EU's 'carbon fat cats' get rich off trading scheme: study

[Bonam]

Eyeball is a Libertarian. I suppose as long as one gets to dictate the terms.. Libertarianism is great.

Sure doesn't sound like a Libertarian to me. Forcefully seizing other people's private property is antithetical to Libertarianism.

[eyeball]

SEIZE THEIR ASSETS? The day something like that happens, Canada will turn from a democratic country to a totalitarian dictatorship. At least your tyrannical tendencies have been exposed for all to see...

You don't think the government should have the option to seize the assets of criminals that try to evade fines or penalty's by leaving the country?

[M.Dancer]

You don't think the government should have the option to seize the assets of criminals that try to evade fines or penalty's by leaving the country?

You thought process is addled again. Once repressive legislation is introduced, before the fines are leveled, that's when they pack up and leave, taking their wealth, jobs and opportunities with them.

But I'm sure you would fine them anyway.

[eyeball]

You thought process is addled again. Once repressive legislation is introduced, before the fines are leveled, that's when they pack up and leave, taking their wealth, jobs and opportunities with them.

But I'm sure you would fine them anyway.

Imagine if it was that easy? Just threaten to protect the environment and watch the C-suite flee like rats.

It would be worth it just to see you cry like a baby.

[M.Dancer]

Imagine if it was that easy? Just threaten to protect the environment and watch the C-suite flee like rats.

It would be worth it just to see you cry like a baby.

Portect the evironment my ass...yes it would be that easy...you might have slept through the NEP...

[eyeball]

Portect the evironment my ass...yes it would be that easy...you might have slept through the NEP...

WTF did the NEP have to do with protecting the environment?

[M.Dancer]

WTF did the NEP have to do with protecting the environment?

Better to ask grasshopper, what did the NEP do to drive away business...which seems to be your first interest...

[eyeball]

Better to ask grasshopper, what did the NEP do to drive away business...which seems to be your first interest...

No that's just how you like to characterize me, my first interest is in protecting our environment. That said I don't see anything wrong with driving away business' that don't give a crap about the environment or would behave like criminals and avoid measures Canadians want taken to protect their environment. Why you do is obvious enough, you're a C-suite toady.

[M.Dancer]

Why you do is obvious enough, you're a C-suite toady.

You're quite funny, for a prole...

[Pliny]

Sure doesn't sound like a Libertarian to me. Forcefully seizing other people's private property is antithetical to Libertarianism.

He took a test and it said he was.

The way I have it figured is that as long as we have people like Eyeball around we don't need no stinkin' government.

I have talked to him about it at some length. In my view, he is a "live and let live" sort of guy, doesn't like government interfering and regulating his business but very protective of the environment, with almost military intensity. (His business is dependent upon a healthy environment, by the way. Can you say vested interest?)

Is that a fair assessment, Eyeball?

Edited March 18, 2010 by Pliny

[blueblood]

He took a test and it said he was.

The way I have it figured is that as long as we have people like Eyeball around we don't need no stinkin' government.

I have talked to him about it at some length. In my view, he is a "live and let live" sort of guy, doesn't like government interfering and regulating his business but very protective of the environment, with almost military intensity. (His business is dependent upon a healthy environment, by the way. Can you say vested interest?)

Is that a fair assessment, Eyeball?

No Eyeball is just selfish like the rest of us. It's all for Eyeball and to hell with anyone else. He would have the entire economy tank, just so he could have a healthy fishing industry.

Which is ironic because fishermen are among the worst stewards on Earth. They can't even manage to have a sustainable industry.

[Pliny]

No Eyeball is just selfish like the rest of us. It's all for Eyeball and to hell with anyone else. He would have the entire economy tank, just so he could have a healthy fishing industry.

Which is ironic because fishermen are among the worst stewards on Earth. They can't even manage to have a sustainable industry.

We all have selfish and greedy traits as part of the human character. They are part of our character for a reason. There are times to use them. However, judging them in others is nothing but a subjective biased opinion that has it's basis, in almost every case, in a covetous jealousy. Hence such sloganeering as "Tax the Rich!" and coined phrases like "Greedy Corporations".

Fishermen can't legally own their stocks. Government regulates the fishery. Eyeball is between a rock and a hard place - he wants government to regulate the environment for him but he wants them to stay out of his life. ???

Private ownership of the Seas and fish stocks is something I haven't looked into too deeply but there is an arguments for it. I am not talking about the private fish farms we have on our coast today.

[eyeball]

No Eyeball is just selfish like the rest of us. It's all for Eyeball and to hell with anyone else. He would have the entire economy tank, just so he could have a healthy fishing industry.

Which is ironic because fishermen are among the worst stewards on Earth. They can't even manage to have a sustainable industry.

Sure they can but first they need a government that is properly managed. Very few people in the world have that, least of all in Canada. I posted the following in response to your last slandering of fishermen. Perhaps you missed it, or more likely didn't give a shit.

