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LEO THE WISE 1 year, 8 months ago.
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Hey cool…I’m one of those plant operators that gets to spend a lot of my day sitting in a heated/air conditioned office because of that equipment. I can say this…the equipment you talk about…it certainly is nice to have but it will never replace people on the job no matter how good it gets. The simple reason why is these plants are designed on having redundant safety features. Maybe you have a valve with an air operator and a motor operator…what do you do if you lose air and power? Simple…someone goes and takes local manual control. Even if we theoretically had a robot that could get to and operate any valve in the plant that was smart enough to maneuver around common obstacles, like scaffolding, and was smart enough to find alternate paths in the even of a catastrophic failure of some sort that maybe damaged piping and walls, these robots still wouldn’t replace humans, they would just become an additional safety layer.
That’s great! I used to do Operations, we still had to handle truck loading/unloading (managing 3″ hoses was good exercise!), and climbing up ladders and under tank skirts to get at manual ball and gate valves, check for leaks, etc. So I got some exercise that way — it was batch processes, so a bit more labor intensive than the continuous process plant I work for now. Even here, operators have to get out in the plant quite a bit for startup/shutdown, or when anything goes wrong. And of course, to load/unload tankers, railcars, etc. I love manufacturing. It’s not the most lucrative career choice, that’s for damn sure, but you actually MAKE something you can touch (or pour on the ground, in my case, haha).
I’ve been on vacation the last week, but had to go into the plant a couple times to fix things, even with a completely ‘automated’ plant you still have a significant maintenance staff to lubricate the equipment, replace worn rotating machinery, mechanical seals (in our industry with so many pumps), etc.
The tanker truck drivers may eventually face potential replacement with machines, especially on long-haul interstates. But I think even that is many years away — trusting a machine to drive a big rig hauling flammable or hazardous materials.. Replacement of an operator or mechanic would require a level of artificial intelligence and robotics that seems far off to me — a conscious machine capable of learning/self-programming.
I agree man…I’m sure we’ll see more use of robots in our life time for performing basic and repetitive tasks, but the point that we’ll be seeing self aware, self thinking robots capable of learning and understanding and not just being coded to respond to certain things in a certain way isn’t going to happen until long after I’m dead, so I’m not going to worry about it. The human race will be colonizing other galaxies before we see true AI and not just binary code and a random number generator putting on a good show responding to pre-set conditions.
Yes, and we already use machine to augment our abilities; just as I get on a forklift to move a heavy pallet, or get in my car to travel at 10 times the speed I could run. I think machines are great at heuristics — when I search for something on Google, it autocompletes it. But that isn’t AI to me; it’s just querying a large database to find the well-trodden paths and suggesting them to me. Pattern recognition (visual face recognition, text-to-speech, etc) has advanced tremendously. But we still don’t have artificial consciousness and self-learning. We don’t have a generalized AI that we simply send to driver’s ed school and it can learn to drive a vehicle. Instead, we have programs that can do one task (e.g. play chess). In that case, it’s a math problem well suited to a computer, that can consider hundreds of moves ahead and consult a database of all significant past games. But can that ‘AI’ learn how to play poker on its own with no programming? Or, even write a computer program, given the vague human ‘requirements’ statements? No, but billions are being spent on AI R&D so there will be advancement.
Beer writes: Yup…I work at a nuke.
That’s awesome, I’ve always wanted to work at one, but none near me! I’ve always been fascinated by the technology, PWR’s, BWR’s, etc since I was younger.
It seems it’s always a big bulls~~~ political battle to get a license extended. Out of curiosity, have they upgraded your plant to modern digital control systems, or does it still use 1960’s pneumatic controllers? You guys get lots of money for training and maintenance.
At present natural gas from fracking is cheap and abundant, but it will eventually be expended. Nuclear seems a good choice to me. You have some high-level waste that you can vitrify, and the tailings from mining the ore. I think it’s pathetic that the National Waste Repository, for which nuclear plants have paid billions over decades, hasn’t even been built yet due to politics (Yucca mountain). Since there is no national waste repository, do you store the old fuel rods on site in the ‘temporary’ pools or have some been moved to dry cask storage after a few decades?
I think industry needs to come up with standardized design/safety systems, for, say, 1,000 MW, 2000 MW, etc plants that are already ‘pre-approved’ designs, that would help a great deal rather than each plant be different. And every five years issue approved ‘updates’. I’m against subsidies. The public is poorly educated on nuclear plants & doesn’t realize how many people are killed in coal mines and in conventional electrical generation vs how few killed in nuclear industry.
