What do you think of GATS?

[Silver Cheetah]

Originally posted by Moridin: too important a thread to let fall off the first page!

Hi Moridin - I'm going to be away for the next day or so without access to a computer (shock! horror!). However, I'm going to take some of your posts with me to answer on my train journey, as there seem to be quite a few points that I haven't yet replied to. Dedication or what, eh...

[WOLFGIR]

Well an interestng thought.. What shall be do when all resources are dried out?

I have actually thouhgt alittle about this. I got really amazed when i read some years ago about a new material that is very rare here on earth (don´t recall the name) but was very abundant on the moon and some other planets in this solar system. I think it was called helium3. But with very littel of this you could use coldgusion to het out more energy with a kg of that than you can with any kind of nuclear power plant and the fuel we use today. Also alot of asteroids and such are more or less minerals floating around.

The voyage into space seems like the resource-step we need to take with this consume friendly lifestyle of today.

lso another techinchal thing is the Nano technology. To break apart and reform materials with "programmable" atmoms. Someone can probably desribe these techniques much better than me. But that also is dependant on a numerous of other actions. The money to research into these technologies, and for a world that can survive mankind.. Also we need to make the technology free for all countries and get a resource level out here.

The environmetn we people are going to be stuck with, so it´s time to take care of it. Perhaps it is good if we drainearth, so we then understand how important environmentally good profucts are, cause when it is drained, all this society will collpapse.

OKI, sorry for the doomsday ending!

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Be vevvy qwiet..I´m hunting wabbits...
Wolfgirs lair
once-upon-a-paper

[Fljotsdale]

Wolfgir - don't be sorry for the 'doomsday ending' of your post. It could happen. Will we learn from it? Somehow, I think we will - but it will be FAR FAR too LATE.
We need to stand up and be counted NOW. Don't buy ANYTHING from the big corporates if you can possibly avoid it. It is only if they lose trade, as Silver Cheetah said, that they will look to what WE are showing them WE want. It is up to US, the ordinary guys, to to MAKE them rethink their policies. 'Cos if they don't change we have had it.
IMHO, of course!

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[Fljotsdale]

Bumping for the silver cat. Let's not let it drop off page one!

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[Moridin]

Does anybody else care about this issue?

I think the point is being driven home right here on the forum! The problem is that nobody feels like it is their problem. Let someone else change the world, I am too busy enjoying it (while secretly wishing that my life didn't suck so bad!).

Come on people this is not a closed debate! This is a topic that should be of interest to everyone!

Maybe everyone is reading this thread, but don't you have any opinions?

Oh well...off for a vacation now

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Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig
I've got to admit it's getting better, it's getting better all the time
Proud member of the Lecherous Hillbillies...oh no wait the Laughing Hyenas

[John D Harris]

Originally posted by Fljotsdale: John D - sometimes you are just plain weird! ROFL

SOMETIMES!!!! I represent that remark



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"the memories of a man in his old age,
are deeds of a man in his prime"

[John D Harris]

I'm kinda lost on this is G.A.T.S. a free trade treaty, or enviromental treaty? I think both can co-exist (no Miss Fljotsdale this capitalist pig is not going green )
Resources, what do we do with them? To one person they are to be used, another they are to be protected. Who gets to set the rules? Why do they get to set the rules? I'm honestly not trying to push one side or the other, just make us all think. We can't go back, so where does that leave us?

Now you see why I'm rooting for an allien invasion, not an allien invitation. A full scale kick in the colectvive human, seat of the pants.

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"the memories of a man in his old age,
are deeds of a man in his prime"

[Silver Cheetah]

Originally posted by WOLFGIR: Well an interestng thought.. What shall be do when all resources are dried out? Also another techinchal thing is the Nano technology. To break apart and reform materials with "programmable" atmoms. Someone can probably desribe these techniques much better than me. But that also is dependant on a numerous of other actions. The money to research into these technologies, and for a world that can survive mankind.. Also we need to make the technology free for all countries and get a resource level out here. The environmetn we people are going to be stuck with, so it´s time to take care of it. Perhaps it is good if we drainearth, so we then understand how important environmentally good profucts are, cause when it is drained, all this society will collpapse.

