Publius
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Posts posted by Publius
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All environmentalist attempts to limit free enterprise should be vigorously opposed, and all environmentalist legislation should be repealed (thus, campaigns to support repeal of such legislation should be strongly supported). There are no proper concerns which are not already fully addressed by tort law.
This is the statement I was looking for.
Is there anyone reading this who would disagree with this statement in any way?
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Interesting! I'd be curious to find data in the topic from a reputable source.
You're in luck, I've saved you the trouble. That is a credible source.
Oh, no, you've made a silly mistake. The policy makers simply respond to the perceived direction that the wind of the voters is blowing (which is in some vague way related to actual voter interests, modulo some steering by folks who comission polls). Policy makers just want to stay in office, and publically opposing fuzzy bunnies is not a good way to keep your job if you are suppose to be appeasing the mob.Great. The Congress is just full of self serving politicians who have no devotion to public service or intellectual honesty. Pretty cynical outlook. I've known many politicians in my time as a journalist. Yes they have to say many things to appease the base, but almost without exception most I have known were truly dedicated to public service and doing what they thought was right. Remember being a member of Congress is not a lucrative job, especially considering the alternatives in the private sector most could have.
As I mentioned earlier:
What should the proper view of dealing with environmental concerns be given the current political situation? Since we are not living in an Objectivist society, what is the prudent course to take now? Are there any legit examples of environmental problems that there should be some concern about?
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What are the environmental concerns that prompted this action in the first place?
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I wouldn't assume that, since numerically speaking, the viros vastly outnumber the energy companies. All it takes is a handful of radical Stewart Motts to generate as much cash as BP has to combat his type.
I took a few minutes to look it up. It seems the Oil and Gas industry spent $83,907,485 last year, compared to the green lobby's $13,567,446. The campaign contribution disparity is even more stark: Oil and Gas in 2006 $20,193,657, enviro organizations $2,939,097
Because the viros exploit emotion rather than relying on reason. Everybody loves a walk in the park and a fuzzy bunny, so all they have to do is imply that evil energy companies are out to rape the land and kill the bunnies, and all for the love of evil money. In addition, they get vast amounts of free advertising from the media (so-called "news" shows). By government policy, their message becomes part of the curriculum in schools. This has been going on for decades, and I think the problem is that nobody really took seriously the threat of a few nut-job teachers out planting trees with their 6th graders. But the chickens -- vultures, in fact -- have come home to roost.The working assumption here appears to be that policy makers are all mushy-headed bleeding hearts. Maybe so, but I don't find this a compelling argument to say "Well, their judgment is clouded by emotion." This may be true for children or the average working man. But I mean, I can't picture Carl Levin is sitting in his office in Washington fretting about bunnies.
One strategy by environmental groups is to sue the government or individual companies and win judgments. Often these are heard in federal court and heard by a judge or a panel of judges. So emotion is generally not a factor I would say.
Nevertheless, the prime driver is ideology, with cash as a major player.Not sure what you mean by ideology. Wouldn't this ideology have to be near universal in the public sphere?
Perhaps a better line of inquiry might be, what should the proper view of dealing with environmental concerns given the current political situation? Since we are not living in an Objectivist society, what is the prudent course to take now. Like drilling offshore, for example, there seem to be some genuine risks to the environment, risks that would be potentially devastating for the ecology of the coasts, fishing industry, tourism, etc.
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I have started a new thread in a more appropriate area to address a major question I have been wondering about.
From a lobbying perspective, do environmentalists have more money to spend towards lobbyists and affect public policy, or do energy companies? I would assume the latter would have them outspent by a longshot. How does one explain the disparity in influence of environmental groups then when it comes to drilling for oil?
In another thread, as just one example, I see much power and clout attributed to environmental groups. Just some random statements:
...to the extent that enviros are constraining future supply......I'm all for blaming the enviros for making things worse...
...An environmental group called World Wildlife Fund Canada is lobbying to delay the current round of leasing bids...
...American environmental groups have already succeeded in delaying Arctic offshore drilling...
If not lobbying, where does this power come from? If we have a cash and carry government, why can't big business just buy more government influence (not that I'm advocating buying gov't influence)? Like I said, the money clearly has to be on the side of the energy companies.
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Well, you'd have to confirm that assumption.
Also the inherent premise in the question is that the influence on public policy is a function of and only a function of lobbying budgets.
