"Your turn. Where do you live, and how does it affect your attitude?
Posted by Pericles, Thursday, 21 April 2011 2:30:11 PM

Fair point Pericles. I've lived in many places. At 2:30pm yesterday it was Booroomba Rocks. I don't dislike people - far from it - but I have seen the damage they do to other species, and to each other. They sometimes find it hard to understand the consequences of their actions - especially when their income and their lifestyle depend on not understanding it.

"The question nagging me remains, why would such a respectable businessman abandon everything he knows about economic principles to make a pure advocacy case?"

Spindoc, because Dick Smith is exhibiting the wisdom that comes to SOME of us with age.

He has suddenly realised that economics and business does not totally describe the biosphere and all human concerns. And that are economy is 'child process' of the global ecosystem and subject to the limits of that finite global ecosystem.

"The question nagging me remains, why would such a respectable businessman abandon everything he knows about economic principles to make a pure advocacy case?"

Spindoc, because Dick Smith is exhibiting the wisdom that comes to SOME of us with age.

He has suddenly realised that economics and business does not totally describe the biosphere and all human concerns. And that are economy is 'child process' of the global ecosystem and subject to the limits of that finite global ecosystem.

Have you considered Spindoc that what is nagging that part of your deep human nature that is ecologically aware and capable of far better environmental judgement. Dick has obviously re-discovered this part of his long suppressed human nature and allowed it to rise above the more selfish and short sighted aspects of his human nature.

Cheryl

I'm a woman and it shames me that another woman (you) is so aggressive and offensive. Why don't you play the ball and not the man? I, as one who argues for an ecologically sustainable population, am neither misanthropic, misogynist, nor against better urban design. I have not 'moved like head lice' over to the environmental movement - I have always been part of it. I understand enough about economics and the market (read human greed) to know that we cannot have unending resource growth on a finite planet. I support the concept of a dynamic steady state economy that allows people to trade goods and services but I do not support a capitalist economy in which the environment is regarded as an externality. I'm also a feminist and want women to have choice and rights particularly reproductive rights. The latter does not extend, however, to having as many children as they wish because having more than two impinges on the rights of future generations to a functioning biosphere in which they can operate their own economies.

Yep- repeated the same "anti pops don't have arguments (minus the ones I carefully avoided), and are only evil socialists who worship trees and believe in human sacrifice"

Definitely works in Real Estate to keep trolling these lines.

I know that it sounds good, popnperish. Slogans always do.

>>I support the concept of a dynamic steady state economy that allows people to trade goods and services<<

But what does it actually mean in practice?

And how is it achieved? All the "solutions" so far offered depend on the imposition of arbitrary restrictions on a complaisant population.

Except the removal of the "baby bonus", which was always highly dubious policy. Everything else - blanket restrictions on immigration, artificial restraints on reproduction etc. - smacks of government control-freakery.