The U.S. Olympic team is one of a handful that will supply air conditioners for their athletes at the Paris Games in a move that undercuts organizers’ plans to cut carbon emissions.
U.S. Olympic and Paralympic CEO Sarah Hirshland said Friday that while the U.S. team appreciates efforts aimed at sustainability, the federation would be supplying AC units for what is typically the largest contingent of athletes at the Summer Games.
“As you can imagine, this is a period of time in which consistency and predictability is critical for Team USA’s performance,” Hirshland said. “In our conversations with athletes, this was a very high priority and something that the athletes felt was a critical component in their performance capability.”
The Washington Post reported earlier this month that Germany, Australia, Italy, Canada and Britain were among the other countries with plans to bring air conditioners to France.
I have a wild idea here. What if, they didn’t build an entire Olympic sports complex with multiple stadiums and other infrastructure every 2 years around the globe? Maybe that would save a bit on carbon emissions. And hey, the billions that would have gone to building that complex? Maybe that could go toward building up renewable energy resources instead.
But no that’s crazy, it’s the portable air conditioning units for some athlete’s apartments that are the problem. /s
Though some props to Paris, it sounds like they didn’t have nearly the amount of insane new constructions that some Olympics have had. Sounds like only one major new venue with most venues being used already pre-existing.
Yeah, it should only be held in countries that have the required infrastructure in place, but the whole IOC is corrupt from top to bottom.
Absolutely, on so many levels.
And so many wasted constructions that were only used for a brief time: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/abandoned-olympic-venues-sites/
That’s true for a few cherry picked olympics, but there are many where the facilities are still used to this day. In this article it’s really only Beijing and Brazil that are fair to highlight IMO (Greece is 20 years ago and that country went through a massive economic crisis, and Sarajevo was 40 years ago and went through a civil war).
Just hold it in Greece every time. Those poor fuckers could use some foreign money coming in every few years, they might not have to work 6 days a week then.
Greece is too warm now for summer games, it’s significantly hotter than Paris right now and can hit a sustained over 40c without much problem. Paris isn’t great in the summer but it’s better than Greece. If we want one location to host the games during the summer then I pick Bergen, significantly cooler than Paris.
What if they didn’t do the “summer” games in the middle of summer?
Then the Winter games would get all huffy and not speak to them anymore, that’s probably the only reason.
Just hold it in Greece every time.
One of the hottest places in Europe, atm.
By all means, it wouldn’t hurt to build high efficiency stadiums and sports centers the one time in a big “Olympics Zone” that gets used regularly rather than building a big new thing every two years at a random spot in the world. But if you’re looking for maximal efficiency, Greece ain’t your girl. Its cooking at record-breaking 46.4°C temperatures over there, weeks before the games even start.
Might as well make Qatar the permanent venue for the World Cup.
Greece is the last place it should be held, the country is an absolute mess. It could honestly be split over Western Europe, countries like France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, UK. Places that have stadiums and such already, places that will still use any new infrastructure that is built.
Imo, we should have one, or at most, two Olympic states. They’d be small countries that are more-or-less politically neutral, and instead of sending teams, their purpose would be to host the Summer and/or Winter Olympics. Construction, maintenance and upgrades of the facilities would be paid for by participating countries, as a percentage of their GDP. That way, the hosting country(ies) wouldn’t have to spend billions building the facilities, they get guaranteed tourism every 2~4 years, the facilities get reused, non-hosting countries have a place to measure their penis size, don’t have to spend outrageous sums to build their own facilities (they’re all paying together, after all), don’t have to bulldoze houses or forests, be concerned with water quality, and probably many other bonuses I’m not thinking of.
Bonus points if the facilities are open year-round for Olympians to train at, so that the athletes are more used to the climate, equipment, tracks, trails, etc.
The biggest downside is that hosting the Olympics is prestigious itself and generates a lot of tourism revenue (which in this case, would only be going to the “static” host(s)). It’s a chance for the host country to show off their economic strength, culture (like during the opening ceremonies), and more. You’d have to convince countries that they’re better off without the tourism and chance to flaunt their wealth.
Or we could simply be logical and help fight climate change by not having the Olympics at all
I have a wild idea. What if humans prioritise making money now over their children being able to exist tomorrow?
The vasectomy gets more and more justified as the years go by.
My unborn kids won’t be exploited… will yours?
My unborn kids can probably be exploited by AI, somehow.