Yes, natural gas is especially good for peaking/air conditioning loads, my objection to it is for continuous use — long-term, it would be much better to compress NG and use it for vehicles, and use it for building heat, and use nuke plants for electricity.
That’s an excellent point, Beer, and this is just another indicator that climate change and “carbon footprints” aren’t the real agenda. If it were really a scientific problem, they could seek a scientific solution instead of a political “solution”. After all, taxes don’t actually decrease the amount of carbon in the atmosphere at all. What it is really about is replacing the economic, political, ecological, sociological, and cultural/scientific functions of war, as outlined in “The Report from Iron Mountain”.
I agree about the carbon taxes being worthless, they are nothing more but an excuse for government to take a little more, but while I was in college, I talked to plenty of brainless idiots who thought carbon taxes were the path to a better future. Its really just another example of a stupid population voting for s~~~ candidates…its not like we don’t have plenty of choices to vote for who don’t want anything to do with carbon taxes.
It seems it’s always a big bulls~~~ political battle to get a license extended. Out of curiosity, have they upgraded your plant to modern digital control systems, or does it still use 1960’s pneumatic controllers? You guys get lots of money for training and maintenance.
They haven’t overhauled the entire plant, but they are constantly updating things. Its pretty interesting to see…some of the instrumentation and controllers are still original to the plant and others are the latest technology that just got put in within the last few months. Its like they run off of an if its not broke, don’t fix it policy. If what they have in place has been working reliably for decades in our plant and others, why replace it?
At present natural gas from fracking is cheap and abundant, but it will eventually be expended. Nuclear seems a good choice to me. You have some high-level waste that you can vitrify, and the tailings from mining the ore. I think it’s pathetic that the National Waste Repository, for which nuclear plants have paid billions over decades, hasn’t even been built yet due to politics (Yucca mountain). Since there is no national waste repository, do you store the old fuel rods on site in the ‘temporary’ pools or have some been moved to dry cask storage after a few decades?
Both…they get stored in pools for a number of years to decay, and ultimately end up transferred to dry cask storage. It really just boils down to the not in my back yard mentality as far as a central facility goes…but in the end now we have to store spent fuel all over the place instead of just parking it out in the middle of the desert at one central storage location. Its a joke…but what can I say…the same morons who think a carbon tax will magically solve anything think they are somehow doing good by blocking a central storage facility.
I think industry needs to come up with standardized design/safety systems, for, say, 1,000 MW, 2000 MW, etc plants that are already ‘pre-approved’ designs, that would help a great deal rather than each plant be different. And every five years issue approved ‘updates’. I’m against subsidies. The public is poorly educated on nuclear plants & doesn’t realize how many people are killed in coal mines and in conventional electrical generation vs how few killed in nuclear industry.
Check out the Westinghouse AP 1000s. Sad thing is over the next 20-30 years China is going to be benefiting from this technology more than us.
Yes, natural gas is especially good for peaking/air conditioning loads, my objection to it is for continuous use — long-term, it would be much better to compress NG and use it for vehicles, and use it for building heat, and use nuke plants for electricity.
I always just laugh at the morons who drive an electric car to a nuke protest thinking they are saving the world, then they go home and plug into a socket getting juice from a coal plant lol. There really is no reason we can’t cut our emissions down to less than half of what they are today without crippling our economy or raising taxes over the next 10-20 years yet the same idiots who want to cry the loudest about climate change are the same ones blocking progress.
Even if we could get solar up to the point that its producing 90% of our electricity…what are we going to do put massive batteries in every house to store energy for night time and days when the weather isn’t cooperating? What’s going to happen when every house has thousands of pounds worth of battery acid in it that could very easily leak, eat through the foundation, and get into the ground water? The average person doesn’t even maintain their car properly and its generally pretty apparent when something is not quite right or needs a little maintenance with your car…I could only imagine how much worse of a job they’d do monitoring and maintaining a large battery system in their basement….not to mention what does a battery for an electric car cost…several thousand dollars with a limited life span? Multiply that many times to get a battery large enough to power a house for a couple days…its just nowhere close to a viable option.
