The Free Talk Live BBS
Free Talk Live => The Polling Pit => Topic started by: Njal on January 28, 2008, 05:56:33 PM
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What are your thoughts as to whaling, whales, and greenies?
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What are your thoughts as to whaling, whales, and greenies?
Fuck whales. I hate them...they can all explode for all I care.
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Fried whale, why don't they have this at McDonalds?
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What are your thoughts as to whaling, whales, and greenies?
I love whales, am thoroughly annoyed by the greenies, but unfortunately don't know of a practical way to privatize whales or whaling.
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It's a commons problem.
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Whales are apparently part of the Axis of Evil:
http://scienceblogs.com/deepseanews/2008/01/whales_are_part_of_the_axis_of.php (http://scienceblogs.com/deepseanews/2008/01/whales_are_part_of_the_axis_of.php)
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I think that the whaling problem can be best dealt with via ostracism.
By treaty, the Makah Indians of Washington State are allowed to hunt whales. Several years ago, for some reason they decided it would be a good idea to do so, even though it's been decades since they hunted whales. Something or other about upholding their traditions, or some such nonsense. I believe that the negative PR the tribe recieved far outweighed any benefit to them.
The Japanese love the taste of whale meat. But, the cost of it is that they have to put up with a lot of negative sentiment from the rest of the world.
BTW, I've camped and backpacked on the Makah reservation, and it's one of the most beautiful places in the country. I guess they have a right to kill whales. And, I have a right to denounce their action--which I do.
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this is one of those scenarios where i had hoped personal responsibility and common sense would prevail.. but i reckon it aint happening that way..
eskimos, natives, etc., around the world, that have hunted whales for centuries- thats permissible in my book. commercial whale hunting- as much as i love japanese culture, whale hunting for mainstream resale is pretty dirty,
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I think that the whaling problem can be best dealt with via ostracism.
LOL.
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My ancestors used to ride on horseback into foreign villages and burn the fucker flat, and believe me, I feel the urge to continue the work of my proud forefathers. But we no longer ride wooden boats over vast uncharted seas into the maw of the tempest and return as men with our dead lashed to the mast. Heritage is something to be understood as tasks of necessity which also doubled as rites of passage. It is well understood that the Aztecs no longer need to throw a virgin into a volcano to ensure a bountiful harvest, nor is it practical or even legal to burn a woman at the stake for heresy. So, any eskimo who stands on the shadows of his long dead elders and demands the right to kill a whale needs to shut the fuck up and go live in an igloo for the other 364 days a year, stand far removed from the conveniences and entrapments of modern society such as medicine and electricity and the internal combustion engine, then I'll consider his "right" to oar his way out into the Bering Straight and harpoon a fuckin whale.
There is a reasonable realm of pursuit of heritage. If the people of the South Pacific would like to tattoo themselves in the traditional method, great. If African villagers want to test their manhood by flailing each other with canes, have a blast. If a thousand Egyptians want to build a pyramid, cool. But when you have species of animal and plant that are endangered to the point of extinction and some little piss-ant bunch of black-tooth goobers wants to take a certain percent for themselves as a "right" because their culture did it hundreds of years ago, fuck them.
Heres why: When you have a group of maybe, say, a thousand Inuit Indians (whichever eskimo group, sue me for ignorance) and you weigh those thousand douchebags against 6 billion people, who are the worlds living population, they don't get to claim precedence over the needs of the current and future generations. Science benefits from the continued existence of those animals. When you eradicate an animal into extinction, it's gone forever, and I'm not willing to allow a species to be hunted into extinction so Tok-Glok can have a legitimate reason to wear a bone in his nose.
And as far as Japanese having a penchant for whale meat, fuck them, too. I like chicken, but if there was only five chickens left on earth, I think I would probably try to restrain myself. Theres other things to eat, and as much as I like Japanese culture, those fuckers have weird tastes in food. Japanese society has an odd habit of being very group-oriented (the culture is bigger than the self, etc.), whale probably tastes like shit and none of 'em will admit it. Eat a burger, Tojo.
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It's a commons problem.