I guess I was just looking at some of the statements I've read here that environmentalist groups have all this clout. From what I've read just on this thread:
...to the extent that enviros are constraining future supply......I'm all for blaming the enviros for making things worse...
...An environmental group called World Wildlife Fund Canada is lobbying to delay the current round of leasing bids...
...American environmental groups have already succeeded in delaying Arctic offshore drilling...
If not lobbying, where does this power come from? If we have a cash and carry government, why can't big business just buy more government influence (not that I'm advocating buying gov't influence)? Like I said, the money clearly has to be on the side of the energy companies.
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From a lobbying perspective, do environmentalists have more money to spend towards lobbyists and affect public policy, or do energy companies? I would assume the latter would have them outspent by a longshot. How does one explain the disparity in influence of environmental groups then when it comes to drilling for oil?
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I reject the view that our society consists of one percent genius creators and ninety nine percent ballast that merely live off the crumbs that their betters throw their way. That is the kind of thinking that is more in line with feudalism than with modern industrial capitalism. I think the majority in our society are useful and productive at some level of performance and that the law of supply and demand will provide wages (or income) commensurate with our skills and performance levels. While it is true that there are more folks who are voluntarily useless than there ought to be (that is the welfare state for you), I believe, even so, such folk are in the minority.
Great post, well done. I too reject the idea that the 1 percent of the population have god-like capabilities that we all must rely on for our salvation. It takes genius, drive and hard work, but fortunate circumstances also play a huge role in who ends up being a super-success. Innovators don't work in a vacuum; they exist in a continuum of other people working towards similar goals, feeding off each other's achievements and ideas. Eventually you read about Charles Darwin in a history book, but you don't read about all the men who expressed similar ideas on evolution much earlier than he did, and who died in obscurity. So I don't think any one man is infinitely valuable, in a historical context.
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Publius, If 10% the low-skilled workers in the U.S. could move into other jobs, there are enough technological ways to allow accomodate that at pretty short notice. Over the longer run, even more can be done. Please do not point to current techniques of harvesting apples and coffee. A few decades ago people would have said the same for wheat. To think that way is a failure of imagination.
What I am talking about is only relevant in the short term anyway. We live in the world we live in, not what we want it to be. And the short term reality is there are only so many people who are going to move out of low skilled jobs because opportunities are limited. As the economic engine churns, more opportunities become available to low skilled workers. But this is a long slow process moving at a glacial pace. Surely the equation changes if we let in more waves of immigrants.
So that comes back around to the main point. Unions are important because working hard is not going to get everyone promoted.
Many things in the U.S. are far more automated than in some third-world countries, and people there who have never seen the west would not be able to imagine such automation. yet, if you compare automation in the U.S. with that in Japan, the U.S. still lags. There are so many tasks that people consider as requiring detail skill -- e.g. make nice hot tacos -- but, which have been automated. Further, it is n ot simply automation, but the application of knowledge in general. People are capable of doing all sorts, including engineering plants to be more easily harvested. The driver has to be economic. The fewer low skilled folk available, the more that knowledge will be applied to do things a different way.Finally, in the shorter term, to the extent that the economy cannot accomodate them, it will end up raising the wages for those unskilled jobs.
I think you are counting your chickens before they hatch. You are extrapolating a hypothetical template of innovation and free market freedom into the uncertain future. Never bank on technology that isn't there yet, just because you feel that given the right circumstances and time, innovations will crop up to solve all our problems. Technology advances in unpredictable ways, and at an unpredictable pace. Of course the driving force is economic. I don't see a shortage of unskilled workers on the horizon any time soon, though.
BTW I still prefer my tacos made by hand, preferably a clean one
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Considered in a static "point in time" sense, an economy "needs" any large group of workers, at any level.
However, that is mainly because the economy has accommodated the people it has. In a more long-term sense, this is false. There would have been a time when people would have claimed that the economy needed millions of serfs, when what it really need was a few more scientists and engineers to make serfs redundant. The U.S. economy does not employ anywhere near the capital investment and automation that is already technologically feasible. The current constraint to moving many million people out of lower income level in today's U.S. economy is not the technology, but the capability of the people in those groups. If more of them got whatever skills were required to move up the salary ladder, it would raise wages below them and would increase the need for automation at levels below them.
In the U.S., if immigration were legal, there would be even less of an issue, because millions all over the world stand ready to take the lowest-paying jobs. As for the low-skilled in the third world, their economies definitely do not "need' those many numbers in any long-term sense.
