It's decreasing though. — Benkei

You're talking about consumer electronics specifically here?

Second area, we've seen shortages in components and raw materials due to covid disruptions since 2020 causing inflationary pressures during the pandemic. You would expect, especially if people would be spending more coming out of covid, that production capacity would increase. Instead we've seen three quarters of reduced shipping in consumer electronics. Why? — Benkei

Apparently there is already a drop in demand this year, after the "post-covid" surge last year, coupled with lock-down issues in China, and inflation, etc... all apparently contributing to a scaling down in shipping.

https://www.market-prospects.com/articles/weak-demand-for-consumer-electronics-and-ease-the-shortages-of-supply-chain

But point well taking, this was probably not a good example for the more general point I was trying to argue there.

That's why you have the price mechanism. If something becomes unobtainable, it's price goes extremely high. That creates incentives to replace the "something" with another thing. Hence high oil prices are the best thing that can happen to alternative energy resources. — ssu

Yeah substitutability, that works only up to some extend. Batteries without lithium are inferior,maybe we will eventually find something that could replace lithium, maybe not, there are not an infinite amount of elements in the periodic table. Or fertilizer for example is made with natural gas, we don't know of any good other way I don't think. In the abstract it sounds good, but there are practical 'physical' problem to the idea.

Hence high oil prices are the best thing that can happen to alternative energy resources — SSU

Only if oil and its derivatives aren't used to produce and distribute said alternative energy sources, which is, as it stands, a big if.

Either way, and I've said this before, coal, oil and natural gas are by far the most energy dense sources of energy we have access to. They are the reason we have had an industrial revolution to begin with. I highly doubt the idea of substitutability applies to fossil fuels, because they are what the entire economic system as we know is build on, and not only for the energy they provide. But the amount of energy you can use directly translates to amount of work that can be done, which in turn directly ties into the productivity-equation. If you need to invest more to get access to other energy sources, i.e. energy will be more expensive, this will have consequences for the rest of the economy.

And btw to everybody, has anybody seen anything anymore from the MMT crowd? :snicker: — ssu

Yeah I also would like to see someone try an explanation post-inflation :-). I dunno, I though it had some promise because we didn't have inflation for the longest time no matter what we did it seems, but what we have now seems a knock against it to say the least.

Energy crisis, making basically everything more expensive globally as it is at the base of the entire economy.

Also certain material shortages left and right.

And accumulated debt in the system trying to correct itself.

Those are underlying long term structural causes I'd say, then you also have short term factor like covid, Ukraine war, geo-political tensions and protectionism etc...

Demand takes off after covid, but it turn out supply of energy and materials is rather inelastic ... Increasing energy supply for example typically involves building large infrastructure taking years to build. So prices can only go up if we want to resume growth after covid, which implies increased demand.

Since energy and materials supplies and debt are a structural problem going forward, I'd expect some kind of long-term economic consequences, but wouldn't want to guess exactly what and when.

Only reason I can think of is that supplier sentiment is the market is overheated and we're bound to have a recession, (see for instance onetrust laying of 10% after a record q4 in 2021, Tesla layoffs etc.). — Benkei

What if supply just isn't as easy to increase as one thinks? You see this all the time in economics, that increase in supply is just a matter of demand incentive and volition. But in case of energy and materials there are physical processes to mine or harvest them. The idea that supply would follow demand only follows up to the point there aren't any physical limits we run into to increase supply.

There's no default position how the world ought to be, right, but there's a way the world is right now. And the way the world is, informs what the world can be, and therefor what the world should be. What should be is constraint by what is. Of course people disagree, but that doesn't mean that some visions just aren't very plausible from where we are now.

I like nature guy, I'm nature guy to some extent, but we can't return to some previous more innocent state of being without facing the consequences that entails. Back-to-nature should own up to the consequences, and in a world of 7, 8 billion people those aren't pretty I'd say.

The limits to growth fanaticism doesn't come from marxism I'd say, but more from some religious inspired eco-romantic back to nature notion couple maybe with some neo-Malthusianism, i.e the garden of Eden, i.e. the tower of Babel, i.e. Akira... there's tons of old and modern myths about it. It's the idea that reliance on knowledge and technology will do us in ultimately (human hubris) and that we need to return to some previous more pure natural state to save us all.

Also Marx was all for industrialization, It was the reason the bourgeois historically could have taken over from nobility, which ultimately paved the way for the proletariat to take over. It's a question of distribution and who controls the means of production for Marxists, wealth and prosperity an sich are fine. Not so for back to nature-guy.

It does look a bit suspect, certainly given the history fossil fuels industries have with lobbying. So sure, one can create a credible narrative that explains it in that way.

But here's another perspective. Scientists do have an interest in making their particular field attractive for investments. Most research projects rely on government funding to keep on existing and the succes of a researchers more or less gets measured in how much funding they can secure for their projects.... So that's another narrative one could create around the data we have.

What sways me however is that it isn't being used on a large scale anywhere in the world right now, eventhough energy security is such an important issue. It's not only about the US and NASA. I'm not an American, and I know that they are researching deep geothermal in my country, but it's always only at very specific locations to see if it's even viable there. Never is it seen merely as a question of implementing a technology that we know will work anywhere. You'd think that if it was such a no-brainer, they would've come to that conclusion, a good 40 years after NASA already did.