But again…it boils down to someone under the illusion that a couple solar panels on their roof will give them a limitless supply of on demand energy gets the same vote as someone who understands how things work. I don’t think its a conspiracy that big oil is blocking progress or the elites are holding us down…I think its more stupid clueless people voting for s~~~ candidates are forcing us all to shoot ourselves in the foot and they can’t understand why much progress isn’t being made.
Survivor: Fiat currency naturally elicits a discussion of the role government should play in the economy, and obviously, what, if any, role the Fed should play. I ultimately would like to see the Fed abolished, and I would say that puts me in the extreme minority. Even so, I don’t regard it as a ‘linchpin’ of control.
To me, the ‘linchpin’, if there is one, is individuals not taking responsibility for their actions.
This, then fosters the idea that government should be the first recourse to solve problems, rather than individuals. That is, should voluntary associations and individuals remedy problems, or government? Should we save for our own retirement, or be forced to participate in the social security ponzi scheme? Should medical insurance be private or public? Should people adopt radical individualism as a life philosophy, where they do whatever they want so long as it harms no others, or be lemmings?
From a young age, we are socialized into the ‘big government’ solutions mentality by the public schools, and typically, parents, who are ‘Democrats’ or ‘Republicans’, both believing in big government.
I’m not sure why you keep bringing up ‘fascism’; we don’t have that sort of authoritarianism and right-wing nationalism that defines it in the US; we have more of what I would describe as democratic socialism lite, or professional economists used to call a ‘mixed economy’.
Beer: I read a bit about the AP 1000, the flywheel to keep the cooling pump running is ingenious, the passive safety system is fabulous. I asked about pneumatic controllers mainly because they’ve given me grief in petrochemical plants with reliability.
Photovoltaic (PV) solar and alternative energy, in my State, are MANDATED by the Public Utilities Commission, i.e. the electrical utilities are required to produce a certain percentage of electricity through alternative energy, and the percent is bumped up on a schedule every couple years with over 12% required by 2027 and, get this, a MANDATED 0.5% from solar specifically! So they’ve built PV solar farms at exorbitant cost and jacked up everybody’s rates… Wind isn’t so bad but PV solar is insanity! And panel installation is subsidized for small rooftop installations all over the world. Asanine from an economic and technical standpoint. But it’s good PR as the general public then believes these companies are ‘green’. Anybody else, who knows anything about electricity generation, knows PV solar is the worst choice per kW-hr.
Fascism’s definition, per Merriam Webster:
often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control <early instances of army fascism and brutality — J. W. Aldridge>
So, in America, we don’t have the dictator. The President is constrained by the Congress and Courts. He and his predecessors occasionally slip in some executive orders, but even those, can and have been challenged and overturned by the courts. And the President is still elected for a fixed term. So Corporatism is a more accurate term. We also don’t have the Nationalism (exalting the nation). Nor do we have forcible suppression of political opposition. We don’t have severe regimentation, either, in my opinion — you aren’t told where to work, and government doesn’t define production goals, tell you where you must live and work, etc. So calling America fascist is simply false by definition.
How is individual irresponsibility a lynchpin of control? I don’t think you know what control means.
You’re just spouting nonsense now.
Easy. Individuals acting irresponsibly creates the ‘problem’. Government is always the ‘solution’ if people don’t believe in individual accountability. Government grows, with each new ‘solution’, and with it, its control over economic and civil liberties. Eventually, government is 40% of GDP.
The public is being lied to about all kinds of things, green solutions as you point out, But still all you do is blame them.
You are compulsively only able to blame victims. What’s wrong with you?
The public need to educate themselves. Half the jackasses writing stories about ‘green’ energy don’t even know the difference between a BTU and a Watt. A lot of it has to do with getting votes and looking good. A candidate who is ‘Green’ and says they’re going to ‘do something’ about global warming, is more credible to the Average Joe than somebody like me or Beer who says, ‘WHOA, photovoltaic solar is stupid from a technical and economic standpoint with present technology; look at what this s~~~ costs per kW-hr! Let’s build more nuclear power plants.’
Facism is the government and business combining together to magnify their power. And fiat currency is ultimately authoritarian. You canot even acknowledge that private prisons are fascist. You are just unwilling to use appropriate language, and seem to be unable to understand what fascism is.
Cartelization is what you are describing, that was one aspect of Benito Mussolini’s policies, but understand, what that term means, is setting prices and government control of the economy to an extent we do not have here. Basically, the State decided how many competitors firms could have, and who they would be, so that you had state-enforced oligarchies.