I'm having a hard time following your thoughts here. Are you suggesting that the economy is only accommodating restaurant workers, retail workers, most factory workers, farm workers, etc? The technology for automating all low skilled jobs is not developed enough yet to do away with low skilled workers, not for a long time. Retail stores can not be set so as to not need stockers and other store staff. Trucks of merchandise can not drive themselves to their destinations. Crops such as coffee, apples, tomatoes, etc need humans to pick them. Restaurants need humans to prepare food, serve dishes, clean up, etc.
Your last thoughts are a little disjointed and perhaps you can clarify your meaning.
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Union: Pay us this or we will strike, when we strike we will intimidate and harass anyone who crosses the picket line, and... the government may not permit you to fire us.
I don't know that this is the case. I haven't read the law but I think companies can permanently replace striking workers, which is pretty much the same as firing them.
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Boil it down and you have either the owner responsible to a rational consideration, namely, the willingness of actual customers to pay, or to an irrational consideration, namely, the caprice of bureacrats and the power of pull of politicians. Yet for some reason you see vice in private ownership and virtue in public ownership. Why?
I don't why you have become obsessed with potholes, the dimensions of the problem as I see are far larger in scope.
I don't see vice in private ownership, its just that no one has outlined how it could be done vis a vis roads. I believe it is a rational consideration that the system be morally implemented, but it must work too. As I see it, there are a limited number of areas where the dimensions and impact are far reaching and ubiquitous (like the road system), that some kind of quasi government organization must be set up to manage it. That is, one that is privately run but government owned. So if a company or consortium fails at making the system run efficiently they can be ousted in favor of a more competent one. Other such organizations would oversee ecosystems, and the air traffic control system, perhaps other things. If someone can find a way to privatize roads, ecosystems, the air traffic control network, etc., then I am all for it.
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(hypothetical)
I am a regular traveler between Chicago and Milwaukee. I notice that RCX is skimping on their maintenance and basic safety of the road. I mention it to the company as a complaint. They do nothing. Soon the dangers become so prevalent that I can not justify using RCX's "product" so I choose to take a little more time and select an alternate route. I don't stop there though. This inconvenience pisses me off and I will tell everyone I know that I do not travel on RCX roads because they are unsafe.
Before you say it doesn't matter, and that I am only one person I will point out the huge lawsuits leveled against Car companies (the exploding Fiero) are a result of individuals banding together to punish a company for shoddy work.
As for your point about media... Media is global all you have to do is Google overpass collapse laval and you get 2,410 hits, this shows that control of 2 regional newspapers will scarcely dent the media feeding frenzy the first time someone dies and negligence is suspected.
To reiterate, safety is only one of many potential inconveniences to motorists, as mentioned earlier, of this privatization plan. RCX's Chicago-Milwaukee road may also be highly congested. Maybe it has few places to pull off and rest. Maybe alternative routes are just too expensive, or are unwilling to allow your truck to traverse its roads because they are owned by a rival company, your trucks don't meet their specs, etc.
A lot more thought has to go into how to implement this kind of idea.
Ownership of the media is a huge opportunity to shape public opinion. Why do you think Rupert Murdoch is so intent on gobbling up media outlets? Your example happens to be one that that represents the rare story that achieves national media attention. National media comb local media outlets for stories, they don't have the resources to do their own groundwork, especially now. That's why local media is so important, it truly shapes public perception.
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No, it's not. I was a low skilled worker, a waitress, and my upward mobility was not and has not been limited. If they feel limited, it's because they limit themselves. They have just as much opportunity as anyone to get an education, work hard, invent something useful or whatever it takes to advance within the ranks of the workforce.
Every individual has a potential opportunity to move up if they choose to work hard. I'm not denying that. The upward mobility of low skilled workers is limited though. This is true as long as they remain low skilled. What also is true is this: few consider the economy needs low skilled workers, millions and millions of them; without them the economy would collapse. Every inventor who creates a new product, he needs a factory of workers to make it. Every garment manufacturer needs a textile mill of workers to produce for him. Marketing companies need legions of phone operators. Retail stores need countless bodies to stock the shelves. Every low skilled worker cannot simply work hard and rise out of working a menial job, simply because there are not enough skilled jobs to go around for everyone, and those menial jobs are essential to the whole economy.
