I added the "See Also" entries as promised. You can see them at the very bottom of this post.
Rest Assured that this new list could have been longer. And to paraphrase our Corrupter-n-Chief: There would be nothing wrong if I had actually put more down, but fortunately for you, I will refrain; and not just for brevity's sake; as the real pain of what is being ignored too much here, can be very hard to bear when collected like this.
And I also want to thank him for proclaiming "Business As Usual," as it is now practiced, as his true Brand. As much as it also pains me, to say this, he actually said something with a deeper truth to it; even if he wasn't actually aware of it. We'll take what we can get, right?
Hopefully everyone will take proper note of this development.
J.V.]
This is a big list of issues, but I want you to think for a moment about one thing related to them all, as you hold this big list up in front of you, on a virtual whiteboard (and there will be even more in an "See Also" section, after I'm done with this post):
A prominent guy in the shipping industry just indicated, in discussing the health of the shipping industry, that, for every uptick in our GDP, there is also two uptics in the amount of containerized traffic around the world. And that's just the transportation across the oceans.
Even if you allow that the diesels are running more efficiently, and they filter more particulates, that is still a pretty big environmental impact. And then there is, on both the shipping, and receiving ends, of this of course, a bunch more of putting, and taking, and delivering; not forgetting for a moment that a particular item has to go through several rounds of this (just think of all of the sub assemblies that go into a car assembly plant, or an aircraft manufacturing plant, or major consumer product assembly plant), with further processing/assembly steps involved, before it gets to a place where an item can be moved to a final consumer.
Then consider the amount of effort spent in both marketing the need for an item, as well as the packaging of it, cocommintant to the branding naturally, which bleeds from, and over, into the shipping of the item. All of that extra material, organic and otherwise, that then needs to be collected, and further transported again, so as to be available at all for reuse, or disposal.
If we didn't have Capitalism a major majority of all that effort, and at least a significant portion of the transportation effort, would be eliminated from the daily burden that not only we pay for, but the planet pays for, as well.
And it could be done simply by recognizing that we could re organize ourselves in whatever way that might better do the things remaining, that we really need doing, as well as the things we can decide, without marketing, to provide for ourselves, quite well enough I think; as in the things we need and want for our personal use. Perhaps more to the point, however, is that we could do this and also make so many more aspects of our lives meaningful again; precisely because we all would matter so much more in the communities that would need every able bodied worker they could get, in order to be as self sufficient as they can possibly be.
And this thought exercise would yield valuable results, even if Capitalism weren't a toxic, mutated thing (simply because it is so grossly inefficient, and wasteful); which it certainly is now. And made so by the effects of new, electrified instrumentality, it was never meant to handle, much less be able to perceive, and analyze correctly. And this also hardly takes into account what getting rid of all of the associated "Dangerous Competitions" (as in competing in ever more cutthroat markets, contending every more over diminishing resources. and, because of the first two, all of the weaponization races now that ever increasing instrumentality make possible) that Capitalism fosters.
I use this as a preamble to the array of issues displayed here to suggest to you that we could have a lot of possible resource to work with if we (in mobilizing the nation just like we did in WW 2), indeed, wanted to do the things that would address the problems associated with what you see arrayed here. And even better, we could make it so that money then never again had to get in the way of actually accomplishing the things that the majority have stated, with their direct vote, is what needs to be accomplished.
The bottom line here is simply this: The answer to the question stated in this post is quite unequivocally no. There are none of them that wouldn't be helped because Capitalism is making all of them impossibly worse; worse even than the dislocations that doing a change-over, that something new would create, would do; if for no other reason than sticking with Capitalism will, in my opinion, make dealing with catastrophic, global circulation changes, virtually impossible; along with the unlikely survival of ether much of civilization at all, or the species that depends on it.
The referenced article quick list:
1:Drug overdose deaths top 70,000, drive down U.S. life expectancy
2:Rising seas threaten Norfolk Naval Shipyard, raising fears of 'catastrophic damage'
3:Heat waves, mosquito outbreaks, landslides: 6 ways climate change is hitting the U.S.
4:US farms are going bankrupt at an alarming rate. Trump’s trade war is partially to blame.
5:Retirement in America? Too Expensive
6:Which Industries Are Investing in Artificial Intelligence?
Drug overdose deaths top 70,000, drive down U.S. life expectancy
Rising seas threaten Norfolk Naval Shipyard, raising fears of 'catastrophic damage'
US farms are going bankrupt at an alarming rate. Trump’s trade war is partially to blame.
Retirement in America? Too Expensive
[Post Note: I have included this little tidbit from Priceonomics because, whether you realize it or not, one of my pet peeves about investment avenues of questionable social efficacy is not only illustrated here, it also shows you quite clearly how one aspect of that "bad social efficacy" is precisely related to costing us a great deal in diverted expertise. And I can say that because the top utilizer of AI, according to this report, is "Algorithmic financial trading;" not only the epitome of "Crunching numbers, just to get more numbers," but also a sector that can afford to outbid other folks who might need AI scientific, and engineering, talent. And of course, the sectors that would go the most begging would be exactly the kinds of basic science, materials research, and anything to do with weather forecasting, that would help the most in diverting the coming ecological disaster. J.V.]
Which Industries Are Investing in Artificial Intelligence
7 New York hospitals that illegally billed sex-assault victims for their rape kits agree to settlement
Maryland high school football players accused of sexually assaulting teammates with broom
Why Tear Gassing Children Migrants Is Wrong -- Response to US Border Agents Using Tear Gas
Donald Trump Wasn't The Only President Who Used Tear Gas -- Talker
Opinion -- Before The Claims Of Crispr Babies, There Was China's One-Child Policy
CRISPR Gene Engineered Human Babies Immune to HIV, Smallpox and Cholera
No comments:
Post a Comment