Biden / Harris Focused Discussion

[JohnBrown1917]

I guess you think we have a fixed amount of resources where we can't generate more resources. That's simply not how it works.

The idea that humanity is facing a resource scarcity problem is not true, it is nothing more than a myth.

I'm beyond words on how you even need to have the basics explained to you.


Do you think the real world works like a RTS game?

[PC2]

You think we can just make rare metals used in electronics once we mine all the available metal?? lmfao.....

Making metals isn't exclusive to stars, so yes humans could do that in the future. However we won't have to do that anytime remotely soon since we can find more deposits that contain metal, improve at recycling metals, or find superior alternatives to rare Earth metals. There are many pathways to getting more of what we want.

Some people believe that there is a fixed amount of resources that was set in the past and then humans simply consume all those fixed resources until we die. They are entirely wrong, but if they want to believe resource depletion and doom is coming then they are free to live their life worrying about a problem that isn't real.

[Belize]

I'm beyond words on how you even need to have the basics explained to you.


Do you think the real world works like a RTS game?

Even RTS' eventually run out of resources, it's a core tenet.

[Orange Joe]

Making metals isn't exclusive to stars, so yes humans could do that in the future. However we won't have to do that anytime remotely soon since we can find more deposits that contain metal, improve at recycling metals, or find superior alternatives to rare Earth metals. There are many pathways to getting more of what we want.

Some people believe that there is a fixed amount of resources that was set in the past and then humans simply consume all those fixed resources until we die. They are entirely wrong, but if they want to believe resource depletion and doom is coming then they are free to live their life worrying about problems that aren't real.

acknowledging that non renewable resources are ..... non renewable isn't living a life in fear. It's living a life free of ignorance, but please continue. Since you know so much why don't you tell these people how to use fusion to creates these metals like a sun does

[Ivanstone]

You just have to smash the right atoms together to create the metal desired, but that still relies on a finite resource known as atoms.

Something just occurred to me. I remember watching a documentary a long time ago but it should still hold true. It was about this guy that made an atom-smasher that could fit right on your kitchen table. It was called "My Favourite Martian" and it seemed pretty honest.

[Themius]

You just have to smash the right atoms together to create the metal desired, but that still relies on a finite resource known as atoms.

Never mind that what about the energy needed to produce it.

[PC2]

Never mind that what about the energy needed to produce it.

No worries, we can always create more usable energy at a lower cost.

If some people truly think we're going to run out of resources/energy and die then those people should simply not have kids who will deplete those resources. That would also help in the sense that those people won't indoctrinate their kids with their pessimism and the lie of resource finitism.

[Orange Joe]

No worries, we can always create more usable energy at a lower cost.

If some people truly think we're going to run out of resources/energy and die then those people should simply not have kids who will deplete those resources. That would also help in the sense that those people won't indoctrinate their kids with their pessimism and the lie of resource finitism.

Strawman much?

[Muzjhath]

No worries, we can always create more usable energy at a lower cost.

If some people truly think we're going to run out of resources/energy and die then those people should simply not have kids who will deplete those resources. That would also help in the sense that those people won't indoctrinate their kids with their pessimism and the lie of resource finitism.

If you honestly think we can as it stands generate enough energy to rutinely fuse atoms for usable amounts of heavier materials. You're blowing some fancy smoke out of your arse.
The biggest scarcity we humans right now suffer is Energy Scarcity. Since if we had far better energy efficiency we could drag mineral rich astroids into earth orbit and mine those.
We are, however, quite far away from that. Both in material sciences and energy sciences.

But even if we master fusion energy, resources will still be fininte.

[Shadowferal]

Making metals isn't exclusive to stars, so yes humans could do that in the future. However we won't have to do that anytime remotely soon since we can find more deposits that contain metal, improve at recycling metals, or find superior alternatives to rare Earth metals. There are many pathways to getting more of what we want.

Some people believe that there is a fixed amount of resources that was set in the past and then humans simply consume all those fixed resources until we die. They are entirely wrong, but if they want to believe resource depletion and doom is coming then they are free to live their life worrying about a problem that isn't real.

You and this other guy..."Daish" have so much in common.
At the risk of stepping on toes, I give more respect and credit to a devout religious person who points to his holy books and says "this is why I believe." I get it. It's the way that sort of thing works for a lot of people.
Your claim of science...just because "optimism" doesn't work. You've crossed the line to the religious and making a claim of "faith." And that doesn't work. Science demands proof...and a show of mathematics that you clearly lack.

