The idea of the Carbon Tax is to increase the cost of fossil fuels - or at least the burning of fossil fuels - in order to discourage their use. This is a good idea for a number reasons regardless of your stance on anthropogenic global warming. The contribution of fossil fuels to pollution, terrorism, the Bush Administration and all sorts of other evils is well established.
My question is in regards to how much of a carbon tax were we planning on imposing. This idea had its genesis when a barrel of oil was somewhere in the $20 range. Oil just bounced off $140 per barrel. Were we planning on establishing a tax that would make oil 600% more expensive? I find that very difficult to believe, but I never did see any hard numbers from the Carbon Tax people stating where they'd be placing the tax and how much it would have to be.
My impression is that even with a complete shift from corporate and personal income taxes all the way over to a carbon tax, the effective cost of oil would not be more than the current price.
And is the current price enough to change our use of fossil fuels? Just barely.
And does it make sense to still support a carbon tax, given the crushing effect the current price of oil is already having on the lives of lower income people and the economy in general? My suspicion is that introducing a carbon tax now, piling on top of the soaring cost of oil, would prove to be destructively shocking to our way of life.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Pascal's Wager and Monergism
If you've never encountered Pascal's Wager or don't know what is, here's a brief summary. If you believe in a god and a god exists, you go to its heaven. If the god doesn't exist, there is no loss. However if you don't believe in a deity and it turns out he does exist, you burn in hell forever.
Therefore, since there is cost to believing in a deity, you may as well believe.
There are numerous holes in this theory, the most obvious being that there are thousands of deities and you have to be sure to pick the right one because most of them don't like each other.
However there is another hole in this idea of Pascal's. Simply put, there is a huge cost to having religion. Don't believe me? Look at the monergism website. (It's okay, I know it has "gism" in the title, but it's completely safe for work) What is Monergism? Quoth I, Monergism is:
Now look at that absolutely monumental website, entirely dedicated to this miniscule portion of Christian belief. Think of all of the intellectual time spent by these people rationalizing this tiny schism of Christian doctrine. Just gaze in rapt fascination at the sheer insanity of it all.
Now tell me again how the premise of Pascal's Wager, that "there is no cost to believing", is an accurate depiction of how people practice religion. Imagine how much better off our society would be if all of the historical church figures who had been indoctrinated in to this nonsense and therefore spent their mental power on it had instead spent their time refining our understand of the natural universe.
Imagine how far we would have progressed by now. Instead we have centuries of writings and examinations on whether an imaginary man will forgive our crimes based on our interactions with a ghost or based solely on the power of the ghost.
Therefore, since there is cost to believing in a deity, you may as well believe.
There are numerous holes in this theory, the most obvious being that there are thousands of deities and you have to be sure to pick the right one because most of them don't like each other.
However there is another hole in this idea of Pascal's. Simply put, there is a huge cost to having religion. Don't believe me? Look at the monergism website. (It's okay, I know it has "gism" in the title, but it's completely safe for work) What is Monergism? Quoth I, Monergism is:
The view that the Holy Spirit is the only agent who effects regeneration of Christians. It is in contrast with synergism, the view that there is a cooperation between the divine and the human in the regeneration process.
Now look at that absolutely monumental website, entirely dedicated to this miniscule portion of Christian belief. Think of all of the intellectual time spent by these people rationalizing this tiny schism of Christian doctrine. Just gaze in rapt fascination at the sheer insanity of it all.
Now tell me again how the premise of Pascal's Wager, that "there is no cost to believing", is an accurate depiction of how people practice religion. Imagine how much better off our society would be if all of the historical church figures who had been indoctrinated in to this nonsense and therefore spent their mental power on it had instead spent their time refining our understand of the natural universe.
Imagine how far we would have progressed by now. Instead we have centuries of writings and examinations on whether an imaginary man will forgive our crimes based on our interactions with a ghost or based solely on the power of the ghost.
War is Stupid. Everybody knows that.
Oh, if only this were true.
Unfortunately there's a huge crowd of people on the right wing of politics everywhere who believe that war is the inevitable state of humankind. There has always been war, they will tell us, and therefore there will always be war.
Well, there are a lot of things that "always were", and yet we've put a stop to so many. You don't see a whole lot of land wars in Europe or human sacrifice anymore, do you? And there a lot more "always were"s that we're slowly stamping out: genital mutilation; asbestos; honour killing.
The most telling comment, though, regarding the father of the man who died so recently in Afghanistan, is this one from the mother of another deceased soldier:
It sounds sadly desperate, doesn't it? You gotta believe. You just gotta. They can't be dying and killing for no reason. No. No way.
Unfortunately there's a huge crowd of people on the right wing of politics everywhere who believe that war is the inevitable state of humankind. There has always been war, they will tell us, and therefore there will always be war.
Well, there are a lot of things that "always were", and yet we've put a stop to so many. You don't see a whole lot of land wars in Europe or human sacrifice anymore, do you? And there a lot more "always were"s that we're slowly stamping out: genital mutilation; asbestos; honour killing.