Private prisons are no more fascist than publicly operated prisons. I suppose one COULD argue all prisons are fascist institutions, in so far as they have a dictator (the warden), though he still operates within rules. There is regimentation. Opposition is allowed to an extent (through courts, hunger strikes, peaceful organizations of prisoners, etc). There is no exaltation of nation or race directed by the Warden. Since prisons mostly operate under rule of law, I would say they are not fascist institutions.
And you are slowly starting to acknowledge that the green bulls~~~ is to separate people from the land, but you say ” i don’t want it to be mandatory, but the smaller commutes will be nice” way to stick up for things.
The people were separated from the land gradually, when agriculture became intensive — yields shot up with each new development — the tractor — fertilizer — pesticides — GM crops — etc.
Most choices have pros and cons. I merely pointed some of them out. Living in an urban area has some pluses and some minuses in my view.
Big government is big business too, for government contractors, like defense contractors, and prison operations, a slew of other things. Our money is stolen by the government and handed over to private corporations without our consent, for services that are not in our best interest.
Please get honest and quit being a hack. You’re starting to look stupid.
Whether it’s stolen or not, is debatable. We elected the jackasses repeatedly, after all, and gave them the mandate to steal it or borrow it, in ever larger percentages of National economic output. Hence, the need to educate the population. I don’t know as though I’d say big government is big business, but it certainly determines the fate of the defense contractors, since we generally don’t allow exports. I do agree about the corruption of the ‘military-industrial complex’ Dwight Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address in 1961. Personally, I prefer the more modern term, ‘military-industrial-congressional complex’. Clearly, a system in which Congress approves weapons systems the military branches don’t even want, due to receiving large amounts of campaign contributions and God knows what else, is seriously broken. What deserves more media coverage, that or a school shooting you can do nothing about?
The general public doesn’t give a s~~~ about defense contracting, so school shootings, dramatic affairs, will receive 1000 times the media coverage.
Survivor writes: And I don’t believe in insurance. All insurance is a fear based scam. Everything should be fee for service at the time. Prices will adjust. Insurance f~~~s up markets big time, but it’s perfect for parasites.
In my view, it is a way for businesses and individuals to manage risks. Let’s say there is a 5% risk of crop failure. A farmer can purchase crop insurance to even out his income year-to-year. A manufacturing company can get a policy on death & dismemberment, so in the unlikely event someone is severely injured, the company can survive financially.
Insurance DOES mess up (distort) markets, but ONLY when it is MANDATED by government, or government acts in other ways to distort markets — setting rates, requiring insurance, etc.
I suppose you think Obamacare is “left wing”. The truth is it’s also pure fascism. A law that you have to buy a certain product? That’s a corporate wet dream. And the goverment is just as much to blame.
It’s little different than the law stating I must carry auto insurance. Or a company carry workman’s comp insurance. Or that I must pay into a ‘retirement’ ‘insurance’ plan called social security. And of course, buying public education — we must pay property taxes, directly as a property owner, or indirectly in our apartment rents. Or that I MUST buy electricity, natural gas, telephone service, etc from the ONLY company or companies the government selects. Even in de-regulated markets, one still pays a HUGE ‘transmission’ fee, 99% of which has already been paid for by the government-granted monopoly of the past (maintenance is minimal). So there are many markets where government has wrongfully limited competition, essentially forcing us to buy a product for an essential service with no competitors. Again, we’re getting back to individual responsibility vs government solutions.
The Affordable Health Care Act was passed by a representative body, not a dictator, so not fascist. I’d describe it more as a ‘stepping stone’ to socialized medicine or a single-payer system. I oppose it on grounds of economic and personal freedom.
I suppose you think feminism is “left wing” too. But the solution to the pay gap will be fixing salaries across the board, again, corporate wet dream.
Most feminists are left leaning politically; there are radical individualist feminists like Wendy McElroy. She refutes rape culture and believes in equal rights not equal outcomes. Needless to say, she isn’t very popular.
The pay gap is a non-existent problem. Fixing it by paying women more, will either result in fewer women in the workplace (since presumably, most women are paid their market value) OR if quotas are instituted so they can’t be fired, higher labor costs for business and a lower efficiency. ANYthing that raises costs is definitely NOT a ‘corporate wet dream’, so I’d disagree with that one.
