Sub-contractors of sub-contractors of contractors performing the Fukushima clean-up are recruiting homeless men to do the work for minimum wage. After food and lodging was deducted, some of them ended up in debt. Some of the sub-subs have Yakuza ties.
China has declared 8 million acres of land – about the size of Belgium – as too contaminated by industrial pollution to be used to grow food. The loss of that much usable land puts China in a position where it doesn’t have enough usable land to produce its own food.
If only the heavy hand of government regulation loosened its icy grip from the Asian entrepreneurs who would rectify these situations in a true free market environment, just imagine the Far Eastern paradise we’d see: Chinese farmland would be clean and plentiful (and the Chinese surely wouldn’t be choking on pollution from coal-fired plants), and the Japanese streets would be empty of irradiated homeless men who were screwed out of their paychecks.
Just Some Fuckhead
Huh?
Davis X. Machina
The Invisible Hand doesn’t do landscape work, lest it get all calloused.
Keith G
Huh?
Edit: JSF, swear to Dionysus I did not see your comment
Villago Delenda Est
The sarcasm…it’s flowing over me like radiation from Fukushima…OUCH!
PsiFighter37
I can’t fathom what a clean China looks like. The major cities I’ve been to (Shanghai and Beijing) are severely polluted. The Huangpu River (which runs through the middle of Shanghai from north to south) makes the East River look like a paragon of cleanliness. You’re lucky if you get to see skies unclouded by smog for more than a day or two at a time (I enjoyed less than 12 hours of sunlight over the course of 10 days in both cities). And that’s without the less major cities, which are probably in even worse shape…
David Hunt
Yes, we do need more Galts. A thing about John Galt that’s admirable (just about the only thing) is that once he he’d developed a theory about how a certain few people were holding the world together, he put that theory to the test, by withdrawing from society and convincing his fellow “Atlases” to do the same.
Of course, the only reason this worked is because Ayn Rand wanted it to. If these pricks really did “go Galt” no one would miss them and they wouldn’t be charging homeless Japanese men for the free lighting they get by glowing in the dark.
Villago Delenda Est
Seriously, though, I think that the way to deal with Teahadis, Randians and Paultards and similar douchenozzles is to ship them to Fuckushima to clean up the reactor by hand.
Of course, the problem of dealing with their irradiated for centuries bodies I’ll leave as a mental exercise for the reader.
Punchy
So the Red Menace can produce 8.4 billion different types of plastic corncob holders and plastic butter spray containers, just not the actual corn itself, eh? Color me shocked that massive, wanton industrial production produces massive, widespread industrial pollution.
So China is the new Jersey?
Villago Delenda Est
@David Hunt:
Well, for one thing, they’d starve without “moochers” to do the actual work for them.
Scotius
“After food and lodging was deducted, some of them ended up in debt. “
That takes a special kind of evil to make somebody clean up radiation and owe you money in the end.
MomSense
In other good news on the regulations kill jobs front, there is a 7,300 square mile ring of mercury contamination around the Alberta tar sands.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/29/7-500-mile-ring-ofmercuryfoundaroundcanadastarsands.html
Keith G
@Scotius: No doubt they learned that little trick (company stores) from US coal mining capitalists.
Just substitute black lung for radiation.
Gin & Tonic
That 8 million acres is almost exactly what China will be leasing from Ukraine for agricultural purposes, under a deal signed a couple of months ago. http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-china-leases-farmland/25114812.html
Mark S.
@David Hunt:
John Galt invented a perpetual energy machine that ran on static electricity. That would be pretty damn beneficial. I don’t see you liberals inventing anything like that.
Chris
@David Hunt:
Ding ding.
Atlas Shrugged is up there with Star Trek’s “we work to better ourselves and the rest of mankind” in terms of wish fulfillment. If the top tier of businessmen refuse to “work,” all that’ll happen is that a whole bunch of new people will scramble for their now-vacant positions, people who’ll be happy to pay a few extra percentage points in taxes if it means they get to be on top with all the perks, power, and yes, money that comes with that.
C.V. Danes
Jeez. At least in the U.S. we would pave it over and turn it into a suburb, with a school.
dedc79
Environmental regulation in the U.S. has drastically improved the health of our land, air, water, but the free-market types mistake this success for evidence that such regulation is unnecessary.
C.V. Danes
@Mark S.:
That’s because we deal with reality and not fantasy.
Like, you know, perpetual energy machines…
C.V. Danes
@dedc79:
Indeed. And when the regs get watered down and the Love Canals and burning rivers come back, they will all stand around and ask “who coulda known?”
People forget that there’s a reason why the EPA (and other agencies) were created, and it wasn’t because the government had nothing better to do.
balconesfault
@Scotius: Well, clearly the market is concerned with keeping the workers alive long enough to finish the job. Afterwards? Not so much …
C.V. Danes
@Scotius:
And even for an atheist like me, hope for a special place in hell.
burnspbesq
@C.V. Danes:
And if you remind a wingnut that the EPA and OSHA were created under a Republican administration, they look at you funny and say something about Nixon being a Commie.
balconesfault
@C.V. Danes: And when the regs get watered down and the Love Canals and burning rivers come back, they will all stand around and ask “who coulda known?”
You’re too optimistic. Actually, they’ll be trying to blame it on the inefficiency of government bureaucracy, and insufficient dedication to free market principles that would have done a better job of protection of air/water/soil because shut up.