Yes indeed, what WILL we do when resources are getting scarce? Well, in many parts of the world, they already are. All over the globe, people are competing for resources. As the population grows, resources, generally speaking, dwindle. Like I've already said, it's not rocket science, and you don't need to be Einstein to work this one out. So, if it's so easy, why aren't governments doing more? Kyoto, as it was originally conceived, could have been a very good first step. To curb emissions, you must stop using fossil fuels with such gay abandon, and use more sustainable technologies in their stead. Kyoto, in its current form, well, that's another matter. Sad. More than sad, very very stupid and short sighted. (Sigh.)

We humans are so inventive, I am sure we could come up with better and better solutions to generate energy for ourselves, as you say. However, that alone is not going to do the trick (although it would solve several individual problems).

Inexaustable supplies of energy could actually damage us hugely, if you look at it from the viewpoint that we would be able to produce more and more products, generate more and more waste, use up more and more of the earth's OTHER resources (it isn't just fossil fuel energy we're going to be running out of, remember...) In our current rather unenlightened state, unlimited energy could actually be a disaster!

A lot of people will think this is heresey - however, I firmly believe we need to consume LESS - I'm talking especially about the rich industrial nations which consume a proportion of the world's resources which is out of all proportions to their populations. The only way this is going to happen is if YOU and ME start doing it!

When I say consume less, I mean don't buy crap you don't need. Downsize a bit! And like Fljotsdale says, buy local. Support your local farmers, craftsman, and manufacturers where possible. Exchange services with other people (that's big in my town. It's called LETS. No money changes hands. We service each other, if you'll excuse the expression. So maybe my friend gives me music lessons, and I write a little brochure about her services in exchange. And so on. This is getting more common all over.)

Cut down or out what you buy from big corporations. Start thinking about who produced what you buy (if you don't already.) And maybe reduce the amount of waste you generate, step by step.... Reduce (consumption), Re-use (be creative!), Recycle (well, we all know this one). One person alone can do nothing. Collectively, we can change the world.

Draining the earth - no, why? That's what's called the 'woe' path. With most situations in life, there's two ways to react. One is by taking the 'wisdom' path, - that's the easy way. Do something about it before it gets out of control. The 'woe' path is the one where things have got so bad that you have to do something really drastic (suffering a lot in the process) to fix things. Sometimes things get so bad you just can't fix them, and have to walk away. Only in humankind's case, there's nowhere to walk to.

On the subject of nano-technology. Go on then, convince me!

[Fljotsdale]

Silver Cheetah - I am deeply impressed. Go, girl!

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[Silver Cheetah]

Originally posted by Moridin: The problem with economics (and when everything else is stripped away, this is about economics) is that unlike other sciences, economics cannot be researched in a lab. Ideally we would be able to create a pseudo economic environment to ‘test’ our theories, but as of this time the sheer unpredictability of human nature makes this impossible.

Hey there Moridin, I’ve been promising to reply to some earlier points you made...

PLUS you said that in the world, we should produce goods where it is cheapest to produce them. I have tried to show the fallacy inherent in that statement with regard to the developing world. (See below....)

Ok, starting with economics... You say economics cannot be researched in a lab. Very true. However, I would have thought that when a theory had been tried out, and tried out and tried out again, and had failed to work every single time, the theory would be dropped??

It would seem logical, not to mention the most efficient way of going about things.

If you agree with me on that one, then I would really appreciate if you could explain why, in spite of the fact that NONE of the third world nations that have borrowed from the West (i.e. World Bank and IMF) have ever become solvent, Western economists continue to insist that lending them money to develop along Western lines is the way to go?

All sorts of reasons are given for developing nations’ inability to ‘get their sums right’, regenerate their economies and pay back their loans. The blame is always put on the nation in question, as being incompetent, naive, corrupt, or whatever. So it’s like the whole developing world is incompetent, naive and/or corrupt... That’s pretty damning. Isn’t it more likely that economists are talking through their respective posteriors? It’s worth a thought......

(By the way, the last set of figures I saw on national debt put America’s current debt at 6 trillion dollars. Now, there’s a great example to be setting. Britains is over £400 billion, Germany’s stands at over 600 billion deutchmarks. Americas debt is bigger than half the rest of the world’s put together!! So, seems like everyone’s in debt. The problem with developing countries is: most of them really struggle to pay it back. Even a small debt can make a huge difference to a country with a GDP less than half that of your average earning transnational.....

