ALB

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Viewing 15 posts - 691 through 705 (of 10,491 total)
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  • in reply to: The economic calculation debate #253459
    ALB
    Keymaster

    This article, which says that Hayek was right to say that you can’t plan the market, seems relevant to this discussion. But then socialists don’t want to plan the market but to organise the production and distribution of useful things and services directly for use, not to be sold on a market.

    Planning the road to nowhere

    in reply to: Loony toons. #253449
    ALB
    Keymaster

    It not what the scientists are proposing that is loony but the way that article has reported it. It would not been the animals themselves that would be stored there but their DNA.

    Since it has gone online-only the Indeoendent seems to have become a tabloid, with outrageous headlines designed to get clicks and boost what they can charge advertisers.

    But don’t you ever check these stories or are you just indulging in confirmation bias?

    Here’s a more sober report of what is proposed and why:

    https://theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/31/scientists-propose-lunar-biorepository-as-backup-for-life-on-earth

    in reply to: The Starmer Labour government #253442
    ALB
    Keymaster
    in reply to: The Starmer Labour government #253429
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Yes , interesting to note that the new Party of Business government’s kneejerk reaction to a “hole” in the capitalist state’s finances caused by the previous government’s “overspending” is to cut not only some benefits but even some infrastructure projects.

    A sign of what they will do (have to do) when their own plan to artificially boost growth fails and another hole appears.

    in reply to: One for the hive mind #253428
    ALB
    Keymaster

    There is a possible alternative explanation for the facts unveiled to “unequal exchange” (which implies that “the South” is not being paid a fair price for what it sells up the supply chain).

    It’s the theory that the whole world is a “planetary factory” in which the world working class produces, as a class, a pool of surplus value which firms and states compete to grab as much as they can. The firms and states of “the North” do better in this, channelling to themselves a disproportionate amount via interest on loans, charges for financial and legal services, patents and other “intellectual property” rights.

    in reply to: Chinese Tensions #253427
    ALB
    Keymaster

    This, from the German “Gegen Kapital und Nation” (Against Capital and the Nation) group, explains the relationship between China and the US quite well :

    https://critisticuffs.org/texts/usa-and-china

    in reply to: Survival at Stake. #253426
    ALB
    Keymaster

    That article is irrelevant to the point at issue as it is about the eating habits of early members of the species homo sapiens. In other words, after we had evolved.

    The claim is that meat-eating led to the evolution of modern humans from earlier hominid species — that eating meat provided key proteins for the development and functioning of bigger and more functional brains. In other words, before we evolved.

    Like all scientific conclusions (and I think this is the majority view) this is open to challenge but that article doesn’t challenge it, not was even intended to.

    Incidentally, the way that news website reports the findings is tendentious as it speaks of the humans concerned being “vegans”. I’ve not read the scientific paper but it seems to be arguing, not that they ate no meat, but more non-meat food than apparently some have thought. My guess is that it (the report not the research) was written by a vegan or vegetarian, a textbook example of bad journalism.

    in reply to: Survival at Stake. #253366
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Her argument (which is valid) about humans being animals more like many other animals than some care to admit works both ways. As some other animals have the “right” to eat other animals, why can’t we (especially as we wouldn’t have evolved if we hadn’t)? That wouldn’t mean that we can hunt other animals for pleasure or experiment on or be cruel to them as no other animals do this.

    In fact the argument that we shouldn’t kill other animals to eat is based on something that does distinguish us from them — that we can change our environment and have now reached the point where we have a choice not to eat other animals in that we could survive without doing this. Whether everybody should be forced to make this choice is another matter altogether. All that books like hers can do is to try to influence people to make that choice. Which is presumably why she wrote it.

    She may also, as WEZ suggests, be campaigning to ban hunting for pleasure, blood sports, animal experiments and cruelty to animals. But these are things meat-eaters can and do agree with stopping. Not sure about banning leather shoes but fashion accessories could be. She would only cross the line if she were to argue that eating other animals should be banned.

    in reply to: Freud and Marxism. #253342
    ALB
    Keymaster

    So you refer me to Adorno, Habermas and that lot. I’ve had a go at reading them but it’s torture, so can you summarize what their explanation is.

    As they were not and didn’t claim to be psychologists or psychiatrists, I imagine their approach will be philosophical or, with a bit of luck, historical or sociological.

    in reply to: Trump as president again? #253315
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Something on the Trump and the Republican Party’s economic programme.

    This bit suggests the might have stolen a plank from new Party of Business government here:

    “But Moore said he believes that Trump would be pragmatic in office and focus on the needs of business to drive economic growth.”

    https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/rncs-day-focus-economy-trumps-plans-111942382

    in reply to: Freud and Marxism. #253314
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Nobody has told us what Freud’s explanation of Auschwitz etc would have been. That humans are natural born killers? Or what?

    in reply to: Historical denialism. #253250
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Another moral panic, then?

    in reply to: Freud and Marxism. #253220
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Personally I don’t think the Marxian methodology is that scientific mainly because as Popper says you can’t create an experiment to disprove his theories.

    Yes, I too thought that that was over the top and certainly cannot be said to apply to all Marx’s (and our) theories even if Popper’s definition is assumed to be valid.

    Perhaps this could/should be the theme of a thread of its own?

    in reply to: Junior dictionary contents #253195
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Yes, they are known to our person on the ground there.

    in reply to: Junior dictionary contents #253190
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Something more positive — and more up to date — from Generation Z:

    https://www.theryse.org/muinty-stroud-s-youth-assembly

Viewing 15 posts - 691 through 705 (of 10,491 total)