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China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

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Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#151

Post by JumpCrisscross »

maxglute wrote: post #63
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not really sufficient Our barge use is crippled by the Jones Act, not water levels. Make it lucrative to ship by barge and the incentives will get the levels back up.

Making shipping lucrative (which US should) can further increase utilization. Issue with Missippi traffic is existing shipping, i.e. those that operate under Jones, are already crippled by reduced water levels as result of heat/drought/climate change. So it's a water level issue, which translates infra commitment issue... not unlike the green belt. Climate change means you have to invest more just to stand still. E:…

> it's a water level issue, which translates infra commitment issue

The point is with the Jones Act there isn't much value in barges. So other uses of the water are prioritised. Adding water doesn't have an ROI commensurate with alternative uses.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#152

Post by redeeman »

jrflowers wrote: post #133
redeeman wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

heres a radical thought, if a group of people, be it 2, 5 og 250 million wants to build the starship enterprise, how about we say "sounds fun, have at it", and let them mind their own business? and in this pristine new reality, how about we DONT let them put their grubby fat hands into the remaining peoples pockets to fund it? In exchange, when the naysayers to the enterprise projects wants to make something, the ent…

> Now we have utopia A good example of such a libertarian utopia would be a recent experiment in Grafton, New Hampshire. They had a real bear of a time. https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...

and how about regimes where people think they have a right to other peoples life? history would suggest that this mindset means that people are outright gonna get slaughtered.

buy a gun and bearspray, if you dont want to have bears invade your property, put a fence. If someone doesnt want to pay for that and risk it, well, I am kinda okay with that too. If someone breaks their legs and needs help to complete their bear fence, I will help them too, but if they DEMAND and insist they have a god(=government) granted right to force me to help them with their fence under the threat of imprisonment, I will not, and I will consider them criminals as they are

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#153

Post by jrflowers »

redeeman wrote: post #152
jrflowers wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now we have utopia A good example of such a libertarian utopia would be a recent experiment in Grafton, New Hampshire. They had a real bear of a time. https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...

and how about regimes where people think they have a right to other peoples life? history would suggest that this mindset means that people are outright gonna get slaughtered. buy a gun and bearspray, if you dont want to have bears invade your property, put a fence. If someone doesnt want to pay for that and risk it, well, I am kinda okay with that too. If someone breaks their legs and needs help to complete their be…

> how about regimes where people think they have a right to other peoples life?

They have fewer bear attacks

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#154

Post by matthewdgreen »

vkou wrote: post #146
chii wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> productivity growth has dramatically outpaced peer nations over the last 40 years. and yet, are the citizens getting their fair share of said productivity growth? Or has it been obsorbed by the CCP, in which the wealth is then allocated to something that said citizen would not have chosen to allocate to?

Given that hundreds of millions of people living in it had to go outside to shit in an outhouse four decades ago, but are now living first-world and nearly first-world lifestyles, you tell me if any of that wealth made it to them. People tolerate the CCP because of the clear material gains they have seen in their lives. If some strongman authoritarian stood with a megaphone on Main Street and credibly promised Americ…

The same basic rags-to-richest pattern was true for most US citizens a century ago, and no we're now objectively some of the richest people in the world. But despite this progress, US politics does not indicate that the US populace is deeply satisfied. Which leads to the real question: will the CCP still be as popular when material progress plateaus?

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#155

Post by chii »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #154
vkou wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that hundreds of millions of people living in it had to go outside to shit in an outhouse four decades ago, but are now living first-world and nearly first-world lifestyles, you tell me if any of that wealth made it to them. People tolerate the CCP because of the clear material gains they have seen in their lives. If some strongman authoritarian stood with a megaphone on Main Street and credibly promised Americ…

The same basic rags-to-richest pattern was true for most US citizens a century ago, and no we're now objectively some of the richest people in the world. But despite this progress, US politics does not indicate that the US populace is deeply satisfied. Which leads to the real question: will the CCP still be as popular when material progress plateaus?

> will the CCP still be as popular when material progress plateaus?

they know they won't be - people's demand continues to grow, and not just material wants, but "spiritual" wants (aka, they want more representation in the political system to make decisions). Of course, this only manifests after some material wealth threshold has been reached.