The Way I See It....

They way it seems to work is, - a country wants to develop, or is convinced by others that developing would be very beneficial to its GDP and its citizens. It borrows money, from the World Bank or whoever. Then it invests in the technology, services and whatnot (more often than not bought from, guess where, big companies in the industrial West). It starts growing/producing goods for export, including cash crops, which are generally grown at the expense of food crops for local use.

The export goods go out into the world market, where life is uncertain, and prices and demand fluctuate according to complex factors. The markets are not predictable. Their goods, obviously, compete with other export goods, many of them from other developing countries. Oftentimes, they can’t sell their goods for anything like what they need to, or what they’d expected to. So, much less money than originally envisaged....

Oh dear. Now they’ve got a big problem. Because not only do they have to import more than before to feed their people and pay for those imports (don’t forget they’re now producing less for the home market because energies are going into export.)- they’ve also got the interest on the loans to pay..... So if anything goes wrong, they’re screwed. It’s at this point they may have to get into taking out more loans to pay off the interest accrued on the original loans.

Developing countries in debt are vulnerable. They are easy meat for multinationals, who jump at the opportunity to snap up cheap land, cheap labour, cheap assets, cheap everything and anything that’s going. There’s generally less in the way of regulations limiting what they can and can’t do in a developing country. Indebted developing countries are rather attractive to a transnational with an eye to the main chance.... - Ooh, it says, what a lovely place to set up a factory, or a production plant, or whatever it might be. Oodles of opportunity here!

And so they set up whatever it is and get hard to work producing whatever it might be, and then they ship the end product, made by cheap labour who’ll work for peanuts often in lousy conditions – and where do they ship it? Well, very often, they ship it right to your door and mine. (Because their production costs are so low, those extra bucks that have to be spent on transport can easily be absorbed.)

And so the products turn up on our turf, undercutting local prices and damaging our home markets. This causes big problems to producers in our country, who can’t compete. That doesn’t mean, by the way, that WE are going to be able to buy the product at a price that reflects its true cost (although you will certainly get it cheap enough so that its an attractive proposition to buy - in preference to local produce, say. The multinationals will pocket the rest, and up go their profits once more. Sorted!

In Europe and the UK, many farmers can’t compete with cheap produce from abroad. (They complain about it constantly...) Lots of companies and producers go out of business, for just this reason. So, who is benefitting here? Is it the third world countries? No way, José. McCorp TNC is doing ok, though. (And with GATS, he’ll do even better! Services up for grabs as well as goods ...... It’s getting better, it’s getting better all the time! Indeed it is, for some....)

Debt actually promotes growth in global trade, as debtor nations MUST export more than they import, to pay the interest on their loans. This is a huge cause of poverty in developing countries, - as they divert more and more of their land, labour and resources generally to producing goods for export. And in Europe, to take an example, the farmers that cannot compete with cheap produce from abroad have to be subsidised by the government (ie. using my taxes!!!!) so that we can eat food produced by poor nations at the expense of their own people who would do far better to feed their own people before worrying about exports.

This is globalisation, and in my view, it is fatally flawed. The environmental costs of this way of trading are incalculable. The same foods are flown and shipped around the world, often arriving at their destination tasteless, with little or any nutritional value, having used (as I made the point earlier) totally unnecessary amounts of fuel to get there. (I see this scenario where apples from America arrive in England, as a planeload of English apples take off for the US). You get my drift, I’m sure. This IS what is happening ith all sorts of products, food and non food.

**** Another point re the environment – desperate countries cannot AFFORD to care too much about their local environment. If they need money to pay their debts and feed their people, yes, they’ll let big logging companies in to cut down their rainforest, of course they will. They need to eat. They don’t have the luxury of deciding whether to save this bit of resource or that. (To their loss, and ours.)

Anyway, as usual, there’s more I could say, but enough already!!!)

(Hey, Fljotsdale, Yorick, Wolfgir, - I’m hoping you’ll chip in, please do, whilst Moridin’s on his vacation! I’m a newbie and must be encouraged!!