Another factoid, the average big truck you see out on the highway get on average 6 miles to the gallon of fuel.
Tom Lehman
Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
> Ted wrote:
>
> >If we were to "green" the economy in various ways, such as subsidizing
> >organic agriculture, banning cars in downtowns in favor of public
> >transportation, and replacing destructive products with
> >environmentally-friendly alternatives, etc., the result would be new
> >opportunities for economic growth and long-term lowering of the costs of
> >production. But since this would occur at the expense of short-term profit,
> >the impetus has to come from the state. Unfortunately, "In liberal
> >democratic states the normal political logic of pluralism and compromise
> >prevents the development of overall environmental, urban, and social
> >planning."
>
> Ted, this makes it seem as if you are arguing for a more authoritarian,
> centralized state (a Leninist dictatorship of the proletariat?) freed from
> democratic pressure as it takes form in liberalism? Ah, that outstanding
> problem of the relationship between democracy and communism. Are Marx's and
> Lenin's ideas the same (Hal Draper, Paul Mattick, Richard Hunt, Paul
> Thomas, John Ehrenberg all give different answers)?
>
> Perhaps a Samuel Brittain would argue as well that only an authoritarian
> state could embark safely on a Keynesian depression program because it will
> remain insulated from pressure to continue to use such instrumentalities,
> under the pressure of interest groups, after the crisis has subsided? For
> example, Schumpeter did not deny the effectiveness of Keynesian programs
> but argued that it would be dangerous in the long term to widen the state's
> capacity given the pressures that interest groups would then continuously
> exert on it in pluralist democracy (no doubt this is one of the reasons he
> was attracted by the Nazis).
>
> But it seems that a certain kind of authoritarianism is understood as
> necessary to overcome crisis, whether of an ecological or economic type?
>
> At any rate, the advocacy of what kind of state form is implicit in this
> argument?
>
> >I think there's a more likely outcome of acute ecological crisis under
> >capitalism. Back to O'Connor, on the first contradiction: "The main type of
> >crisis inherent in capitalism, however, is a 'realization crisis.' Marxists
> >regard capitalism as 'crisis-ridden.' But the system is also
> >'crisis-dependent' in the sense that economic crises force cost cutting,
> >'restructuring,' layoffs, and other changes that make the system more
> >'efficient,' that is, more profitable.
>
> As I asked Charles, wouldn't such cost cutting compound the realization
> problem taken to be the effective cause of crisis? If this cost-cutting,
> layoffs, etc are the way out, then underconsumption or realization
> difficulty couldn't be the cause of the crisis in the first place.
>
> Yours, Rakesh