[Would you shoot first?]

That depends on the lock quality and type.

They did this one on Mythbusters. Suffice to say, unless it's a really cheap lock, you'd need a shotgun with slugs to really get it.

[Carbon Belch Day]

Granted, there is a small mention of Climate Alarmists making individuals feel guilty here.

And also in the statement you quoted later as evidence against that being their focus:

"I do this with no fear or concern that I am destroying the planet."

This is the primary message as far as I can see - go ahead and produce carbon because there is nothing to be guilty about. That is a healthy enough message.

It is also possible that their primary motivation is merely to infuriate the Climate Alarmists as opposed to seeking to make an important philosophical point. I cannot tell.

That wouldn't be such a bad thing, either. A message needs to be sent to the Greens that not everyone will consent to their man-hating agenda. That alone is a worthwhile message. That there are also other, deeper messages is beside the point. It is not incorrect or so inessential that it would detract from other necessary statements.

[Carbon Belch Day]

Actually, some have voiced concern about the negative non-greenhouse effects of CO2. Whether this is another crackpot attempt at industrial collapse is beyond me. At the moment, I am not concerned.

Well, that's a new one on me. Still, even so their objection it isn't a matter of CO2 being air pollution. And of course I share your lack of concern.

[Carbon Belch Day]

There may be better, but I think you are selling this short. Remember, the essential goal is to get rid of the guilt associated with enjoying things that create CO2. I see it as a promotion of individual freedom and happiness. That's very moral and very worthwhile.

Yes, this is pretty much exactly my thoughts as well.

[Carbon Belch Day]

Regardless of whether or not CO2 is going to cause a catastrophe for the planet earth, large amounts of it are bad for the air and it is nihilistic to combat the environmentalists by purposely polluting the air.

(bold mine)

Moose, this is the claim you made. That even if CO2 is not causing global warming, it is still "bad for the air." To my knowledge no scientist or publication - not even global warming believers - has made the claim that CO2 is harmful apart from the so-called "greenhouse effect."

Yet you are claiming this.

1) You are wrong.

2) That is a scientific claim, which by your own criterion you should not be making.

3) As to your, now additional, claim that Global Warming is real and therefore Carbon Belch Day is nihilistic, that is also incorrect - the entire day is premised on the idea that Global Warming is not real and therefore such activities a harmless and proper enjoyment of man's life. Even if it were real, which it is not, it would not be nihilistic for people to have a Carbon Belch Day if they didn't believe it were so. Nihilism is the deliberate destruction of values qua values. To be properly described as "nihilistic," they would have to both think that GW is real and harmful and that they should cause some on purpose.

Instead, the idea of this holiday is that GW is not real and man should not feel guilty for living his life - he should enjoy it. That is the very opposite of nihilism.

[Carbon Belch Day]

Do you have some kind of scientific credentials I should know about? It drives me nuts when people on either side of this debate take such strong stances and utter statements of fact that they are unqualified to know with any degree of certainty. I don't generally get involved in debates about enviromentalism, because I know fully well that I am unqualified to participate in them. And so are you.

This is not the sort of statement that requires strong scientific credentials. It requires a basic understanding of the properties of CO2, atmospheric composition, and the amount of CO2 produced by mankind.

It is not even remotely possible for CO2 produced by mankind to become harmful from a breathing standpoint. CO2 is basically harmless - the only concerns that anyone in the science community has raised is regarding the theoretical so-called "greenhouse effect" of CO2. There have been no - ZERO - concerns raised about CO2 production as having a negative effect on air quality or breathing or anything like that.

In fact you are the one who has made a scientific claim - that CO2 is "bad for the air" and constitutes "pollution," (apart from the "greenhouse effect") which is something no scientist I have ever seen - not even a Global Warming believer - claim.

By your own criteria I suggest you withdraw your claim.

[Carbon Belch Day]

Regardless of whether or not CO2 is going to cause a catastrophe for the planet earth, large amounts of it are bad for the air and it is nihilistic to combat the environmentalists by purposely polluting the air.

No that's not true. It is not even remotely possible for mankind to produce enough CO2 for it to be harmful from a breathing standpoint. CO2 is NOT a pollutant.

Because the whole idea is to show how meaningless the whole concern over CO2 is. There should be ZERO guilt for this, so they're laughing in the face of environmentalists.

Yes, exactly.

[Carbon Belch Day]

Anyway, I am confident that we both agree that there is nothing at all wrong with a holiday that encourages individuals to enjoy life without any unearned guilt.

Well, that's precisely what this is, and I don't see any reason to either think or assume otherwise.

[Carbon Belch Day]

The problem is in wasting energy for no other reason than make environmentalists angry.

