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Where have all the insects gone?

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Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#141

Post by kij »

hsavit1 wrote: post #126
elif wrote: post #122

In my neighborhood, there were 2 cases of West Nile virus detected in humans in June/July. Since then, the city have contracted a corporation called BugStars to drive down every street in my neighborhood (downtown, 10k population) and the four around it releasing poison directly into the air every Wednesday night. There was no notice given to any of us, and only after investigating were we able to figure out why ever…

this is horrendous. where are you located?

99% sure reddit is leaking in, and this is just some pop culture reference https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Bugstars

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#142

Post by NationalPark »

amatecha wrote: post #138
elif wrote: post #122

In my neighborhood, there were 2 cases of West Nile virus detected in humans in June/July. Since then, the city have contracted a corporation called BugStars to drive down every street in my neighborhood (downtown, 10k population) and the four around it releasing poison directly into the air every Wednesday night. There was no notice given to any of us, and only after investigating were we able to figure out why ever…

So like.. lawsuit? I'd definitely be calling up a lawyer (in addition to the city/police)... that's _seriously_ effed up. What if you had a home business selling honey/beeswax? That's just the most obvious example... not to mention the human-hazardous aspect of spraying this stuff!

It's not really happening, he's describing the plot of a video game.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#143

Post by revolvingocelot »

oofabz wrote: post #125
revolvingocelot wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between a nationalised industry and a publically-offered industry is that the nationalised industry has a chance of properly dealing with externalities, treating workers properly, ensuring safe long-term functionality, and, y'know, prioritizing the service they're there to provide. This situation is covered by the first, though I bet the things that are killing the insects are hurting us, too.

>nationalised industry has a chance of properly dealing with externalities Do you know the history of the Soviet whaling program? They killed more whales for industry than the West.

Yes, yes, the USSR was bad. If I allow you to define "nationalised industry" as "something bad the Soviets/CCP/Venezuelans did", then of course it's bad.

Contrast that to the concept of a Crown corporation in Canada, which "provide services required by the public that otherwise would not be economically viable as a private enterprise or that do not fit exactly within the scope of any ministry." [0] They can do things like "care about externalities" because they're not expected to make money, but they're still structured as corporations and therefore can have the usual trappings like middle management and competitive salaries and casual Fridays.

A famous example would be the Canadian National Railway, which was created by government fiat in 1918 as a response to a bunch of private railways in (less-developed) western Canada running out of government money to feed on and thereby going bankrupt. The diversity of the interests that it inherited allowed it to spin off all sorts of other beneficial Crown corporations recognized by every Canadian, like VIA Rail, Air Canada, and the CBC.

Of course, the privatization of Crown corporations is also a great way for right-wing governments to create minor budgetary surpluses to enthrall the plebes while handing over a captive "customer"-base to their already-wealthy friends, and since the 80s it's become a proud tradition. [1] Air Canada, Ontario Hydro, Petro-Canada...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_corporations_of_Canada

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Former_Crown_corporat...

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#144

Post by Shorel »

abakker wrote: post #30
tw04 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We can't live like native Americans with iPhones. We probably could in the next 100 years through automation, massive reduction in population, and making things to last instead of making things to be replaced. Building a society whose values aren't based around never-ending growth. We won't, but we could.

massive reduction in population is a very ugly thing. There's basically no good way to do that.

Some decades with very old population, and many countries are headed in that direction.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#145

Post by ruined »

elif wrote: post #122

In my neighborhood, there were 2 cases of West Nile virus detected in humans in June/July. Since then, the city have contracted a corporation called BugStars to drive down every street in my neighborhood (downtown, 10k population) and the four around it releasing poison directly into the air every Wednesday night. There was no notice given to any of us, and only after investigating were we able to figure out why ever…

my hometown in Texas has done this regularly since i was a child, when mosquito-borne viruses hit there. they aired notices about spraying nights on local TV news, on the radio, and published schedules in the papers.

i remember my parents discussing it with me and reading editorial debates in the paper.

not providing notice seems like a serious failure and i'd encourage you to give them legal/financial incentives to do so in the future.

edit: some other commenters are dismissing this as fake, so here, the CDC has an informational page on truck spraying https://www.cdc.gov/mosquitoes/mosquito-control/community/tr...