I did consider that possibility, and I kinda figured you would bring that up as a possible answer to that question, which is why I added "not exhaustive" afterwards... I won't deny that political and industrial interests probably play a role in choosing what energy sources to go with, I just don't think in this particular instance that would be the most important reason why it wasn't adopted. Sure, vested interests will push for more financing in their particular sector, but lobbying only gets you so far. If it was such a clearly abundant and cost-efficient energy-source, politicians wouldn't be able to steer political decision processes in other directions... not in an issue with so much public attention. The simpler explanation in my mind is that there are in fact some technical, technological or practical issues that hamper implementation everywhere on a large enough scale.

'Thought' seems a bit strong. I get that sensory stimuli created some sort of reaction in your brain - but that's not necessarily thought. Thought, I would suggest, is a process of challenging those autonomic mental reactions - and I see no evidence of that here. What I see is the stubborn post-rationalisation of an automonic reaction. Thought would have altrered your position by now. Were you actually thinking you would be forced to accept that the energy is there, and that the fossil fuel industry has extensive knowledge about drilling holes deep into the earth, 40 years in advance of anything NASA had available. You would be forced to accept that "experimentally proven by NASA" - while a blatant appeal to authority, is a credible basis upon which to claim it's a viable technology. Instead, what I see is a dismissive use of the term 'theorectical' - as an opening slavo, and what that suggests is that you are arguing from an attitude - reacting; not thinking, for thinking is to be aware, and sceptical of one's attitude. — karl stone

I think (here not used to indicate an instance of thinking, but to voice some amount of uncertainty or subjectivity in what I'm about to say) that what I did was in fact thinking in this case.

That tentative conclusion that you might be talking about a 'merely' theoretical study, came as an answer to the question in my mind: 'why isn't magma-geothermal being used everywhere by now, if it was shown to be that good by NASA?'.

My priors going in were something like (not exhaustive)
1) NASA does seem like a trustworthy organisation,
2) I don't think Karl Stone is straight up lying,
3) Magma-geothermal isn't being used on a large scale anywhere
4) There are a lot of studies being made (in case of renewables for instance) that don't take into account full costs and availability of human and material resources when talking about replacing fossil fuels, i.e. they are theoretical in that they don't take into account real world constraints

Running that question through my mind, I thus came up with an explanation that violated my priors the least/fit into my view of the world the best. I did look at some of those priors, but didn't find anything that would make me want to reconsider them. And then you shared the link to the study, which only confirms my tentative conclusion that is was only theoretical. As a kind of Bayesian, that is what I think thinking is.

"Theoretical" is in no way meant to be dismissive by the way, just that it doesn't look at real world implementation yet. It is part of the process, and a vital step in coming up with new technologies... you have to start somewhere.

Anyway I stand by my original position, that we can't sensibility talk about the viability of this in relation to other energy-sources, if we don't have data about the costs and other practical stuff. Maybe it could work at scale, I just don't know.

May I direct you to NASA's final report on the magma energy project. I'm sure that will answer many of your questions. It's too much here. No magical thinking though. NASA don't go in for that sort of thing.

https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6588943 — karl stone

It is, like I thought, 'theoretical' though, in that its aim was to only research scientific feasibility. There's still a big gap between showing something to work in a research project and unlocking the technology on a large scale in an existing energy market. Costs for instance typically are no factor in a science project, because the are subsidized and economic feasibility is not the aim of the research.

Resources are a function of the energy available to create them. Given limitless clean energy to spend there is no bottleneck in humankind's foreseeable future. We are not running out of anything; except perhaps helium - which I think can be manufactured given enough energy. — karl stone

This is not entirely right. Raw resources like all kinds of metals, are not created, save in rather rare events like supernovae or the big bangs. We have to do with what has been given us on earth for the most part.

Energy is a factor in the sense that you need energy for mining, and thus more energy lets you mine more. But this isn't free by no means. It"s typically a highly ecologically damaging activity, and not only because of burning fossil fuels, but mainly because of destroyed ecosystems.

The density of needed resources is diminishing over the years. We used to find copper in big lumps scattered across the land, now it's typically only a small percentage of the mined rock. This has been fine because mining technology coupled with dirt cheap fossil fuels let us grind through tons of material at relative little financial cost... but at the cost of larger and larger areas being mined.

So 'limitless energy' only get's you so far, if we assume we have limitless energy to begin with, which i would doubt. To begin with there's no such thing as limitless energy in physics, and even though theoretically the heat of the earth would be limitless for our intents and purposes, I highly doubt that we can turn that into limitless usable energy. The same thing can be said about solar energy, theoretically more energy than we could ever use, shines on the earth every day, for a couple of billion years still. But in practice it turns out photovoltaic cells can only turn a small percentage of that into electricity, we need to much of certain materials to build the panels and the batteries to scale them up, they wear off over time, you end up with a lot waste etc etc...

Nothing is free, to make energy usable for us you need to build all kinds of facilities and machinery, which makes that you run into all kinds of practical limits if you want to scale it up. For magma-geothermal we, I guess, don't know what the real costs are because it hasn't been deployed on a large enough scale. And that is by itself already a big issue because we need to decarbonise right now ideally. We have little time to put our hope in future technologies.

