"if all the worlds resources were shared equally..." (how many cameras would I get?)

Bromo33333 · Nov 10, 2006

JBrunner said:
Here in america there are now huge numbers of people of all classes, who have no idea what is even important or necessary for survival and advancement. How did we manage to convince someone that can't pay their rent, that they need $250 tennis shoes? How did we convince someone that working around the clock to pay for an $80,000 car was more important than having a $10,000 car that is functional, and spending time on community and family?

That is a good point - when luxuries are mistaken for requirements, ruinous spending ensues.

This is not recent, the Founding Fathers, save a couple, all died with huge debts, and wallowing in Luxury. Thomas Jefferson being the most profligate - his entire estate had to be liquidated, and a couple of lenders ended up bankrupt. By freeing his slaves, he saved them from being re-sold.

While it is easy to blame marketing, I think it all boils down to being personally responsible for your spending. It does not take a great leap of education to know you have to pay back loans, and that you have to live within your means. I would agree, though, most people don't want to hear that, so ignore it.

kb244 · Nov 10, 2006

Chris I know all bout the whole camera borrow thing, I hardly let my wife handle the cameras, and she does a hell of a lot better job taking care of them if she used them than some 'professionals' I know.

My biggest issues are.

1) Fingerprints somehow getting on the front of the lens "I don't remember touching the lens..."
2) People who don't understand that "Apply Necessary Force" does not apply to cameras.
3) When viewing a print they seem to have to touch every inch of it.

I remember my neighbor needed a camera, I cured that problem rather quickly by just giving him my Minolta X-370 with a 50mm f/1.7 and 200mm f/4. Figured I only paid 2$ for the setup, and I shoot more canon than anything, and he could use the camera more than I could since he's got kids, and I'm sure he'd want to capture their memories more than I would take a picture of an insect with the number of cameras I have. It saves the hassle of worrying bout when and how you'll get your stuff back. Not everyone is at the luxury of doing that.

nick mulder · Nov 10, 2006

Roger Hicks said:
It seems I am not alone in considering this question (a) meaningless and (b) in poor taste.

Meaningless for many reasons, but first and foremost because the valuation of public goods and infrastructure is impossible. What is a fighter aircraft worth (new and 16 years old)? Or a still-functioning Victorian sewage system? Or the 1000-year-old donjon (castle keep) a few hundred metres from my house?

In poor taste because of the flippant 'how many cameras would I have?' My wife and I have had friends who were genuinely poor. How about Tibetan refugees living 6000 feet up in the Himalayas, their only water a shared stand-pipe, their WC a choice between a communal latrine (no flush) and a rocky area favoured by the local monkeys for the same purpose? A friend whose daughter was withdrawn from school because she couldn't afford the few dollars a term in fees? Who didn't mention this to us because you don't beg from your friends (we'd have paid happily)? Tsering Youdon, her daughter, was withdrawn from school between the time we last saw Ama-la before her death, and the next time we saw Tsering-la.

The simple answer is, you'd have no cameras at all, chum. Nor would any other private individual. We are all staggeringly lucky to be born into, or to have migrated to, rich societies. You can ascribe it to karma or science or capitalism, I don't care: the question, at least as phrased, should not have been asked.

Sorry if this comes across as hopelessly puritanical but I was born in Cornwall, one of the poorest parts of the United Kingdom. A hundred years before I was born -- an eye-blink in human history -- there were apparently years when it was too expensive to buy the salt that was needed to salt the fish on which most Cornish people lived. Poverty -- true poverty, the fear of no roof over your head and not enough to eat -- has been the lot of most of mankind for most of human history. The 19th and 20th centuries saw enormous improvements. It is impossible to distribute wealth and income equally, or even fairly, but at least we can try to drag the poor up with the rich.

Cheers,

Roger

All I'll say is that the outcome might be meaningless but the attempt nonetheless not ...

My addition of 'cameras' into the title was purely a marketing ploy to get people interested in the question, this is a photographers forum and I imagine many of us would be rather hesitant to part with them... Think of them in this sense purely as generic chunks of resource - 'energon cubes' if you will - passably more useful than a wad of cash out in the anarchic woods/large rabid city ...

I apologize for anyone I have offended - I suggest that everyone here, offended or not, visit :

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

It will put most bent noses back in place

Its from the first of two forum entries that answered my original query...

Roger Hicks · Nov 10, 2006

nick mulder said:
All I'll say is that the outcome might be meaningless but the attempt nonetheless not ...

My addition of 'cameras' into the title was purely a marketing ploy to get people interested in the question, this is a photographers forum and I imagine many of us would be rather hesitant to part with them... Think of them in this sense purely as generic chunks of resource - 'energon cubes' if you will - passably more useful than a wad of cash out in the anarchic woods/large rabid city ...

I apologize for anyone I have offended - I suggest that everyone here, offended or not, visit :

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

It will put most bent noses back in place

Its from the first of two forum entries that answered my original query...

Dear Nick,

My apologies -- I guess it worked as a 'marketing strategy'. But my point about valuing public (and indeed many private) goods still remains.

Cheers,

R.

copake_ham · Nov 10, 2006

Bromo33333 said:
I believe that trying to give the poorest some sort of minimum opportunity to improve one's lot in life (I do not believe the sons and daughters of the Bush family have the same opportunities as a middle class family - so "equal opportunity" is a misnomer, I think offering good opportunities will be the best way)

Brent,

It is well known that "W" entered Yale as a result of a special affirmative action program known as "Legacy Admissions"!

blansky · Nov 10, 2006

In my opinion, it either works one of two ways.

1. It's all random. You're here, now what.

2. Reincarnation, it's pre planned. You're here to learn and advance karma-wise. This time you're moderately wealthy, last time you weren't.

