So what WOULD be "real change"?

[unixronin]

Well, let's see.

• Congress could start actually representing us, instead of lining their pockets and their friends' pockets and then handing us the bill.  At least acting like they think the law applies to them as well as to us would be a good start, too.
• Maybe when they get over that difficult and painful obstacle, they could start obeying the Constitutional limits on their own authority again.
• We could stop rewarding the financial sector for behavior that would get us, as individuals, thrown in jail or homeless with our future wages garnished for the rest of our lives.
• We could even make economic plans that aren't based on pretending that infinite economic growth forever is a good idea, or even possible in a finite world.
• We could get serious about trying to make the US independent of foreign oil, instead of fighting wars to ensure our continued future access to it, and stop funding foreign governments that hate us but love our money.
• For that matter, we could get serious about renewable, non-polluting energy sources, and stop winking and talking about "clean coal" as though it's not an oxymoron.
• We could stop coming up with movie-plot threat after movie-plot threat to justify taking away our own freedom in order to stop terrorists from taking it away.
• How's this for a really wild idea:  We could, like, actually respect each other's rights and work together to defend everyone's, instead of dividing into opposing camps that each fight to restrict or destroy the other's (but how dare you even think of touching ours!).
• While we're at it, maybe we could even toss out the absurd idea that it's even possible (let alone a good idea) to eliminate all possible risks and hazards from life from the cradle to the grave.  And hey, perhaps we could even ditch the equally stupid idea that there exists some kind of natural right never to be offended (but it's OK to offend other people in the pursuit thereof, because, well, we're Good People, so if anything we do offends them, they must be Bad People, right?).
• On yeah, and that retarded "zero tolerance" shit?  Right OUT, buddy.  Zero tolerance is an excuse not to have to think or accept responsibility for anything — you can just point at the rulebook and say "Don't blame me, the policy did it!"
• You know ... this is a radical concept, but maybe we could, y'know, like, work on the idea of personal responsibility in general, instead of trying to make everything somebody else's fault or somebody else's responsibility?
• In a related vein, we could perhaps work on internalizing the idea that just because we choose to live by a particular ideology doesn't mean everyone else has to, and that we can't expect them to respect ours if we don't respect theirs.

There's a few suggestions to toss out.  Anyone else have more?

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

But information more or less *is* infinite.

Well, for some values of "more or less". It is possible to store all the information that exists about the entire universe and every elementary particle (or larger collection thereof) within it. The catch is, you need the entire universe to do it. You can only map anything in complete, perfect detail if the map is either the territory, or a perfect replica thereof. While the quantity of information available is very nearly limitless, the actual information storage capacity of any given storage resource is finite.

My 22" high-def flatscreen monitor weighs substantially less than my old 15" CRT, which implies that it used fewer bulk resources than the CRT. But in terms of actual value (and economic value, for that matter), my 22" flatscreen is *far* higher.

It may use less bulk resources, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're cheaper resources or cost less energy to extract. The major resource in a CRT that's not in an LCD is glass, which is cheap — made from sand, silicon dioxide, one of the most common materials on the planet — and more or less indefinitely reusable. But the cold-cathode fluorescent lamps usually used to backlight LCDs contain toxic material (mercury) not present in a CRT. Also consider that as a general rule, the way you get more functionality out of less materials is by doing more processing on it, and that takes energy.

Economic growth? I see it happening indefinitely. Not in terms of "bigger", but in terms of "better and worth paying more money for."

That's more on the right track. We can improve the equation by trying to build smarter, better stuff instead of just more stuff. But even then, you cannot have indefinite continuous growth within a closed system. Sooner or later you run into the limits of the system. In any case, conventional economics doesn't even think that far ahead — conventional thinking would rather sell you a car this year and another one in five years, than sell you a car this year that'll last you twenty years, and sell you something else in two years.