Looked at in this way, it follows that limits to growth is the consequence of a misapplication of technology. No-one need have a carbon footprint. I'm not claiming magma energy would solve everything right away, but abundant clean energy gives subsequent generations the best shot at a decent future. And limitless clean energy changes the calulus of economic rationality; allowing for recycling for example, or desalination and irrigation. The increase in downstream value will sustain civilisation. — karl stone

Carbon is hardly the only thing that matters. There are definitely limits, it's just not clear where they exactly lie. Waste heat of continued increase in energy use alone would fry the earth eventually.... But anyway, I do agree with the sentiment that we should give future generations a decent shot by finding the best way to generate energy.

The sheer scale of the energy available changes the equation in a most unexpected way; and that's what I'm trying to communicate. I assumed for a long time that sustainability required sacrifice, and couldn't see past that - but because of magma energy, I don't believe that's true, nor is it the right approach. The best and right approach to climate change is to have massively more clean energy to spend; not slightly less similarly polluting energy. That way leads to madness! — karl stone

I will say, even if we assume energy to be nigh unlimited and free of carbon, that doesn't mean we have reached sustainability. Energy and climate change is what is focused on most of the time, but that's only one of the major issues we are dealing with at the moment. There are also other, material and bio-physical limits we run into now, and if not now, eventually.... More energy let's us kick the can a bit further ahead of us, but at some point we will have deal with it. I tend to agree that we need more energy right now, because the alternative isn't very appealing (to understate how dire things could get), but I wouldn't presume we solved everything with that.

No that's right, I don't expect an answer right here, but those are the type of questions one needs an answer to to be able to settle the debate.... If not, then one does seem to engage in something akin to magical thinking as per title of the thread.

I know there's a lot of heat under the earths crust, just not how easy it is to be turned into usable energy. NASA's estimates are theoretical I presume? How practical is it to tap into it, what is the technology and engineering needed to do this? And especially, how much does it cost? There's always a cost to extract the energy, if possible at all. That's what is needed in this debated, you can't just say magma energy solves all the problems and expect everybody to take your word on it.

That's a truism, I suppose. I'm not sure it's a matter of having endless potential solutions waiting to go, and only the time and resources to develop one, but okay, sure - tell me, why would a nasa approved technology with the potential to provide near limitless clean energy, not be a priority? — karl stone

Every country has to come up with a plan to scale down use of fossil fuels and retain energy security at the same time. There's were the agency is at for the energy-transition (and that will probably not change any time soon), and also the bottlenecks for political will, budget and resources.... To make that plan they need to figure out their equation about cost, security and pollution of different energy-sources.

From what I gathered geothermal seems to make a lot of sense if you're close to continental plate fault lines. For other locations you need to drill a lot deeper, figure out how you get hot water out without causing seismic activity etc... I assume there's a reason it's still in a development-fase in a lot of countries where hot water doesn't literally gush out of the ground like in Iceland.

So the reasons for some countries not making it a priority would be costs of building the plants, research cost and time, and security issues etc... It might make more sense to build nuclear plants for instance. But look I'm no specialist and one does have to look at the numbers, case by case probably.

What if there's not enough time? Would you regret the wasted effort? — karl stone

Well yes, assuming financial, human and material resources are finite... we do have to make choices between what kind of things we will prioritize.

If it turns out geothermal doesn't get there in time, and the earth overheats, and societies collapse because climate change stresses get to much, then investments into geothermal, and mitigation in general, maybe could be better spend (at least for some part) on adapting to climate change instead.

If the whole thing goes south we presumably would have little use for high-technology energy sources.

The question is how does this scale up fast enough to replace fossil fuels before climate spirals out of control?

Geothermal is good for what, not even 0.5% of world energy generation at this moment? Do we even have enough engineering and building capacity to build what we need in any reasonable timeframe?

Pointing to a theoretical possibility means nothing if it isn't practically feasible. The practical details are exactly what matter here. We do need to do the math in this debate, otherwise it is magical thinking.

Similar exercises have been done with solar, wind and nuclear, and ridicules amounts of facilities need to build to be carbon free by 2050, and those are technologies that don't need any R&D anymore, and we could implement everywhere right away.

Bitter Crank, and authors like Vaclav Smil, are absolutely right to be sceptical about these kinds of proposals, if one looks at the numbers.

2. I think you have missed the point. — Wittgenstein

Maybe, then again maybe you are also missing a point if you think you can neatly untangle instrumental and intrinsic valuation in Nietzsche. As the philosopher with a hammer he saw his task as sounding out ideals/values (yes it was a sounding hammer, not a sledge hammer) to see whether they where ultimately hollow, or whether there indeed was something to them.

Part of sounding out a value like equality is looking at it from multiple perspective, which typically would include also looking at what said value ultimately entails practically in a society, or in a person. Sure he didn't like equality, but I don't think you can't separate out his 'pure' distaste of the value equality from its material, practical and economic consequences. I think all of that is locked into his perspectival evaluation of it.

If we should want to have a charitable look at the argument, maybe we should let the man speak for himself, since he did happen to make this exact argument in the greek state which boils down to this:

1. Life, suffering etc, can ultimately only be justified through art.
2. Slavery is necessary to enable a few to focus on creating said art.