I asked about pneumatic controllers mainly because they’ve given me grief in petrochemical plants with reliability.
We don’t have many big issues with them because we have so many layers of safety features. We normally power our compressors with energy right from our main turbine when our system is online, but if we go offline, we can also power them from our backup diesels, from the other unit on our site, we can pull power from the grid, we have an offsite storage facility built to withstand floods and earthquakes and King Kong jumping on it that houses all kinds of backup generators and diesel powered compressors if we need them, we have contracts with some local businesses to bring emergency equipment in if needed, and we have a regional facility in Memphis to fly stuff in if needed.
A lot of the air valves are going to fail to a safe condition as well…so if we did lose air they’d all fail in the alignment we want to safely shut the plant down. Considering its just air pushing a diaphragm one way or the other its a pretty safe bet its going to fail as expected. Some of them also have accumulators on them, so even if we do lose air we can still stroke them a few times with the air in the accumulators.
If all else fails you can always manually bleed one if needed or there is generally some sort of manual controller, isolation, or bypass, or its one of multiple identical valves so we just realign to the others. If we do just have a bad valve its generally not a big deal because of that, just do what we need to operate around it and the valve team usually gets things fixed quick.
Its pretty insane how they design nukes…we’ll have a pump we need 1 of to run the plant, so they’ll put 3 in lol. We have very few issues with equipment being unusable because of that, and worst case scenario we just trip the plant and only have to worry about decay heat.
There’s no point in continuing, Frank. Survivor has a big heart and wonderful intentions but he refuses to actually learn and understand the difference between a libertarian, and a fascist. His mind is made up; as far as he is concerned they are the same, regardless of what the definitions or doctrines of the ideologies define them as. You are correct that the public needs education about a variety of things, unfortunately no one is stepping up to the plate to teach them. People can only learn if someone else provides the knowledge. Also, the person providing the knowledge has to be an honest, reliable source that isn’t twisting the facts in order to influence the perspective of the learner for political gain. Leadership is dead. A real leader develops the followers to their maximum potential. They don’t exist anymore. “Leaders” now, think it consists of dominance, criticism, and suppressing the individual to make good “use” of them. People DO need education, and they need teachers. Unfortunately, there are none to be found, and now that it takes a two person household income to live, the fact is that most people simply don’t have time to sit down and learn these things from unreliable sources and still be an expert in their particular field of division of labor. Poor people have even less a chance. We have people out there working 2 or 3 minimum wage jobs who barely get any sleep. Individuals make bad choices, yes. Especially ones with horrible parents, or even worse, NO parents. People do not “choose” to be raised by a single mother who was an orphan that lived on the street. None the less, the system is, in fact, engineered to perpetuate the wealth of the rich, as well as the poverty of the poor. Even the simplest of minds can see that people get paid just for having money, and that people get fined/punished/jailed for not having any. The poor are prevented from acquiring education via financial constraints. The cost of a seriously credible college is ridiculous, and has risen by 1100% since the 60’s. The “Voice and Exit” program consists of rich millionaires who see this exploitation and problems and intend to shut them down. Recently, even billionaire Nick Hanauer acknowledged that it’s a system of indentured servitude, and set his self against it. The ones who do chance going to college, because society requires it for financial independence via access to a good paying job, often end up with a debt that soaks up the majority of what they make when they get hired. If they don’t pay it, they get their wages garnished. Likewise, it’s even worse if they never get hired at all. Yes, human beings make stupid choices. Yes, some human beings have no one teaching them properly. However, in the old world they could go to a piece of land, build their own house with their own labor, and live off the land without paying anyone anything, and then even after a while possibly begin producing some surplus to take to market Therefore if “we”, involuntary collectivists are going to be forced to play a game rigged to disadvantage us with rules created before we were born, and we have no say in removing the disadvantage, then honestly either someone has to step up to a leadership position and teach people at the entry level job (like the old days), or people need to be provided the capability to opt out by simply going on their own to an area where no one lives so that they can take care of themselves while not being anyone else’s expenditure. Independence.
Summary: Humans make mistakes, and the ruling class fosters and exploits those, poisoning people and then selling them the antidote. The system is involuntary, and anyone attempting to opt out is met with coercion and contempt by society. Government manufactures it’s illusion of legitimacy by solving problems that it creates.
