I suppose don’t : According to you the state has a role in creating property rights. Would you mind commenting on this ? .
"Are You an Austrian?
A Property is a naturally arising relationship between human beings and material things. Property and enforceable property rights make possible economic calculation, a wider and more productive division of labor, and therefore increasing levels of prosperity. Indeed, civilization itself is inconceivable in the absence of private property. Any encroachment on property results in loss of freedom and prosperity.
B Property is at the heart of most serious inequalities and oppressions in modern civilization. Only by regulation, transfer payments, redistribution of property, and common ownership can society arrive at fairness, justice, and human dignity for all.
C Property is an important component of our social system but its status as a “right” is contingent. It must be subject to regulation and modification for the general good. The state must intervene to prevent abuses of economic power, even at the cost of reducing traditional prerogatives of owners.
D Property is central to prosperity and economic growth. Accordingly, it is of the utmost importance that the state, or more abstractly the law, maintain and modify the bundle of property rights in such a way as to allocate transactions costs in such a way as to promote maximum growth and economic efficiency. Property does not arise naturally, but is the end product of the legal system. "
Who specifically are you talking to, and why do I detect a smug attitude towards the prospect of left libertarianism? And why do you appear to be lumping all of us together? I consider myself a left libertarian and I disagree with Donny With An A (who likewise considers himself a left libertarian) about this issue. I always took a fairly neutral stance on the issue. On one hand, I think those who outright deny that there is any issue of climate change at all are wrong. On the other hand, I find the radical environmentalists who propose global warming as imminent apocalypse to be wrong.
Even granting the existance of a problem, the problem would appear to be one that is largely outside of human control since we cannot reverse a process of nature. But I also don’t see a problem with using the market and the technological innovation therein to develope more environmentally friendly products and methods of production. While global warming as end of the world might be a drummed up hysteria, all environmental concerns are not and it would be silly and vulgar to brush aside all such concerns as statist conspiracies to crush the market and implement socialism (although unfortunately the bulk of the environmentalist movement does appear to be geared towards that).
Nonetheless, regaurdless of wether or not the problem is real or the extent to which it poses a serious threat, I would agree with the sentiment that all of the political solutions presented for climate change so far are non-solutions and mere political power grabs.
hjmaiere: You are of course absolutely right that we should be concerned - indeed, vigilant - about how the elite try to use the state for their own ends and how they seek to manipulate our tribal reactions to misdirect us and to fool us into enabling them.
But, as I have noted, that concern, while valid, tells us nothing about whether in fact there is a problem (climate change, overfishing, destruction of ecosystems in developing nations) that should concern us - problems that Austrian economics tell us are likely to arise with respect to resources for which there are no clear or enforceable property rights and rather open access.
Further, you should be careful of your own tribal reactions, especially when it is rather easily determined that there is a powerful bunch of corporate insiders and political enablers who are deliberately doing their best to stoke them. It’s clear that Republicans have helped the fossil fuel producers, utilities and auto firms to do that with “enviros”.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not a huge fan of much of the environmental hard core. They’re strident, they don’t listen, and many of them really have no clue about why their appeals to have government “solve” things are actually counterproductive. But they’re not evil fascists, and even if some are, they usually still have a point about the misuse of government by corporations or the absence of property rights or misgovernance in other countries. And people forget where these enviros came from, in the first place - they are a response to obvious earlier wrongs of big, secretive and arrogant government and misbehavior by corporations, to the Vietnam war, to open air nuclear bomb tests at home, to rampant industrial pollution made possible by corporate subversions of the common law, to government involvement in and subsidization of nuclear power - all issues where libertarians and Austrian would share a large degree of the “enviros” concern.
Instead of handicapping their own agenda by hating enviros, Austrians ought to be saying, yes, yes, we agree that we need to oppose the misuse of government by corporations, but in order to really sove problems we need to not make the government bigger, as the corporate rent-seekers have all of the advantages in that battle.
But even Austrians, even those attuned to tribal reactions, seem to have a very difficult time letting go of a good hate (a hate that results in them dancing to the tune of insider rent-seekers).
I have no problem stopping rights-violating pollution; however, I feel that it’s much too hard to prove that x-tons of carbon is criminal, y-tons is acceptable, etc., and my question above concerning children still stands.
The problem with most environmentalists is that – despite what the origin of environmentalism may be – they are using using/abusing the environment as the “question” for the “answer” of socialism that they’ve long advocated.