It's also why i conspiratorially believe that the CCP is deliberately ensuring chinese yuan is continuously debased, and kept artificially low. It ensures that the people's wealth in general is not high enough to reach that threshold i mentioned above.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#157

Post by throwawaymaths »

jrflowers wrote: post #131
throwawaymaths wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes and believe it or not healthcare runs into real constraints and concerns about equity, etc. suppose a rare disease is only well researched in a few white families. lets say, the mennonites. curing the disease is possible, but expensive. should everyone else be forced to subsidize it? what if the markers are known and parents choose to have kids anyways even though they have the markers. does the situation change…

This is a good point. If you imagine that by healthcare people mean an imaginary expensive Mennonite disease instead of the ability to see a doctor and receive treatment for common diseases and injuries it becomes very murky indeed.

yeah i should have said ashkenazi instead of mennonite, but i didn't want to come off as or attract a certain type of comment.

this is a real thing. Gaucher's disease, while anyone can get it in principle, is almost entirely a disease that afflicts ashkenazim. the treatment is cerezyme, which is one of the most expensive drugs, and you must take it for life.

and you missed the comment about sickle cell (only affects west africans and people of west african descent). which is now curable, but VERY expensive to cure.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#158

Post by jrflowers »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #157
jrflowers wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good point. If you imagine that by healthcare people mean an imaginary expensive Mennonite disease instead of the ability to see a doctor and receive treatment for common diseases and injuries it becomes very murky indeed.

yeah i should have said ashkenazi instead of mennonite, but i didn't want to come off as or attract a certain type of comment. this is a real thing. Gaucher's disease, while anyone can get it in principle , is almost entirely a disease that afflicts ashkenazim. the treatment is cerezyme, which is one of the most expensive drugs, and you must take it for life. and you missed the comment about sickle cell (only affects…

I didn’t miss anything. You can substitute in any real or imaginary rare and expensive disease if you want to define “healthcare” as something that excludes the general ability to see doctors and receive treatment for common illnesses and injuries.

If you’re dead set on arguing about an arbitrary imaginary definition of a word, the world is your oyster. You can say sickle cell or Methuselah Syndrome or Tandy’s Malady, it’s all gravy if you can convince your mark that whatever you’re talking about is the same thing as the broad concept of healthcare.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#159

Post by maxglute »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #151
maxglute wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making shipping lucrative (which US should) can further increase utilization. Issue with Missippi traffic is existing shipping, i.e. those that operate under Jones, are already crippled by reduced water levels as result of heat/drought/climate change. So it's a water level issue, which translates infra commitment issue... not unlike the green belt. Climate change means you have to invest more just to stand still. E:…

> it's a water level issue, which translates infra commitment issue The point is with the Jones Act there isn't much value in barges. So other uses of the water are prioritised. Adding water doesn't have an ROI commensurate with alternative uses.

The mississippi utilization priority is commercial traffic, which is prodominantly barge traffic for all sorts of critical bulk cargo. It's an extremely valuable waterway that can't be replaced by rail or truck. It's not about adding water, it's about dredging to maintain same water levels or building out infra to be more resilient to water level changes, in so far as Jones Act is concerned, along with Foreign Dredge Act, it limits non US ships from conducting maintainence, which precludes bidders like the Dutch who are much better / economical at maintaining water ways. The ROI is massive, but there exist lack of commitment to fix, at least with urgency that, which is in part legistlative.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#160

Post by throwawaymaths »

jrflowers wrote: post #158
throwawaymaths wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah i should have said ashkenazi instead of mennonite, but i didn't want to come off as or attract a certain type of comment. this is a real thing. Gaucher's disease, while anyone can get it in principle , is almost entirely a disease that afflicts ashkenazim. the treatment is cerezyme, which is one of the most expensive drugs, and you must take it for life. and you missed the comment about sickle cell (only affects…

I didn’t miss anything. You can substitute in any real or imaginary rare and expensive disease if you want to define “healthcare” as something that excludes the general ability to see doctors and receive treatment for common illnesses and injuries. If you’re dead set on arguing about an arbitrary imaginary definition of a word, the world is your oyster. You can say sickle cell or Methuselah Syndrome or Tandy’s Malady…

what does it mean if healthcare doesn't include the corner cases though? where do you draw the line? is cancer treatment healthcare? what if you have a rare cancer?

im not the one arguing from a made up definition here. almost ANYONE would consider cancer, rare cancer, sickle cell treatments, and gauchers treatments "healthcare". its disingenuous to put those outside the bag of things called healthcare just because its inconvenient to your worldview

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