Economic growth

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“Only in economics is endless expansion seen as a virtue. In biology it is called cancer.”
(From David Pilling’s book “The Growth Delusion”).

Pilling’s core contention is that gross domestic product – the measurement upon which so much economic analysis is based – is an arbitrary, oversimplified construct that we “slavishly follow” for no good reason. Indeed, a good argument can be put forward for saying that capitalist “growth” and limitless expansion is going to end up skewering the human race and the planet it lives on. There is only so much junk plastic you can throw into the ocean, only so many wild creatures you can render extinct, only so many forests you can chop down. Catastrophe, caused by capitalism, may not undermine the lifestyles of those who read this posting while they are alive, but the eventual outcome looks pretty clear.

In the series “Cosmos” Neil Degrasse Tyson talks about the horrible fate of the planet Venus, which originally had an atmosphere somewhat like that of the Earth today. Over the centuries the oxygen in the air was replaced by carbon dioxide, and thick clouds of sulfuric acid completely covered the planet. The atmosphere traps the small amount of energy from the sun that does reach the surface, along with the heat the planet itself releases. Venus is now toxic, with violent lightning, thunderstorms, and acidic land. No living creature could survive a day on it. To all global climate change deniers: Earth is going in that direction.
Do you really want to take the risk of it getting that bad?

Thought for the day

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Congress is moving to take a second crack at opioid legislation, with lawmakers broadly agreeing that they need to do more to deal with a crisis that’s killing over 42,000(!) people per year.

Are they sure they are up postponing fundraising for long enough to do that?

Down syndrome

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Lawmakers in Ohio fecently took steps to bar abortions when they are sought because a fetus has been diagnosed with Down syndrome, one of more than a dozen abortion restrictions passed in the state in recent years. If the bill is enacted, Ohio would become the latest state to try to stop women from aborting fetuses when they discover through prenatal testing that they have a chromosomal defect. Similar laws have been passed in North Dakota, Indiana and Louisiana, though the latter two have been blocked by the courts.

One observer commented: “If politicians were really concerned with Down syndrome, the things we’d be talking about are access to health care, independent living, opportunities for children when they graduate high school,” she said. “We’d be talking about companies that should be hiring children with Down syndrome.”

Alarm about abortion of fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome spiked during the summer after a widely viewed CBS News report showed that women in Iceland had all but stopped giving birth to babies with Down syndrome, thanks to mandatory prenatal testing and liberal abortion laws.

What would have been the attitude of Epicurus? – a tricky question. On balance I suggest that the humanistic attitude that the welfare and happiness of the mother (and father, too) would have won out at the expense of the unborn child, whose future and cognition, awareness and possibly? happy life would be in doubt. I have no experience of Down Syndrome children, but understand that they are loving and responsive to the care and attention of parents. However, I still think that it is a life sentence for the parents, and, when they die, and if the child survives, a trial for the survivors who look after the child.

Guns again: The Swiss have good reasons to have them

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A fatuous piece of propaganda has been doing the rounds in America. It’s an image of two young women cycling through a field with semi-automatic rifles on their backs, with the text: “Switzerland: 1 in 2 citizens has guns, lowest crime rate in the world”. The idea that this somehow discredits calls for US gun control is laughable. The high rate of gun ownership in Switzerland is owing to the fact that, with no standing army, virtually every male citizen is conscripted into the militia, but doesn‘t store state-issued weapons (without ammunition) at home.

This is nothing like the US, where “untrained yahoos” can “hang about Starbucks with loaded AR-15s”. Yet the militia link is still instructive. It brings to mind the Second Amendment to the US Constitution: “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”. The founders included this on the assumption that the US, like Switzerland, wouldn’t have a standing army and would need militias to protect the state. But US gun nuts interpret it differently: for them, it confers a right to stock up on arms with which to protect themselves from the state. Which, when you look at it, is not the same thing at all (Heather Digby Parton, Salon).

Foreigners look at the American gun scene in horror and disbelief (see Owen Bell’s excellent comment on my posting yesterday). All I can say is that, truly, there are grown up, wise and sensible Americans of all ages who abhor the gun culture and think it totally inappropriate for the modern world. One person allowed a concealed weapon is enough to frighten a dozen other people into arming themselves. Thus does the NRA and its extemists make tons of money out of death or threats of death.

Guns should be locked away and the lock-up was inspected regularly by the police. The idea of walking around “legally” with concealed firearms is an appalling idea, dangerous to innocent passers by and useless in an emergency. Concealed firearms are simply extensions of a fragile manhood. Real men don’t need them.

This issue is not an issue of personal freedom or the Constitution; it defines whether one wishes to lives in a modern, civilised country or in a vast Hollywood version of Dry Gulch and trigger-happy cowboys.

The uselessness of armed guards at schools

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Amid the aftermath of the Florida high school shooting, the usual suspects, anxious to safeguard the huge gun income, are pushing the idea of posting armed guards at schools.

This idea is naive and extremely dangerous, reflecting badly on the country as a whole. It would result in even more deaths. Let me tell you why.

Anyone with bad intent would know that he had to get past the armed guard if he were to murder innocent children within the school buildings. He would therefore use the ancient route to success: total surprise. However alert the guard he still doesn’t know from which direction an attack would come. Unless you had multiple guards, surprising one man would not be difficult. I know whereof I speak, because this happened to me while in the army. Innocently entering a room, supposedly full of people on my side, I was fired upon, the bullet passing through my hair and lodging itself in the doorframe. (This was an accident, not an assassination attempt!). I stood there shaking with shock and fright – and so would anyone else. (A similar thing happened to the terrified guard at the Florida school, I imagine. He is labeled a coward, but I at least understand, but not condone, his inaction).

If,like many Americans, I had been brought up on sherriffs, the wild West, stage coaches, robberies, ridiculously accurate gunfire, and Hollywood mythologies, I too would believe in sharpshooters gunning down a school attackers with a single shot. The messy truth is that gunfire around a school is very likely to injure or kill anyone in reach. Moreover, the whole point of total surprise is to kill or injure the guard, leaving the whole school open to mass murder. If you are suddenly attacked from an unexpected direction you simply do not wheel round and put a bullet through the forehead of an attacker. Most people would be shaking with utter fright and horror, unable to aim anything like accurately. The exponents of this whole idea are either naive, dishonest or lack the beginnings of an imagination.

And you cannot give arms to the teachers either. Their job is to look after the children, not to be sharp-shooters, or to endanger the children with a loaded gun in the classroom. Guns should be nowhere near schoolchildren. Mass murder weapons should be banned and restricted to their principle users – the military. I maintain that this is the Epicurean stance.