Re: [A-List] Costs and Benefits of Economic Alternatives

["Macdonald Stainsby" <mstainsby@xxxxxxxxx>]

Lou Responds to:

> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>>
>> In other words, to struggle for socialism is to struggle to have
>> certain benefits at certain costs, not to struggle to have all
>> benefits one might want at no cost.  People have to understand the
>> trade-off, and for them to understand it, we have to have honest
>> discussion and detailed examination of political economy under all its
>> historical and present varieties.
>
> This is a highly academic approach to politics. Have you reconsidered a
> new foray into graduate school? I am sure that this would be a very
> feasible topic for a PhD in political science. My wife just needs one
> more signature for her dissertation and she graduates. She compared
> Marxism and other disciplines on case studies involving financial crises
> in order to answer the question of whether the US is declining or not. I
> am sure that you would find this type of topic more interesting than
> literature.

While throwing out insults and ad hominem, it appears that the actual
point of discussion of ideas has once again been lost.

However, this does raise interesting questions. I for one, do not take
cost-benefit analysis as an academic question, but more importantly one
that may go to the heart of what kind of new society we want.

Most of the "left", for fear of being labelled part of the bashers of the
Bolivarians great advances for all of us, do not spend a lot of time
thinking about the Orinoco Basin. Yet, the point of "socialising the means
of a dead planet" seems to be the order of the day should this continue.

Climate Change will decimate the poor, the indigenous and people of colour
around the world first. Witness not only Katrina, but also the communities
of the Arctic washing out to sea and the destruction of traditional
societies inherent in them.

Surely this list has had enough of rejoinders of crap, all spewed without
actual content?

As the last of the major imperialist-friendly corporations of the energy
markets have now left Venezuela, these reactionary employers have taken
vast numbers of Venezuelan Gusanos to Alberta, where they will now use
their oil-from-mud talents to destroy huge swaths of the most important
Boreal Forest cover that the planet has remaining.

Meanwhile, the longer the plunder of the Orinoco Basin continues, the
worse the chances are of getting out of the climate change disasters
headed our way, even though in geo-political realities the Bolivarian
revolution could not possibly just stop tomorrow.

The general idea: declare socialist production and you'll have a green
revolution-- needs to be buried even deeper than the deposits of mock
crude being pulled out of the earth. What to do, however, is something of
a different matter-- it means original thinking, not parables about our
spouses going through school.

--
Macdonald Stainsby
Co-ordinator,
http://oilsandstruth.org
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In the contradiction lies the hope.
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