Ray Mears: We'll struggle to survive climate change

[emordnilap]

What exactly makes him qualified to speek on the subject at all?

He's a rich westerner. Why, what other qualifications does one need?

[Vortex]

I made no reference to 'lower down' jobs.

I simply don't like spongers and hangers-on.

Take a look outside: every lamp post you see had a designer, a foundry worker, an electrician and a hold digging person involved. Some of those jobs are poorly paid and can be dirty and unpleasant.

True, not all these workers are A-types ... but the whole lamp post process was instigated and brought to fruition by people who want to 'do stuff'.

And then we have the riff-raff who vandalise the lamps, and the boy-racers on the dole taking advantage of the lamps' illumination.

More subtly, we have the 'professional free-loaders' such as financial advisers, many politicians & civil servants who do damn all except line their pockets at our expense.

Until now society has had any excess of energy & resources available : this excess has permitted the creation of non-jobs. Sadly the holders of these non-jobs have managed to convince us that they are important and according deserve high salaries, long holidays, huge bonuses, great pensions etc.
When energy supplies and resources dwindle the entrepreneur, the foundry worker and the shipping planner will become more important, whilst the pension 'experts' will fade away.

[Ludwig]

I made no reference to 'lower down' jobs.

I simply don't like spongers and hangers-on.

Take a look outside: every lamp post you see had a designer, a foundry worker, an electrician and a hold digging person involved. Some of those jobs are poorly paid and can be dirty and unpleasant.

True, not all these workers are A-types ... but the whole lamp post process was instigated and brought to fruition by people who want to 'do stuff'.

Vortex, you are making a totally spurious distinction. We can't all be electricians or foundry workers.

People don't get jobs because they want to "do stuff", they get jobs so that they can earn a living. If you enjoy your job, so much the better, but most people don't, particularly.

If people do dirty, unpleasant and poorly paid jobs, it is invariably because they can't find anything better to do.

And then we have the riff-raff who vandalise the lamps, and the boy-racers on the dole taking advantage of the lamps' illumination.

I think you will find a lot of the riff-raff actually have jobs.

More subtly, we have the 'professional free-loaders' such as financial advisers, many politicians & civil servants who do damn all except line their pockets at our expense.

Ha ha.

What is Steve Jobs doing except lining his pockets at our expense?

If those financial advisers and politicians are spending money on Jaguars and cappuccinos, they are helping the economy.

If people are prepared to pay financial advisers, that's their problem.

Until now society has had any excess of energy & resources available : this excess has permitted the creation of non-jobs. Sadly the holders of these non-jobs have managed to convince us that they are important and according deserve high salaries, long holidays, huge bonuses, great pensions etc.
When energy supplies and resources dwindle the entrepreneur, the foundry worker and the shipping planner will become more important, whilst the pension 'experts' will fade away.

Absolute rubbish. You think somehow "proper" jobs are going to materialise once these non-jobs vanish?

The economy is what creates jobs, not people. Wanting to be a steelworker might, in your view, be very noble, but it ain't much use when all the steel is being made in China.

The entrepreneur will actually be particularly vulnerable in the post-PO world. Entrepreneurs require credit. Go figure. (Sure, there will be opportunities for entrepreneurship in the black market, but nothing like the number of legitimate opportunities that there were in the late capitalist economy.)

Foundry workers and shipping planners will be no more and no less important than they currently are. One thing's for sure: there will be far fewer of them.

Virtually all jobs in a service economy are non-jobs. They don't need doing, they're a function of the spurious need created by advertising and marketing that is essential to the consumer economy.

This is the problem we have created: we have machines to do most of the traditional jobs, and we have a growing global population, so how do we keep everyone occupied, and give them money to live on? Answer: create a consumer society and a service economy.

Having worked in the software industry, I know that one of the principle problems of it is: how do we keep making money from old rope? Software doesn't degrade, so we have to do things like ensure obsolescence (i.e. stop supporting old versions, don't port to new operating systems); and use marketing to persuade customers to upgrade to the latest version, which they don't actually need.

So using this example, everyone who works in the software industry is just as much a sponger as the financial advisers.

All anybody wants to do is earn a living.

As for salaries: we work in a market economy. If you can persuade people you're worth an inflated salary, then the problem lies with them, not you. In what way does the CEO of a company deserve a salary an order of magnitude higher than his middle managers? He doesn't, he's just, understandably, going to take home as much as he can get away with.

Still, I don't think I will have convinced you, because you are too arrogant ever to see things other than in black and white terms, or to see the other person's point of view.

[Vortex]

All anybody wants to do is earn a living.