Would you like an actual CONFESSION by the ruling class?? Here it is:
“For the first time in all of human history, mankind is politically awakened. That’s a total new reality..total new reality. It has not been so for most of human history, until the last one hundred years.. and in of course in the last one hundred years, the whole WORLD has become politically awakened, and no matter where you go, politics is a matter of social engagement, and most people know what is generally going on, generally going on in the world and are consciously aware of global inequities, inequalities, LACK OF RESPECT, EXPLOITATION. Mankind is now politically awake and staring. -Zbigniew Brzezinski
So, while there are individuals that are somewhat to blame for their own misery, let’s not pretend that the involuntary game isn’t at all responsible for creating a disadvantage for poor people, and an advantage for the wealthy ones. Let’s not pretend that the “leaders” have no culpability in creating the slavery and serfdom that we experience today. They are telling you THEMSELVES that they are culpable. I campaign not for the redistribution of wealth, but the *removal* of legislation and rules of the game that intentionally disadvantage the poor. I already acknowledged several times that I do not regard people who built their businesses from the ground up with honest labor as the enemy. All that I am really asking of anyone, is to consider these facts. Being flawed is not an option for humans. Human beings will be flawed, *that* is not a choice. Creating a system that punishes humans for being human, threatening violence or famine should they make a mistake, is evil. Man isn’t inherently evil; the system is.
All Surivor is really asking, and all that *I* am asking, is for people to acknowledge that the ruling class is *also* responsible for manufacturing poverty, because they *are*. That’s precisely the reason that they criminalized subsistence, or otherwise artificed a monetary cost to it (which doesn’t exist in nature; animals do not pay to exist.), and precisely why they pay for ghetto mother babies. They know what they are incentivizing; the creation of more serfs. “We need more serfs, create more poverty, or import impoverished people. Yes yes, more immigrants please.”
It’s useful to use precise language when discussing politics, so everyone understands you. Fascism has not just a nationalist component, but also, an authoritarian one. We still have democracy and rule of law, albeit a somewhat dysfunctional democracy, due to a dysfunctional electorate.
In some ways, the decline of Nationalism is a good thing; extreme nationalism tends to promote war and pogroms against minorities. The terms communism, socialism, and fascism, are often mis-used making for a confusing discourse.
I agree with you that we have a ‘military-industrial-congressional’ complex AND others of similar ilk
‘They’ didn’t build us up in the 1940’s. Primarily, technology did. In 1900, 43% of income was spent on food; in 1950, it was 30%, and finally, in 2000, 13%. The decrease wasn’t due to the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergers or Jewish Bankers; rather it was due to more mundane innovations, such as the Tractor, pesticides, and herbicides. Yield increased greatly. We didn’t need as many farmers. Farmers moved to urban areas for better job opportunities. No one commanded them to do so. Demographics also plays a role; as the population grows in median age, and we have fewer children, we can expect decreased economic growth rates.
THIS, not environmental laws, is why we had a nation of 90% farmers in 1790, down to around 2.5% in the 1990’s. The percent of the population engaged in subsistence farming, has dropped with each new technological innovation, with the resulting increased productivity and decreased labor requirements and increased bushels per acre. I’ve beat the horse to death on this; subsistence agriculture is for the rural areas, where land is cheap. Zoning has little impact there. Property taxes are a cost, but not a huge one.
Many economic choices comprise trade-offs. Free trade in textiles? Well, apparel comprised 14% of spending in 1900, 12% in 1950, and only 4% in 2000. Housing has gone up from 22 to 33% of average spending in the last century, but, bear in mind, 80% rented in 1900; in 2003, 60% of families owned their own homes.
Individual responsibility, and moreover, the philosophy of individualism, is against the idea of redistribution and control. It is difficult to control radical individualists, because they closely guard their civil and economic freedoms, and they don’t want to reduce others’ liberties either. So it’s difficult to cajole such individuals into, say, a War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Crime, War on Iraq, War on Terror (and civil rights), or any other ‘Command and Control’ schemes.
‘Corporate Worship’? I know many entrepreneurs, and one-man show businesspeople. I jokingly refer to corporations as ‘the plantation’, where one lives in a regimented fashion, reporting to work at a fixed time and leaving at a fixed time, in a hierarchical structure where the worst Machiavelli is in charge of everybody. But some of us make a voluntary choice to work for such entities, based on the benefits outweighing the costs. Others choose to be independent contractors or self-employed.
