Skronk wrote:

big_dave wrote:Let's not have this conversation again. I'm not even sure I want to change your mind, you don't understand your own arguments let alone anything a little more, eh, realistic.

I mean, think about what you're been repeating over and over on this forum before we bring any of this shite up again.

I know full well what I've been arguing for, I'm not sure you do. You can act as much of a cunt as you want, but if you can't actually respond with a meaningful answer, then why even carry on this 'internets attitude'?

Skrick,

If you haven't got anything to contribute to the thread...get out of the road.

I asked your twat of a friend a question and he can't give a solid, practical answer. Who's not contributing? Mind your business.

Take your flame war somewhere else, please.

Skronk wrote:

big_dave wrote:Let's not have this conversation again. I'm not even sure I want to change your mind, you don't understand your own arguments let alone anything a little more, eh, realistic.

I mean, think about what you're been repeating over and over on this forum before we bring any of this shite up again.

I know full well what I've been arguing for, I'm not sure you do. You can act as much of a cunt as you want, but if you can't actually respond with a meaningful answer, then why even carry on this 'internets attitude'?

I feel as though we have both typed out our opinions on the subject numerous times, and there is no point in doing so again.

Why? Because whenever I do, you and the other Chuckle Brothers on the board pick apart my posts and type the word "troll" umpteen times. There is absolutely no point in taking you seriously.

Oh yeah, and Rick can calm the fuck down. He can also go whistle if he thinks I'm responding to that new bunch of insanity.

Probably wondering how he can Skrick can fellate each other while both wearing "The End Is Nigh" sandwich boards.

Cranius wrote:

Earwicker wrote:Or are some people seen as culpable for their actions but others aren't? And, if so, by what criteria are you making distinctions?

I'll ask what I asked Cranius above:
Should a Chairman or CEO of a corporation be held accountable for the deaths of workers who die as a result of cost cutting for the sake of profit?

I can answer this question quite easily.
My answer says, 'fuck yes, and throw away the key'

What's your answer?

My answer is the same as it's consistently been in this and other threads, when you've asked me. So at the risk of repeating myself ad nauseam:

Sorry, but I didn't see a clear answer anywhere.

Cranius wrote:Politics has to be adequate to capital. You can't partialize it and say that this or that is the consequence of one individual's choices in isolation from a formal framework of historical events, social relations, regimes of domination and material systems.

I agree you can't isolate choices completely, which is why I keep saying you need to look at the system and circumstances also. And rarely does one individual count but several - a handful - often do.

You see, from my perspective, I am the one trying to look at the whole picture. You and others are deliberately turning a blind eye to (what I see as) an extremely relevant factor.

Cranius wrote:In a way, your answer is an emotional response--an understandable one--and not unimportant. But I'm wary of anything that oversimplifies things into moral judgments. However if an individual has a legal case to answer(corporate manslaughter, corruption, human-rights abuses etc,.) so be it, but everything beyond that is an ethical consideration. I'm more interested in how you might produce an ethics that in turn might produce a better world.

I'd start by making everyone equally accountable for their actions. No matter who they are, what they own or what political office they hold.

Cranius wrote:You keep asking me the same question, but it's one that could easily be reflexively turned back on you. Who are these individuals? How long is the list of the culpable? Thousands, millions, everyone in the West? The consequence of this logic is limitless and could easily fall prey to some sort of negative ideology.

I would look at it on a case by case basis. Though looking specifically at highly significant cases.
So - for example - I'd look at Chile, where there's evidence that a small handful of people supported a coup by a maniac then manipulated the situation to enforce an economic model that was not wanted by the majority of the population.
I would hold that small handful of individuals accountable for that support and that enforcement. I wouldn't separate the economic policy (establishment of free market economics) from the political one (torturing and killing tens of thousands).
From what I can see you (plural) are saying that the economic policy would have come about naturally anyway, as an organic development of capitalism.
I don't believe that.
I think some powerful people, with a particular ideology, positioned themselves in the right place and pushed the right levers so they and their chums could strip millions of their property, their rights, their lives. Not just in Chile but in much of South America, Russia, much of Africa and the far east and elsewhere.
I think the people responsible should be held accountable for that.

Cranius wrote:Also, I think you place way too much emphasis on the individual.

And I think you place way too little.

Cranius wrote:You imagine a system with a head that can be snipped off, but for me the system has no head.

I don't see the head snipping as a means of correcting all wrong instantly. However if you are to prevent the worst excesses of the system you should regulate it. One means of regulation would be the holding to account of those who behave in such a way that they cause poverty, hunger and death on a mass scale due to their desire for wealth.

But after all that I still don't think I got a clear answer. can I gather that your answer to this:

Earwicker wrote:Should a Chairman or CEO of a corporation be held accountable for the deaths of workers who die as a result of cost cutting for the sake of profit?