There's a small fish hatchery down the road from where I live that produced nearly 2 million fish shortly after it was constructed. When these fish returned they kept a couple hundred fishermen working for a couple of months and a couple of fish plants working around the clock to process the catch.

This was it's first pilot project based on a Japanese model for producing big commercially harvestable runs, basically free range fish farming. It was so successful that communities up and down the coast started drawing up proposals for similar hatcheries. Ottawa ordered DFO to shut it down and no more were built.

It's pretty sad how many of my fellow citizens in this country think stories like this lend themselves well to making jokes about selfish commies who just want to get rid of the government or worse, use the government to get rid of inconvenient industries, like mine.

The stated reasons from Ottawa's bureaucrats for shutting down BC's attempt to do what is still keeping Japanese and Alaskan fishing communities together was essentially that we shouldn't play God with fish stocks. What was really happening though is that our attempts to sustain our fishing communities was at odds with Ottawa's desire to essentially let the commercial fishing industry die and use the stocks we depend on as bargaining chips in the Salmon War with the US and to settle native land claims.

A few years later...95% of the boats and fishermen were gone and Ottawa invited in some big Norwegian and Chilean corporations to fly in Atlantic salmon and start farming. Our native Pacific salmon stocks are really up against God now and they're not faring well. But what the hey we sure showed them commies something didn't we?

This was my favorite...

(His business is dependent upon a healthy environment, by the way. Can you say vested interest?)

Is that a fair assessment, Eyeball?

Yeah, you could say that about every human being on the planet.

[M.Dancer]

Fish farms are known environmental dangers...and they produce crappy fish.

[eyeball]

Fish farms are known environmental dangers...and they produce crappy fish.

Hatcheries are not without their problems but they're nowhere near as bad as the open-pen farms that are now fairly common on the coast.

It takes 5 lbs of wild fish caught somewhere else in the world to raise 1 lb of farmed fish. I understand concerns about dwindling feed sources are compelling fish farmers to experiment with cow brains and what have you.

Enjoy.

[eyeball]

The way I have it figured is that as long as we have people like Eyeball around we don't need no stinkin' government.

Interesting way to frame it...I'm certainly not the only one to compare fishing communities to canaries in a coal mine. Vanishing fishing communities are a good indicator that the government is doing a lousy job of managing a public resource i.e. they are either allowing to much to be harvested too fast or they are not protecting the environment the fish depend on or both. Usually both in the case of salmon which depend on rivers and lakes as much as the do the sea for survival.

I need good effective honest transparent government in ways you and apparently billions of human beings are unable to comprehend.

(His business is dependent upon a healthy environment, by the way. Can you say vested interest?)

Is that a fair assessment, Eyeball?

You really have no clue just how screwed you really are do you?

[blueblood]

Fish farms are known environmental dangers...and they produce crappy fish.

There are guys out in the country that have small scale fish farms in their shops. They can sell as much fish as their heart's desire. For the price of a new boat plus liscencing, a person could have a small scale fish farm in their shop.

The fishing industry is like the bison industry years ago. You can't just harvest, harvest, harvest. Those fish don't follow any borders, making regulations and enforcing them a wash. Traditional fishing is an industry on life support, and unless those stubborn fishermen change, there will be nobody eating any fish.

Eating crappy fish in the short term is better than no fish at all.

[eyeball]

There are guys out in the country that have small scale fish farms in their shops. They can sell as much fish as their heart's desire.

Yeah and sometimes these fly by nighters ignorantly, accidentally or deliberately spill, lose, or dump their fish, fish shit, eggs or offal into their local ecosystems. Introduced species and pathogens are a leading cause of extinction. I don't know about where you live but given the frustrating experiences I've had with trying to get approvals, permits and zoning for different things I can't see any small scale fish farms ever being allowed around here. Somebody would point at the growing population of introduced bull frogs we have on the Island and that would be the end of that.

If you're proposing a big scale industrial application then sure I suspect government officials would probably fall all over themselves to accommodate you.

Traditional fishing is an industry on life support

And the fact this is the case everywhere around the world should tell you as much about the unsustainable nature of our economy as a dead canary has to say about how long you can expect the environment of the coal mine to sustain you.

Fishermen didn't mismanage themselves into oblivion and if you think privatizing the resource would have made all the difference you'd have to believe that fishermen would have had the clout to tell loggers, miners, dam builders, developers and of course you cattle ranchers what you could and couldn't do around fish habitat.

That was the government's job, but of course in a democracy it's supposed to be our job to make sure the government does what it's told.

How does this relate to the thread title 'carbon fat cats' get rich off trading scheme? The only reason it's become a scheme for fat cats to get rich off is that the world's governments are out their citizen's control and the fat cats are running the show.

Edited March 19, 2010 by eyeball

[bloodyminded]

We all have selfish and greedy traits as part of the human character. They are part of our character for a reason. There are times to use them. However, judging them in others is nothing but a subjective biased opinion that has it's basis, in almost every case, in a covetous jealousy. Hence such sloganeering as "Tax the Rich!" and coined phrases like "Greedy Corporations".