"In order that there may be a broad, deep, and fruitful soil for the development of art, the enormous majority must, in the service of a minority be slavishly subjected to life’s struggle, to a greater degree
than their own wants necessitate. At their cost, through the surplus of their labor, that
privileged class is to be relieved from the struggle for existence, in order to create and to
satisfy a new world of want."

Since 1) is essentially a value-judgement one maybe could just say that one doesn't care about art or high culture, and the rest of the argument looses its potency.

2) is more of a statement of fact that one could maybe discredit (or credit) on empirical grounds. Essentially he saying that 1) you need specialisation to be able to create good art 2) which requires that some are relieved from the daily struggle for existence 3) which in turn requires that a part of the population produces more/is forced to produce more than it needs for itself.

Maybe this could be true in ancient times, like Greece, but certainly this isn't true anymore in fossil-fueled post-industrialised societies. Because of the amount of energy per capita we have access to, we essentially have all the energy slaves we want, Energy can be translated directly into work, which basically could free up almost everybody to produce art if we wanted to.

A caveat to this story maybe is that going forward, huge amounts of energy is not necessarily garanteed since we kind of have to de-carbonize rather quickly and all (most, sorry nuclear) energy-dense sources of energy are carbon-based.

It is not that I am opposed to his philosophy and the idea of the 'overman' but I am thinking that it is a rather elastic idea, open to being stretched in many directions. — Jack Cummins

Yes I'd think he did that on purpose. Being a prelude to philosophers of the future and a beginning of re-evaluation et al., it has to be a bit non-specific if he wants it to be of use.

The overman is an ideal, a value, something to strive for... his tentative attempt at re-evaluation of values.

He thought western culture and philosophy was focused to much on static a-historical identities, on fixed being.

'Über' is 'over'. The over-man stands for a man that overcomes (his being). Being is becoming is the formula for this re-evaluation.

Capitalism may not be perfect but it is the only way to run a free society. — Dermot Griffin

Why do you think that? Sure, maybe you could say there were some failed non-capitalist experiments, but 'only way' seems a bit definitive.

Also, is freedom then the only, or the highest value, to which a societal organisation should be evaluated?

I dunno, maybe we are on a somewhat different wavelength, I wasn't really referring to any kind of monasticism at all. The point or problem, as I see it, is precisely not found in any kind of individual solution or orientation, but rather a lack of direction that is shared or communal if you will. This doesn't even have to be transcendental, religious or even political, just that people apparently have a need to feel part of some greater whole, on whatever scale that may be.

Capitalism and liberalism seem to have pushed individuation to the extreme so that there doesn't seem to be anything shared left at all. I think we are social cultural beings, are evolved to function that way, and are incomplete without some social, cultural sphere wherein we are raised and can thrive.

Maybe its the other way around? Maybe continual erosion of all that was communal/shared in favour of the individual has left a void, to which all of these movement sought some kind of solution?

In my opinion, I think it's undeniable that this is the issue of our time and those of us who aren't in denial should at least put it in their top 3 political priorities and act accordingly. — Xtrix

It is the issue of our time, but what should be done about it is not that clear. 'Act accordingly' sounds a bit like the solution automatically follows from the problem.

Without trying to be exhaustive about it, part of the problem is that energy is life, and fossil fuels are the most dense, convenient energy-source we have, and also the basis on which our entire globalised system is built.

Anyway, i'm not suggesting that we shouldn't do anything about it, just that exactly what is the real question here.

We can only deal with the Earth's ecology from the reality of where it is right now rather than mull over exactly who is responsible for past damage done to the Earth due to industrialisation or past/current systemic desire for prioritising economic growth.
Any new/current technology developed/continued must now take ecological consideration to be a major factor when deciding whether or not a technology should be used or developed further.
This has to be a major tenet of 'true socialism.' All true socialisms must earn. learn and demonstrate 'Green credentials.' The SNP and the Green party in Scotland's attempt to find common ground is a good step in this direction. — universeness

What about continued damage done by industrialization going forward?

There seems to be a tension in socialism, where on the one hand industrialization is the source of all evil and on other hand it's also the reason socialism exists to begin with (as a reaction to industrial capitalism). Does socialism need to keep it going, or assumes that it will, albeit with redistributions and/or changes in power relations?

What if choices need to be made between material wealth provided by industrialism and ecological damage done by it? Or maybe put another way, would a socialist support de-industrialisation or de-growth for ecological reasons, even if that would mean making people poorer?

I guess my question is about how these values actually relate to eachother in socialism?

No, you misunderstand me. I am convinced by all of Carl Sagan's great demotions. I do not assign prime importance to the human race from a Universal perspective. I think we are significant as we give meaning and purpose to the Universe, that it might otherwise not have, especially if we are currently the only intelligent life in the entire Universe (which I think is highly unlikely considering the number of planets it has). I also recognise the importance of protecting/understanding/progressing the sentience of all other lifeforms on Earth. That hasn't yet turned me vegetarian or vegan but that's a whole other debate I am always willing to take part in.

I do not advocate for a true socialism which 'ignores the cost of the rest of the whole.'
On the contrary, earlier on this thread, I typed about my limited interest in the cultures of GrecoRome, Germany etc as cited by Xtrix and my preference for those tribal groups who tried to live in harmony with the environment and did not seriously damage it.