That's the journalist who used that word, not the group calling for the belch day. The way I read it, they want you to guiltlessly enjoy life. I wouldn't describe that as "nihilistic."

[Carbon Belch Day]

I'd like to know what you all find nihilistic about "hosting a barbecue, going for a drive, watching television, leaving a few lights on, or even smoking a few cigars?"

[Justification for war in the Middle-East]

You do your cause a disservice by not extending a modicum of intellectual honesty toward me or my points. If you insist on assuming I am an idiot and basing your points of discussion on that I see no point in discussions with you.

Now first off where did you get the idea that I hadn't? I didn't accuse you of not knowing the difference - I said you were spreading the popular usage of an obfuscatory term. An anti-concept, if you will. This isn't calling you an idiot. I recognized that you are trying to act in the furtherance of a good cause, I simply said that you do that cause a disservice by using that word in that way.

Yes I am well aware of that, I do not feel like writing "constitutional liberal republic with representative electoral government and market based economy" every time. Liberal constitutional democracy is a common phrasing used to signify a representative government which also has rule of law and protections for rights of individuals against mob democracy.

Yes, it is common today - but why is that? 80 years ago the difference was commonly known and clear (see the 1928 US Army training manual) - certainly to the founding fathers it was clear, as they openly and frequently denounced "democracy." The very fact that you have to specify that by "republic" you mean "rights-protecting republic" is another product of the leftist-"progressive" use of the hijacking of words. When you yourself use and spread a leftist anti-concept in the "conventional" sense you are acting to destroy not only the English language but also to legitimize their cause and its goals.

If you don't believe me, then look at President Bush's actions vis-a-vis "Democracy." In "Palestine," he has established precisely that: a democracy in the original and correct sense which has elected Hizbullah to power.

As to the difficulty in phrasing, I would argue it would be worth any such difficulty to avoid serving this vicious leftist anti-concept, but I don't think it's necessary to engage in lingual spaghetti. Here are a few examples of articles which speak on the topic concisely. They would be good examples to emulate. (note especially the identification that "'Democracy' is the most dangerous term in the American political lexicon.")

Do you think the promulgation of constitutional liberal representative governments with market based economies (see, its really annoying to write that whole thing out every time) ought to be a primary driving force in our foreign policy or not?

No, as I made quite clear I think the primary driving force in our foreign policy ought to be the destruction of our enemies (with the recognition that our enemies are ideological in nature).

Do you agree that technological growth is rapidly accelerating and fewer individuals are able to kill more and more people with less and less resources with every passing year?

Yes, actually.

Do you agree that despotic totalitarian socialist prison states make the world and us less safe by their mere existence or not?

In a very general sense, yes. But this isn't to say that the rest of your argument follows. The contrap

I do not disagree. The greatest idealogical and thus real threat we face right now is that of islamic fundamentalist fueled terrorism, 2nd to that, the threat of totalitarian dictatorships on global economic stability and infectious diseases.

In a very concrete sense, I suppose that Islamism is the most immediate threat we face. But I'd say that in a very real sense, the greatest threat we face is China and the resurgence of a belligerent and totalitarian Russia - both of whom watch with delight as we deconstruct our military to fight small-scale police actions and downsize the supposedly obsolete capability of warfighting. Of course the latter is fueled by our so-far helplessness in the face of the former, so we do agree at least that elimination of the former is our most immediate concern.

It so happens that islamic fundamentalist fueled terrorism is most commonly promulgated by totalitarian dictatorships, and most of them are centered in the middle east.

It more than so happens - Islamism as a movement could not exist without state support.

How do you propose to wage idealogical war against prison states which kill you and your family for speaking your mind?

By eliminating state entities which support Islamism.

African hell holes pose little long term threat right now, but they probably will in the future. Most are directly propped up by the competing interests of other shitty dictatorships, many of which are islamic fundamentalist middle eastern nations.

Which again brings us to the fact of the ideological movement of Islamism as our central enemy.

Well unfortunately I am not privy to this crystal ball that allows you to so accurately see into the future. Do you by chance have a track record of accurately predicting the outcome of complex geo-political events such as these and fuels your confidence in this assessment?

Yes, historically ideas are the primary movers, and ideologies have spread most effectively with state support. The contrapositive is also true historically, with the elimination of state support being key to their removal.

Perhaps these new hostile regimes will be perpetually propped up, embroiling us in a 'range of the moment' never ending battle against the same enemy over and over again for decades to come. Perhaps expending a bit of effort in 'nation building' will undermine the entrenchment of the next 'hostile' regime, which we would otherwise be fighting, over and over again.

I'm not completely against "sticking around" as it were, if the goal is the eradication of state support for the ideology of Islamism, rather than nation building as such. Military presence or absence isn't the essential point of my argument - it's the goal of that presence. The thing is, in Iraq there wasn't a state Islam entity - and one only formed because of

1) Our own failure to outlaw its creation by force

2) The fact of Iraq's neighbors, which are State Islamists, who we won't fight

In a vacuum, the threat of a dictatorship such as Iraq's would not require us to nation build them in order to remove the threat to us - it is only because of the existence of our ideological enemy in the region that the situation was not as simple as knocking down Saddam and leaving. Where I take exception to your position is that you seem to see a need to remain there, not as a reaction to the nature of the regional and ideological war which we fight, but as such - it seems you say it wouldn't ever be a proper policy to knock out the dictatorship without nation building afterwards.

I agree there, but we might disagree on the extent of force used (I adovcate strategic attacks against government officials and things critical to the functioning of the police state) What do you suggest?

I'm skeptical of the idea that an ideological movement can be defeated while sparing its adherents of the consequences of war. Key to the transformation of Japan was the fact that we visited defeat on them. Had we surgically removed the Imperial Government as you propose, I do not believe we would have been as successful. See John Lewis's explanation of the requirement of prostrate surrender in The Moral Goodness of the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima.

Interestingly, Iraq enjoyed no such popular support of their government, and so a surgical removal would have served just fine, had the matter been as simple as a secular dictatorship.

I suppose my short answer would be that it depends on the regime.

[Justification for war in the Middle-East]

I will certainly argue that the 'nation building' or attempted as such was the right decision

Well, that was unexpected.

To start, no liberal democracy has ever been at war with another liberal democracy

I'm going to have to start off by saying that The United States of America is not a "democracy" and you do your cause a disservice by spreading the use of that obfuscation. We are a Constitutional Republic, sir, and don't forget it.

But on "nation-building." What do you mean by the term? I think the term is inseparable from the Wilsonian and now Neo-Conservative idea that we ought to altruistically "build" nations at our national expense.

these totalitarian despots are the root of all the wars in the world

No doubt, but there are plenty of African hell-holes which pose us no threat. The key is to identify the enemies of America and to eliminate them. What is most important is to understand that our enemies are ideological in nature and no fight is possible without first identifying this fact.

Suppose that we knocked down Iraq and left. Some might argue this would create a power vacuum which could be filled with a hostile regime. But why would a hostile regime fill this vacuum? Because an ideological enemy - Islamism - exists in practically all of Iraq's neighbors. The key is not to "nation build" Iraq over decades and decades of spilt blood and squandered treasure into something immune to this, but rather to swiftly and irrevocably eliminate Islamism from the governments of Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Then continue to knock down each next largest source of Islamism until it is dead as a movement. At that point it doesn't much matter what kind of nation Iraq becomes because:

1) Islamism will be dead - so it won't be another Islamist nation.

2) All non-Islamist thugs will have learned what happens to any government who so much as breathes a word in threat to America.

The only undermining of the history and political narrative of the region that we need engage in is one of force - of demonstrating our power to wipe out anyone so foolish as to threaten us. A rights-respecting civilization is not something that the majority there will understand for centuries at least. A lesson of force is something that they will understand immediately. Especially if we defeat the ideological movement which fuels them.

[Justification for war in the Middle-East]

To expand on this, the "way of life" of a dictatorship which harms and threatens both its own citizens and other nations is not a "way of life" which has a right to exist. Therefore, we gain no moral obligation from removing it. A dictatorship is, in many senses - illegitimate. Once you understand just how deeply that concept goes, I think the rest may fall into place for you.

[Justification for war in the Middle-East]

The alternative would have been, what, go in, destroy the Iraqi government, and leave? Once we set foot on the road, we were on the turnpike, there were no moral exits. We are the ones who upset the way of life for an entire country by taking out its Government. We are responsible by our own actions for the lives of those we interfered with.

Not so. Upon toppling a dictatorship we have no moral obligation to do anything besides to say to them in no uncertain terms: "don't do it again, or the bombs will fall on you."

The idea that we must stick around and help them is altruism and nation-building, an entirely separate concept from the invasion itself.

[Why is the Initiation of Force Immoral?]

It seems to me that that line of reasoning is slightly faulty, Brandon. If my own self-interest is what determines morality, then why is it immoral for me to prevent someone else from pursuing their own self-interest?

In essence, if you hold the premise that your own self-interest is what determines morality, then you first establish that you have the right to life and therefore to your mind and to be free from the initiation of force, etc.

At that point it would be the height of unreason and hypocrisy to apply a double standard to yourself and others. If you have the right to your life, and this right is derived from your nature, then logically they enjoy the same right. To establish your own rights, then you must simultaneously establish theirs.

And since morality is based on the recognition of reality, then trying to lie to yourself and hold a double standard is immoral.

All these things are tied together, as are the other arguments presented here about living in a civilized society, the benefits of cooperation, and the arguments against the prudent predator presented elsewhere. So while I'm addressing your point with the above, do please bear in mind that it isn't simply this, but all of the other arguments as well. The initiation of force is wrong on many, many levels.

[Justification for war in the Middle-East]

I am, however, still convinced that it was not the right decision.

What specifically did you think wasn't the right decision? The removal of Saddam, his government, and their weapons which they were shooting at us and threatening us and our allies with, or the actions after that where we stuck around and attempted "nation building?" Because if you mean the latter I don't think anyone here is arguing against you on that.

[Could plasma conversion revolutionize waste management?]

Here comes 'Peak Garbage'.

That's what they should call "Peak Oil." Heh.

[Could plasma conversion revolutionize waste management?]

I read the PopSci print article last year. They are already up and running in several cities, producing profits. Very cool stuff.

What I found interesting is that the cost to dispose of garbage via landfill is actually a bit cheaper in most places than to use the plasma incinerator. Only a select few cities which have long distance shipping routes, such as New York City, actually need this. So far from the "garbage crisis" nonsense that the greens foster on us, we were very very far from garbage even being a problem at all, much less a crisis.

Now, with the use of this invention, it can basically never become a problem. Take that, you Neo-Malthusian idiots.

[The American Philosophy?]

It did in fact require the 16th Amendment, and was by no means uncontroversial. Also, the founding principles were by no means solid and 100% - we did in fact fight a civil war over the fact that political problems prevented their full implementation from the get-go. But the point in speaking of the American Founding Philosophy is to speak of the intended theme and purpose of this country's founding, rather than any concrete flaws in its implementation. Once you've identified the principle of this country's founding - individual rights - it's not hard to see which parts of that founding were in following that principle and which were (most lamentably!) departing from it.

[Reason for lack of new energy innovations?]

I liked the links in your last post, though. You had an interesting conversation with Flibbertigibbet. I found it strange that he considered cities to be more "economically robust"--I mean, there are certainly some very wealthy areas in Manhattan, but the norm is pretty much for the suburbs to be where the well-to-do live and the inner city to be the ghetto!

Also, I'm not sure what his definition of "suburb" would be. To me, a suburb is a settlement consisting of single-family homes and small condos outside, but within driving distance of a city. If Thousand Oaks is not a suburb, then I don't know what is!

Yes, that's how I define "suburb" as well. I think he more had in mind the poor rural south of his upbringing. His view of "robustness," however, is quite the conventional view. It's probably reinforced by the fact that it's easy to see the economy of an urban area since it's all perceptually accessible just by looking ("Ooh! Buildings! People! Big, old things from grander times!"). To see how more spread out cityscapes are just as robust, you have to engage in some deeper consideration. Flib's a smart guy, though - so he could see it. Your average listener these days... well that's another story.

[Reason for lack of new energy innovations?]

It certainly would, but I'm not sure in what way exactly you think transportation would be different.

Whoops! Of course that's what I meant to say.

[Reason for lack of new energy innovations?]

I think present regulations give the automobiles an advantage over less subsidized forms of transportation. This is why I think city structure and transportation would be different in a free market.

I disagree, with my case being presented in the links I gave and perhaps more specifically in some of my later posts here, here, and here. But I do see that I've at least brought your attention to some things you hadn't previously considered so I'm glad for that at least.

[Oil Industry Regulation Laws]

By "the rise of Environmentalism," do you mean prior to the 1970's?

[Discussing non-Objectivist opinions on OO.net]

under threat of restriction (and it is a threat, when a person puts a lot of effort into an existing discussion).

How is it a threat in the sense you're using that word? A threat to do what? Move the thread over to another forum where you can continue basically unhindered? I don't see what the big deal is. I've seen a lot of people react in a strong negative fashion to the idea of restricting a particular argument to the debate forum, but I would really like to know why. Because I can't see the cause for it. Sorry if this is off-topic.

[Reason for lack of new energy innovations?]

But to say that a subsidy isn't a subsidy because of the net effect is to engage in the fallacy of division.

I see what you're saying there. To explain my point, then, I see that the government's "subsidy" of roads is inseparable from the fact that they grossly mismanage them to the point of doing net harm to cars, their producers, and their owners.

Your original post was very much in the character that there were net subsidies going on - so much so that cities were build out instead of up, which you imply wouldn't happen without the net subsidy. And also so much so that you doubt that the UAW is a drain on the industry in the balance. So you were not just using the term as avoidance of the fallacy of division - you were actually stating that the auto industry was on the balance subsidized by the government's control of roads, rather than oppressed by it. Now perhaps you've changed your mind on that point, but that is the context of my original statement.