There was just an article posted around here about future games in Los Angeles …. Where one of the venues is in Oklahoma, unless I got seriously trolled, for exactly this: trying not to build as much new stuff.
Here in Boston when they were talking about putting in a bid, all the discussion was about upgrading athletic facilities for all the regional colleges, and getting more hotels built to handle more tourism
It was far more nuanced than that. They also wanted their own lane on 91 so they wouldn’t have to deal with Boston traffic.
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2015/06/30/boston-2024-olympic-lanes/
- “Mass media encouraging citizens and tourists to use public transportation and carpooling”
- “Flexible hours at local businesses”
- “Rerouting long-haul trucking around the city”
- “Intelligent highway systems technology”
- “Manually-controlled traffic lights”
- “New one-way streets in busy areas to create better flow”
Never been more proud to go tell the IOC to go fuck themselves with a huge cactus.
Those all sound like good things, though. There shouldn’t be an interstate right through downtown. And god knows transportation in Boston is a mess and desperately needs work.
Right, plus in the context of not building new stuff for a temporary need
- too bad they didn’t know how easy it would be for so many of us to work from home
- roping off a lane may offend our egalitarianism, but it’s a temporary change
- even if we had to build new lanes, they would sure as hell get used (especially since there’s never enough capacity on the T)
You gotta wonder WTF the French were thinking when they decided to force people into the sweltering insomnia of 80 degrees indoors at night just for the sake of creating the appearance that climate change is the fault of the dispossessed proletariat running air conditioners to survive global heating, and pretending like the owners of the means of production aren’t actually in a position to change how the economy functions.
They have done a bunch to keep athletes cool without AC.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91142188/how-the-olympic-village-was-designed-to-stay-cool-without-ac
Interesting, didn’t realize they had a geothermal loop in the concrete floors. I wonder if condensation will be an issue?
I would prefer if you used just “owners” or “owners of the majority of wealth”. Owners of production just sounds like old-school socialism propaganda and doesn’t really translate to the current world.
No, you just don’t understand that “means of production” doesn’t exclusively apply to industrial production, it talks about all capital, including financial. Lenin talks about this extensively as far back as the early 1900s, and it applies extremely well.
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A society can’t be run on smartphones, this was patently obvious during the COVID pandemic, when governments had to decide which were the “essential jobs” that society literally wouldn’t keep running without. Were these the smartphone jobs? Or was it agriculture, education, transport of goods, supermarket cashiers, infrastructure, and trash collection among many others?
I’m fully aware that SOME people can get rich using a smartphone. Hell, I’m a lucky individual who had access to high level studies, and who fortunately enjoyed STEM, and my life is pretty dope, I consider myself very successful. I’m just not stupid enough to think that’s a sustainable, or even desirable model of society, where SOME people can be “successful” (assuming that your metric of success is income) by moving around numbers in investment funds or programming databases so that banks can surveil us and squeeze a few dollars more out of our pockets.
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Lenin does sound awfully like socialism propaganda. Or more in essence, the desire for egalitarian utopia written by pseudo-philosophers (neither economists, nor engineers, nor mathematicians, nor any based-in-logic scientific field) without having any such social system in place and only dreaming. USSR did not go well, in any way, as an aside.
I can understand the desire for a push for more socialistic government reforms, but what needs to just happen is European semi-capitalism semi-socialism to just be more controlled, especially with regards to tax avoidance, and anti-monopolisation, and then to government mandated climate-change-fighting policies such as heavy (and unavoidable) taxing on pollution.
Looking back into old books and spouting the same-old propagandist battlecries does not do much to the conversation, and actually tries to derail it, instead of simply pointing “yeah that’s bad, maybe they should have done this, I did the math [or maybe this other person <link> did the math]”.
the desire for egalitarian utopia
Again, you’re not bringing any remotely new pseudocriticism to the table. Friedrich Engels outlines this in his essay “Socialism: utopian and scientific” from 1880, in which he explains the difference between utopian socialism, and scientific socialism. Your criticism is outdated by 144 years.
pseudo-philosophers (neither economists…
Again, showing us how you haven’t read a single essay or book on Marxism, and all you’re doing is regurgitating anti-communist propaganda. If you think Marxist writers aren’t well-versed in economics, you’re absolutely delirious. Marx is best known for his “Capital”, a 3-volume treaty on economics which is still used to this day in economics faculties. There ARE things wrong within the book such as the understanding of money which Modern Monetary Theory has extensively criticised and improved upon (if you’re interested in the field of economics), but it’s a key work in explaining many of the functionings of economics, being the first work (to my knowledge) to properly describe the process of revalorization of capital and doing a great job at analyzing economics under the light of the industrial revolution. I’m currently reading Lenin’s “Imperialism: the higher stage of capitalism”, and like half the book are references to economists or geographers, most of them non-marxists, showing economic trends in the concentration of capital, in the specifics of the distribution of colonial land among some industrial powers of the world… Even if you’re not a Marxist I suggest you have a look at it, it may change your mind about which degree of science Marxists are using in their analysis, and it’s quite short.