Also, we are not saying that workers cannot get together and petition their employer for higher pay, better benefits, etc. What we are saying is that the group shouldn't have the right to force the employer to comply with their demands. If the workers choose to get together and strike, that's their risk. The employer should also have the right to fire them and hire new employees. That's the risk they take by agreeing to work for someone under one situation, then holding the employer hostage unless he gives them another situation. Why did they go work there if they don't agree with their working conditions and compensation package?I'm not familiar with the NLRA or other laws, but my understanding is that an employer can hire permanent replacements for striking workers. This rarely happens as it is usually not a good long term economic move to retrain an entire work force from scratch. So I don't think the employers are being forced to comply with demands.
I must say I resent your insinuation that I am somehow lucky because I didn't go looking for my career. I was a unskilled worker, and as such, I took a job that I felt I could be good at and make enough money to survive. (Which is far more than I can say for a lot of unskilled workers.) I was in the restaurant business for three years. During that time, I went from waiting tables, to bartending, to administrative to management shifts. A regular customer noticed my hard work. Perhaps I was "lucky" in that she liked to eat at my restaurant (??), but I have no doubt part of the reason they returned weekly was because of the excellent and personal customer service they received. Also, I experimented with other career paths (also as a result of someone noticing my efforts) but decided to come back to financial planning because not only do I have a passion for it, but I feel like I am able to do something fulfilling in helping our clients realize their retirement dreams.So maybe when I was 19 I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with my life (gee, how odd), but through hard, honest work and a positive attitude, I was able to work my way through that and arrive at something very fulfilling. I didn't feel lucky then, and I don't feel lucky now. I've earned every last penny I've ever been paid, and when I wanted to earn more, I did what it took to take my career to the next level. I came from a poor family, I have no degree and I had no skills, except the motivation to work hard with a smile on my face. If I can do it, any of the poor, pathetic, unskilled workers you mention in your posts can too. I don't feel sorry for them.
I didn't mean to denigrate your accomplishments. My intention was to point out that good fortune plays a part in many people's success. You will find many if not most successful entrepreneurs will readily admit this. You have a better chance of getting luck in your favor by working hard, but many many people work hard their entire lives and don't get an opportunity such as you were presented with. Ask yourself, what would you be doing today if that person hadn't crossed your path?
Also I don't see people who are working unskilled jobs as pathetic, as you said. A vibrant economy, upon which so many entrepreneurs and professionals depend to make money, is nonexistent without them.
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I agree with this completely. As a college drop out and waitress, I was approached by a regular customer who wanted me to come work for her. She saw that I was a hard-working, honest person and she brought me into her business, an industry I had no experience with and trained me for what is now my career. Throughout the past 13 years, I have been steadily working my way up in this business, past many lazy workers and college grads, because of my work ethic. I am now at the high end of my pay scale for my current position and ready to move on to the next level within the next several years. If someone wants more from their job or career than they are currently getting, it is well within their power to earn more for themselves. You don't need to pay thugs union dues to bully your boss into what you feel you deserve.
It sounds like you worked hard, but to be honest it sounds like you didn't go looking for your career, it came and found you. So consider yourself lucky that the right person came along and took a chance on you. And it doesn't sound like you are in a situation where a union would be beneficial to the work force. The upward mobility of low skilled workers is limited.
Just curious, what safety standards are management pressuring employees to ignore?One of the common things that happen are putting pressure on sorters to not stop the belts when there is a dangerous overload of flow from unloaders. Much psychological pressure is put on workers to not report injuries.
BTW you can't lay the blame for Detroit's woes at the feet of the unions. The Big 3 agreed to those contracts. It is not the high wages so much, especially since the huge buyouts will effectively mean new workers will be paid half of what the old employees were getting. Rather the lack of foresight by the the Big 3 top brass in creating vehicles that people want. Toyota is doing great, albeit paying about 30% less in wages in the US, but negotiated through the same UAW.
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This is unjust because low-skill workers should get what they deserve, not something better.
And what is it that they deserve, and who decides? Low skilled workers have little leverage independently to negotiate, so grouping together they can achieve more than one can individually in most cases. The above comment implies that people should never look to gain leverage to negotiate better deals. This runs counter to any business philosophy that I am familiar with. Companies are always looking to get leverage in negotiations with other companies to get "something better", not "what they deserve." Why should it be different for workers?