The most telling comment, though, regarding the father of the man who died so recently in Afghanistan, is this one from the mother of another deceased soldier:
"You've gotta believe that what they did, they did for a reason," she said, adding: "I honestly believe they're there for a good reason."
It sounds sadly desperate, doesn't it? You gotta believe. You just gotta. They can't be dying and killing for no reason. No. No way.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Harper Apologizes to the Natives
The Conservative government perplexes me. In amongst all the obvious pro-business, pro-wealthy tax cuts, the military expansion, their involvement in the torturing of prisoners and their secret assistance to the invasion of Iraq - they go off and apologize to native Canadians for their mistreatment at the hands of the government's residential schools.
It's a well deserved apology. These people were horribly mistreated. The basic crime is attempting to destroy someone's culture. We're not talking about the "culture" that Jeffrey Simpson and that lot are worried about (wherein, apparently, all Muslims want to come to our country and change our constitution in to sharia law). We're talking about speaking your own language, signaling yes and no the way you were raised to do so, eating your own food and following your own religion.
Yes, that was bad enough. But on top of that we've got to deal with the rampant sexual and physical abuse at these schools. It's very hard for us, as Canadians, to believe that we perpetrated this level of abuse on people in our country.
The question for Mr. Harper is this: what will you do now?
Will you recognize that these residential schools were not isolated outcasts or small stains but rather symbolic of the nature of our treatment of native Canadians? Do you now realize that the way that we act toward these people, our fellow Canadians, our fellow human beings, has to change? Do you now see, along with all of the other parties in government, that we need to reexamine our handling of our relations and our treaties with the natives?
The apology is only a first step. Any money paid is largely irrelevant.
What matters is that the policy changes. If it doesn't, the apology rings hollow.
It's a well deserved apology. These people were horribly mistreated. The basic crime is attempting to destroy someone's culture. We're not talking about the "culture" that Jeffrey Simpson and that lot are worried about (wherein, apparently, all Muslims want to come to our country and change our constitution in to sharia law). We're talking about speaking your own language, signaling yes and no the way you were raised to do so, eating your own food and following your own religion.
Yes, that was bad enough. But on top of that we've got to deal with the rampant sexual and physical abuse at these schools. It's very hard for us, as Canadians, to believe that we perpetrated this level of abuse on people in our country.
The question for Mr. Harper is this: what will you do now?
Will you recognize that these residential schools were not isolated outcasts or small stains but rather symbolic of the nature of our treatment of native Canadians? Do you now realize that the way that we act toward these people, our fellow Canadians, our fellow human beings, has to change? Do you now see, along with all of the other parties in government, that we need to reexamine our handling of our relations and our treaties with the natives?
The apology is only a first step. Any money paid is largely irrelevant.
What matters is that the policy changes. If it doesn't, the apology rings hollow.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
McLellan on the Bandwagon
Honestly, I'm not even going to read the man's book. It's nice that people who leave the Bush Administration are telling us what a bunch of dogmatically driven pack of liars they are, but it's a bit late, Scott.
The time we needed you to call them out was sometime in 2003, when you were helping them lie. You're no hero. You're too late. You're too late by 4000 American dead, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead and hundreds of billions of American dollars spent.
Good luck with the book, though.
The time we needed you to call them out was sometime in 2003, when you were helping them lie. You're no hero. You're too late. You're too late by 4000 American dead, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead and hundreds of billions of American dollars spent.
Good luck with the book, though.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Unions and Goodness
Unions have always been a mixed blessing. Historically, unions of workers have given us a lot of the things we hold dear. Reasonable working hours, weekends, benefits, living wages and worker's rights against abuse are all valuable things. When the rights and wages of the lowest people on the ladder are improved, we get two main benefits. One is that the wages of the rest of us go up. The other is that unions shift wealth toward the poorest which helps fuel our mass consumption driven economy as well as improve the education and health possibilities for those with lower incomes.
It's a much more reliable method of improving things than, say, giving massive tax cuts to corporations and wealthy people and hoping that this magically improves the lives of poor people through some unspecified mechanism (usually given the implication-laden title of "trickle down").
But unions have also used their heft to prevent innovation by mechanization, to help workers do their jobs poorly (thus "dealer prep") and to protect workers who are actually lousy at their jobs.
I read this article today and I found it idiotic.
GM is laying off 2600 workers at its truck and SUV plant and Buzz Hargrove, the super powerful union leader, has declared that he won't let it happen.
Is he insane? The market for SUVs and trucks could not have declined? Has he seen the price of gasoline? Of course North Americans are finally getting smarter and realizing that the giant vehicles they drive are expensive and irresponsible.
What is the argument here? That no one saw this coming? What you should have been doing, Mr. Union Leader, is negotiating for the past several years, on behalf of your brothers, to have those factories slowly converted over to efficient passenger cars in advance of this very, very obvious impending crisis.
It's that kind of behaviour that frustrates me. There is a place for the Union concept. Democracy simply can not react quickly enough to protect large numbers of workers from large scale abuse - especially with the penchant corporations have shown for trust violations. A Union or Federation can step in and threaten to halt production in order to extract fairness from the corporation rather than having all of the workers uproot their lives to change jobs.
But this is not it. This is not what the Union should be doing - attempting to stave off the unavoidable tide of change. I'm not too worried though, about the plight of these particular workers. I hear there are autoworking jobs elsewhere:
It's a much more reliable method of improving things than, say, giving massive tax cuts to corporations and wealthy people and hoping that this magically improves the lives of poor people through some unspecified mechanism (usually given the implication-laden title of "trickle down").
But unions have also used their heft to prevent innovation by mechanization, to help workers do their jobs poorly (thus "dealer prep") and to protect workers who are actually lousy at their jobs.
I read this article today and I found it idiotic.
GM is laying off 2600 workers at its truck and SUV plant and Buzz Hargrove, the super powerful union leader, has declared that he won't let it happen.
Mr. Hargrove insisted the U.S. market could not possibly have declined so sharply in such a short period of time that GM would have to break that agreement.
Is he insane? The market for SUVs and trucks could not have declined? Has he seen the price of gasoline? Of course North Americans are finally getting smarter and realizing that the giant vehicles they drive are expensive and irresponsible.
What is the argument here? That no one saw this coming? What you should have been doing, Mr. Union Leader, is negotiating for the past several years, on behalf of your brothers, to have those factories slowly converted over to efficient passenger cars in advance of this very, very obvious impending crisis.
It's that kind of behaviour that frustrates me. There is a place for the Union concept. Democracy simply can not react quickly enough to protect large numbers of workers from large scale abuse - especially with the penchant corporations have shown for trust violations. A Union or Federation can step in and threaten to halt production in order to extract fairness from the corporation rather than having all of the workers uproot their lives to change jobs.
But this is not it. This is not what the Union should be doing - attempting to stave off the unavoidable tide of change. I'm not too worried though, about the plight of these particular workers. I hear there are autoworking jobs elsewhere:
The dramatic shift in U.S. demand benefits Asian-based auto makers, which have dominated the passenger-car side of the business since the 1990s, when Detroit focused the bulk of its product development and investment on SUVs.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
The Apology Industry
There's a loud lament from the right side of Canadian politics against what is called the "Apology Industry" or the "Apology seeking industry". This is surmised to be some sort of legal establishment that funnels people in to lawsuits and PR campaigns for the purpose of taking money from the government for previous immoral actions of the government.
As examples, we have the payments that went out to the descendants of those who paid the "Chinese Head Tax" or to those who suffered under the "Indian residential schools".
The right wingers tell us to stop and they give this warning: "When does this all end? Do we apologize to everyone we've ever wronged?"
I hate to break it to you, but yes. Believe it or not, in spite of all of the rhetoric, you in fact have to apologize to everyone you've wronged. That's maturity. That's adulthood. That's responsibility.
It's not just about the money. Beating children to death or letting them die in the snow can not be healed by passing money to their parents or to some descendants or fellow band members. It's about changing policy.
If you publicly apologize to the people who paid the Head Tax, you implicitly publicly acknowledge that this was an immoral Tax and thus guarantee (one would hope) that future Canadian governments will avoid such idiocy.
When you apologize to the native Canadians whose children were taken from them, you are speaking to an immoral policy of assimilation that continues, in one form or another, to this day. Yes, the money can help those who have been mentally damaged by these schools, but the money is not the crux of the matter.
It's much more important that we recognize the brutality inspired by the arrogance that led previous governments to institute schools where children were beaten for refusing to pray to Jesus, speak English and start nodding their heads for "yes". The same governments who made those schools also made the rest of the policies towards our native population. Therefore we must suspect those policies of containing within them the same soul of arrogance and brutality.
And consequent to realizing how brutally we've been treating the native population, we must act to change that policy.
That, not money, is what these apologies are about.
As examples, we have the payments that went out to the descendants of those who paid the "Chinese Head Tax" or to those who suffered under the "Indian residential schools".
The right wingers tell us to stop and they give this warning: "When does this all end? Do we apologize to everyone we've ever wronged?"
I hate to break it to you, but yes. Believe it or not, in spite of all of the rhetoric, you in fact have to apologize to everyone you've wronged. That's maturity. That's adulthood. That's responsibility.
It's not just about the money. Beating children to death or letting them die in the snow can not be healed by passing money to their parents or to some descendants or fellow band members. It's about changing policy.
If you publicly apologize to the people who paid the Head Tax, you implicitly publicly acknowledge that this was an immoral Tax and thus guarantee (one would hope) that future Canadian governments will avoid such idiocy.
When you apologize to the native Canadians whose children were taken from them, you are speaking to an immoral policy of assimilation that continues, in one form or another, to this day. Yes, the money can help those who have been mentally damaged by these schools, but the money is not the crux of the matter.
It's much more important that we recognize the brutality inspired by the arrogance that led previous governments to institute schools where children were beaten for refusing to pray to Jesus, speak English and start nodding their heads for "yes". The same governments who made those schools also made the rest of the policies towards our native population. Therefore we must suspect those policies of containing within them the same soul of arrogance and brutality.
And consequent to realizing how brutally we've been treating the native population, we must act to change that policy.
That, not money, is what these apologies are about.
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