Would be 'No'?

If so, I can see why you wouldn't want to say that simply.

Rick Reuben wrote:getting Cranius to complain about Putin...

No complaints here. That man is mighty fine.

Walkin' In Memphis

I've been talking with lots of folks about globalization and climate change lately...

sunlore wrote:

Andrew. wrote:I agree it can be useful to bracket reality and talk about what's practicable within given coordinates

Well, word to that, and also I would argue that the inverse, to unbracket reality, would be hell of ambitious, no?

Just today I was discussing this stuff with an academic who noted that there is frequently a "political" chapter at the end of books by climatologists. And inevitably this chapter makes claims that are at once perfectly rational (and necessary) and utterly naive. Naive because we are in an extremely pragmatic period, politically. And the kinds of global regulation and alterations in infrastructure that these climatologists propose are utterly impracticable within the reality of procedural liberalism (aptly termed "market democracy" during the Clinton years). Hence, the only steps sufficient to the problem are impossible to take. When I said "bracket reality," I just meant, for example, bracket the reality of climate change and the steps necessary to address it in favor of a "pragmatic" approach that produces results in the public sphere if not in ecological reality (e.g., we can follow the carbon speculation boom in newspapers, we see hybrid cars on the freeway, etc.)

sunlore wrote:

Cap-and-trade - because it is a "market solution" rather than an actual political-economic intervention - has lateral "externalities" in deforestation, escalating food costs, and further "accumulation by dispossession" in the global south. It imposes an artificial scarcity in one realm, hence the explosion of (unsustainable) capitalist production and exploitation in others.

This constitutes a criticism of the "cap" part, not the "trade" part. What solutions do you suggest short of caps?

One of my best friends - no pinko - works for one of the most prominent environmental research and advocacy foundations in Canada. It's a very mainstream organization geared to policy and public education. Its founder - an icon in Canada - has a column in The Guardian today. But here's my friend's response re: cap-and-trade.

Making cap and trade work is another works-only-in-theory model. It's too open for corruption and rigging. Cap n' trade is terribly problematic. It's just another subsidy for historical bad actors.

Carbon pricing in the form of taxes are simpler and less open to being broken. I support this.

You can tell he works for an NGO because he uses terms like "historical bad actors."

Political-economical decision-making is not without contradictions. There's the cases where the relationship between the global (okay, local) commons and social justice are strained: you know, when the Chinese decide to cut back on their coal mines (scroll around a little), it will almost certainly send thousands of workers straight into abject poverty. That's ambiguous.

De-industrialization and systematic reductions in energy use and resource extraction are self-evidently catastrophic propositions in terms of current economic/employment imperatives. I think - as I hope you do - that this fact should be the beginning rather than the limit of our thought. We need to accept the necessity of rethinking those structures and imperatives: climate change demonstrates this more powerfully than anything yet.

Whatever the case, we (in the global north) need to pull up our multiculturalist britches and prepare to welcome that tide of "climate change refugees" destined to flood into our "homelands."

Follow-up on UK offsets:

http://interact.newint.org/blog/adam-ma ... conned-uct

"Carbon offsetting cannot substitute for cutting emissions here and now. This code will still allow offsets to be sold for our increasingly polluting lifestyles - such as sports utility vehicles and flying on extra weekend holidays. Even the Government acknowledges that offsetting is not a cure for climate change."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/global ... 516098.ece

Sir, The passage of the Climate Change Bill through Parliament is at a critical stage (comment, March). One highly controversial issue is the use of overseas credits or “offsets” in achieving the UK’s emissions reduction targets.

The science of climate change is clear; the world needs to make deep cuts in its emissions, and rich countries such as the UK need to lead by cutting our emissions by a minimum of 80 per cent by the middle of this century.

The Government is increasingly aware of this need, but it is now clear that rather than making such reductions at home or even by trading permits with our European neighbours, the Government envisages buying its way out of much of the problem by purchasing offsets from poorer nations.

If all rich countries seek to do this then not only will we shift the cutting of emissions on to the shoulders of nations poorer and less responsible for the problem than ourselves, but we will not tackle climate change.

To head off climate change without compounding its injustices, countries such as the UK, where major industrial CO2 emissions first began, must not only cut by at least 80 per cent at home but must also help to finance clean development in poorer countries.

Charles Abugre
Head of Global Advocacy and Policy, Christian Aid

Phil Bloomer
Campaigns and Policy Director, Oxfam

Peter Hardstaff
Head of Policy, World Development Movement

Paul Cook
Head of Policy, Tearfund

Andrew Simms
Policy Director, New Economics Foundation

Andrew Scott
Policy and Programmes Director, Practical Action