That's a grey view of the world and Man.

I would liked to have been an astrophysicist - but that wasn't possible.

I would like to work on Artificial Intelligence- but that isn't so easy.

Others would like to write books or poetry or invent a better fridge - but many don't have the chance.

We weren't put on Earth to simply 'earn a living'.

Humans need to progress, move on, invent, create - not simply stagnate.

We can leave that to the sharks - an evolutionary dead end.

Invention, progress, creation takes people who 'do stuff'.

The free-loaders who leach off the work of others are the enemy.

They may give themselves posh titles and huge salaries - but most must know that they make little contribution to society.

The 'doers' may have been a major cause of today's troubles - but the free-loaders swilling their beer whilst watching daytime TV, or the civil service paper pushers retiring early on index linked pensions haven't complained too much as long as the goodies have flowed freely in their direction.

PS There's no need to be so personally abusive Ludwig.

[biffvernon]

The A-types create stuff and get things done.

Yeah, like wrecking the planet's ecosystem. Bloody A-types.

[Vortex]

The A-types create stuff and get things done.

Yeah, like wrecking the planet's ecosystem. Bloody A-types.

... we haven't quite wrecked it yet ... anyway the damage is being done by almost EVERYBODY.

That BigMac, that patio heater, that trip to the shop in the car to buy a packet of peanuts, that extra holiday to the Canaries .. we are all guilty.

[fifthcolumn]

What exactly makes him qualified to speek on the subject at all? surely he is only a rung or 2 below Leorardo di Caprio on who we should be listening to about this topic

Agreed.
I notice that the most extreme doomers are people like English teachers, "Animists", Lawyers etc.

The problem of less oil and how to substitute for it is primarily an engineering problem and the engineers are roundly mocked by these people.

It's also interesting that the only two people on this site who actually work in the oil industry are a LOT less pessimistic than the rest.

[Ludwig]

PS There's no need to be so personally abusive Ludwig.

How can you make statements such as this:

The effete quiche eaters will be but a speed-bump in the course of history.

and this:

However the populace might be rather surprised to find that the heads of the Population Reduction Control Force, the Eugenics League and the Fair Allocation Of Hunger quangos will be ... former heads of Liberty, the RSPCA and the Cuddle A Terrorist quangos.

and not expect a strong reaction?

[eatyourveg]

PS There's no need to be so personally abusive Ludwig.

How can you make statements such as this:

The effete quiche eaters will be but a speed-bump in the course of history.

and this:

However the populace might be rather surprised to find that the heads of the Population Reduction Control Force, the Eugenics League and the Fair Allocation Of Hunger quangos will be ... former heads of Liberty, the RSPCA and the Cuddle A Terrorist quangos.

and not expect a strong reaction?

Lighten up Ludwig. Personally, I can't wait to spit roast a few effete quiche eaters.

[Ludwig]

Lighten up Ludwig. Personally, I can't wait to spit roast a few effete quiche eaters.

Piss off, I'm not going to pretend I don't think someone is a tosser for the sake of keeping things light.

[fifthcolumn]

Personally, I can't wait to spit roast a few effete quiche eaters.

I'm not sure which I'd prefer to spit roast more, some chav teenagers or some yuppie financial analyst.

[ziggy12345]

What exactly makes him qualified to speek on the subject at all? surely he is only a rung or 2 below Leorardo di Caprio on who we should be listening to about this topic

Agreed.
I notice that the most extreme doomers are people like English teachers, "Animists", Lawyers etc.

The problem of less oil and how to substitute for it is primarily an engineering problem and the engineers are roundly mocked by these people.

It's also interesting that the only two people on this site who actually work in the oil industry are a LOT less pessimistic than the rest.

Those 2 being you and RGR?

[biffvernon]

Time to revive the "Is it me, or has PowerSwitch got a little bitchy recently?" thread?

[eatyourveg]

Lighten up Ludwig. Personally, I can't wait to spit roast a few effete quiche eaters.

Piss off, I'm not going to pretend I don't think someone is a tosser for the sake of keeping things light.

Phew, glad you did lighten up, imagine what you could have said!

[UndercoverElephant]

I don't really understand the naturalistic fallacy undercoverelephant ,
nature red in tooth and claw produced the fast and the strong we seem to be on the road to producing the slow and the weak .

The trouble with this, ethically, is that it ends up being a justification for extreme right-wing policies like those employed by the Nazis.

Nature produced certain behaviours in humans which are morally completely unacceptable. RAPE is natural. If you were to say "Rape is natural, therefore it should be ethically acceptable and legal" then you would be committing an extreme example of the naturalistic fallacy.