I therefore reject your accusation that socialists ignore ecological threats to our planet. Any true socialist must be fully cognisant of climate change. We are not motivated by a desire for personal wealth/power/status, If any true socialist demonstrates such desire then they instantly forfeit their claim to the true socialist label. Capitalists rape our planet for profits not true socialists. — universeness

I did think of socialism as a 'progressive' ideology, as the progressive abolition of social and material limits for everybody. And construed as such that does kindof assumes material progress provided by industrialism and economic growth. And that seems hard to reconcile with living in harmony and within the limits of ecosystems...

But I suppose there are different blends of socialism. I wasn't my intention to accuse you of anything, my bad.

Constant improvement of human beings, via science/growth, at the cost of the rest of the whole cannot be improvement is what socialist don't seem to get.
— ChatteringMonkey

Well, it depends. Economic growth leads to disaster. It depends on how much of the natural world you fuck up. If you use smaller and fewer instruments, it will not go wrong. I think we are perfect as we are. No need for improvement. Maybe build a super large particle accelerator. To prove preons. Costs 100 billion only. — EugeneW

Sure I could live with a little fucking up, I'm no fanatic.

Large particle accelerators are fine, as are nuclear powerplants ;-).

Giving the human race a chance is a matter for every one of its members that has the cognitive ability to consider it. You are either part of the solution or part of the problem. I don't accept the term utopia and I don't desire such. I desire continued effort to improve the lives of all human beings so that fewer of us live with constant despair or/and suffering. Such despair can even have the horrible effect of turning good, deep thinking humans into misanthropic, pessimistic, antinatalists. — universeness

The human race is not alone, but part of a larger whole. 'Being part of' means it is nothing without it, cannot exist without it.

Constant improvement of human beings, via science/growth, at the cost of the rest of the whole cannot be improvement is what socialists don't seem to get.

But since you were already listening to that song in the 70's and 80's, I probably won't change your mind at this point ;-).

Thank you too.

Yes you do, so let's keep chattering with each other all over the world, with that general goal in mind. There is a lot of time left based on the expected natural lifespan of our pale blue dot planet. We have only been at this 'create a good/fair/equitable/global human civilisation,' which has earned the right to and can be trusted with 'stewardship' of the Earth, endeavour for around 10,000 tears. Okay, so far, its been mainly 10,000 years of tears and slaughter due to failed attempts and nasty individual human and groups. But Carl Sagan's cosmic calendar shows a time duration of 10,000 years to be a drop of water into a vast cosmic ocean.
As I have politely typed many times, in consideration of the potential duration of time available to our ever-busy procreating species, "Give us a f****** chance!" A single human lifespan is very brief.
The cause of the true socialist, is to progress the cause of true socialism, so that's my cause within my own short lifespan. Unless of course I can live long enough for science to invent that which will allow me the option of living longer. — universeness

Nice rant, seriously I can appreciate some real passion shining through. It made me think of this songs :



[...]
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin' if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing

Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what, he never knew, now man's reign is through
[...]

Ultimately I'm probably more of an ecologist than a socialist. The laws of physics, ecology and biology take precedence over what we want, over what we can agree to.

I do want to give man a chance, I really do, but I don't think it's up to me... Socialist utopia may just not be in the cards.

Take care.

So yes, we have to look to the long term and create checks and balances backed by global legislation which will outlast individual human lifespans. — universeness

Part of the problem, and reason, we don't already have that is because what 'we' decide is partly determined by those that are in power. At no point in history we get to actually step outside these power-dynamics, and draw up these rules from some fair and balanced point of view.

And global legislation is even more difficult because you need actual consensus for that, because there is no decision organ with majority rule or something like that...

I mean I agree that this is how you would need to do it (if you could do it), on a global level, but that isn't going to happen it seems to me. The last 50 years we saw the opposite movement with globalization and neo-liberal abolishment of barriers.

Yes and I agree that such is necessary and will always be so but it's the checks and balances which will prevent the historical abuses of power we have memorialised. I can describe the kind of checks and balances I am typing about if you wish. I have done so in other threads. They are not of course from my original thinking, they have been around for centuries and attempts have been made to establish and apply them. Most Western political systems have quite good examples but few have the power or structure they need to effectively prevent abuses of power or the excesses of unfettered capitalism. — universeness

We probably only would know if they work if they have been put into practice. As a legal practitioner, if there is one thing I have learned it is that people always find loopholes to circumvent the rules. People seem to think rules are the solution to everything, they rarely are.

We don't currently, your right, but we must get it right or we will not survive as one human race, living on one little pale blue dot of a planet. We are all responsible for Putin who now threatens the existence of our species. One pathetic little prat should never have been able to do what he is doing. — universeness

Yeah, after WWII never before we had so much consensus and momentum to draft up systems to prevent future atrocities. But even then the powers that be couldn't resist the temptation to introduce rules that consolidated their power, essentially making the UN toothless going forward.

Geo-politics is a game of countries doing what the can get away with. Only when something really really bad happens, I could see countries actually coming together to draft something up that is fair and balanced.

No it doesn't, for me, it proves that we need to demand economic parity for all human beings and only allow authority which is under effective scrutiny and can be removed EASILY due to the checks and balances in place against abuse of power/cult of personality or celebrity/mental illness/attempts to establish totalitarian regimes or autocracies/aristocracies/plutocracies. — universeness

Like I said what we want doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what we can do. I probably agree all of that would be nice in theory, I'm just not so sure we can get there.

