After the watching the Greta Thunberg UN speech (all four minutes), I came to two observations:
1. It's funny how she came to condemn capitalism in the midst of this speech. It was capitalism that built the boat that brought her to New York City (in fact, a lot of capitalism). It was capitalism that provided wealth to her mother and father, to be at the positions of life that they are today. So you come to this complaint of hers over capitalism....if it's carved up enough and dismantled to some degree....all the trillions required to repair things to the degree she believes....WILL NOT exist.
Yes, that's the shocker. If capitalism now fails or some serious depression starts up, then the money for all these fantastic requirements will never exist, and we are truly doomed.
So maybe it's just me.....but if you hold dad's credit card to accomplish something....don't go and cut it up before using it. You might not want to whine over the dad's money or the stupid credit card.
2. I read through twenty-odd commentaries over the UN event from the various news groups and this odd word popped....pedophrasty.
It's not a word that I'd ever seen. So I had to go and look it up.
The best description is....you've got this public argument brewing, and some guy decides that he's going to go use juveniles (kids) to win the discussion. So you make up this agenda and argument.....with kids either arguing it for you or part of the background. You'd (the opposition) like to argue the points, stating some logical opposition....but if you go and do this....you look anti-juvenile or like some five-star asshole.
You can do this by having a briefing or graphic presentation....where kids are in the pictures (preferably starving or looking like welfare products). Or you can have the kids memorize Bible-verses to stake out the wonderful logic of Moses. Or you can bring on some Joan-of-Arc character to talk about the suffering of the masses.
The sad thing about this pedophrasty argument situation....roughly half of people recognize this.....with maybe a quarter of this group laughing over the tactic used, and the juvenile kid stuck with the save-mankind purpose in life.
What happens now? The Nobel Peace Prize people have their mission....getting Greta to the last big hurdle. My general belief is that Greta will have an emotional collapse episode within two years as she comes to realize that no nation is willing to spend trillions to save the world.
5 comments:
You could quite conveniently swap the word 'slavery' for capitalism. There's really been no free market capitalism, in which there wasn't an exploited class. Stop pretending that there's no blood on it's hands. There's just as much as socialism. Just because we've outsourced our slavery, that's not an excuse.
You're playing the identity politics game by blaming her for factors beyond her control. She wasn't consulted about where and when she'd be born, and who her parents would be. The scarier thing is having paedophile enablers such as Australia's Andrew Bolt attacking her. That's quite creepy.
Also, you never answered what science degree you hold. Which one, and from what university? You listed about nine subjects, but I'm guessing you were thinking high school, or middle school. Not quite sure how it works in the US.
Also, what's the logical counter argument that everyone's afraid to say because she's a child?
Two bachelors with majors and minors in each, with three associate degrees. Toss in around 800-plus man-hours in lectures, weekend seminars, etc (between 1978 and 2013)...which had nothing to do with university credits. And over the past five years (since being retired)...around 80 books read, and umpteen hours of video lectures on financial management, economics and international affairs. Who paid for 200-odd semester hours of college...partly myself, and the rest via military tuition assistance. Full-time student?
No...never, I was always the part-time student doing the classes when I had work schedules that fitted well or good shift hours. Course, that was when it was still reasonable on cost (not like it is today).
I had time to read, study, and research. Along the way, I took a couple of CLEP tests, passing, and got 'free' credits. Most of my yearly travels these days are tied into historical episodes and cultural study.
Your intellectual game isn't worth the time.
As for Greta, look around....no one is going to front trillions of dollars or Euro (not the US, the UK, Japan, China or even Germany). They weren't buying into this before she came along, and they won't buy into this massive 'bill' at this point with her talk.
As for the counter argument, it basically starts with the problems listed (like on an Excel sheet) and the solutions listed with accurate (not fantasy) cost patterns. To just say x-solution requires Germany to go spend 800-billion Euro...it ought to trigger you to ask why it's such a nice round number. Then you go and associate the solution patterns to pay-back and pain-to-be-suffered.
A great example here....if you go and double the capacity of German railways over the next decade...the pay-back question is this...will ridership actually double? If you go and accomplish this, and only get 10 to 20 percent more people to ride, then the value of pay-back is not worth discussing. Your comeback would be....well, we will just 'force' them to accept public transportation. Their comeback? Well...lets have an election and find alternate parties to undo the forceful nature of this. You already invested the train money, and could end up with most of this wasted...rather than accomplishing anything.
A good example right now is the electric car business. All of the major European brands have models ready to sell. The environmental folks ought to be tremendously happy. Billions invested by BMW, Mercedes, etc....to produce and sell them. So...why aren't people massively buying them? The sales pitch isn't working...the charge-time discussion is a problem...and folks suspect that electrical rates will go up and make the car a problem in terms of cost. You go over to the Frankfurt car show from earlier in the month, and find massive criticism by the environmentalists (rightly so on diesel car woes) but the car companies are peeved because they've put a lot of effort into electric cars and getting no respect back via their money or investment.
On Greta, you don't want to engage or plan this in some highly charged-up state of mind. Otherwise, you end up with massive mistakes and the public quickly loses confidence in your charm, and decision-making.
That Swiss foundation study done this year to suggest that a great deal of the CO2 issue could be resolved with massive reforestation? They aren't saying all of the problems could be resolved, but the bulk could be. The cost factor? Way below the trillions game. Odds that this suggestion will be picked up? Zero. This leads some people to ask if this is more about taxing the heck out of business and consumers....rather than fixing an actual problem.
If you erase out an entire industry (like Germany is doing with the coal people and coal-fired plants), you have to provide a massive amount of training money and capital money in those regions. There's forty billion Euro that has to flow into those three regions until 2038. It's signed and done....being part of the budget planning process. What happens after 2038? It's possible that half of the people don't have a job, and another 20-year plan has to occur, with another 10-billion Euro bill given to the German tax-payers. Lets be honest, no one has done anything like this before and it's possible that you end up with an electrical shortage on the grid (don't worry, the French nuke plants will still sell them power) and coal-miners-turned-code writers didn't generate jobs like people think.
Off the top of my head....other than Joan of Arc, and Stephen of Cloyes (1212), that's about the only two juveniles that did something remarkable (oddly, both were French) and captured the imagination of the public....achieving success. Both led the public. Both died before they were 20.
I'm guessing from the long winded evasion that the answer is no, you don't have a science degree. But that's cool, we've all figured that out by now.
Judging by your defensiveness, you're not interested in having your opinions challenged. So all the best.
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