If it means anything ...your posts are a constant reminder that the Bell Curve theory is nonsense.

[PC2]

If you honestly think we can as it stands generate enough energy to rutinely fuse atoms for usable amounts of heavier materials.

Not in 2021 but it's irrelevant because there is ample resources to get us by for a very long time. We don't need all future technologies today we just need incremental progress over many days, and years, and centuries.

But even if we master fusion energy, resources will still be fininte.

Again no, that's based on the idea that fusion energy is the be-all-end-all technology and that we can't create or find any new resources beyond that point. Fusion energy is just the current next step, but it's not the last.

- - - Updated - - -

Science demands proof...and a show of mathematics that you clearly lack.

No, science is conjectural and never based on proof. That's why it's impossible to prove that a scientific explanation is correct. It doesn't matter if you're talking about Einstein's theory of relativity or the theory of the heat death of the universe, there is no proof that either is correct which is specifically why we call them 'theories' and 'conjectures'.

Science isn't mathematics...

[Muzjhath]

Not in 2021 but it's irrelevant because there is ample resources to get us by for a very long time. We don't need all future technologies today we just need incremental progress over many days, and years, and centuries.


Again no, that's based on the idea that fusion energy is the be-all-end-all technology and that we can't create or find any new resources beyond that point. Fusion energy is just the current next step, but it's not the last.

- - - Updated - - -



No science is conjectural and never based on proof. That's why it's impossible to prove that a scientific explanation is correct. It doesn't matter if you're talking about Einstein's theory of relativity or the theory of the heat death of the universe, there is no proof that either is correct which is specifically why we call them 'theories' and 'conjectures'.

Science isn't mathematics...

We... will probably never find a better energy source than fusion. Unless we somehow learn to generate matter/anti-matter pairs at will in a controlled environment (So, non-random virtual particles). Which. If we ever do is centuries into the future. And there's no giving that it'd give out more energy than fusion since it'd be following most of the same equations. Just with more than one type of mass. However, might be more efficient since if it would be complete transformation you'd get a higher "E" from the same amount of "m".

As for the proof. Since demands proof. It just uses the word differenctly from what is done in maths.
A Physics Proof might not hold water for a mathmatician. It will hold water in physics. It just means that the math seems wonky since the equation can't be "solved".
For a theory to become a theory in truth it has to be observable, and testable. A reason Einstine needed a full solar eclipse for Relativity. The only reason things could be observed.
Before that, while called "theory", in practice it was just a hypothesis. And while scientists really should get better at not naming their shiny big new hypotheses theory. They can't help themselves (See, "M-Theory").

[Cthulhu 2020]

Well Cthulhu 2020 has built up some interesting allies. Growth eternally is functionally impossible, there are not infinite resources nor infinite planets.

Eternal growth is functionally impossible, but the country is capable of growing exponentially larger than it is as the moment. How do you think the US grew up in the first place? Around nothing but demand for goods and services. How do you think the baby boomers created an economic explosion even though you're right now arguing that explosive population is functionally impossible to support? Demand creates consumption creates growth. The idea that there is a finite number of jobs based purely on the capacity that businesses allow is itself the corporate propaganda that you have fallen for. Again, keeping migrants in citizenship limbo is what conservatives and other anti-immigrant patsies seem to desire. It allows companies to pay them dimes on the dollar and get away with it. If we create an effective path to citizenship where these people are all documented as they work, then they must be paid a good wage for their labor.

Right now? This anti-migrant stuff is keeping them in citizenship limbo. The opposition to immigration by you and others isn't going to magically send them off to some other country or their home country. Opposition to immigration isn't going to make the problem go away. Those in power are keeping these people in the country very deliberately for their own gain. Right now our immigration system has been slowed to a near halt due to conservative tampering. We are nowhere near even getting anywhere close to the immigration cap as laid out by the The Immigration and Naturalization Act because immigration hearings can take 5, 6 even 7 years to happening. Someone arriving on our border right now as a legal immigrant won't get their hearing until at least 2026, if not later, because the Trump administration slowed the process even further.

