[veyrongatti]

OK, now, in that world here's my question: How fast would you drive? There's no traffic and no traffic laws. How fast would you go?
 

Being a reckless teenager? 200 KM/H

 

[gikigill]

Abbott doesn't realize that Airlines and Car manufacturers all over the world get subsidised by the Govt and he wants to get them off the government teat which will prove to be a major mistake down the road.

The Japanese government paid for the Prius from its own pocket, Emirates gets subsidised by the govt. Just a couple examples.

 

[SP Wild]

Umm, thanks guys, I think. I believe we'll just hold on to them, though we did hire security for the garage(s). Walked by one this evening and I was like, "Wow, he has a .40 cal and a 12ga pump". I hate that, but it is what it is.
One issue is that manufacturing costs are so high in Aus, all countries with higher than average labor costs are losing their factories (unless the company is firmly based in that country and gets special tax breaks). New cars are much more expensive due to more restrictive manufacturing processes (emissions regs) and more exotic materials, so something has to give, unless everyone wants to pay 30-50% more for their cars, overnight. US states are paying companies to build their factories in their states, to counter the higher costs. It's crazy.

 
Basically that is what happened, the car companies were receiving subsidies to remain in Australia.  That idea is crazy from an entrepreneurial point of view...I have to agree, and I have never discussed such matters with people from the other side of the class struggle so your point of view is very important to me.
 
I just wonder sometimes if perhaps modern democracies are veering to far into corporatism.  I don't believe a country should operate under pure market forces and governments must intervene as its primary role is social engineering, not profit. 
 
Its a bit like denying a child in modernised societies access to an Xbox to play video games (or whatever every other child has access to).  It costs too much, and no real benefits seem evident.  But that is the cost of keeping up.  To not keep up will eventually cost much more, this concept should be pretty obvious.
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
With no laws and traffic...I would end up dead in a mangled car wreck.

 

[SP Wild]

What happened to all the Australian regulations about requiring a percentage of local content in the cars?

 

 
They're still in effect.  Australia has a massive support industry behind local manufacturing.  Tony Abott killed not just the car industry...but every other technology industry we have in support of this effort...cost effective know how in developing rear drive sports layouts, due to our V8 Supercar effort, gave us chassis rigidity and dynamics in line with the Germans...the Camaro and SS Chevrolet belongs to our Holden rear drive platform.
 
Admittedly the interior quality of Holdens and Fords are far behind the Germans and Japanese and even the Koreans are superior...this was always a problem and I am not sure why they didnt attack this issue head on.  This mind you is the same problem facing US cars...they're even worse than aussie interiors last time I looked and in 2010s the engineering looked like early 80s...so be warned.
 
The CSIRO just developed super hybrid capacitor batteries for cars...these high technology developments will cease with the loss of the auto industry.  Are we developing an aerospace industry to take up that technology gap...yeah, we gonna take on Lockheed Skunkworks...as if.  The negative ramifications may never rear its ugly head....or it will.
 
But...we still got the mines for now and that is all that matters right now.

 

[billybob_jcv]

I guess I'm more of a Friedman economist (or perhaps an "Economic Darwinist") - I think that as a society and a species, we're better off letting the market forces rule than we are with letting short-term thinkers (ie politicians & corporate executives) try to meddle "for the good of the people". If that means that large segments of the population, or entire countries turn into dust bowls - well, that's the price of long-term thinking. Natural selection (whether economic, social or biological) has determined that your particular branch on the tree of life isn't gonna work out. And BTW, I take the same stand when considering the planet as a whole. If we, as a species, take the planet to the point where it can no longer sustain the current biological life - well, gee - that sucks - but I don't think we have a divine right to exist in this universe, and I guess our little branch of Yggdrasil isn't gonna work out. Hopefully, there's a planet full of cockroaches, squid or gaseous clouds of Chlorine somewhere out there that can make another go of it - but if not... *shrugs*...

Douglas Adams said it best:

“Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space...

 

[ssrock64]

Billy, you're correct that we don't really have a natural "right" of any sort to exist, but a large part of the evolutionary process involves each species using its own available intellectual tools to preserve its existence. Our chief asset is our minds and our ability to create physical tools and high-level processes with those minds, and I don't have a problem with using those processes to forward our survival. If the evolutionary process has endowed us with the power to control the climate to our liking in the long term and to harness the earth's energies and materials for our own preservation and comfort, I see that as a natural, not artificial, means of survival. I see our complex societies and industries as an extension of nature, and I have no problem with collectively acting to change our environment to suit our needs. It's selfish, but it falls in line with the same Darwinistic principles you espouse. In the same way that our actions could bring about our own deaths as a species one day, our intellect can preserve us for longer if we support concentrated efforts do to so.

 

[billybob_jcv]

Yes, I didn't mean we should all be sitting in caves hiding from Smilodons - I agree with you, we should use our intellects to survive. I just don't think we can *legislate* our survival. Creating laws that are for the "betterment of the society" mean nothing if society doesn't actually believe what the law says - and if society *does* believe, then there's no need for the law!

Douglas Adams has many other excellent lines directly addressing all of this:

It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

 

[Hutnicks]

Time for you to start the Devolution thread Billy
 
Or, we can all just sit down and watch "Melancholia" again.

 

[billybob_jcv]

I also don't want to leave out another great philosopher of society, Terry Pratchett, who said:

You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage.

And also:

Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.

 

[Hutnicks]

Can Pol Pot be far behind?

 

[SP Wild]

.

 

[SP Wild]

I still have something like this...in needing of more work and time to get goin again.
 

 
Its got a single cylinder 2 stroke engine of 3.5 cc making around 2 HP at 40,000 RPM running on nitromethane...Top Fueller food.  Its crazy watching the flames belch out them exhausts.  It launches literally like a rocket off the line. This car, ladies and gentlemen, is the fastest car...in the world...
 
All wheel drive, with fully adjutable lockup rate diff in the rear, front, and center...this thing can scrabble like a scrabble player in The Scrabble World Championships, and yes such a thing does exist.  You can lock a diff by opening it and jamming blu tack into the gears....alternatively like most racers, you would use thick, gooey, silicone oil to allow for slip...the thicker the oil the less it slip...the thinner the more it slips, until its thin and it acts like a regular open diff.   Because the thing weighs nothing....this simple oil thickness trick works and works well with all diffs.  Shock oil is the same but much thinner and rated for different dampening levels......everything you can adjust on a real race car, this can as well and more than most.

 

[gikigill]

Where would a 76 page TOS figure in your economic plan Billy?

 

[billybob_jcv]

Where would a 76 page TOS figure in your economic plan Billy?

We only need one law: Shoot the lawyers first. Without the lawyers, the politicians will whither and die. There would be no such animal as a TOS - it would be pointless. It would take a few generations, but eventually, natural selection would reassert itself, and the non-viable (ie, the stupid) people would be thinned from the herd. Stupidity would not be tolerated - it would be shunned and ostracized. The B-Ark would be bid bon voyage. The air would be clean and the water would be fresh...

Or...

If we assume the apocalyptic vision of the future, then we might end-up like this...




Either way, it wouldn't be boring...

 

[gikigill]

What if the fuel you get is poisoning your water supply without your knowledge? Who would you go to in such a scenario and what would your proposed course of action would be ideal stop drinking water or stop heating and driving?

Your proposed solution is more anarchy than anything else and knowing mankind, we will end up killing ourselves, not the best solution and not evolutionary in its nature either.