Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus and Global Trade with Ecological Sustainability Concerns

Trade is an issue of concern mostly for people invested in the present system of globalization, or opposed to it. Some felt that developing nations were taken advantage of by aliens that are rich and empowered with corporate plans to exploit the uniformed savages that are barefoot and without big screen TV’s In my opinion such concerns will continue because people haven’t very good ideas about what or how trade might be done differently or even how to transition an economy to an ecologically sustainable foundation.

I read a textbook on ecological economics once, and I seem to recall that it mentioned that global trade is inefficient in regard to the environment. Harm is done to the atmosphere form all of the global transportation of goods, and harm is done to the oceans and land as well. As global labor is exploited and wages kept down to minimum increases because production can relocate to where the lowest common wage denominator is, so can production and resources be most easily exploited globally as they are locally depleted by producers that relocate when they are gone, or transport more from abroad. A significant change would be to produce as many goods locally as possible and minimize foreign trade. Some day perhaps 3d printers can manufacture goods locally and plans and design program made globally; transferring information on the Internet isn’t too harmful to the environment, although it would be better if server farms were geothermally powered or some other renewable resource was used to power them.

The controversial or contentious item about trade from my point of view is why is it so encouraged to exist in a world that still uses Adam Smith’s 19th century paradigm for free trade given to relax royal restrictions on trade with Europe? In Adam Smith’s day the environment’s limits weren’t too much on the radar except for people like Thomas Robert Malthus, whose concerns about the limits to population growth never really became obsolete. Free enterprise within ecologically economic paradigmata for directed economic evolution can be applied to create a political economy to maximize human potential within rational and sustainable criteria in theory if not in political practice.

Trump Acquittal is Good News for Democracy, but History Shows Org Crime Will Keep Trying

President Trump was the first President to be impeached and acquitted on a purely partisan basis. Democrats generally hate President Trump for a variety of reasons, not all of which are wrong although hatred is, and so they flammed up a pretext for impeachment. The bunk impeachment was as great as danger to democracy in the U.S.A. as was the Nixon directed burglary of the D.N.C.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/06/trump-impeachment-verdict-how-america-can-recover-column/4655515002/

If Democrats could have succeeded in removing a President they hate, overturning the vote of 2016, they would have established a one-party rule over America. The Clinton administration seemed to bring in a networking for insider wealth and ad hoc political racketeering rendering the Democrat Party into the mafia that people said it was long ago. That ad hoc mafia was acting as a Shadow government and even had a former Clinton, Biden operative create a San Francisco based Shadow Company that botched the vote count of the Iowa primaries.

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-04/clinton-campaign-vets-behind-2020-iowa-caucus-app-snafu

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-02-04/nevada-democratic-presidential-caucuses-questions

The Clintons catalyzed a Democrat Party network synergized with Silicon Valley party partisans able to coordinate headline propaganda with a pejorative outlook. The Clinton Foundation and Sect. Clinton provided free tours for those that made large donations to the foundation. Countless Clinton computer related perfidies, lost hard drives (or erased), unsecured email servers for official state department business, a lost Clinton Diary that reappeared after Vince Foster died- the number of information age perfidies that appeared to be a constant companion of the Clintons and the Democrat Party; no to mention Senator Feinstein’s employment of a Chinese espionage agent, brought distrust to the public and incredulity at the specious nature of the impeachment charges. 

Democrat hatred of the President induced them to conflate bias with facts to produce a subversion of Democracy that was as an attempted coup in effect. Corporatism and socialism may egress to establish itself as a deep shadow government eventually, apparently it was mostly thwarted this time. 

President Trump Acquitted Vacation Next on Congressional Agenda?

President Trump's was acquitted by the Senate on a generally strict party split with Utah's Mitt Romney being the crossover on article 1. One wonders if the Congress has scheduled vacation time all around for a job well done at wasting time and money instead of packaging good bi-partisan legislation.

Both parties seem to applaud the President's state of the union speech reference to the Barrasso Highway Bill. Actually the U.S. should replace its old infrastructure such as highways with new infrastructure rather than rebuild it. One of the challenges of mature civilizations is that they can't fundamentally change their basic infrastructure forms. Asphalt and concrete highways and steel and concrete bridges are such infrastructure the post-modern U.S.A. cannot move beyond with brilliant, new transport ideas that aren't so trampy, slow and solar heat absorbing.

The President's approval rating is 49% though Speaker Pelosi isn't one of those. She said she will not accept the acquittal, and Majority Leader McConnell responded; whatever that means.

Having Trouble With Moral Principles?

It is a good thing to have principles, so many people don’t. Principles serve as self-directed programmatic choices one has made or accepted. It is easy to understand therefore that some would regard principles as pre-judgments and offer reproof. Alice Cooper sang ‘we’ve got no class, got no principles, got no intelligence, can’t even think of a word that rhymes’.

Principles may arrive from others and conveyed as social values that one has accepted for various reasons. Immanuel Kant wrote sapere aude- think for oneself. René Descartes’ earlier had written a philosophical investigations on epistemology were he resolved to investigate first principles of knowing, of self-awareness; perhaps Kant thought to improve on that and to consider perception and objects technically rather than introspectively- objectively rather than subjectively if that differentiation were possible... Kant wrote The Critique of Pure Reason trying to do so.