USSR did not go well, in any way, as an aside.
The Russian Empire in 1917 was a backwards, feudal, unindustrialized state incapable of winning a war against a recently industrializing Japan and requiring massive French loans to even attempt to fight it, where the vast majority of the population were quite literally serfs working the land for an aristocracy. If you’re interested in Russian history up until the 1917 revolutions I recommend “The Empire Must Die” by Zygar, a non-marxist writer (in fact very critical of bolshevism) in which he examined an immense amount of documents starting from 1900 and describes the period that led to these revolutions in extremely good detail.
The USSR managed to come out victorious of a 4-year-long civil war in 1921 against the Tsarist loyalists which were aided economically and militarily to the point of Russia being invaded on their behalf by 14 countries including European powers such as England, France, and Italy. By the early 1940s, only 20 years after beginning to industrialize, the Soviets were capable of defeating the industrial powerhouse of Nazi Germany (a country that had begun industrializing around 150 years prior to that). By the 1970s, the USSR had gone from being the feudal state I describe, to being the second power in the world. This is not a defense of everything the USSR did as there was massive oppression during Stalinism, but saying that “the USSR did not go well in any way” is again delirious.
what needs to just happen is European semi-capitalism semi-socialism to just be more controlled, especially with regards to tax avoidance, and anti-monopolisation, and then to government mandated climate-change-fighting policies such as heavy (and unavoidable) taxing on pollution.
I disagree. Capitalism inevitably leads to the concentration of capital and the establishing of monopolies. It’s literally the tendency of markets, since it’s a “winner-takes-it-all” system, in which once a big share of the market is consolidated by the “most competitive” company, economy of scale makes it quite literally impossible for other companies to outcompete it in a free market. The best alternative to a free market isn’t a “regulated free market”, it’s a democratically planned economy which actually goes where the population wants it to, and not where the invisible hand guides it.
“Regulating” companies into stopping their polluting and monopolistic behaviour usually amounts to allowing the companies of other countries to outcompete them (as you can see with the current cries of the EU and the USA against Chinese electric vehicles or solar panels), and that is if the capital-controlled media and elected officials even dare to attempt this in the first place. For a very recent historical example on how capital won’t allow a progressive government, you can read the case of the Spanish political party “Podemos” (I’m bringing it up because I’m well-versed in everything that happened because i happen to be Spanish). Wanting to apply this exact type of regulation to improve workers’ rights and social rights and legislating progressively towards a clean economy, there was a collaboration between private media and the state apparatus, in which a false report of corrupted money from Venezuela to Podemos and its leader Pablo Iglesias was fabricated by a rogue corps inside the National Police, and was leaked to private media. All of this is already confirmed to be true by judges, and again, you can look all of this up. The result was a multi-year campaign of smearing in private media which led to the practically total disappearance of the party, in one of the most flagrant cases of lawfare in a European country in the recent times.
Another Spanish example of capitalism refusing to be regulated is the Second Spanish Republic, in which a democratically elected leftist government in the 30s wanted to regulate for a redistribution of land to peasants to improve on the massive inequality at the time, together with labour protections and workers rights. The result was a fascist coup that sunk the country in a half-decade of civil war, and ultimately placed Francisco Franco as the fascist dictator of the country for the following 35-ish years until his death in the 70s.
The anti-scientific and ahistorical thing isn’t saying that communism can be obtained, but to say that regulations aren’t only possible, but even better. You’re just showing us that you don’t understand the history of class struggle and workers rights movements, which achieved the concessions they achieved in the western world not by electing progressive reformist representatives, but by organizing labor and striking and disrupting until their demands were met.
Again, you’re not bringing any remotely new pseudocriticism to the table. <…> I agree that I am not read up on this topic. My knowledge of Lenin is definitely less than limited. If I read his works I could talk about more in depth about his persona.