People can only learn if someone else provides the knowledge. Also, the person providing the knowledge has to be an honest, reliable source that isn’t twisting the facts in order to influence the perspective of the learner for political gain. Leadership is dead. A real leader develops the followers to their maximum potential. They don’t exist anymore.
I consider myself honest, but I’d say everyone tends to twist the facts; I tend to portray libertarianism and small government in a positive light, because those are my beliefs, for instance.
I think it’s good to read divergent views too, And not to get all your news and information from one source, or sources with only one political bias.
I’d agree with you, most of our leaders aren’t very inspiring.
It takes a two person household income to live, the fact is that most people simply don’t have time to sit down and learn these things from unreliable sources and still be an expert in their particular field of division of labor. Poor people have even less a chance. We have people out there working 2 or 3 minimum wage jobs who barely get any sleep. Individuals make bad choices, yes. Especially ones with horrible parents, or even worse, NO parents. People do not “choose” to be raised by a single mother who was an orphan that lived on the street. None the less, the system is, in fact, engineered to perpetuate the wealth of the rich, as well as the poverty of the poor. Even the simplest of minds can see that people get paid just for having money, and that people get fined/punished/jailed for not having any. The poor are prevented from acquiring education via financial constraints. The cost of a seriously credible college is ridiculous, and has risen by 1100% since the 60’s.
I’ve known many tradcons in rural areas that did fine with one male breadwinner, typically Christians. They lived modestly. No cable TV. One car. All meals prepared at home. Not my belief system, the religion or supporting a wife, but I can say, in my observations and interactions, they were genuinely happy people. Both husband and wife had shared values.
I agree costs for education are out of hand, I attribute much of this TO government issuing loans, which increases tuitions. It wasn’t so much an issue when I graduated 23 years ago, as school was 75% cheaper then. In my case, the advantage wasn’t so much wealthy parents, as it was an INTACT family with two caring parents, who highly valued education and development of human potential. Obviously, all of that is a huge advantage. I also didn’t engage in the wine & women so got out in only 4 years, which is a challenge.
That said, I’ve known people who’ve overcome uncaring, poor parents, but it’s obviously difficult. I remember personally encouraging a friend of mine who dropped out of high school (he was smart but hated the cliques), to pursue his education. He ultimately became a lawyer.
The idea that everyone should go to college, is ridiculous in my opinion. Considering how many opportunities there are in the trades, parents over-value college. A good welder could have made 150% what I make as an engineer, by doing pipe welding for oil & gas companies during the fracking boom of the last several years. Albeit, that has died off, but still plenty of other work for them.
The PNACkers. lol. those guys were nuts.
People For a New American Century holy s~~~.
It was Partnership for a New American Century.
Nanobots: Not sure I agree there. We don’t know if Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will be benevolent… or malevolent. Or if we can develop it. If sci-fi turns out to be reality, the next step in evolution may well be evolving beyond our biological constraints. The nanobots may know no aging, no pain, no broken bones. They may survive for millions of years, and be able to traverse interstellar space. I’d love to see us re-write our biology, but it’s sci-fi today. That said, I wanna be the guy with the clipboard.
As for globalism, if you mean free trade, yes, I’m for it. Exchanging goods and services tends to reduce wars and poverty. If, by globalism, you mean centralized political and economic control then, no, I’m not for it. Hence I’m against the UN.
Bankers created those wars for their own profit. Hitler was really a globalist anyway.
Hitler came to power due to an economic crisis caused by reparations from WWI; he certainly didn’t think much of Jewish bankers, now did he? As for globalism, let’s see now, what did Adolph have to say about the ‘International Jew’? Did Jews support Hitler’s rise to power despite his statements about Jews in Mein Kampf?
Im talkng about environmental laws NOW ALSO separating people from their land or otherwise restricing land usage so you cannot get off the grid.
Funny, most people I’ve known who lived in rural areas, WANTED to have natural gas extended to their homes. The cost of home-heating with propane, was exorbitant. They only had wood-chip furnaces because they had no natural gas lines in the sticks. As noted previously, part of the ‘grid’ are the systems of roads interconnecting you to everyone else. Somebody has to pay for their maintenance.
As for electricity, nobody is making the Amish hook up to the grid. Similarly, in rural areas, you can dig your own well for water. No matter how much you glamorize it, people DON’T WANT to do subsistence agriculture. They have migrated to urban areas across the world, not because of any grand conspiracies, but because they can make more money. As I’ve noted repeatedly, if you want to move to a rural area, and do subsistence farming, there are few impediments by the government. The biggest impediment is the high price of good farmland, determined by free markets.
