The PNAC expectation is that they are going to control the world. They may not “rule” but they expect to control. They are working towards this end even as Bush admits that he purposely shredded the constitutional prohibition against the spy agencies spying on Americans. To what purpose? I think Bush himself is unaware, but his handlers have steered him to this end. Wiretaps are legal for 72 hours without a court order, and can be justified against any reasonable target of surveillance. The NSA was however, spying on a Quaker church group among other non-reasonable targets. It was probably being used for political as well as terror related intel. It was misused against laws and rules SPECIFICALLY designed to protect the country from that misuse.

On this topic and this alone, Bush is now impeachable… ALONE. His approval ratings are dismal, he can’t run for President again in any case. The Neocon movement has no further use for him. On this charge, Cheney is not involved in any degree. Bush can be impeached in a show of moral rectitude by the Republican Congress and Cheney installed as President. The Congress would have a shot in that case, of remaining in Republican hands over the 2006 election. The 2008 election will be gamed when it happens, depending on Cheney’s health.

I didn’t come here by accident. I’d like to be wrong but it would be a mistake to believe that this is all benign, and Wolfowitz is where he is because none of it is accidental. Rumsfeld’s FU of the war in Iraq was perhaps, but all the rest is going to plan.

respectfully
BJ

“Once people no longer assume “somebody else will fix itâ€? about their communities or other communities, they will think about acting themselves - what is wrong with ASKING for money for libraries, instead of just pilfering it through taxes?

If you do not see the similarity to the Communist ideal of individuals working for the good of all you aren’t as smart as I reckon you to be. Both Marxism and Libertarianism have at their heart a utopian view of humans who can live together unfettered by government, humans who, in perfect knowledge and honesty manage to always or at least usually, do the right thing because they know it is the right thing, even though their individual short term interests are not advanced by that act.

In other words, you are asking individuals to ignore “market forces” individually and trusting that all will do so. Some of us might, but it takes a powerful and accurate understanding of the future consequences of ones actions to override the market incentives and signals. It takes an extremely honest person to ignore the personal gain inherent in giving a little less and letting others pick up a little more of the burden. The disincentive to any giving at all when there is knowledge that others of equal or greater means are giving nothing at all.

When put that way it seems almost exactly as absurd as Marx’s “the state will wither away and die when it is no longer needed”, and indeed the end state you aspire to, while worthy, is just as unreachably idealistic.

Sorry, I didn’t put a time frame on the peak oik changes… I was actually having to, as an afterthought, tie the post into context

The private car will get less popular and be less used as the price of fuelling it rises, and it will rise. That it will still exist is certain, people had their own buggies and horses before the I.C. engine was invented, but their use was scarcely similar to the uses we put the things to today. Call my prediction a “slow armageddon”… as the outlying cities initially employ infrequent commuter buses to get people to and from work wasting their individual time. This is something people are quite sensitive to and eventually the outlying suburbs will be depopulated in favor of new construction along the mass transit routes that finally get built through freshly condemned and bulldozed right-of-ways created when the price signals finally justify the construction.

Real estate values in the outliers will tank, values along the routes will go up… and in time there will be a bunch unused empty buildings in places that are unreachable except by car. Retirees might live there, unable to afford to move. Poverty and eventual destruction of many buildings would follow in time. I don’t foresee Zimbabwe or Israeli-like bulldozing of the suburbs as they are uneconomic, the change will be slower, but it will entail waste of energy and resource nonetheless. Planning ahead avoids some of that waste. The process is imperfect, but if it mitigates the trouble that suddenly ballistic rises in fuel costs cause, it will deliver a better result than simply waiting for the market signal.

respectfully
BJ

BJ - I am optimistic about people, I think that a lot of what you are arguing makes sense and you can convince people that it makes sense, and then people will choose to act because it does. Once people no longer assume “somebody else will fix it” about their communities or other communities, they will think about acting themselves - what is wrong with ASKING for money for libraries, instead of just pilfering it through taxes? I am no more condemning the least affluent to ignorance than you are. You have no idea how much or little I might contribute to libraries or anything else. If taxes didn’t fund libraries are you saying you couldn’t be bothered donating for them, or you couldn’t convince people to pay for them? Why must you or I be FORCED to care?