That is the reality of the situation, and as I have always argued, I operate within the confines of the reality. I don't speak in "ideal" situations regardless of which side's ideal it is. Speaking in terms of the ideal never seems to solve anything, ever. The reality is we already have millions in our border seeking citizenship and more who come every year. Many of those within our border are refugees who, under normal circumstances, would be granted citizenship as refugees of war torn countries. But recent US policy penned by conservatives has seen to it that this does not happen. At no point in our country's history have we ever been so harsh on immigration. Many, like you, insist it is because we are simply "at capacity" and yet the US is one of the biggest economic powerhouses in the world with some of the most open land there is.

You laugh at the idea that immigrants could live and grow in Montana, and yet that is exactly how towns grew up previously. Companies would build headquarters in the middle of nowhere because land is cheap, and a town would spring up around their headquarters. Thus is how towns are formed, around major economic centers. The city I live in would not exist were it not for the fact that it's a major university town. Fora large part of its life, the basic economy revolved around the university. The last few decades, the city itself has become more or less self sustaining, with circulation of money from businesses operating here now far surpassing that of the university. I will reiterate, infinite growth is not possible, as this planet is not capable of support infinite people. But as my own professors attested to, with none dissenting, we are capable of support an exponentially larger population than we have today.

But speaking on my university city circles me back to another point: Yes, housing is based almost entirely on location location location. My city has an official population of somewhere around 150k. Getting an apartment within the city center will cost you $1k for a 1 bedroom, and a house that can support a family can easily go for over $500k, there are even neighborhoods where they cost over a million (you know, probably university Deans or the local land owners/renters). If you move out to the suburbs, you won't find any apartments, but houses go down to around $150-200k depending on their size. If I drive 20 minutes outside of the city limits, there are suddenly mansions with massive acreage. I look up their value on various sites and none of them are above $250k. Normal sized houses don't go anywhere north of $100k. And there are actually a few apartment buildings out there that are no more than $300 a month for two bedrooms.

Students who come here frequently complain about their options for housing. If they want good public transport on the university's bus line, they have to at least live in the inner suburbs. If they want to live somewhere without a 30+ minute commute to go a few miles on public transport, they have to live in one of the apartments near the city center. Even local residents complain about the housing situation. No place is entirely free of undocumented immigrants, but we do not have a major population of them worth noting here. Housing is still a major issue, and not sustainable in the long term with most local salaries, and certainly not with local wages. Housing is always an issue in major economic centers, i.e. cities.

You haven't answered the Supply and Demand point

I have, quite handily. Maybe not to your satisfaction as I doubt you will ever be satisfied with my answers. But "More people means more demand for jobs means more unemployment!" Is not a position based in reality. It ignores most of the simple supply and demand principles and only hyper focuses on a single one. Same with your housing argument. Housing is something that is relatively easy to create. Hell, commuter cities, cities that spring up solely as places for people to live to commute to other places nearby to work, is entirely a function of people building housing outside of major cities. Businesses spring up around these commuter cities, and eventually these cities become self sustaining in their own right. It's why major cities in every single states are so massively sprawling. The city center remains where it is, and cities outside of the center grow up to support it. These commuter cities literally exist because growing population creates higher demand. Our country literally encourages people to have babies to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars in incentives, tax benefits, health benefits, education, etc. Why? Because the past of the US - no - the past of human history demonstrates that having a higher rate of population growth leads to higher economic growth.

That's one major thing I don't really understand about your argument. You seem to hold two juxtaposing positions. 1) Having babies is GOOD because they are future contributing citizens. 2) Immigrants are BAD because it contributes to the housing crisis and unemployment. These two ideas are mutually exclusive. You can't on one hand argue that citizens we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars nurturing are better than citizens who come ready to contribute to society. You may bring up an argument against immigrants on the grounds of cultural differences being something we can't handle. I would disagree with you, but it would ultimately be a self sustaining argument within your bounds of economic principles.

I will also correct you on a point that you seem mistaken on. I do not hate babies. I do not hate people having children. Democrats do not hate babies nor do they hate people having children. You can often thank the left for having any benefits to raising your children at all. The right is far more obsessed with stopping abortions than it is concerned with handing money out to people who have kids, even if the latter supports the former. But here's my major point, you think that supporting immigration means that the left hates for people to have children. Here's my question:



Have you ever perhaps thought that people believe that both having migrants and babies is a good thing?

you haven't explained why a party that won't provide Health Care and instead funds Health Insurance ghouls is going to spend trillions on.... free? cheap? housing? Where billions will live? Where the jobs will come from and even admit that the losses and pain will be felt by the poorest and this is a big win mainly for corporations who don't want to deal with the troublesome problem of .... families existing.