In urban areas, rules are much stricter; I’m required to have water and sewer hookups, rather than septic tank. The residents that live amongst me don’t trust each other to keep their septic tanks working correctly and have thus mandated I hook into the water treatment system. The cost of this, is negligible if my water usage is minimal. So while I don’t agree with it, it is not a huge financial cost keeping people from going subsistence. As I’ve said repeatedly, one doesn’t go subsistence in Manhattan or LA, anyway, you do it in a rural area…
As for bankers controlling companies, look up a pie chart for some major companies, and see how much equity retirement funds, IRA’s, and individual investors hold vs these imaginary groups. Furthermore, when large companies need money for expansion, they often seek it through stock issues… NOT banks.Firstly, whether or not Hitler’s, and the NAZI’s financiers were “Jewish” or not was irrelevant. The mass murders that took place *all over the world* were simply a depopulation effort to prevent revolution and perpetuate the structure of society. “Jews” were just an excuse for depopulation, and the deaths weren’t limited to that religion. All impoverished people were killed, including Gypsies, and I’ve already explained that it was due to philosophies in keeping with Thomas Malthus’ “Essay on the Principle of Population”. Psychopaths do not have a religion. Religion is for the subjects, which is why their primary focus is almost always obedience. Likewise “Jewish” financiers aren’t actually Jewish. They might have a specific reason for pretending to be. I challenge you, Frank, to actually look into who was financing Hitler at the time and come to your own conclusion. Let’s not pretend that banks didn’t intentionally instigate war and then loan money to both sides. Win/win. The only condition need be that the winner pay the debts of the loser. Have you seen “A Christmas Carol (1938)? In it Scrooge is a banker, and doesn’t shut up about overpopulation, and constantly makes remarks about reducing the population. This is not new material, and it’s not “conspiracy theory”. The facts are *everywhere*. I’ve already pointed out to you Frank, that whether or not people “WANT to do subsistence agriculture” has no relevance. What *IS* relevant is whether they are able to do so legally without paying money to the state. I’ve made this point over and over. Citizens should not have to pay the state just to exist. As for the Amish, they pay the state. It’s in their religion: Romans 13. They will submit to the authorities. I do not believe in Romans 13, however, because I know for a fact that authorities around the world are not established by god because they are the most evil people in existence. That of course, and I am agnostic, but that’s another subject entirely. As for the relationship between bankers and the stock market, it should be obvious after evaluating the lenders of last resort, banker bailouts, the FDIC, etc. The financiers and the stock market are intertwined. The Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFR) of most government entities show stock that they own, and how much profits they make from it. Money is printed (or created electronically), then distributed to government beauracracies, who then distribute it to corporations that participants of government own stock in. Get it? Circular flow. Manufactured prosperity. If their businesses fail, they just print more money and charge the tax payers. If you want deeper understanding of it, you should read “The Creature from Jekyll Island” by G. Edward Griffin. Ideologies are the tools to manufacture excuses for hatred and division, and motivate people to mass murder one another for the benefit of the ruling class. They are a form of technology. People who believe what you want them to are easier to control. Feminism is one of these tools. The religion of statism is no different than any other religion. So is the religion of money. It’s only legitimate because people believe it is. Behind closed doors, the wizard of Oz frantically pulls levers and pushes buttons to make it seem real. There has never been, and never will be LEGITIMACY to slavery and genocide. I don’t care if you call it government, the state, society, etc. The label used is irrelevant.
Do you understand that people are just products of their environment? Do you understand that ideologies are really just software for programs(people) in the matrix? The ideologies result in a specific desired outcome through the actions of the people believing them. Think tanks provide these ideologies by analyzing human behavior and then deciding what effect they want; after that they tailor the ideology to manufacture the cause of the desired effect. They primarily resort to manipulating people by exploiting their emotional vulnerabilities. They use things like fear, hate, resentment, jealousy, etc to motivate people to the desired emotional response, instead of a rational response. This is called social engineering. It’s really no different than computer programming, or animal training.
“Lost: Exposé (#3.14)” (2007)
Henry Gale: I can convince him to do it.
Juliet Burke: How?
Henry Gale: The same way I get anybody to do anything: I find out what he’s emotionally invested in and I exploit it.- AuthorPosts
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