From my coarse perspective, given your input, what Engels wrote (which would be even more dated) maybe takes in more perspectives. But then, we weren’t entirely talking about Engels before. Scope broadens.
My very first comment was about your (not entirely hidden) socialistic propaganda style of writing. The points you tried to make in your very first post would likely be valid, but instead they were railing the discussion in a direction of socialistic revolution, because of ACs.
Again, showing us how you haven’t read a single essay or book on Marxism <…> Even if I haven’t read a book, discussing the topic should be viable, otherwise how would those books have been written by esteemed law-practicing philosophers? And in general, the ideas of socialism and capitalism are tremendously interspersed in all literature we read, one can’t live without being subjected to them.
In no way was my response anti-communism propaganda. I just disliked the phrasing which clearly shows your desire to drop the old-school battlecries without a directed objective. (Unless you desire to just include all objectives without second guess, from books, but then be sure to include all).
The general problem I have (which is empirical and not substantiated here) is that Lenin himself, while likely incredibly intelligent, was not, by trade and thus biggest chunk of his time, a mathematician, or an economist, so while he can read the papers, having a fully informed opinion on the matter is a dubious idea.
Reasons why I am so jaded and critical is that many fields these days (especially lacking rigorous peer review) fall victim to innability to discern fact from fiction. Specifically for philosophy, feels like the field has diverged from mathematics and physics in an ununderstandable way, where philosophy tries to be a voice of reason in humanity’s subjective reality of society while ignoring mathematics and pure formal logic. To me this is insane. Especially for a field that was once exactly that: mathematics, physics and trying to understand the natural world. In general, the field has been critiqued for empirically arguing that its education is actually formative for logical thinking 1 2.
The reasons I am jaded at dated books, is because the way of thinking can be so different, even in physics, many papers from early 20th century have god in the picture or see the human as some kind of special consciousness in the picture of the universe.
The Russian Empire in 1917 was a backwards, feudal <…>
The first paragraph I completely agree.
Nazi Germany was indeed defeated by allied forces. And Russia definitely played a large part in it. However, the way it did, was not due to industrialization. It was due to an insane amount of conscription that is well-known as a meat-grinder. 9 million military dead (versus 4.3 million military from Nazis. Note: Nazis weren’t only fighting USSR.) was not a mark of an industrialized nation cranking out well-prepared, well-rationed, well-equipped soldiers, it was a feudal state throwing meat at the problem (or rather opportunity). Among other atrocities such as forced famine Holodomor.
The time of the cold war, Russia was barely scraping by to keep the narrative of “Great superpower” alive, it was only until Chernobyl, Gorbachev that USSR finally imploded and all was slowly unraveled. If 1970s USSR was this great superpower, then somehow 10 years later it fell to stagnation and then collapse? What? With people coming out from the iron curtain amazed at how simple people in foreign countries had lived, the variety of food, the quality of engineering, of clothes they had.
All the while illegal speculators were a huge problem, and simple food items were “always out of stock” throughout the whole USSR’s life. You just had to know the right people and pay the right money to live normally. That is, after you waited for 3 hours to get bread.
Personally, USSR achieved limited industrialization, while funneling unfathomable amounts of money into shiny things such as space exploration, while people had a hard time getting bread. To me, this is still close to feudalism.
I disagree. Capitalism inevitably leads to the concentration of capital and the establishing of monopolies
Europe has achieved the highest quality of life in the world not by a planned economy, but by mediating the inherent problems of capitalism (monopolism, elitism, class warfare) and complete socialism (government overreach, lack of freedom, lack of democracy). This is what I said is most prudent to continue, but it requires maintenance from strong-willed people.
“Regulating” companies into stopping their polluting and monopolistic behaviour usually amounts to allowing the companies of other countries to outcompete them
That is indeed a central problem, slightly reduced by import taxes. Obviously a full solution should include some international cooperation, and if it isn’t possible (and seems it isn’t) sanctions and heavier import taxes should follow. Or some taxes on import that take into account pollution at the importing source.
I don’t see how your example of corruption is novel. Corruption is indeed something that must be fought, and it wouldn’t disappear in a socialist society, as it didn’t USSR (where you could get anything for favors if you knew the right people).
The 20th century period across Europe was indeed a rough one, many countries went fascist (Spain, Portugal, Russia, briefly: Austria, Greece, Germany, Italy). Still, I don’t think it’s a novel example. And it’s also not an example against the current state of Europe, it’s an example of the inequality and volatility of European countries at the time.