I am glad you agree for constitutional protection of rights of individuals against the state - THAT is very fundamental.

My vision of laissez faire capitalism is that it is NOT the law of the jungle. The jungle does not respect individual rights or property rights - nobody has the right to initiate force against one’s body or property - but the costs you mention (environmental costs) do deserve proper attention. The means to do that can be debated, and certainly carbon trading, as an example has some appeal as a means of rationing a scarce resource. That would be a market mechanism, as would selling rights to pollute up to a certain level in cities (i.e. tradeable nitrous oxide emissions)- but I would argue these are ways of using the market.

On what is the peak oil point - there will NOT be a significant shift from the private car to public transport in major cities - because private mobility is here to stay, whether powered by oil or other fuels.

I care about the situation my children’s children will find themselves in. Markets do not accurately predict anything noteworthy and especially do not predict anything out further than a few quarters with any accuracy. The signals you expect to see will show up in 30 years time, because there’s a 30 year lag between the CO2 and the climate change. At that point IT WILL BE TOO DAMNED LATE. That is why you have to talk about predictive ability, and the market has none. A good theory does a lot better, and science predicts any number of things with fair accuracy at way longer time intervals. As a result we use science NOT the market, to understand whether the environment is going to crap, whether adding mercury to the food chain is a good idea, and the consequences of peeing freon into the ozone layer. The “Market” has no tools to look beyond the price signals and the environment doesn’t give price signals until starts killing something or someone.

Hell, that is what Kyoto is all about… putting a price “signal” on a critical climate change “forcing” chemical release.

You are correct, that mother nature is a bitch. The problem is that the long term cycles are invisible to humans. We don’t live long enough, we don’t have enough history and we don’t have scientific records going back through the last 5 ice-age cycles. Instead we do research and develop our understanding from indirect evidence, and we have done so.

Human evolved intelligence is the principle tool we have for predicting our individual futures and choosing our best path through life. How does a society choose its best path through life?

If you tell me that the market alone will guide it, you are missing the point of the human example. The market is the law of the jungle and it is quite efficient at producing faster cats and bigger elephants and stronger gorillas… and ensuring that there is balance. Humans beat them and eat them because we alter the environment. We build traps, cages, bridges, damns and fences. It gives us control of the animals and alters the balance. Civilization and society MUST as a result, pay attention to the ways in which we alter that balance. With respect to the markets we ALSO must pay attention, but the fences and dams on the market are laws and regulations governing companies and trade.

We have to do better than the law of the jungle or the species is doomed to miserable and brutal decline, savagery and war. The market doesn’t know what to do with a cost that won’t show up in your lifetime. There’s no feedback… yet.

Whether the feedback of gasoline prices will operate efficiently to enhance the acceptance of mass transit and the layout of cities in the future, it is very clear that those prices WILL go up in real terms and that the cities built under the current regime will be inefficient for a long time and will only be demolished and rebuilt to account for those prices at great cost. Do you count these costs? The market is capable of wasting a huge amount of money if the assumptions of the market are incorrect. The assumption of unlimited supply IS incorrect… how much do you intend to waste on your ideology?

LibertyScott… in your zeal for voluntarism you condemn the least affluent to ignorance. No volunteer program has ever set up a library in the boondocks with the same resources as the libraries in the city possess, nor a school in those same conditions. The need for constitutional protections of rights of the individual against the state, is an important protection that is missing (apparently) in this country.

It is not a good thing for a human or a society to make sub-optimal choices, and temporally local optima are often deceptive. The market has no means of pursuing a global optimization over time, it merely gets the current optimum solution (very effectively) and ignores the future.

You do not run your own life the way you are encouraging your society to run. If you did, others would take advantage of your short-sightedness, for that is the word humans use for this condition. Why burden society with blinders you would not wear yourselves?

respectfully
BJ