One snowball can create an avalanche. I don't dismiss the 'wishes' or determinations of any individual or a group you define as 'we', as impotent. Doing so, can often allow the nefarious to gain power and influence. I act based on my 'wishes.' — universeness

If we are talking about societal structures, it's about the long term, right? Maybe the founders of google had all the best intentions, and with those initial intentions amassing power seems a good thing... problem is they aren't going to be in power for ever even if the structure keeps on existing. After Lenin came Stalin.

Like I said in my response to Xtrix, when you get to a certain number of people hierarchies seem to become necessary. And with that kind of power relations, some will have more power to determine how the system looks like going forward. And because of that, a certain type of personality seems to rise to the top etc etc...

I don't think we have as much control over these systems as we'd like to think, and no matter the original intentions, it seems like it tends to go in certain directions.

Perhaps you are conflating historical aristocrats with modern celebrity culture. The French aristos only had interest in what their fellow aristos thought of them or/and the King/Queens inner circle. They had little interest/conception/concern about what the unimportant/starving/abused mass of the French peasantry thought about them. The same applies to all historical aristocracies. Such an aloof attitude proved to be their biggest mistake. — universeness

Well sure, I'm under no illusion that they have been a particularly nice group of people, but the fact that they were overthrown because of their aloof attitude kindof proofs my point, namely that they have to take the wants of the peasantry into account at least to some extend.

I never said I fully believe the basic assumption either (check my last line), but I do think maybe there's something to it. 'That something' is always hard to determine and certainly hard to proof because we are speaking of complex emergent structures... who really knows what the limits are?

And look, if your only argument is that you don't want it to be so - which it usually is when people fight these things with a lot of zeal - I kindly bow out of the discussion. What we wish has nothing to do with what is necessarily the case...

What?? Give me a historical or current example of a well-behaved aristocratic family who were benevolent/altruistic/philanthropic towards the majority and I will provide many, many other examples of historical aristocratic nasties. — universeness

I'm not saying aristocrats are altruistic philanthropes, I'm just saying that there are limits to what they can get away with because they at least have to uphold some public image, unlike faceless capitalists who operate entirely behind the scenes.

I personally don’t think we can make that assumption. It’s not simply about removing suppression— it’s also about positive design: beliefs, values, culture, education. Actively encouraging other values like love, compassion, good will, tolerance, strength, confidence — this is just as important as removing factors that suppress these values. — Xtrix

I think I agree. Question is maybe how does one organise those into a society, practically?

We moderns and atheists usually don't have much time for tradition or religion, but at least those did provide a positive account..

Now we only have secular states that have to guarantee neutrality and plurality, and can't give any 'thick' account of what values our societies should be build around. This has its benefits no doubt, but then again maybe that did open us up for capitalism to fill in the void.

II can’t help but be reminded, again and again, of both Plato and Nietzsche when it comes to a vision of what society could be like. They tend to favor aristocracy. So do I — but in the very long term. In the meantime, I think communalism is the proper direction as a countervailing force to the extreme form of capitalism we’ve been living under. — Xtrix

I think scale is important.

Maybe in smaller groups with little specialisation some form of communalism was the default organisational form. Maybe that is indeed even our dominant instinct because we presumably evolved in such circumstances..

But I think as soon a we pass a certain number of people, as soon as we started organising into cities, some form of hierarchy perhaps became necessary, or at least more practical.

And if we need to have these type of power relations anyway, an aristocracy probably makes sense lest we devolve into an other type and even less desirable form of oligarchy.

The French might fight against you on that idea. I would help them do so.
Why would you favour an aristocracy? at any time? — universeness

All systems tend to oligarchy.... combined with.... noblesse oblige.

Now we nominally have democracy, but in practice power seems to be in the hands of a few capitalists anyway.

So even though the system was supposed to be something else, we still ended up with some type of oligarchy.

The difference then is that now the oligarchy consists of nameless capitalists who have no public image or values to uphold, because 'technically' they aren't even in power.

Aristocrats at least has a reputation and values to uphold by virtue of the official position they hold.

If we need to have an oligarchy, aristocracy would seem to be one of the better versions of that.

Anyway, this ofcourse assumes we always end up with an oligarchy, which isn't a given by any means,... but this would be a reason to favour it.

People who take 18th century values seriously are against concentration of power. After all the doctrines of the enlightenment held that individuals should be free from the coercion of concentrated power. The kind of concentrated power that they were thinking about was the church, and the state, and the feudal system, and so on, and you could kind of imagine a population of relatively equal people who would not be controlled by those private powers. But in the subsequent era, a new form of power developed — namely, corporations — with highly concentrated power over decision making in economic life, i.e., what’s produced, what’s distributed, what’s invested, and so forth, is narrowly concentrated.

The public mind might have funny ideas about democracy, which says that we should not be forced to simply rent ourselves to the people who own the country and own its institutions, rather that we should play a role in determining what those institutions do — that’s democracy. If we were to move towards democracy (and I think “democracy” even in the 18th century sense) we would say that there should be no maldistribution of power in determining what’s produced and distributed, etc. — rather that’s a problem for the entire community.

And in my own personal view, unless we move in that direction, human society probably isn’t going to survive.

I mean, the idea of care for others, and concern for other people’s needs, and concern for a fragile environment that must sustain future generations — all of these things are part of human nature. These are elements of human nature that are suppressed in a social and cultural system which is designed to maximize personal gain, and I think we must try to overcome that suppression, and that’s in fact what democracy could bring about — it could lead to the expression of other human needs and values that tend to be suppressed under the institutional structure of private power and private profit.

This is interesting in that it kindof lays bare some of the assumptions that are being made in enlightenment/liberalist ideology.

Maybe it is the obvious thing to try when confronted with concentrated power, to try to get rid of it, and try to distribute it evenly over the population.... that sounds perfectly reasonable on the surface at least.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating however and experiments to achieve this, haven't been all that successful historically it seems to me. Maybe one can argue over whether it's the idea or the execution that failed... but my intuition is that it's no fluke that capitalism developed in the society that championed individual liberties over everything else.

Power hates a vacuum. If we destroy traditions that uphold certain values, something else will look to fill the void. Maybe it is the case that commerce/capitalists could jump in an manipulate the rest of society precisely because it didn't have to compete anymore with traditional value-systems that have been systematically destroyed after the enlightenment?

The idea of liberalism, enlightenment and democracy seems to be predicated on the assumption that the good parts of human nature automatically will come to the fore if only we could end oppression and suppression of said values. Can we really make that assumption?

We've had the technology for many decades. The only reason it's not fleshed out is because there wasn't any weapon capability as a byproduct. You know, if you have a normal nuclear power plant, you could use some of the nuclear matter used for nuclear weapons as a side gig. Thorium is too good for bad nations. — Christoffer

The main reason I'd say is that the government isn't embarking on big societal projects like it used to, the socio-political climate has changed ;-). I doubt that technology is ready to start building actual functioning plants, but I'm not an expert so I could be wrong on that.

It's a push in that it demands another solution. And "scramble" to stay afloat is not really true. An economic crisis may look like the one in 2008, but did that "scramble to stay afloat"? There's still plenty of capital to invest in new solutions, it's just that the financial world always need to balance the entire economy so as to not break regular folks. However, since regular folks seem to not care about climate change and politicians are not willing to do what it takes, a crisis that pushes everyone out of their comfort zone will lead to hard times in the short terms, but better times after a few years. Also remember the jobs that gets created by investing in new technologies. — Christoffer

This is all assuming the crisis won't be much worse and debilitating for years.

And this is what I think gets pushed when we can't rely on oil and gas. People feel the ground shake under them and they will start investing much quicker. — Christoffer

Gasprices rose something like 400% last year without the war or sanctions, one would think that would be incentive enough to try something else.

My point is that tanking the economy is probably never a push towards other solutions,
— ChatteringMonkey

This is doubtful. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention (not talking Zappa here, who was extremely creative himself). Take The Manhattan Project for example. When you get hundreds, or even thousands of scientists working together, in a network, there is a lot more efficiency than a handful of scientists here, and a handful there, with intellectual property guarded by secrecy. Fusion, or other new ideas, might not be as far away as you think. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think the saying really applies here because there's no invention that can deal with that necessity short term. It's not like there is a lot of unexplored territory in energy-physics where one might expect radical new technologies just around the corner. Every new development costs exponentially more resources now, in fundamental research, in time and R&D, precisely because so much has already been put in over the years. All the 'low hanging fruit' is long gone. If some new technology could provide us with more energy, I'd fully expect it to take 50 to 100 years to develop. By then we'll be living in a totally different world I'd expect.

But sure, long term maybe it will spur the EU to reconsider it's energy-strategy. I'd argue that this is already happening, as climate change is putting pressure on fossil fuels and people are starting to realize that renewables can't really replace them. This is one more argument for nuclear, which seems to be the only technology (maybe with fusion in the future) that can provide us the energy we need. In short I'd argue that the necessity is already there, but we need time and resources to do it. A severe economical crisis with no doubt nasty political consequences, would probably not help, is my guess.

I think you should check that again. — Christoffer

I did check it, a lot... renewables just will not work on the scale needed. And even if they would, you'd need huge swats of land for it which would be an ecological disaster on it's own. Nevermind the waste afterwards, and the sheer amounts of resources needed to keep building them in large enough quantity...

And it doesn't matter, it has to be done anyway, whatever people think about it or however hard it hits the economy, it has to be done in order to decrease the rate of climate change. — Christoffer

We need to do whatever is the least worst, which is not as clear-cut as one might think ;-)

On top of that, since the investment in improvements of renewables has skyrocketed in a very short period of time, all while we just recently had a major step forward for fusion energy, which changed the projected time-frame for when we might solve that problem. If nothing else we also have Thorium nuclear power with power plant designs that can utilize nuclear waste almost until they're half-lifed to irrelevant levels before storage. — Christoffer

From what I've gleaned, renewables can only be part of mix at best, fusion is still 50 years into the future even with recent improvements, and the new type of nuclear reactors are not entirely ready to be used either. Anyway I agree that nuclear is the way to go, but this is not something that can get done in the the time-frame needed to stop climate change.

