I'm increasingly dissatisfied with the "fundamental change" forum. In effect it has served as a rough duplicate of P&CA's economics and environment forum, a match-up I also thought was quite poor. But in this respect it has become a respository for all topics of a primarily economic nature, rather than specifically dealing with fundamental change as such.

I'm not even that keen on fundamental change as a forum title anyway, seeing as it reflects Francois's semi-apocalyptic views on the demise of technical society more than anything else. I can work with it, as I'm not totally unsympathetic to the view (although I'm of a rather more optimistic bent) but it feels wrong to post every article on economic topics in there as if they were all harbingers of doom.

Therefore I'd like to propose that either we have an economics forums as such, or that the politics forum be expanded to include economics as well. FC can then be reserved for toipics that really reflect the title rather than being the hodgepodge it is currently.

Resource depletion, global environmental change, and economic collapse are probably those three (interlinked) issues that will change our society most fundamentally in the coming years and decades.

However, I agree with you that not every economic and/or environmental issue is of that nature. For example, if an oil tanker breaks up and spills its load of crude oil into the ocean, this is an environmental catastrophe, but has little to do with fundamental change. It is a strictly contemporary issue. Similarly, there are many economic news that are of a temporary nature.

I usually post temporary stuff in the General & Current Events forum.

Not convinced. Job losses in academia? Tax-evading landlords in Spain? If these are "fundamental change" topics, then so are all economic topics.

Current and General presently has a semi-lighthearted/localised/miscellaneous atmosphere. That seems fine to me and I wouldn't want it to be changed; if regular economic issues - like unemployment rates or tax evasion - are to be housed in an existing forum it should not be there, it should be in Politics.

Originally Posted by contracycle

Not convinced. Job losses in academia? Tax-evading landlords in Spain? If these are "fundamental change" topics, then so are all economic topics.

I think, these are.

1. Job losses in academia: Our governments are increasingly in financial difficulties, because the limits to growth deprive them of the economic windfall of an exponentially growing economy. Consequently, they need to save money ... and they do so by cutting in areas, where they believe that they'll get least resistance. Education is one such area.
2. Tax-evading landlords in Spain: This one is indirectly caused by the same problem. In past years, many Spaniards invested in the same fashion as many Americans did: they bought real estate and used the continuous increase in the real estate prices to finance their life style, i.e., they used their real estate as an ATM machine, frequently increasing their mortgages and taking the cash out to have a good life. With the end to exponential growth, the real estate prices dropped, and now, many of these buildings are under water. The landlords try to prevent losing their property to the banks, and so, they cheat on the taxes to stay afloat for a little while longer. Yet, I agree that the way, in which the thread then developed, didn't reflect any fundamental change issue.

We may not see eye to eye on the significance of some of the observations that we make. For example, I might claim that some facets of the Iraq war are fundamental change issues. The Iraq war wasn't fought over human rights or liberating the poor Iraqi from their dictator. This was a resource war. It was fought over the control over a significant portion of the remaining oil.

Now, you may claim that wars have been fought sine the dawn of times, and most wars are resource wars. What's new? Resource wars started with Zichao taking some toys away from her little sister, because she could; because she was bigger and stronger than her sister; and because her sister couldn't defend herself.

This is true, but the incentive for fighting resource wars gets bigger as we approach the limits to growth. Also lab rats get more aggressive as their cage fills up.

Now, this doesn't mean that I'll henceforth report any and all war activities under fundamental change. There are many facets of war that are better classified as either politics, or in some cases, such as torture of prisoners, for example, as principle of things issues. The day-to-day news concerning a war will probably end up in general and current events.

To be fair, she did have nuclear, chemical and biological capacity, vectors capable of delivering WMDs within a 1000km radius and battlefield chemical munitions ready for launch within 45 minutes.

About the forum arrangement, I'm not sure. I don't really mind what the forums are called as long as the threads are ok. Contra - do you want to do a poll giving the different options and we'll vote on it?

__________________
Standard disclaimer: the disgusting statements contained in this post are the views of the poster, and unless specified do not represent the views of the moderators or the site's owners.

You can make the case that Iraq is a resource war, and put articles to that effect in FC, but I don't see that it makes sense that this should be a fixed determination. I could make the same argument for Afghanistan and the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline:

Quote:

‘Since the US-led offensive that ousted the Taliban from power,’ reported Forbes in 2005, "the project has been revived and drawn strong US support" as it would allow the Central Asian republics to export energy to Western markets "without relying on Russian routes"

Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As for job losses etc, I have seen no argument to the effect that the difficulties we have encountered arise due to running into the buffers of any limits to growth. That has been assumed, or at best asserted, rather than shown. And instead it seems to me to arise from the structure of capitalism itself, and the inevitable shift of capital from Department I to Departments II and III, i.e. this is a classic expression of a contradiction in capitalism, irregardless of any alleged limits to growth.

It's too flaky, to the point of being devoid of any evidential basis.

I'm inclined to agree with contracycle.

For instance there is an interesting post on the NYTimes Freakonomics blog criticising people who criticise food packaging (you know, plastic, cans, foil etc, etc, etc) on the grounds that if food were not packaged this way, its spoilage rate would massively out-d0 the discarded (and hopefully often recycled) packaging.

This is an economic observation that will never fundamentally change the universe and I would not have posted it in that sub-forum. However, let's have a vote on contra's suggestion, which would give that thread a better home.

It should not be a majority vote, but a reasonable minority should carry the day. Then protagonists can show us the new value that it contributes.