Agencies of socialization may train one, or indoctrinate, their own ethical values in subjects; i.e. television. Television watchers presently encounter one commercial where a famous lesbian appears extolling the virtues of evolution following a funny video story about stone-agers trying to cross a bay without a boat and being eaten. The obvious purpose is to promote homosexuality as an evolutionary, progressive devise. The values of the rich are promoted through the television commercials and content they can afford to put out.

The moral and value principles in the commercial showcase evolution as social change, and lesbianism as an example of positive change. The unstated premise of atheism being rational is implicitly inferred from the context. What isn't mentioned about evolution is that not all change is good-for-all.

An example of evolutionary harm might be that of Nazi Germany's final solution being harmful to European Jews. If a Chinese bio-lab invents a virus that escapes and kills all human life on Earth except for independent voters in the U.S.A., that would be bad for everyone except possibly the independent voters. Neither can evolution be set against Christian beliefs for there are Christians that believe the book of Genesis describes God evolving the Earth on his own better than ours time.

Principles are abbreviated, encapsulated forms for behavior and for making live moral or other kinds of choices without needing to rethink those on-the-spot. Sometimes that kind of time for careful reflection on principles doesn’t exist. Consider the philosophical ethical thought problem of a fellow forced to choose between switching a runaway train onto a track with one baby tied to the rail or let it go ahead to crash into a bus full of Democrats that is stalled on the track- if he had a moral principle thing about it he could act decisively. If he stopped to think about the moral issues the train might speed right on past while he was thinking about it.

There is a difference between abstract principles and principles actually used and accepted as worthwhile for-oneself. Some authorities; Biblical for example, offer moral instructions or principles that can save a lot of suffering learned through experience, even so it is worth thinking about accepted moral principles to determine for-oneself if they are reasonable, if opportune.

If one reads a book on outboard motor mechanics that describes particular principles of small engine repair and those principles become your own, and one day you need to repair a broken outboard motor on the high seas, and discover that the book obviously had bad advice and actually was written by a poet, it is likely that you would discard that set of principles for repairing an outboard motor and look for something else if you survive rowing to safe harbor. Untested moral principles that are abstract can fail when put to the test. One sees the temptations of Christ that were well met; not every human does so well in applying or understanding moral principles to actual circumstances if they need to.

East and West; Who is the Winner at Decline?

Thomas Piketty writing in his book Capital in the 21st Century examined the economic history and growth rates over time of several nations and found that the economy of nations stabilize when mature at a fairly modest, low rate in comparison to the rapid growth rate of developing nations taking up the technology and economic tools of more advanced nations. It is thus reasonable that the Asian nations have a faster rate of growth than those of the west. Eventually they too will stabilize at the same level as those of the west I would think, or might if several externalities such as limits to population and resource growth or ecospheric challenges do not arise to change things.

Sustaining high rates of growth for several generations is improbable because of the compound nature of the increase. Doubling a population or rate of growth every few years instead of over several generations would quickly deplete planetary natural resources.

One might regard the west coast of the United States as being in decline compared to the east coast because Democrats have taken over largely, yet that isn’t the sort of answer some would be looking for. Decline is an ambiguous term since there are so many possible value systems to choose from. If one wonders about civil liberties the west still has more than nations like China, yet for decadence socially the west might have more of that than the orient.

If one is looking for zero population growth and a sustainable ecological economic based economic reform with free enterprise working within a directed political economy with a goal of restoring the vitality of the world ecosphere in my opinion East and West are equally in decline.

Predatory Capitalists Have Partners in Ecosphere Predators

I.M.O. corporate raiders are predator capitalist in a free market mal-adapted to global ecosphere challenges concerning its decay. Free enterprise should have better ecospheric regulatory criteria to prefer a directed evolution of free enterprise with ecological economic guidelines conducive to sustaining human life on Earth and recovery of as much of the lost wild flora and fauna as is compatible with state of the art land use design policies.

Corporate developments should be required to go through hoops of no-net-loss-of-ecospheric vitality, neutral to reversal affect on global warming etc. Intelligence is required in all economic development to create structures that reward efficiency and eliminate negative externalities that degrade the ecosphere. Plain predatory capitalism has a partner in ecospheric predatory capitalism that burns the planks of the wooden ship in effect in order to power the boilers and make the passengers more comfortable. That sort of capitalism with its corporate raiders is grossly irresponsible. Adam Smith probably would have recognized that the paradigm of free enterprise and capitalism should be tailored to fit the empirical challenges of a society instead of relying upon government to solve the problems and challenges to society that cannot be ignored except and human peril.

I should point out, for those that haven’t thought about it, that capital is nothing more than wealth accumulated in about any form. Free enterprise is one way to build capital, yet even socialists and communist can be capitalists; that acquisition of capital is sought after by communist managers that may be ecospheric predators (in Africa and elsewhere for example) can also practice the usual predatory capitalism people are more familiar with. 


Free enterprise isn’t the sole method for building capital; it is just the most efficient and generally satisfactory way for the people if properly regulated to prevent the over-concentration of wealth that inhibits egalitarian free enterprise. When communists redistribute capital they are not in the least reluctant to practice predatory capitalism.

Russian, Chinese or FB Election Interference in Iowa?

With the complete fiasco of the Iowa Primary election results it is surprising that Russian election interference, or perhaps that of Ukraine, wasn't blamed for putting a rotten app in the barrel to sour the pie. Someday when the winner is known the Democrat Party may turn toward tasking a special Schiff inquisition to find a phone call between the President and a foreign head of state to encourage 2020 election interference in Iowa, New Hampshire and other states.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iowa-caucus-results-delayed-by-apparent-app-issue-11580801699