The anti-scientific and ahistorical thing <…> One thing is to talk about history and how we got here, and to talk about what we have now and what do we do. These are separate.
The idea behind representative democracy is that I cannot do the work of a law-maker, deal with tax policy details while also living a life, so I elect someone whom I think I can trust.
If I have no trust in the system, I will go to the streets, as it was always the case. And yes, in this sense, we hold a lot of thankfulness for those that went to the streets before us to bring us to where we are now.
your (not entirely hidden) socialistic propaganda style of writing
I’m not trying to hide anything here. My username is a reference to Lenin, whom I referenced in the comment, doesn’t get much more explicit than that :)
your desire to drop the old-school battlecries without a directed objective
Firstly, I’m not the one who brought up the dispossessed masses, that was another commenter. Secondly, it’s not without a directed objective. The argument is clear: “the fault of climate change is not of the individuals who use AC, but of the system as a whole, and since the system is controlled by the ruling class, the ruling class is to blame”. It explicits this victim-blaming mindset where the general populace is blamed for climate change and pollution, when they’re not the ones choosing in which system they live. And I say this as someone who doens’t own a car out of principle, so criticism to the system is compatible with individual action and compatible with understanding that the blame is not of the individual workers.
The general problem I have (which is empirical and not substantiated here) is that Lenin himself, while likely incredibly intelligent, was not, by trade and thus biggest chunk of his time, a mathematician, or an economist, so while he can read the papers, having a fully informed opinion on the matter is a dubious idea.
I don’t accept this criticism. First of all he was a lawyer, so he definitely had education in economics. Secondly, I don’t believe that formal education in an institution is the only possible way to attain knowledge in a field. I say this as someone doing a PhD in a STEM field, knowing many people around me who have formally attained the same education level as I have and know jackshit, and others who with the same formal degrees as I do, are insanely more knowledgeable. Hell, Marx himself, who wrote one of the most influential and important works on economics of history, formally studied law and philosophy, not economics. How is this not proof enough?
Reasons why I am so jaded and critical is that many fields these days (especially lacking rigorous peer review) fall victim to innability to discern fact from fiction. Specifically for philosophy, feels like the field has diverged from mathematics and physics in an ununderstandable way, where philosophy tries to be a voice of reason in humanity’s subjective reality of society while ignoring mathematics and pure formal logic. To me this is insane. Especially for a field that was once exactly that: mathematics, physics and trying to understand the natural world. In general, the field has been critiqued for empirically arguing that its education is actually formative for logical thinking
All of this criticism of philosophy is valid, but again, socialism and Marxism aren’t philosophical ideas. They’re philosophical when it comes to the morality, sure, in the sense that I do believe that they’re morally superior to other systems, and that much is subjective. But the historical, economical, and political study of socialism and Marxism can be scientific. That doesn’t mean that every single book or article or essay on socialism is scientific, but that it can be approached as a science. Economic planning, the analysis of media, the economic analysis of capitalism and imperialism, all of those are very scientific, and the fact that you haven’t encountered scientific literature on them has more to do with your surrounding conditions or ideas than with the nature of the study debate of socialism. Especially nowadays, when there have been socialist attempts such as China, Vietnam, the USSR and the whole soviet block, Cuba… It’s very possible to do material, economical, historical and political analysis of socialism, and it’s routinely done, both from a subjective point of view and a scientific one.
The reasons I am jaded at dated books, is because the way of thinking can be so different, even in physics, many papers from early 20th century have god in the picture or see the human as some kind of special consciousness in the picture of the universe.
Being critical is good. Criticising them without making an attempt to read them based on preconceived notions isn’t. You talk about the scientific method which is great for me, since I work in that field. To me, the most important part of the scientific method are predictive capabilities. Without proving predictive capabilities, there can be no science. And when you read Lenin’s work “Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism”, and it can successfully make predictions about the economy that are valid more than 100 years ago, such as the tendency towards monopoly of capitalism (as we can see with Nestlè, Amazon or Google), or later stages of capitalism shifting from the export of manufactured goods to other countries to the export of capital to other countries (look at how much capital entered China since the 80s from capitalist countries), I’m as amazed as I am when Einstein’s theory of general relativity is yet again confirmed 100 years after its writing when SUPERLIGO is capable of detecting the gravitational waves of a collision of black holes. Especially because he was running against many economists of back in the day who were already claiming that the best way to solve monopoly was through progressive regulations… and look where that’s led us.