There is a reason this is so and a way to alter it within the reach of anyone who is willing to work hard.In a low skilled job situation, working hard is a virtue but is not going to get you much leverage at the negotiation table, because you are still a low skilled worker and easily replaceable. You must rely on the good graces of your employer.
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In a hypothetical state where roads are privately built, run and owned if Road Company X gets a reputation for unsafe bridges or road surfaces that wash out frequently, they will lose business. Safety very often pays. In the real society, roads are state run monopolies so there is not as much incentive for safety. See incident of collapsing interstate in Minneapolis or the collapse of the Canajohari Bridge on the New York State thruway. And even when the roads and bridges are built well they must be -maintained-. Government owned and run roads are infamous for deferred maintenance. Politicians love to fund New Stuff. They don't get publicity for safe bridges. We only hear about new bridges and the bridges that collapse, not the old ones that stand.
ruveyn
Safety very often pays, except when it doesn't.
(hypothetical)
Road Company X sees more than the usual number of accidents or safety issues on its roads. It gets sued occasionally but it only pays actual damages and can afford to take the hits. Problem is, its the company that has got the most direct route from Chicago to Milwaukee, and maybe its the cheapest too since they cut all those corners on infrastructure. No other business can enter the market because there are not enough property owners willing to sell to make a similar route available. So we put up with the crap roads from Road Company X because its the only alternative, and Road Company X knows it. That doesn't mean RCX completely gouges its customers and blatantly ignores safety issues or logical inconsistencies in its designs. It stops short of the point where customers seriously consider alternatives.
Did I mention Road Company X owns the big daily newspapers in Chicago and Milwaukee, its mouthpieces to downplay criticism?
I guess being a bit over the top but maybe thats because its late and I'm tired. But this whole idea of privatized roads doesn't make any sense to me.
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Presumably since the purpose of the road is to provide safe passage to motorists, foisting logistical nightmares on them would not be among the owner's needs. Government standardization would not be necessary. A private professional group of civil engineers could provide the necessary standards, and the risk of civil tort damages for negligence would be inducement enough for road owners to follow them.
The purpose of some roads will be for safe passage for motorists. Maybe, maybe not. The purpose of the roads will be to make money. The safety of motorists is only important insofar as it serves that purpose. What is the standard of "safe", and who gets to decide? How would the public even know if a road is safe?
A private professional group of civil engineers could provide standards, maybe, but would this happen? Not necessarily. What if there are all sorts of conflicting ideas on what makes a road safe? Or what constitutes the most logical signage? Or the best design for intersections? What if a group of prominent engineers is paid by Big Highway, Inc to promote a certain standard, while Super Roads, Inc has their own standards and their own engineers? What happens when private roads intersect and no agreement can be reached on how to merge?
I just don't see the evidence that this would work as seamlessly as it is claimed.
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This might not seem like such a big deal but what about standardization? We take for granted the standardization of government owned roads. Namely the mileage markers, exits signs, caution signs, traffic signals, stop signs, road width, overpass height limits, load limits, entrance and exit ramp protocol, etc., etc., etc. Would it not be a logistical nightmare to not have a universal standard? Wouldn't private roads all have varying standards based on what suited the owner's needs for that individual road?
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D'Kian, I'm assuming the system is very corrupt down there In Mexico. Apparently rule of law does not apply, as you couldn't even make sense of the court ruling.
There is something deeply wrong when that group uses force to compel the employer to give them a raise and prohibit the employer from firing them. The problem isn't with unions per se, but with federal and state laws that force employers to deal with unions.I'm not that familiar with unions, but I wasn't aware that unions could compel raises and prohibit an employer from firing them. What federal and state laws do you mean? The closed shop/open shop state laws, the NLRA? My understanding is that its an employer's right to hire permanent replacement workers to continue operations during a strike. I think its called the Mackay doctrine based on an old Supreme Court decision.
I have never been in a union but my wife is in one with UPS. She appreciates the union even though there are quite a few absurd things that go on because of it. Namely, people that get fired for good cause and then the union intervenes and gets their jobs back, exorbitant union dues on part time employees, indifferent union reps, etc. However the constant pressure from management to ignore safety standards is ongoing, despite the union contract and OSHA.
