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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • I immediately dislike calling it commerce for 3 reasons:

    1. Most people will not know what I mean so I will have to explain every time
    2. Commerce is an existing word that means something different so it will still be confusing in a different direction
    3. I, on principle, don’t like abandoning words because some dumb group(s) appropriate them and try to change their meaning

    I think I will try saying “regulated capitalism” from now on and see if it works better.




  • CGP gray very specifically refers to democracies as well and explains how things like farm subsidies are used to buy votes. Maybe re-watch the videos.

    And yes, CGP gray also indirectly explains why Marxists kept pumping resources into the government, police and bureaucracy. (Clarification: CGP Gray never mentions Marxists specifically, he just explains why leaders have to funnel resources to areas that help them stay in power.) It is inevitable in a system where you concentrate power in a limited group of people.

    That is why distributing power between large number of independent capitalists and voters is the system that so far worked best, although still very far from perfect.

    As long as humans behave like humans and are in charge, the utopian communism is as realistic as wizards in flying castles.


  • It is the opposite. In capitalism, there is at least a chance a good person has some power because power is distributed, not only held by governments. There are multiple examples in the main post. Even better examples are European countries where the government and businesses hold each other in check instead of govt being bought off legally like in the US.

    In communism, the way power is distributed ensures corrupt people raise to the top. See an amazing video “rule for rulers” by CGP gray for a simplified explanation how that corruption works and why a good person can’t hold power.



  • Almost, yes. It should be close enough as an estimate.

    If you want to be precise, one thing you want to be careful about is that not every fuel releases the same amount of energy per kg of CO2. So you should be comparing to the CO2 released by whatever is being replaced by the biofuel (most likely fossil fuel), not the biofuel itself.

    Another consideration is how much CO2 is released by the production of the biofuel compared to what it is replacing. Since farming equipment, transportation etc. all could produce CO2.


  • A very good question.

    It is a very common misconception that trees and plants just always absorb CO2. The Carbon © in CO2 does not just disappear when plants produce Oxygen (O2). Plants use it as material to grow themselves and their fruits. Once they are fully grown, they don’t really absorb any more. So if you burn a tree in a fireplace and grow a new tree in its place, the new tree will eventually re-capture all the CO2 burning the wood released as it grows. This works even better with fast growing plants used for biofuel. The CO2 released by burning biofuel is re-captured when you grow more plants to make more biofuel.

    So chopping down a forest to create fields is bad in the short term since it releases and does not recapture the CO2 from the trees, but is sustainable in the long term since you “recycle” the same Carbon.