Regarding your discussion of how the USSR managed to defeat nazism, yes, lots of people died, but what can be expected? The USSR had 20 years to industrialize against the 150 years of Germany, of course their army wasn’t as capable or developed as the German one. This whole “meat grinder” vision of USSR in WW2 stems from Nazi propaganda, in which the Nazis were justifying losing against the “Slavic Untermenschen” because of the infinite “hordes of Asians” that they were throwing at them, and talking of the brave fight of the Soviets against Nazism as a “meat grinder” is very insulting towards the population of those countries. Belarus lost 25% of its population during WW2, and reducing their contribution to the war to “a meat grinder” is horrendous IMO.
it was a feudal state throwing meat at the problem (or rather opportunity). Among other atrocities such as forced famine Holodomor.
You don’t understand what “feudal” means. Feudal isn’t a synonym of agricultural or poor, feudal refers to a particular system of social relations, where serfs are bound to work the land of their lords without a wage on exchange, but instead receiving military protection on exchange for a compulsory requisition of the goods produced by the land, paid in kind. Again, when you use those terms in this fashion, you’re proving that you haven’t studied the true meaning of what you’re talking about.
Regarding Holodomor, it happened during the collectivization of agriculture, and it happened because of a combination of bad planning in collectivization (doing it too fast), unfair and poorly-planned requisitions of grain in certain regions such as Ukraine or Central Asia in general (which people often forget about because then they can’t make baseless claims of genocide against Ukrainians), sabotage by Kulaks, and bad crops. But this is the first and last famine that the USSR saw, and it happened prior to the industrialization of the country. Almost as if famines are commonplace in preindustrial societies, huh? Almost as if Russia was a region which has suffered historically about 5 famines per century. That’s not to say it wasn’t intensified by poor planning by the government, but again, first and last famine in the USSR. And it’s not like capitalism doesn’t create famines. Just some years later, during WW2, the British provoked a famine in India (Benghal Famine if you’re interested) which killed 3+mn people, and that one was actually done with explicitly racist undertones, with Churchill famously justifying the famine by telling Indians that “they reproduced like rabbits”.
that USSR finally imploded
If 1970s USSR was this great superpower, then somehow 10 years later it fell to stagnation and then collapse?
Because, again, you’re not being faithful to reality. The USSR never impoded, and it never collapsed. The USSR did suffer a period of stagnation, but how exactly does stagnation lead to collapse? Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. The USSR was dissolved illegally and antidemocratically against a referendum carried out in 1991, from the top down, by the Gorbachev administration. This is indeed a consequence of one of the biggest problems of the USSR: the immense concentration of power at the top spheres of government. But you can’t accuse the USSR of collapsing. In fact your reasoning is backwards. If the USSR survived to a civil war in which 14 foreign countries invaded it, if it survived to a WW2 where 25+ million inhabitants perished, and if it survived to the Cuban Missiles crisis, how on Earth is it supposed to crumble under stagnation? As I said I’m Spanish, Spain hasn’t grown AT ALL in per-capita terms since 2007, so it’s been stagnant for almost two decades at this point. Would you say it’s a failed state and that it’s collapsed and the government should be dismantled, or is economical stagnation really not that big a thing? The USSR was burdened with problems with economic planning (very hard to do properly before modern computers, if you’re interested in this I suggest that you read “People’s Republic of Walmart”, a book that outlines arguments for economic planning and criticises planning within the USSR as antidemocratic and inefficient), with overspending in military (triggered and forced by the USA despite the constant attempts of the USSR to try and reduce tensions and reach deals about disarmament and deescalation), and several other problems. But the moment it all started going down (and not just stagnating) is after the mid-80s, when Perestroika was applied and huge swaths of the economy were suddenly liberalized and subjected to markets.[1/2]
[2/2] What really made the former USSR actually collapse, was the neoliberal shock therapy applied after its illegal dissolution, supervised and directed by “prestigious experts” from MIT and by the IMF. There, the GDP fell as dramatically as it does in war times, and the situation was so dire that the population loss due to alcoholism, suicide, lowering standards of life and healthcare, missing births, depression, unemployment, etc. are numbered in millions of lives lost, and many millions more ruined. That’s the moment when good’ol capitalism auctioned the entire country to a few corrupt oligarchs because the priority was to privatize everything as quickly as possible, and which led to the modern fascist oligarchic kleptocratic government in Russia. But these millions of lives lost and ruined by capitalism don’t count, do they? These were somehow a necessity, unlike Holodomor, a famine in a preindustrial society.