I vote for #2.

That being said, any form of commune ism doesn't seem to work. Human nature what it is, always wrecks it.

Indifferent capitalism doesn't work either because all the money eventually controls everything, and we get super rich and super poor.

So the middle ground is a sort of free enterprise, and try to educate and feed everyone so that they have a shot. The main problem is, and will continue to be, overpopulation.

A life raft of whatever size can only hold so many people. Some will live and some won't.

Michael

Bromo33333 · Nov 10, 2006

Roger Hicks said:
My apologies -- I guess it worked as a 'marketing strategy'. But my point about valuing public (and indeed many private) goods still remains.

I think that is the difference in "capital" and "income" - if you have a sewer system that functions well, you certianly don't have to build one, freeing up income for other tasks. And if you have had it for 100 years, there is 100 years you haven't had to build it!

Valuing is very difficult - you need air, but what is the price? You need it to live, so you certainly can't do without it, but it is rather hard (and illegal under most circumstances) to withhold it. But since degradation of it does not result in direct charges, and damage is spread evenly amongst all users of air, pollution is rampant. "Tragety of the Commons"

There is a political philosophy here in the US "Libertarians" that tend to beleive in minimal government and privatizing everything because private ownership they believe creates the greatest good. Or so they say. Their philosophy stumbles and becomes complicated when dealing with "public goods" like air, though their ideas helped create the Kyoto carbon exchange market...

Bromo33333 · Nov 10, 2006

copake_ham said:
Brent,

It is well known that "W" entered Yale as a result of a special affirmative action program known as "Legacy Admissions"!

Friend of mine went there. He talked about the Legacy students (not him) - most were "C" students - they called them "Gentleman C's." They weren't too concerned about grades since their family would take care of them when they got out, and Yale didn't dare flunk them or give them bad grades since it could hurt the donor base ....

firecracker · Nov 10, 2006

Bromo33333 said:
Their philosophy stumbles and becomes complicated when dealing with "public goods" like air, though their ideas helped create the Kyoto carbon exchange market...

The U.S. has exceeded 15 percent, and that's the worst, according to the report. Japan has exceeded 6 percent or so, and so have a few other countries. The Kyoto thing is almost like a joke.

firecracker · Nov 10, 2006

Anyway, speaking of the global issue of the unequal distribution of resource(s), has anyone seen the documentary film, "Darwin's Nightmare"?

It's been out for more than a year at least in the festival market. It shows almost exactly the same thing that we've been discussing here, except for the film's subject which is the fish from Africa that's feeding some of the rich nations.

copake_ham · Nov 10, 2006

firecracker said:
Anyway, speaking of the global issue of the unequal distribution of resource(s), has anyone seen the documentary film, "Darwin's Nightmare"?

It's been out for more than a year at least in the festival market. It shows almost exactly the same thing that we've been discussing here, except for the film's subject which is the fish from Africa that's feeding some of the rich nations.

Fishermen have travelled throughout the world's seas for hundreds of years in search of catch.

The original colonial settlement of North America was based on the need for European fishermen to have landfalls upon which to dry and salt their cod catches taken from the Grand Banks and other fisheries back in the 1500's! Those catches fed much of Atlantic and Meditteranean Europe for hundreds of years.

And, for crying out loud. Whoever said these ocean resources "belong" to any continent? If the Africans want to obtain the catch off their shores let them stop all their damned civil wars and genocides and start maturing as nations!

Oh, and, BTW, isn't Japan one of the "worst" offenders under your argument? What with hundred mile lengths of long-lines and huge drag nets that sweep the seas of all life in their wake?

firecracker · Nov 10, 2006

copake_ham said:
Fishermen have travelled throughout the world's seas for hundreds of years in search of catch.

The original colonial settlement of North America was based on the need for European fishermen to have landfalls upon which to dry and salt their cod catches taken from the Grand Banks and other fisheries back in the 1500's! Those catches fed much of Atlantic and Meditteranean Europe for hundreds of years.

And, for crying out loud. Whoever said these ocean resources "belong" to any continent? If the Africans want to obtain the catch off their shores let them stop all their damned civil wars and genocides and start maturing as nations!

Oh, and, BTW, isn't Japan one of the "worst" offenders under your argument? What with hundred mile lengths of long-lines and huge drag nets that sweep the seas of all life in their wake?

http://www.darwinsnightmare.com/darwin/html/startset.htm

Read the outline of the film before you get fired up. It's not about the fishing in the big seas or shores. And the story goes much further that.

And about the Kyoto protocol agreement, yeah, Japan is one of the worst among several other nations that didn't meet the requirement. And how stupid to name it as "Kyoto" Protocol. That's a shame.

But for the U.S., it has not been an issue because it didn't sign it.

But about the fishing territories, I'm not sure, but maybe. Japan has consumed a lot of fishes, but mostly in the last few decades or a little longer because of the "fresh-freezing" technology that came in the 60's or so. That helped the popularity of the raw fish-meat eating habit round the world. Until then, even the Japanese fishermen could travel far, they couldn't bring back the caught fishes as fresh as they wanted.

But now those jobs are being replaced by the fishermen in the other countries because they have access to better fishing areas and cost less for their labor.

And please don't even get into the hotter topic such as whale hunting because that's way too off the topic here.

nick mulder · Nov 11, 2006

firecracker said:
And please don't even get into the hotter topic such as whale hunting because that's way too off the topic here.

yep :rolleyes: - but I guess its to be expected in an 'ethics & philosophy' forum

Woolliscroft · Nov 11, 2006

If I hadn't bought so many !@*! cameras, the Japanese and Germans would be a lot poorer, that's for sure.

David.

"if all the worlds resources were shared equally..." (how many cameras would I get?)

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