some people died but i got rich. sue me.
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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Lefty Memes
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You should see the lines go up though!
The problem with using the Love Canal was that it was the local government that really fucked up.
For the time, Hooker Chemical Company disposed of the chemical waste in a somewhat responsible way; a clay lined canal that they later topped with clay to prevent water infiltration. If the town wasn't dead set in developing the land, we likely would have never heard of Love Canal.
Yeah that's immediately what I thought whem reading it. The company did the right thing, it's the government who wouldn't listen to reason.
Second picture should be Bhopal.
Unión Carbide. I was very young when that made headlines.
That's cute, now do governments.
Lol bro thinks acts of war are the same thing passing laws.
Truly, the most libertarian.
Environmental destruction because of greed: inexcusable.
Environmental destruction because you don't like those bastards over there: totally acceptable.
Since leftists tend to also condemn those things, as well, what the hell are you on about?
Leftists LOVE to defend big government, particularly if it's communist.
Meanwhile, communist governments are responsible for some of the worst man-made natural disasters in history.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/27/chinese-communist-party-environment-co2/
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/romanias-unsolved-communist-ecological-disaster/
There's never been an actual communist government. As much as those countries like to say they're communist, that doesn't make it true. They're authoritarian, and you're buying their propaganda if you think they're actually communist.
They are buying propaganda, but in this thread they are selling it. They're a bad faith actor, disinfo bot, or standard issue moron. The only hard part is knowing which one.
If every "communist" government ever turned out to be authoritarian, you might want to ask yourself if there is some fundamental flaw in communism that makes it so it always turns out that way.
Also, Marx literally called for a "dictatorship of the proletariat". If that isn't authoritarian, then IDK what is.
A bunch of Marxist-Leninist governments turned out to be authoritarian, as well as fermenting cult-like behavior in smaller ML groups. That's a reason to drop that whole branch. Has nothing to do with leftism in the broad view.
The Lemmy devs are explicitly Marxist-Leninist, but you know that, right?
Meanwhile England created a man-made famine in Ireland and oversaw 15 of them in India, while the US straight up did the worst genocide the world has ever seen and is driving the climate catastrophy which might end up killing most of the humans on earth. Not defending socialist states, but there's not even a comparison here.
You're missing the point. This isn't about which form of government is better, it's about the fact that governments themselves are liable to produce far worse catastrophes than the businesses they're supposed to be regulating, and every time you vote for giving the government more power to punish those you hate, you are also giving it more power to punish yourself.
Nobody said that. You can't just make shit up and act like it's what the person you're arguing with is thinking.
Also people talk about this shit like we bombed today's Japan. Japan was a horrendous empire. They were doing the same shit the Nazis were doing but in asia. Do you condem the Dresden Fire bombing this fervently? Or do you just defend the stuff that's buzz worthy?
Not nuking Japan would have allowed the USSR to invade Japan before they surrendered. Meaning another East/West Berlin/German situation. Can you honestly say that would have had a lower death toll?
Stop hopping on this contextless internet hills for dying on and learn your history.
Like I said...
And yes, I do condemn the Dresden Fire Bombing. Sure the Nazis were bad but wiping out thousands of innocent civilian lives like that was a war crime, nothing else.
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A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings including genocide or ethnic cleansing, the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military and flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crime
It's literally the first part of the definition.
You cant stop a national government from making weapons and conducting war. A national government, however, should regulate corporations in its territory or sphere of influence to prevent attrocities and tragedies the corporations would conduct. You do not yet live in an idealic valley of plenty where there are corporations but not a government, so you must lend your voice; do you want one Tyranny Machine to run or should there be two Tyranny Machines and the second one has no oversight or regulation from the appropriate parties. Remember that when the government turns on its Tyranny Machine at least competing governments can oppose it. If you are not careful the Free Market Beast will allow many Tyranny Machines to run simultaneously.
At least you're smart enough to realize you're putting a tyranny machine in charge of regulating tyranny machines...
I work in aerospace regulation and the latest media coverage has been quite upsetting for me. There is a huge difference between delegation (how the aerospace regulator gives approval power to people in companies) and self-regulation, but I'm not clever enough to summarise them in this format. So instead I'd like to share two facts that can summarize the outcome instead.
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An airliner is a chunk of metal full of people 30,000 ft in sky propelled to near the speed of sound by burning kerosene in a tube. With all of that is safer than driving in your car or going for a swim. That's aerospace regulation at work, and it has always included delegation. It's almost the safest industry there is even when you include Boeing's criminal fraud and attempts to abuse the system.
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Boeing had to ground their fleet for years and now is being charged with criminal fraud for deceiving the FAA (the aerospace regulatory body in the USA). Self regulated industries rarely face consequences.
I'm not saying it's perfect, and I wish I could explain the process better but I think it's very effective and has a proven track record across the world. Almost all modern countries use the same regulatory framework because it delivers incredible safety at a reasonable (by aerospace standards) cost to the government.
I hope more industries transition to a similar framework. If we had an FAA for finance and environmental protection, I think we could end scam shell companies and illegal pollution in a decade. But it would probably be "big government socialism" so there isn't much hope.
I think the narrative is about how Boeing used to be the gold standard, but with money grabs for years the check is now coming due - hopefully before its too late & there is a crash.