This. If private groups were allowed to lease/purchase property rights to large geographic areas, they'd be able to set the rules for passage through the waters. International shipping lines, no problem. Fishing, no problem. Whaling, confiscation of ship & arrest of crew.
Of course, the greenpeace folks are probably too far along the path to militant communism to believe in ownership of anything, so they'd not actually be able to take a useful course of action.
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I just keep thinking of the kid from Free Willy screaming "WWWWWWWWWWIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY" :lol:
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I don't know how you can say that the commons is the problem when it would be extremely easy for whalers to just buy a small chunk of ocean and wait for whales to pass by so they could be killed. Environmentalists aren't the only people who have an interest in buying this stuff. Whales are migratory animals, so this really wouldn't be hard to do. Also, I believe that many/most forms of whaling are already illegal. It's already hard enough for us to patrol the ~25% of the Earth's surface that is made of land. I don't see how we could realistically patrol all the corners of the ocean where whales might be found. That's not even bringing up the fact that given that there's such an abundance of ocean property and how little use it is to most people compared to that of land, it would probably be very cheap.
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I think that the whaling problem can be best dealt with via ostracism.
By treaty, the Makah Indians of Washington State are allowed to hunt whales. Several years ago, for some reason they decided it would be a good idea to do so, even though it's been decades since they hunted whales. Something or other about upholding their traditions, or some such nonsense. I believe that the negative PR the tribe recieved far outweighed any benefit to them.
The Japanese love the taste of whale meat. But, the cost of it is that they have to put up with a lot of negative sentiment from the rest of the world.
BTW, I've camped and backpacked on the Makah reservation, and it's one of the most beautiful places in the country. I guess they have a right to kill whales. And, I have a right to denounce their action--which I do.
I remember seeing a video not too long ago where one of the Heroes actresses was protesting a dolphin slaughter in Japan. Ostracism doesn't seem to be functioning there in the way that you seem to be implying that it would (though feel free to correct me if you don't believe that the dolphin slaughter can be compared to whaling). These people just have different cultural values. They don't seem to care whether or not you ostracize them. There's plenty of market in Japan and the rest of Asia.
I'm not saying that I have all the answers, but I do think this is a complex question that can't be answered so easily.
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Nuke the whales.
Because you gotta nuke something.
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"The commons is the problem."
Whale sashimi is yummy.
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Definitely don't go whaling, my buddy went last night and it was not good.
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It's a commons problem.
This. If private groups were allowed to lease/purchase property rights to large geographic areas, they'd be able to set the rules for passage through the waters. International shipping lines, no problem. Fishing, no problem. Whaling, confiscation of ship & arrest of crew.
Of course, the greenpeace folks are probably too far along the path to militant communism to believe in ownership of anything, so they'd not actually be able to take a useful course of action.
Yeah, this sounds great. Japan and China could buy the whole ocean outside of our territorial limits and restrict our free trade with the entire rest of the world.
Ships would have to zig-zag all over the map to go through what was previously a straight line, like not touching the red squares on a checkerboard.
Theoretically, you could buy a circle of plots and the owner of the donut-hole would have no access to their waters.
Shipping would have increased tariffs like toll booths on the open seas, if the owners wanted, and you can bet they'd enforce it. Some could pass, others could not, depending on their international trade agreements.
They're called "International Waters" for a reason.
And, who exactly would they buy the rights from? Nobody owns them, so, start wars to claim the seas, and the winner gets to sell their conquests to the highest bidder?
I'm sure the US Navy would approve. We haven't had a good war at sea in 60 years.
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Wow, Brasky. Your arguments reek of desperation. You should try and come up with something more concrete than simply positing any 'What if?' scenario that people have been saying about the free market from the beginning about how it can't work because of these scenarios.
You need to advance your argument (http://advancetheargument.com/), or dismiss it (http://dismisstheargument.com/).
You must ask the question: How can aggressive interaction between individuals ever improve the situation if humans are able to take into account the non-need for aggression and rise above the incorrect belief that government is necessary?
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As long as there is a market...for anything...
That demand will be filled...somehow...
Enjoy!
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As long as there is a market...for anything...
That demand will be filled...somehow...
Which is exactly why government and the idea of a monopoly on security being better than competition in security is absurd.