No one is jealous of corporations, except for owners and large-scale shareholders of less-successful corporations.

Hell, every time someone criticizes a corporation for its behaviour, we are soberly informed that the critic is "jealous." It doesn't even make sense.

People dislike corporations because they feel they can't trust them. They don't like the way that unelected, unrepresentative entities acquire de facto political power.

That's not jealousy...it's good sense, basic sanity. It's also the democratic impulse at work.

[blueblood]

People dislike corporations because they feel they can't trust them. They don't like the way that unelected, unrepresentative entities acquire de facto political power.

That's not jealousy...it's good sense, basic sanity. It's also the democratic impulse at work.

Wrong. Corporations are among the most democratic institutions there is. The board of directors is elected by shareholders, and the CEO is picked by the majority of the board of directors. The CEO can hardly do diddly squat without running it by the board of directors.

If the company performs poorly, the board can fire the CEO, and if need be the shareholders can turf the board of directors. Not only that by law corporations have to publish their wheelings and dealings on a regular basis free of charge to the public. Sounds pretty legit to me.

[bloodyminded]

Wrong. Corporations are among the most democratic institutions there is. The board of directors is elected by shareholders, and the CEO is picked by the majority of the board of directors. The CEO can hardly do diddly squat without running it by the board of directors.

If the company performs poorly, the board can fire the CEO, and if need be the shareholders can turf the board of directors. Not only that by law corporations have to publish their wheelings and dealings on a regular basis free of charge to the public. Sounds pretty legit to me.

That's not democratic...not when the corporation is affecting national and international political policy. Shareholders aren't elected by the people either.

At any rate, all this was only to correct the wanton misstaement that critics are "jealous" of corporations. Of course they're not.

[Pliny]

No one is jealous of corporations, except for owners and large-scale shareholders of less-successful corporations.

Hell, every time someone criticizes a corporation for its behaviour, we are soberly informed that the critic is "jealous." It doesn't even make sense.

The way you put it, it doesn't make sense. Corporations, or anyone, can be deserving of criticism. It is when someone demands they be taxed more or their profits should be limited or they shouldn't exist in favour of competitive entities. that is when jealousy or envy or just a general distaste for capitalism or free enterprise is evident.

People dislike corporations because they feel they can't trust them. They don't like the way that unelected, unrepresentative entities acquire de facto political power.

They shouldn't acquire political power but if they did that would be a fault of politics and government. We understand that corporations and capital enterprise is not averse to seeking market advantage or a competitive edge so they would only be too willing to take advantage of political or governmental privilege and favour if it were extended in any respect. It is only natural. So it behooves government not to provide political opportunity.

That's not jealousy...it's good sense, basic sanity. It's also the democratic impulse at work.

The democratic impulse is to vote for government largesse unless one understands thoroughly that it is not in his best interests to have government provide for him.

[Pliny]

Interesting way to frame it...I'm certainly not the only one to compare fishing communities to canaries in a coal mine. Vanishing fishing communities are a good indicator that the government is doing a lousy job of managing a public resource i.e. they are either allowing to much to be harvested too fast or they are not protecting the environment the fish depend on or both. Usually both in the case of salmon which depend on rivers and lakes as much as the do the sea for survival.

I need good effective honest transparent government in ways you and apparently billions of human beings are unable to comprehend.

Of course I understand that the government is doing a lousy job of managing a public resource. They invariably do. Other means of management must be looked at and evaluated.

You really have no clue just how screwed you really are do you?

No. I don't.

[Pliny]

Double post!

Edited March 19, 2010 by Pliny

[bloodyminded]

The way you put it, it doesn't make sense. Corporations, or anyone, can be deserving of criticism.

At bottom, my only point.

It is when someone demands they be taxed more or their profits should be limited or they shouldn't exist in favour of competitive entities. that is when jealousy or envy or just a general distaste for capitalism or free enterprise is evident.

"Taxed more" and "shouldn't exist" are not precisely the same thing; certainly, Warren Buffet, who has stated that wealthy people AND wealthy entities are not taxed enough, is not jealous, nor has a distaste for capitalism or free enterprise. Obviously.

I'm not even saying such criticisms are correct. I'm saying that they have nothing to do with jealousy.

Calling "jealousy" is mostly laziness, for people who don't wish to argue the merits or demerits of a given criticism.

NO ONE is "jealous" of corporations...except (like I said) people invested in less successful corporations.

They shouldn't acquire political power but if they did that would be a fault of politics and government. We understand that corporations and capital enterprise is not averse to seeking market advantage or a competitive edge so they would only be too willing to take advantage of political or governmental privilege and favour if it were extended in any respect. It is only natural. So it behooves government not to provide political opportunity.

I agree about the government. But there is more than one agent involved in such an equation. People are personally responsible for their personal choices. So if you CHOOSE to attain power over policy, which you know damn well is going to affect human beings who have no say in it...then you share direct responsibility for that. There's no way around it.

Edited March 19, 2010 by bloodyminded