Europe has achieved the highest quality of life in the world not by a planned economy, but by mediating the inherent problems of capitalism (monopolism, elitism, class warfare) and complete socialism (government overreach, lack of freedom, lack of democracy).
Europe has achieved the highest quality of life through a combination of imperialism and resource, wealth and labour extraction from underdeveloped countries (look up the concept of unequal exchange if you’re interested), and last century’s worker movements which achieved significant improvements in the quality of life of people, and obviously due to technical and scientific progress. But these worker victories were achieved DESPITE capitalism, not because of it.
And the technical and scientific improvements that happen under capitalism, funnily enough, are funded mostly by public research, in which universities and pulic institutions will do the brunt of the research, and then a few companies will cherrypick whatever they deem profitable, study a bit further, patent it, and then sell it to the rest of the world at exorbitant prices, as we see blatantly and glaringly with medicine and pharma. I’ll remind you which country in the world was the first to double-vaccinate 95%+ of its population against COVID: Cuba. With state-funded research, and state-funded vaccine production, with the goal of vaccinating as many as possible as soon as possible, instead of the objective of maximizing profit. Or just look on how much governmetns spent funding big pharma to develop the vaccines. This progress isn’t BECAUSE of the private sector and capitalism, it’s DESPITE it.
hould include some international cooperation, and if it isn’t possible (and seems it isn’t)
This was already obvious to Lenin in his 1917 work “Imperialism: the highest stage of Capitalism”, where he extensively criticises the idea of “ultraimperialism” or long-term collaboration between different capitalist world powers as impossible (again a successful prediction more than 100 years ago, how lucky is that?).
Corruption is indeed something that must be fought, and it wouldn’t disappear in a socialist society, as it didn’t USSR (where you could get anything for favors if you knew the right people).
Obviously corruption happens everywhere, but it’s a very different problem systemically when the means of production are owned collectively. Because, suddenly there are no private companies with the private interest of maximizing profit at all costs. So you don’t have the car factory paying the goverment official to be able to dump waste in the river, or the construction firm paying the local town hall to requalify their lands and allow for a construction plan. Embezzling and favors still exist within socialism, but without a profit motive, many other types of corruptions disappear. If there’s no wealthy ruling class whose existence and profit depends on the exploitation of the working class, suddenly there’s no wealthy powerful people doing everything legally and illegally possible to maximize their profits.
The 20th century period across Europe was indeed a rough one, many countries went fascist (Spain, Portugal, Russia
Russia went fascist? Excuse me? The USSR is the ONLY country in Europe which supported the Republicans in Spain in their fight against ACTUAL fascism, while Britain and France looked at the Nazis and the Italian Fascists supplying weapons to the reactionaries and literally bombing republican Spain, and claimed “best we can do is non-intervention and a volunteer corps” (brigadas internacionales, my utmost respect to all who participated in them)
Still, I don’t think it’s a novel example. And it’s also not an example against the current state of Europe, it’s an example of the inequality and volatility of European countries at the time.
Again, you’re failing to have a proper understanding of the reasons for fascism to exist. Fascism is a reactionary movement which takes place when the wealthy elites of a country see themselves threatened by the mobilization of the working class. It happened like this in Spain, it happened like this in Germany, it happened like this in Italy, and it attempted to happen in Russia as well (look up what the Black Hundreds were, and how Bolsheviks eliminated them). One of the most explicit purposes of fascism is to eliminate socialism and anarchism from society, for the most part through violent means. Fascism isn’t a consequence of “instability”, it’s a response to socialist movements and worker coordination.
The idea behind representative democracy is that I cannot do the work of a law-maker, deal with tax policy details while also living a life, so I elect someone whom I think I can trust.
Elected representatives aren’t a bad idea in itself, they’re just proven not to be democratic in western capitalist systems, in the sense that they don’t make decisions that represent the majority, but instead make decisions which represent a wealthy minority. Again, how many people in the EU wanted to apply austerity policy after the 2008 crisis, whose consequences we suffer to this very day? If you want an example of what real democracy looks like to me, I recommend you have a look at Pedro Ross’ book “How the workers parliaments saved the Cuban Revolution”, which details how after the dismantling of the USSR, Cuba was immersed in a deep economic crisis after losing its main trade partner, and how democratic participation by millions of people in the island was capable of saving people from the worst of the crisis.