My point is that we NEED to have a push towards other solutions than gas and oil and we just got this with moving away from Russia's export of it. So while people can take the pain that creates as a sign of support towards Ukraine, that kind of pain could never be endured just on the basis of "we need to do this for the environment". People don't care about the environment, they care about people suffering. We can argue this is because they're stupid and don't connect the dots of how the environment create suffering, but the fact is that we hit a lot of flies in one hit at the moment. We can weaken Russia's hold on the west, remove their trading diplomacy cards so we don't have to be puppets of the oligarchs and Putin's ego, all while pushing the necessary push towards better solutions than oil and gas. Even if we don't go renewable soon, just build Thorium power plants. I feel like people don't know how safe these designs really are, it's way better than any other solution at the moment until renewable match up with it. — Christoffer

My point is that tanking the economy is probably never a push towards other solutions, because as you scramble to stay afloat, the last thing you want to do is make big investments in future-oriented transitions.

I agree on nuclear, if they are ready, but you need large coordinated investment for that. They are the future, but if you're too busy trying to put out fires left and right, you typically don't think about the far future.

I'd say, rip the band-aid already. The world needs to move towards sustainable energy and this could be a good way to speed that up. Even if it would create enormous economic problems in the short term, it can be done. — Christoffer

I don't think it can be done. Energy-transition is a process that would take decades even if there was a consensus on the way to go... you can only speed it up so much, before you run into physical, engineering or even economical limits.

Without fossil fuels you basically have renewables and nuclear energy. Renewables will not get it done any time soon, and probably never, because they just are not that efficient, reliable, easy to use, and not even that green to begin with. Nuclear could've done it if they committed to it decades ago, but as it stands they are still in the process of phasing out nuclear in a lot of the EU-countries because of anti-nuclear ideological sentiments of the past.

Energy prices were already shy-high in Europe before the war, it just came out a pandemic that caused massive debt for governments that tried to prop up the economy, inflation was already higher than in a very long time... chances are you completely tank the economy by raising energy-prices even further in a precarious moment. And completely tanking the economy seems like the worst thing one could do to speed up energy-transition, because of the enormous amounts of investments and resources needed for such transition.

Anyway, I'm not saying Europe shouldn't consider it, just that we need to realize what is a stake here.... energy is life.

That's something that is lacking in Western philosophy, which tends to focus on mind/pure thought (forgetting the body), and which gets a whole lot more attention in eastern philosophy (rites, meditation, etc.). So I do think this is an important topic, but I would rather want to explore it from a psychological/physiological naturalist point of view, rather than from a magical supra-natural point of view... if that makes sense.
— ChatteringMonkey

The esoteric as whatever Western philosophy neglects or denies, is almost a tautology. — unenlightened

Well I'd say the esoteric is whatever Western tradition ignores.... and Western tradition is more than Western philosophy I suppose, we did have a couple of religions playing a role in our history.

But I wonder how a naturalist account of the supernatural, or a rational account of the irrational can possibly work. I'll have to wait and see I suppose... — unenlightened

Yeah I did and do wonder about that tension too. I'd say at this point in time we did arrive at the conclusion, via reason/empirical data, that the irrational, myth/stories are important for us humans. That's to say the idea that we should be perfectly rational beings was by itself not a very reasonable or scientifically justified conclusion.

The question still remains, how does one deal with the irrational with reason? The answer is, I suppose, one doesn't... one recognizes that ones reason isn't suited for everything and leaves some space for exploration of the irrational via arts, music, practicing rituals etc... Isn't this precisely the problem with the magical or esoteric, that one is still trying to use an essentially rational methodology to things that aren't really suited for it? What I mean is that one is looking at these things as if they have a "literal" meaning, instead of metaphorical meanings.

I would appreciate particularly the sceptical response to Episode 5: Methodologies for the Study of Magic. However the warning about glamour particularly applies to the sceptic if they assume a superior position. One of the aspects of magic discussed is that of its normativity - magic as foreign/illegitimate religion. The high priests of science have cast out all the demons? Then why are we not in heaven already? — unenlightened

Ok, there's two meanings put forward of the word/concept magic, first order and second order.

The first order meaning revolves around ingroup-outgroup perspectives being taking on some sets of rituals, where in-group rituals are seen as legitimate and out-group rituals as illegitimate, magic... i.e. magic used as a political term. I totally buy that this distinction isn't really justified from a more objective point of view one would want to take on the matter. The fact that some subset of rituals is deemed illegimate however, on the basis of some political/objectively unjustified criterium, doesn't really make one want to re-evaluate the excluded rituals, if one doesn't believe in religious ritual to begin with, legitimate or otherwise,. Put another way, If one is an atheist, it doesn't really matter if it's magic or legitimate religious ritual... both seem equally unpalatable.

Looking for a second order meaning, a more objective meaning one could use as a scholar, seems a lot more difficult. One gets something that remains nebulous at best, as the podcast-host has to admit. It's a word that could denote something like rituals that seek to elicit some effect, maybe or maybe not in connection with the will. So for the skeptic there doesn't seem a whole lot to go on there.

I will say, I do think the practice of rituals, or rather the omission of ritual in Western Philosophy for the most part, is something that does interest me. That's something that is lacking in Western philosophy, which tends to focus on mind/pure thought (forgetting the body). This does get a whole lot more attention in eastern philosophy (rites, meditation, etc.). So I do think this is an important topic, but I would rather want to explore it from a psychological/physiological naturalist point of view, rather than from a magical supra-natural point of view... if that makes sense.