Philosophy
Here in the United States, a large percentage of our population seems to be increasingly obsessed with the 'invisible hand' of capitalism and the 'wisdom' of the free market. Interestingly, many of these folks are also the very same people who are highly skeptical (to say the least) of the 'wisdom' of the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection. And of course, they'll try to rationalize away the cognitive dissonance with the kind of twisted logic one should expect in these scenarios.
But that's the point: while natural selection and the free market are incredibly good at eventually producing innovation, they do it at the cost of great losses for the majority of those fed into the grinder. There is no long-term foresight nor moral concern for anyone's welfare in these mechanisms. For everyone who survives and thrives in these systems, hundreds or thousands must perish, by necessity.
So, when large corporations (already involved in a tradition of corruption schemes) try to engineer 'environmental solutions' to the world's problems, we should be extremely cautious, not only that there might be corruption purposely or inadvertently built into the system somewhere along the line, but that the very nature of our understanding of the phenomenon in question becomes tarnished.
The main problem with so-called solutions like Cap & Trade, in my opinion, is not even the possibility of large-scale corruption: it's the fact that it filters our perception of the environment and natural resources so that we start to see them as commodities to be used, abused and manipulated for purely financial purposes. The value of people, animals and the environment is then understood in terms of how they contribute to the accumulation of wealth. If they don't contribute or feed into the system, they are then perceived to have no value, and if they have no value, they're not worth saving or fighting for.
Anyway, the following animation with Annie Leonard beautifully captures some of the devilish details built into the proposal of Cap & Trade and gives us some food for thought.
For more, check out The Story of Stuff or The Story of Bottled Water.
- Second Law Silliness
Been working on the evolutionary biology track in my forthcoming philosophy of science textbook, Methods and Models, and in fairly quick order came across two instances of the argument against evolution based on entropy. It's probably worth making...
- Michael Sandel - The Moral Limits Of Markets
There are some things that money can't buy... for everything else... oh crap, there's no anything else! Over the past couple of decades, and without almost anyone noticing, we have turned from a market economy?one in which we use capital as a...
- Dan Ariely - The Truth About Dishonesty
If I were to ask you if you are an honest person, chances are that you'd say yes. Yet, if we look at the details of your everyday behavior with a magnifying glass, we'd most likely discover all sorts of ways in which you lie, cheat and steal,...
- Immigrants For Sale
One of the problems with a free market is that when the market is the ultimate decider of values (and doesn't have to answer to anyone), it always decides on the side of profits, regardless of the ethical impact such choices might entail. And when...
- Peter Singer - The Life You Can Save, In 3 Minutes
We all like to think that we are good, moral, compassionate people. Of course, that's always easier said than done. Often, we tend to consider ourselves good simply because we are not out doing evil stuff, but not doing evil doesn't make you good;...
Philosophy
The Story of Cap & Trade
But that's the point: while natural selection and the free market are incredibly good at eventually producing innovation, they do it at the cost of great losses for the majority of those fed into the grinder. There is no long-term foresight nor moral concern for anyone's welfare in these mechanisms. For everyone who survives and thrives in these systems, hundreds or thousands must perish, by necessity.
The main problem with so-called solutions like Cap & Trade, in my opinion, is not even the possibility of large-scale corruption: it's the fact that it filters our perception of the environment and natural resources so that we start to see them as commodities to be used, abused and manipulated for purely financial purposes. The value of people, animals and the environment is then understood in terms of how they contribute to the accumulation of wealth. If they don't contribute or feed into the system, they are then perceived to have no value, and if they have no value, they're not worth saving or fighting for.
Anyway, the following animation with Annie Leonard beautifully captures some of the devilish details built into the proposal of Cap & Trade and gives us some food for thought.
For more, check out The Story of Stuff or The Story of Bottled Water.
- Second Law Silliness
Been working on the evolutionary biology track in my forthcoming philosophy of science textbook, Methods and Models, and in fairly quick order came across two instances of the argument against evolution based on entropy. It's probably worth making...
- Michael Sandel - The Moral Limits Of Markets
There are some things that money can't buy... for everything else... oh crap, there's no anything else! Over the past couple of decades, and without almost anyone noticing, we have turned from a market economy?one in which we use capital as a...
- Dan Ariely - The Truth About Dishonesty
If I were to ask you if you are an honest person, chances are that you'd say yes. Yet, if we look at the details of your everyday behavior with a magnifying glass, we'd most likely discover all sorts of ways in which you lie, cheat and steal,...
- Immigrants For Sale
One of the problems with a free market is that when the market is the ultimate decider of values (and doesn't have to answer to anyone), it always decides on the side of profits, regardless of the ethical impact such choices might entail. And when...
- Peter Singer - The Life You Can Save, In 3 Minutes
We all like to think that we are good, moral, compassionate people. Of course, that's always easier said than done. Often, we tend to consider ourselves good simply because we are not out doing evil stuff, but not doing evil doesn't make you good;...