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#146

Post by amatecha »

NationalPark wrote: post #142
amatecha wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So like.. lawsuit? I'd definitely be calling up a lawyer (in addition to the city/police)... that's _seriously_ effed up. What if you had a home business selling honey/beeswax? That's just the most obvious example... not to mention the human-hazardous aspect of spraying this stuff!

It's not really happening, he's describing the plot of a video game.

Super weak, I wondered if that was the case. Lame troll then.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#147

Post by Jensson »

farias0 wrote: post #131
Jensson wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we had elected good officials at least. That is the argument against it. If you had elected good officials they would have created regulations against this already. Fact is that we can't elect good officials in the current system. Either it is because people would rather have more goods instead of caring about nature, or the system is corrupt and politicians use their power to enrich themselves rather than doing…

The problem with US politicians is that they are sold out to the private sector. This is a problem that would obviously not exist if there was no private sector, or if it was weaker, which is the "what if" of the discussion. Sure, then we could elect politicians that are bad in different ways, but then this becomes a discussion against socialism, which is not what I'm intending here. I'm only talking about socialism…

> The problem with US politicians is that they are sold out to the private sector. This is a problem that would obviously not exist if there was no private sector

You are diagnosing the symptom and not the cause. Politicians selling their power to the highest bidder is a symptom of politicians being corrupt and using their power to enrich themselves. Removing the private sector would give these corrupt cronies a lot more power to enrich themselves, that woudln't solve anything at all. Instead of having people with money and people with military power, you now have the same people having both power over industry and power over military, do you really think these people would now start caring about the environment over how much those factories are producing? No, these politicians still enrich themselves, they run these factories to make themselves as wealthy as possible and now there isn't even a government to stop them since they are the government.

Modern capitalism is based on the separation between capital and state. We call it corruption when capital is used to buy political power, or when political power is used to buy capital power. Communism is the merging of capital power and political power and giving this to the same ruling class, it is the ultimate form of what we in the west calls corruption.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#148

Post by z3t4 »

About the same amounts of pests every summer, so I'm not concerned. If the winter comes fast, like 15 C one day and -15 C the next day, many will die and there will be less of them the following spring, but at the end of the summer they have usually recovered. I think the lack of pest are due to use of pesticides and lack of habitats - rather then some doomsday coming.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#149

Post by mellavora »

thisiscorrect wrote: post #49
jerry1979 wrote: post #36

Anecdotally, while driving along Minnesota's segment of I94 in the '90s, one would have to stop and scrape the bugs off the front window and grill. Today, this is no longer a problem.

Could that be explained by improved aerodynamics of cars now compared to then? Has that been studied?

For me, I noticed the change over one year. I had a job where I commuted the same stretch of highway every day. For the first few years, every May/June the windshield was always badly crusted with bugs. Then suddenly one year, no bugs. Same car.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#150

Post by dragonwriter »

farias0 wrote: post #131
Jensson wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we had elected good officials at least. That is the argument against it. If you had elected good officials they would have created regulations against this already. Fact is that we can't elect good officials in the current system. Either it is because people would rather have more goods instead of caring about nature, or the system is corrupt and politicians use their power to enrich themselves rather than doing…

The problem with US politicians is that they are sold out to the private sector. This is a problem that would obviously not exist if there was no private sector, or if it was weaker, which is the "what if" of the discussion. Sure, then we could elect politicians that are bad in different ways, but then this becomes a discussion against socialism, which is not what I'm intending here. I'm only talking about socialism…

> The problem with US politicians is that they are sold out to the private sector.

No. The corruption is one of many symptoms of the problem, which is the fact that the electoral system is poorly designed for responsiveness and accountability, since it is structured so as to reinforce duopoly which incentivizes lesser-of-two-weasels voting.

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