I once came close to being in a union. I was working part time at night for a marketing company of about 12 employees, myself having no interest in unionizing. Four of the older employees banded together to push for a union, and got enough people to sign union cards to bring it to a vote. That's when the company owner contacted a union busting consultant. He fired two of the employees the next day, as he was able to demonstrate somehow that he had planned to eliminate their positions anyway. He promoted the other two into management, essentially taking away their potential union vote. Over the next few months he subtly intimidated the rest of the staff into not voting union by pulling individuals in for meeting and probing them with questions. He even directly asked me if I was involved, which is illegal according to my understanding. Luckily I wasn't. Ultimately the big union the original four had petitioned decided it was best to not even bring it to a vote. So that was that. The remaining two union organizers that were promoted were subsequently fired not long afterward.
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Is there something wrong with unions in principle, or just the way unions are commonly organized and managed?
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We already do. When I buy any electrical device I pay for the little UL sticker on it that says it's safety has been tested. Again, trillions of examples of safety supplied by private industry. UL is not corrupted and no one short circuits the system. And UL would never consider it because their entire livelihood banks on teh prospect that they remain uncorrupted. If they were to be discovered to be approving inherently unsafe materials in some sort of backroom deal, that little seal, that brand, which today means so much to so many companies would lose all its value. Please read Alan Greenspan's article in Capitalism the Unknown Ideal.
Not sure this is a good example of what you are trying to demonstrate. Although UL is a tremendous company that has created standards of quality that are universally respected, it is still one of several companies, known as Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratories, approved for such testing by the U.S. federal agency OSHA. So there are federal standards it must comport with. Now this doesn't mean that UL is not a great example of the government outsourcing inspections to private firms to create efficiencies and innovations.
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A private association, the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) developed a specification or code to both dictate proper manufaturing and testing techniques to confirm that such vessels were designed to withstand their design specifications. That code was entirely voluntary, that is, a customer could request a vessel be "code stamped" or not, and was entirely audited and controlled by independant inspection and certification reports. That code is still in use today, and is still completely voluntary, and pressure vessel are now more ubiquitous in society then ever (think of every air conditioner, every water heater, every propane cylinder, etc. in addition to industrial vessels).
But isn't the code adopted by the states and federal government as a standard? I'm not sure just how voluntary it is, if the code must be followed if you are going to have any business with the state. I found this old story from 1922 about this topic. It was the ASME itself that was looking for state action to coordinate inspections of old boilers by private companies. This organization has some info on how private inspection agencies, Federal Inspection Agencies, are accredited by the government. So its not really an example of private enterprise regulating itself.
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I'm uneasy about the prospect of a company paying another company to vouch for its services/products. There just seem to be too many examples out there of such close financial arrangements leading to corruption. Such as Arthur Anderson and Enron, for example.
Sure companies have all the incentive in the world to deliver quality goods and services, but yet there are endless examples of tainted meat, defective child seats, dangerous medications, etc., unleashed on the public, liability be damned. The cost/benefit analysis often results in companies choosing to keep news of the offending product on the down low.
Wouldn't the best arrangement be for people to voluntarily fund independent certification firms for food safety and products? An official seal of approval from such an organization would mean so much more to me than one from a certification company I knew was paid money by the company they were supposed to be vouching for.
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I feel the same way about your outlook. It must be a helpless feeling having to wait for individual geniuses to come along to fix the world's problems. Better outlaw abortion because what if one of those babies was the next Einstein, Buffet, or Gates? How comforting it is to know that there are many many geniuses waiting in the wings should one fail, and the progress of mankind will move on regardless.
What a strange assessment of human achievement. Being smart, keeping a strong positive mind, working hard, are essential. But do you think everyone who possessed these traits became an elite 1 percenter? Read D'Kian's examples. There are millions more.
I don't resent anything or anyone, that would be irrational. It is also irrational to deny that good fortune plays a strong role in who rises to the very top of the pile.
I beg to differ. Every invention is as much a product of its time and place as it is the man. Edison had many competitors that were driving him. If he were to have been killed by a speeding horse and carriage, humankind would still have developed his innovations, albeit those innovations would have occurred a small time later and in a different form.
Not a footnote, and not devalued; read what I said. He put the final piece together to come up with natural selection, but he did not generate the idea by himself. You seem to possess a high school history book view of history. I suggest you dig deeper into how innovations happen.
You almost have to make an exception for Newton, he was pretty unique. Maybe someone who knows more on the time period would have more insight.
Your deification of these men has a religious air about it. Dig into some anthropology and you'll see what I'm talking about.