I largely have explained this, but you seem to have some really warped perception of what the Democratic party actually is and its stance on things. You seem to have a hard time reconciling your own image of what the Democratic party is, with the bills it has actually attempted to pass in the past. You deride people for basing the positions of Democrats off of some bullet points on Biden's web page. I look at what bills Democrats at least attempt to pass. My attention is laser focused on what Biden and the Democrats will do with the next two years since they have a majority in all 3 houses (something that is incredibly rare, mind you) but with the near limitless issues our country faces, I do not seem them taking care of every single one. And the biggest problem Democrats are facing with passing various legislation, is that even though they have the 50 seats and the tie breaker, even one Democrat breaking away from a vote will doom it to failure. And that's what Democrats are wrestling with right now, the fact that we still have a couple of blue dogs on the team means that they effectively get to decide what does and doesn't pass. Which effectively means they don't even really have a majority at all. They're still at the whims of conservatives even in their majorities.

You frequently criticize Democrats for what they are not passing, but often times the very things you criticize them for not passing are bills they have tried to pass, that they have made genuine attempts to pass. But again, guess what? At nearly every point in the past couple of decades, Democrats have never held a majority in all houses, making it impossible for them to pass their more progressive bills that - YES, THEY HAVE PENNED AND PASSED THROUGH CONGRESS - only for them to die in the Senate. Criticism OF DEMOCRATS that Democrats are not progessive enough because they do not successfully pass progressive legislation is not valid criticism.

That is functionally a criticism of the right and their stonewalling of every major progressive legislation of the last 20 years. You believe that Republicans are a functionally dead party. You have mentioned that they are irrelevant in discussion because... they just are, believe it. And yet they are the biggest source of progressive stonewalling in this nation. I know you believe that the "true" left in this country is being snuffed out by Democrats. The reality is that the biggest opposition to progressives in this country is in fact conservatives, and not "progressives lite" aka Democrats. Or neocons, or neolibs as you like to call them. The answer to this is very simple. The people that are politically closer to far left progressives are in fact less detrimental to the far left than the conservatives.

I realize that the party of Trump has shown (fake) sympathy towards the far left progressives. But I'd like to remind you that before Bernie lost in 2016, conservatives were leading a major smear campaign against him. When Bernie looked like a real contender, the most vile smear ads were being taken out against him, and these forums were filled with conservatives calling Bernie a nasty jew hating communist that wanted to bring back concentration camps and gulags. When Bernie lost, conservatives saw an effective opportunity to try and hurt Democrats by pretending to sympathize with Bernie supporters. They began offering fake sympathy and pulled a complete 180, pouring sweet honeyed words all over the far left. I'd have rolled my eyes at such a pathetic attempt to hurt the Democrats, but I had to roll my eyes even harder, as to my surprise many Bernie supporters actually took these words of sympathy seriously. Some 5-10% of Bernie supporters apparently jumped over to Trump, while some uncounted number just stayed at home.

It's really difficult to believe that the far left would accept sympathy from people who want to abolish unions, abolish the minimum wage, abolish all forms of welfare including child support, and take us back into the age of wage slavery that defined the industrial revolution. But well, we live in strange times. A lot of the anti-Democrat memes and social media posts that were aimed at Bernie supporters were also sourced back to Russia. I realize you enjoy making fun of these facts, but well, you believe in some pretty wild things yourself, some crazy conspiracies that I won't bother bringing up, because I'm actually trying to engage in something of a serious dialog without throwing out strawmen or making fun of ridiculous conspiracies that would mostly be detrimental to the conversation.

That is also why I'm not going to throw out things like "Oh you're just a Trump supporter". I realize why people believe this of you. I know your views are far more nuanced. You have something of a mixture of progressive left ideals, with some conservative family values thrown in there, along with the anti-immigrant natalism/nationalism sprinkled on. You're of course welcome to your own political ideals, though I am at least going to attempt to dispel some of your false notions about what the Democrats are. Not that I really think I can. You have some deep seeded hatred for Democrats that's hard to pin down the exact reason for. Your view of Democrats is something closer to a right wing political cartoon caricature representation of Democrats, and is very distanced from reality. Your views on immigration seem to be created on a foundation of natalism/nationalism sentiments, then hidden beneath/justified by a structure of economics that have massive holes in them. Your explanation about why immigration is bad for us using economic principles is something like getting 1/4 of the way through building a house then saying "Alright, look at how shitty this house is! We should never build houses because of how shitty this one is!"