People forget that there’s a reason why the EPA (and other agencies) were created by a Republican President, and it wasn’t because the government had nothing better to do.
Roger Moore
@Mark S.:
In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics.
Villago Delenda Est
@C.V. Danes:
The problem with Ayn Rand’s fantasy is that the result she postulated from a perpetual energy machine probably has little to do with the reality of it. One of our problems is that the concept of “making a living” is kinda silly when you’ve got labor saving devices that reduce the human input needed to provide basic human needs. Which means, yes, you’ll have lots of “moochers” because there’s no need for them to work if you’ve got an inexhaustible supply of energy and machines to do the work for you.
Galt’s biggest problem was his own invention undermined his notion of how society is supposed to function, with a high, a middle, and a low, with him on top.
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@burnspbesq: Tricky Dick was written out of Republican history the same way GWB is being written out.
balconesfault
@Roger Moore: Haven’t Big Oil/Coal/Nuclear been busy over the last few decades buying up all the patents to perpetual energy machines before they can get into the marketplace?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mark S.:
You got love how those have made a comeback into the mainstream. And all thanks to the Ryandians ROFL
Visceral
@David Hunt: Except Galt’s theory didn’t work, since the ubermenschen had to actively sabotage society rather than just passively withdrawing.
Villago Delenda Est
@balconesfault:
They may not have been doing that, but they’ve been damn sure to do whatever they can to block alternatives to their product, like solar and wind power. One of the shitty grade Z movie star’s first official acts was to remove the solar panels from the White House.
These people can’t function in a world without scarcity they can use to exploit their fellow man.
Roger Moore
@dedc79:
I don’t think it’s so much a mistake as a refusal to allow reality to interfere with their belief system. They know that regulation is bad, and they can come up with a way to prove it. If there is no regulation and things are bad, then hypothetical regulations wouldn’t improve things. If things have gotten better because people obey the regulations, their obedience is proof that the regulations are no longer necessary. If things have failed to get better because people have refused to comply with the regulations or because the regulations are too weak, it’s proof that regulations are incapable of fixing our problems. The answer is always the same; it’s only the reasoning that changes.
C.V. Danes
@burnspbesq:
As he would well be today, even by Democrats ;-)
Roger Moore
@dpm (dread pirate mistermix):
Yes, inconsistently. On the one hand, they don’t want to admit to all the bad (according to their current theories) stuff he did, so they want to ignore him. OTOH, lots of important Republicans started their careers in his administration, so there’s a large contingent that wants to defend everything he did because it proves that they were right all along. It’s a different twist on the way Reagan has been distorted into Zombie Reagan who did exactly what current Republican theory says was right, and actual facts be damned.
C.V. Danes
@balconesfault: Indeed, indeed.
realbtl
@Keith G:
Saint Peter don’t you call me
‘cuz I can’t go
I owe my soul
to the company store
Merle Travis
C.V. Danes
@Villago Delenda Est:
Indeed. And as the machines work their way up the food chain, there will be less and less that “normal” people can do. Expect a revolt to happen at some point in time.
JCJ
@Keith G:
“No doubt they learned that little trick (company stores) from US coal mining capitalists.”
You load sixteen tons, whaddayou get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
JCJ
@realbtl:
Curse you!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Joo90ZWrUkU
Chris
@Roger Moore:
Blind ideology for ideology’s sake is killing us.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
The way they’ve sort-of rehabilitated Nixon without rehabilitating him is by comparing him to every Democrat that came after him (hence the long list of “Clinton’s Watergate” and “Obama’s Watergate” moments). They never actually come out and say that he was good or that Watergate wasn’t a big deal, but their narrative is that every Democrat since was even worse, and yet none of them caught as much shit as Nixon did. By inference, Nixon wasn’t that bad compared to the other people out there, the only reason he was brought down was that the fucking liberal media went on a crusade (the same liberal media that’s covering for all of Obama and Clinton’s Watergates).
Which is pretty much what they’ve been doing with Bush – beat the “Obama’s even worse” drum (Obama’s Katrina, Obama’s Iraq, Obama’s 9/11) and whine about how Obama is being unfairly respected more than Bush was, because liberal bias, argle bargle.
muricafukyea
I have a former friend who STILL believes with every cell in his body that the 2008 financial crisis happened because of too much gov’t regulation. I pretty much disowned him because of that. Yes, he leans libertarian and watches Fox. 3 strikes.
Roger Moore
@balconesfault:
I can guarantee you that they’ve bought every patent for a functioning perpetual motion machine that’s ever been filed. Of course that’s because none have ever been filed because perpetual motion is impossible.
muricafukyea
@balconesfault: Whah what! Please tell me this is sarcasm. Hard to tell on this board sometimes.
Mino
It’s all good. They are buying cropland in Africa to export Africa’s fertility and water to China in one fell swoop. In the meantime, they are signing contracts for off-brand canned veggies to be sold in Dollar Stores. And raising chickens for the US market on the blasted lands.
MattF
@balconesfault: OOOH. I love perpetual motion machines. How about a 1000 by 1000 array of dippy-ducks? That’s obviously patentable. Easy-peazy, I can put the concept up for bids, and then just wait for an oil company to buy me out. A cool billion is all I want.
Mino
Come to think of it, that might solve our Salmonella-in-poultry problems–instantly sterilized by the dust.
balconesfault
@Roger Moore:
Eh – anyone who would buy a Paul Ryan budget has to be lining up to invest in perpetual motion, right?