In that argument, you assume it is 'of course' differently 'everywhere else'. What if it was the other way round: just one place (or country or something) destroying environment and all the others not? Oversimplified, sure, but that is basically what you're using to back up your view.

As I said: the issue is much more complicated than that. If the river bed was not enlarged, people without jobs may very well move elsewhere, having a worse effect at the environment at their destination than if they stayed at home, enlarged the river bed and found a job. There's a cause and effect to everything, and it's extremely hard to actually predict them.

NetDanzr: If you're only repeating the same argument all over and over again, I don't have to be original...

Yes, of course it is. However, you presume I'd have the same view without knowing what posts are...

Tranferring this opinion to your example, that would mean: The river depth has to be increased. In the optimal case, this would help people to get jobs for about ten years until new ships become too large for the river again. In contrast to that, preventing to increase the river depth artificially, might help people to live in this area for another thousand years or something (of course, this doesn't depend on the question of the river size alone, but it's a single component). Now what's more important?

Tapuak: I probably would not miss them at all. Progress solves some problems, only to bring new ones. But imagine: a world without you being able to read my posts. Now that is scary...

Mr Creosote: You are getting a little predictable; that's exactly the reply I expected from you .

Edited by NetDanzr at 16:21 on September, 24th 2002

Yes, but without factories and cars, we wouldn't have any at all anyway

Now go and play Civilization again. You should know that without development we would not have recycling centers and mass transit, which curb polution .

Yup, without economic grwoth, thrre would be no need to develop this techniques.

And a completely different question (fully hypothetical): Do you really think you would live a more unsatisfied life without the massive technological inventions we are used to today? You wouldn't know them, so you wouldn't miss them most likely. I don't think humans in the stone age were unhappier in any way.

This argument is easy to break: without a working environment, humans will die anyway, so why bother about jobs?
As for the historical part: without this developement, the mass pollution wouldn't even have started. I'm not saying it would have been better, but your argument is not logical in itself.

You see, and that's the problem, Tapuak. My priority is economic growth, even for the sake of the environment. I can argue with history as well: only the massive economic growth of the 1850-1925 allowed people to apply much more advanced techniques for environmental protection, so that in the long run, the economic growth was benneficial for the environment. (This is just an example of an argument; the full issue is much more complicated, of course.) As an investor, I don't like the Greens sitting in the government and presumably have too much power. It seems that the investors at the Frankfurt stock exchange have been thinking along the same lines...

In my opinion, it's the right order of priorities. Maintaining the environment intact is much more important on the long run than creating few jobs short dated.

Side note: In the 19th century, Bremen even founded a neighbour city closer to the sea, Bremerhaven, because the river was to small for huge ships. Actually, this problem isn't really new.

Yes, these are the fields where economy and ecology overlaps - the Greens are always 'against' these at first, but then 'grudgingly give in'. It's kind of sad how obviously staged this always is.

I was referring more to the structural changes which the propaganda tells are 'necessary'. There, the SPD is the most 'conservative' of all parties.

I don't presume to know more about Germany than you, Mr Creosote, but just a few days ago I was talking about the election with a guy from Bremen. He gave me the example of a shipbuilding company (supposedly the largest chipbuilder in the world). He told me about the problem in the SPD-Greens coalition: on one hand, the SPD wants more jobs, and thus encourages the growth of the company. On the other hand, the growth of the company would require building a larger and deeper canal from its manufacturing facilities to the sea, which the Greens are strictly against. This is the kind of economic growth that NY Times (and others) say the Greens are against.

Yes, the CDU will most likely block the government's concept through the Bundesrat (the states' chamber). Just like the SPD did with the CDU government before 1998. That only shows how little these parties actually care for the developement of the country and the well-being of the people, and how much for their own power.

The point about the Green party is unfair though. As I said before: in the field of economy, the Green party is more 'liberal' and 'right-winged' than the SPD! I consider it highly questionable that the imitation of the USA economy is the 'right' way anyway (as for some reason everybody seems to consider the only option), but even accepting it for the sake of the discussion, it is not true.

About this Bush-Hitler comparison: all this tells is something about the person who makes such comparisons - that this person obviously has a very limited knowledge about history! And all this person achieves is to make Hitler appear 'less evil' rather than making Bush look 'more evil'. Concluding from that, I don't understand what the big deal about this 'affair' is about.

There was a long story about the German election in the NY Times today. Basically it's saying that with these elections, the economy of Germany will go down the drain. The SPD will be unable to make economic reforms because the CDU will block them, and the government will be unwilling to make any serious economic reforms because the SPD is too dependent on the Greens. The article compared the German economy to that of Japan, which in my opinion is worse than comparing Bush to Hitler...

In some fields (taxes, economy, employment), the Green party is actually more right winged than the social democrats, so they'd mix fine without any problems

What's really laughable is how the CDU now presents itself as the 'small party' with 'little money' and gives this as a reason they lost. Sure, they're so poor, had to transfer all their money to Switzerland

Edited by Mr Creosote at 05:17 on September, 24th 2002

It's not a miracle Germany slowly develops to a system of two parties. Mainly the media are guilty of that, presenting the election as a "battle of two candidates" and other primitive bullshit. On the paper, there are still four parties represented in the parlament. Two of them (social democratic, green) even made their campaigns together, admitting they actually depend on each other. On the long run, they could fuse to one party without a significant political change, the green party being the so-called "left" wing of the social democratic party. The same applies to the other two parties.

The worst thing about the parlament losing a party is that there is no opposition anymore concerning one of the most fundamental topics: war. Although I don't agree to many opinions of the PDS either, they were the only ones who raised their voice against random wars at all.


That was one of the main reasons for me to be satisfied with the results to some extent, too. These bastards got exactly what they needed - especially since they declared "18%" as their aim before. And as I think they almost completely exhausted their potential this time, it makes me hope they won't gain more power in the future either. They won't get as much helpful attention before the upcoming elections as they got this time.

I voted with 38.5% for SPD, 38.5% CDU, 8.6% Green and 7.4% FDP. So my vote is represented perfectly in the new parliament Actually, I made my cross somewhere else, but since this party didn't make it into the parliament at all, my vote didn't count at all, so mathematically, it is as I described above - without me approving this

I am glad that the 'lesser evil' of the two realistic alternatives won, but I'm crying with the other eye because of pluralism dying a bit more with this election (one party less in parliament - not counting the two single persons). The reason why I am on the whole more happy than sad about the outcome is that the so-called liberal party received a severe punch in the face

Edited by Mr Creosote at 18:27 on September, 23rd 2002

Well, some of you probably noticed there were elections in Germany yesterday. The old gouvernment (social democratic party, green party) was able to persist, but it really was a tight result this time. I am quite pleased with it because it was the less evil solution, although it is a bad one anyway. After all Mr Lederhosen-Sauerkraut-Weisswurst Stoiber from Bavaria and his mafia thugs didn't win.

Beyond that, another right-wing gouvernment in Europe like Berlusconi/Chirac/Balkenende/Aznar/Schüssel could be prevented - even if the differences are limited to details. So what's your opinion?