You've taken one particular idea about economic supply and demand, applied that, then threw out the inconvenient parts. Immigration is not completely 100% positive, but there is a net positive effect overall. You've simply taken the negative aspects, throw out the positives, and magnified the negatives into a much bigger problem than they actually are. This is made even worse by the fact that you apply all these positives of population growth to justify your own views about why people should be having more babies. So it's not that you don't know about these positives of population growth, it's just that you seem to think they don't apply to immigration? Not sure exactly how you justify it within your own head, but it's a really weird juxtaposition to gaze at from the perspective of an outsider.

The only way you could possibly think that I've been brainwashed by big corporations is if you believe my entire stance on immigration is solely based on corporations gaining cheap labor. The reality of course being that corporations gain far more from immigrants remaining in citizenship limbo. As has been pointed out previously, migrants who remaining in citizenship limbo can be paid lower wages and have no way to complain about that. These people cannot unionize as non citizens, because it would draw attention to themselves. Anti-immigration sentiments are the very thing helping these businesses. Were all current migrants in the country granted a path to citizenship, it would present a huge threat to corporations. It would mean these people could unionize, it would mean they could demand better wages. It would mean a lot of things, but not a single one of them would be good for corporations. Which I present to you, as the main reason why anti-immigration sentiments are pro-corporate sentiments. These people who currently live in the country have built a life from themselves here. They are not going back to another country. They are here to say. Continuing to insist they not be citizens only continues to support the corporate overlords.

[PC2]

We... will probably never find a better energy source than fusion.

It's currently the best idea for generating a lot of energy but there's no reason to think it's the ultimate source of energy.

As for the proof. Since demands proof. It just uses the word differenctly from what is done in maths.
A Physics Proof might not hold water for a mathmatician. It will hold water in physics. It just means that the math seems wonky since the equation can't be "solved".
For a theory to become a theory in truth it has to be observable, and testable. A reason Einstine needed a full solar eclipse for Relativity. The only reason things could be observed.
Before that, while called "theory", in practice it was just a hypothesis. And while scientists really should get better at not naming their shiny big new hypotheses theory. They can't help themselves (See, "M-Theory").

Again no, not only does science not demand proof it is fundamentally impossible for a scientific explanation to be proven right. The idea that a scientific conjecture or theory can ever be turned into a proof with any amount of experimental confirmations or observations is simply wrong.

[Shadowferal]

No, science is conjectural and never based on proof. That's why it's impossible to prove that a scientific explanation is correct. It doesn't matter if you're talking about Einstein's theory of relativity or the theory of the heat death of the universe, there is no proof that either is correct which is specifically why we call them 'theories' and 'conjectures'. Science isn't mathematics...

Further proving you lack any education in this...and relying solely on belief. I mean your words distubingly echo right-wingers...and Daish. (To be fair, he at least admitted his ignorance)

[Orange Joe]

No, science is conjectural and never based on proof. That's why it's impossible to prove that a scientific explanation is correct. It doesn't matter if you're talking about Einstein's theory of relativity or the theory of the heat death of the universe, there is no proof that either is correct which is specifically why we call them 'theories' and 'conjectures'.

Science isn't mathematics...

wow... your ignorance is stunning lmfao.

[PC2]

Further proving you lack any education in this...and relying solely on belief. I mean your words distubingly echo right-wingers...and Daish. (To be fair, he at least admitted his ignorance)

wow... your ignorance is stunning lmfao.

If I'm wrong then point to a single scientific explanation that has graduated from a conjecture or a theory and turned itself into a proof.

[Orange Joe]

If I'm wrong then point to a single scientific explanation that has graduated from a conjecture or a theory and turned itself into a proof.

Yeah... not gonna bother with your ignorance. You have shown many times how deep it goes. You keep on believing whatever you want.

[Shadowferal]

If I'm wrong then point to a single scientific explanation that has graduated from a conjecture or theory and turned into a proof.

How the hell do you imagine you're communicating at this moment?
You're surrounded by science and math and you can't acknowledge that...because you don't know?

[Orange Joe]

Just gonna leave this here for the ignorant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory