China hungry. Antarctica stuffed.

[boneyard]

http://www.stategrowth.tas.gov.au/h...s_and_loans/drought_concessional_loans_scheme

Tassie gov drought loans

 

[Big A.D.]

If you can just go out and buy more land after trashing your own, where is the incentive not to destroy productive land that food grows on?

When the cost of replacing the productive land you have trashed is more expensive than sustainable stewardship and/or rehabilitation practices.

The important part you seem to be missing is the original land is already trashed and the spot market for land is not the same thing as the futures market for healthy, unpolluted food.

Remember when Cyclone Yasi came through and bananas when up to $20/kg? Outrage! OMG, bananas are sooo expensive!

Okay, so the sensible thing to do is just not buy bananas for a while until the prices come down, and that's all fine and how markets are supposed to work: price goes up until demand drops. Here though, we're talking about everything becoming permanently more expensive. There's not going to be room for substitution because the price rises will be across the board.

That's a direct result of China f***ing up it's own farmland. Somebody would have made some money doing it, but we have laws because money isn't always a great way of figuring out how to go about doing something.

Can you honestly, with a straight face, explain how the best person to decide how any given area of land should be managed is a Chinese businessman because he has cash? No, really: in terms that wouldn't make most people bend over laughing.

Seriously, your free market environmentalism theory scales up to about the size of an eco tourist resort and then it dies in the arse.

 

[Topherclaus]

I wonder if food prices in Australia will massively increase as we compete with Chinese buyers willing to pay high prices for healthy produce? (Similar to the natural gas market where Australian consumers must compete with the international market for Australian gas.)

We may find ourselves surviving on crappy Chinese instant noodles while the best produce heads offshore. No point complaining however, we should each learn how to grow our own healthy vegetables and maybe even own some chickens. The farms and water rights may be sold off to foreign buyers, but we'd still have a degree of autonomy and independence if we could supply our own food.

Time for gardens in the yard to change to vegetables and home grown produce?
If you do and live in an inner city area you might also have extensive lead pollution in your soils. Be aware and either get your soils tested or use raised garden beds.

If you don't want creepy Chinese noodles there is always Indonesian noodles.

To complement the extensive lead pollution, I also have a nice dusting of asbestos. The daycare centre outside of which asbestos was dumped a few years ago is a couple of hundred meters from my apartment, just near a nice little community garden. There are numerous building sites here in inner Sydney that don't bother with dust & airborne pollution control. There was also mention of uncovered trucks taking away asbestos waste and it was blowing off in the wind.

Have you seen how seriously the UK treats asbestos? And here the standard is basically spray some water laced with PVA glue on it, she'll be right. So scary.

 

[mmm....shiney!]

The important part you seem to be missing is the original land is already trashed and the spot market for land is not the same thing as the futures market for healthy, unpolluted food.

Big A.D., you asked a question about where the incentive is to stop trashing land instead of just going out and buying more. I answered you: When the cost of buying new land is higher than the cost of sustainable stewardship/rehabilitation practices. It's a simple case of economics, the more valuable something is, the more incentive I have to look after it. If it costs more to maintain my property in good working order than it does to replace it with a new item, why would I spend money on maintaining it?

Can you honestly, with a straight face, explain how the best person to decide how any given area of land should be managed is a Chinese businessman because he has cash? No, really: in terms that wouldn't make most people bend over laughing.

Did I say that? No. If you want to protect valuable Australian farming land from the rapacious Chinese, then you are going to have to enhance its value in the eyes of other investors (yes, farming is first and foremost an activity based on a desire to profit), say the Brits, or Japanese, or you.

But you don't have enough money so what you do instead is lobby the government to do your bidding on your behalf. You support the staid old way of the State ie the destruction of an individual's right to decide for themselves how they can best utilise or to whom they can sell their own property. You think you have a right to tell someone else what they can do with their own stuff. I'm saying you have no right, and if you do possess that right because it has been granted to you via a legislation, then you possess a tool of enslavement.

By the way, how has that whole "the government is responsible for looking after the environment" thing been going over the last 200 years Big A.D? As good as "the government is responsible for looking after our freedoms", or "the government is responsible for looking after the Aborigines", or "the government is responsible for looking after the banking sector" things I suppose. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

So what makes you think that the Chinese will destroy Australian farming land in the same way they have in China?

Seriously, your free market environmentalism theory scales up to about the size of an eco tourist resort and then it dies in the arse.

Really? What are the shortcomings of free-market environmentalism that can be better addressed through central planning? Give me some examples and I'll see if I can come up with a better free-market alternative, but remember, don't fall into the old trap of central planners and assume that all intervention is largely costless and has only positive ramifications (every benefit has a cost that has to be met by someone, in the public domain the cost is generally borne by the public, in the free-market domain the cost will be borne by those who benefit see: http://forums.silverstackers.com/message-887328.html#p887328 )

 

[FullMetalFever]

By the way, how has that whole "the government is responsible for looking after the environment" thing been going over the last 200 years Big A.D? As good as "the government is responsible for looking after our freedoms", or "the government is responsible for looking after the Aborigines", or "the government is responsible for looking after the banking sector" things I suppose. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Why don't you answer your own questions on behalf of China and then Australia (replace aborigines with Tibetans). Sort of becomes pretty obvious to me but I would be very interested in how you spin this one ...

 

[SpacePete]

By the way, how has that whole "the government is responsible for looking after the environment" thing been going over the last 200 years Big A.D? As good as "the government is responsible for looking after our freedoms", or "the government is responsible for looking after the Aborigines", or "the government is responsible for looking after the banking sector" things I suppose. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Why don't you answer your own questions on behalf of China and then Australia (replace aborigines with Tibetans). Sort of becomes pretty obvious to me but I would be very interested in how you spin this one ...

Shiney has previously argued that the British were justified in violently taking land from the Aboriginal residents because their traditional cultural system of land ownership was immoral and was preventing them from achieving their full potential, preventing them from becoming "fully human" whatever that means.

 

[mmm....shiney!]

By the way, how has that whole "the government is responsible for looking after the environment" thing been going over the last 200 years Big A.D? As good as "the government is responsible for looking after our freedoms", or "the government is responsible for looking after the Aborigines", or "the government is responsible for looking after the banking sector" things I suppose. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Why don't you answer your own questions on behalf of China and then Australia (replace aborigines with Tibetans). Sort of becomes pretty obvious to me but I would be very interested in how you spin this one ...

Shiney has previously argued that the British were justified in violently taking land from the Aboriginal residents because their traditional cultural system of land ownership was immoral and was preventing them from achieving their full potential, preventing them from becoming "fully human" whatever that means.

Care to quote me on that?

 

[mmm....shiney!]

By the way, how has that whole "the government is responsible for looking after the environment" thing been going over the last 200 years Big A.D? As good as "the government is responsible for looking after our freedoms", or "the government is responsible for looking after the Aborigines", or "the government is responsible for looking after the banking sector" things I suppose. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Why don't you answer your own questions on behalf of China and then Australia (replace aborigines with Tibetans). Sort of becomes pretty obvious to me but I would be very interested in how you spin this one ...

It's time for the Fallacy Ref again! :lol:

 

[SpacePete]

Why don't you answer your own questions on behalf of China and then Australia (replace aborigines with Tibetans). Sort of becomes pretty obvious to me but I would be very interested in how you spin this one ...

Shiney has previously argued that the British were justified in violently taking land from the Aboriginal residents because their traditional cultural system of land ownership was immoral and was preventing them from achieving their full potential, preventing them from becoming "fully human" whatever that means.

Care to quote me on that?

Certainly, remember the thread where you argued that (emphasis mine):

...

Just because you do not agree with somebody else's philosophy, it does not mean it is wrong, especially if it is harming nobody and arguably benefiting them all.

In this case I do believe their societal structure was flawed, any system based upon collectivism as being the supreme value system overrides the fundamental right to freedom from aggression upon both person and property. It's a view I can morally justify by arguing that a human can only achieve his or her potential when private property rights are recognised as supreme.

and...

But what does being "truly human" mean? Are you saying aboriginals living in traditional cultural systems were not truly human and hence that provides a justification for forcibly acquiring the land they occupied?

I'm not justifying the forcible acquisition of the land, I merely stated that if one good thing came out of European colonisation of Australia, it is that the indigenous inhabitants now live under a legal system that better recognises private property rights.

By full potential I mean to be truly human.

Surely you are not introducing the informal fallacy along the lines of the "No true Scotsman argument" ?! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

No I'm not. I would've thought the concept of being truly human to be self-evident. :/

To me it means an existence where an individual has exclusive control over their own life, they are not indentured to any other nor to any group.

So here is what I see being argued above:

1) The primacy of private property rights is morally justified because it is the only way for a person to have a chance at becoming "fully human".

Yes.

2) Traditional Aboriginal societal structure was flawed because it overrode a fundamental right to freedom from aggression upon both person and property.

Yes.

3) Therefore, 60,000 years of Aboriginal culture and occupation of the land can be classed as immoral because it prevented them from achieving their "full potential" in becoming "fully human".

No. 60 000 years of ownership rights can be classified as immoral.

4) Since traditional ownership of the land is now classed as immoral, or at least less moral than one specific alternative system, there is justification in the imposition of private property rights through the means of aggression against them which ultimately resulted in Aboriginals having no private property rights over the land they previously occupied, and arguably now have far less potential to become "fully human" than they did living a traditional lifestyle for the past several millennia... a lifestyle, in fact, that was far closer to that for which humans had evolved over hundreds of thousands of years.

I'll refer you back to the quote from bordsilver above regarding aggression. As far as the rest of your paragraph goes, I repeat agin that Aboriginal people now have the capacity to own property privately, something which they could not have done under their old cultural system. This is a step forward, it's not a regressive step therefore they have far greater capacity now to reach their true human potential.

From: http://forums.silverstackers.com/to...en-china-used-to-be-full-of-poor-farmers.html

So while you may say in one pargraph that you don't justify violence against the native inhabitants of Australia, in another you do because their sociatal structure was based on collectivisim and so you state they lose any right to freedom from agression.

 

[mmm....shiney!]

I didn't say that I believe the British were justified in violently taking the land though did I?

Shiney has previously argued that the British were justified in violently taking land from the Aboriginal residents

Your charge is unsubstantiated:

I'm not justifying the forcible acquisition of the land

 

[SpacePete]

I didn't say that I believe the British were justified in violently taking the land though did I?

Shiney has previously argued that the British were justified in violently taking land from the Aboriginal residents

Your charge is unsubstantiated:

I'm not justifying the forcible acquisition of the land

Is it?

...

In this case I do believe their societal structure was flawed, any system based upon collectivism as being the supreme value system overrides the fundamental right to freedom from aggression upon both person and property. It's a view I can morally justify by arguing that a human can only achieve his or her potential when private property rights are recognised as supreme.

 

[SpacePete]

Shiny, you can't have it both ways if you wish to be consistent in your argument.

 

[mmm....shiney!]

Am I going to have to get the Fallacy Ref here for you too?

What part of that quote justifies a violent occupation of Australia?

 

[SpacePete]

Am I going to have to get the Fallacy Ref here for you too?

What part of that quote justifies a violent occupation of Australia?

In the other thread you were arguing that aboriginals weren't fully human... and then:

...

In this case I do believe their societal structure was flawed, any system based upon collectivism as being the supreme value system overrides the fundamental right to freedom from aggression upon both person and property. It's a view I can morally justify by arguing that a human can only achieve his or her potential when private property rights are recognised as supreme.

 

[mmm....shiney!]

I'm going to ignore every new attempt of yours to quote me out of context until you answer my initial question.

What part of that quote justifies a violent occupation of Australia?

 

[SpacePete]

I'm going to ignore every new attempt of yours to quote me out of context until you answer my initial question.

What part of that quote justifies a violent occupation of Australia?

I can see you dont want to address what you wrote. It was quite clear. Now, are you going to explain your quote?

 

[SpacePete]

Poor Shiney, caught out with a logical inconsistency in his argument.

 

[SpacePete]

...

In this case I do believe their societal structure was flawed, any system based upon collectivism as being the supreme value system overrides the fundamental right to freedom from aggression upon both person and property. It's a view I can morally justify by arguing that a human can only achieve his or her potential when private property rights are recognised as supreme.

 

[mmm....shiney!]

What part of that quote justifies a violent occupation of Australia?

 

[SpacePete]

What part of that quote justifies a violent occupation of Australia?

* In this case I do believe their societal structure was flawed,

* any system based upon collectivism as being the supreme value system overrides the fundamental right to freedom from aggression upon both person and property.

* It's a view I can morally justify

* by arguing that a human can only achieve his or her potential when private property rights are recognised as supreme.