If I have no trust in the system, I will go to the streets, as it was always the case. And yes, in this sense, we hold a lot of thankfulness for those that went to the streets before us to bring us to where we are now.
You hold them in high esteem, but then proceed to basically insult their legacy when you say that living conditions in western Europe are due to capitalism, instead of honoring the worker movements of the past century.
He just explained how it did!
They have simulated conditions in the parts of the accommodation most exposed to the sun and have tested the effectiveness of the cooling system with an objective to keep the indoor temperature between 23 and 26 degrees Celsius (73 and 79 degrees Fahrenheit).
Then it continues with:
The geothermal energy system will ensure that the temperature in the athlete apartments in the Seine-Saint-Denis suburb does not rise above 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit) at night…
They also go on to say that the apartments will be around 11°F cooler than outside temps, which are expected to be over 100°F.
—
Let’s just stop for a second and let that sink in. First of all, who keeps their houses up to 79°F at night? Is that a thing in Paris/Europe? Do they have ceiling fans or standing fans to keep the air moving?
That aside, these are athletes who spend their daytime hours sweating their asses off, performing feats us mere mortals couldn’t dream of achieving. And, yet they are expected to “adapt” to have to suffer at night too? Fuck that noise.
I’m all for reducing our carbon footprint, and finding more natural ways to keep cool in the hot summer months. But we also have to be practical and reasonable. I don’t blame those countries for giving France the middle finger and bringing their own ACs.
First of all, who keeps their houses up to 79°F at night?
I do. When I am in Florida, I set my AC to 78 at night but room temperature can go to 80 before the AC kicks in. The key is having a nice ceiling fan. Normally the discomfort comes from hot and humid air hovering around your body (you do make heat). Having a constant breeze on your skin keeps you comfortable.
That said, I am not an athlete trying to achieve my personal best while the entire world is watching. I think it is reprehensible to not provide athletes with a climate controlled environment in which to rest.
OHMYGOSH! I am so glad to meet you! I lived in the South for about a decade and I met so many people who were so opposite of me (having grown up in New England) and I miss them now that I’ve moved away. I will text them. Thanks for the reminder.
In the summer, what temp do Europeans keep their homes? When I’ve been in Europe (northern US too) it’s always so hot indoors, summer and winter. I thought it was a low energy use thing until i encountered the crazy indoor heat in the winter.
We go outside because it is too hot to stay inside.
Outside costs money
24 °C is at the upper end of the comfort zone. 26 is a bit warm but nothing to cry about. I hate it when people crank up the ac to 13 °C. How’s that comfortable?
I keep mine at 21°C.
The world will continue to get hotter year by year until climate change is solved. I’d fully expect to see more AC use, not less. This won’t be limited just to athletes, but it will be limited by affordability.
Humans ceasing to emit carbon dioxide is inevitable. I reckon this will happen some time before the average global temperature reaches 100 degrees C.
“Humans ceasing to breathe is inevitable”
Big cities already periodically provide “Cooling Centers” to support the large population of working poor who can’t afford the sky high energy bills. I have no idea what rural communities do during a heat-wave induced brown out. Everyone gets in the lake that’s full of industrial agricultural run off? They retreat into the mines, like a bunch of Morlocks? Y’all just fucking die?
But this is entirely unsustainable long term. Either we find a way to keep our large populations cool during the killer hot months or we stop having large populations all together.
We just retreat into the shade of the cornfields and drink sweet tea
The athletes who get aircon will also be determined by who comes from a wealthy country. Makes a mockery of the games imo, should disqualify them all for having an unfair advantage.
Economic imbalance is baked into the games.
A runner that trains in a state of the art facility with a nutritionist and physiotherapist on call 24/7 will inherently have an advantage over a runner from a poor country that trains in their spare time at the local high school track. Acting like air conditioning is a step too far is silly.
Economic imbalance is baked into the games.
Taking your own air conditioner and rubbing it in the face of those who can’t afford it, in the olympic village where you’re all supposed to be treated the same, is such a glaring display of economic privilege that i find it bothersome.
I’m always embarrassed by Australia spending a fortune on sport and then congratulating ourselves for winning more medals, especially at the commonwealth games where most of the countries are poor.
Yours is an interesting viewpoint. Should athletic competitions also include heat tolerance?
By France not supplying AC to all the teams, it makes it so the competition does include heat tolerance, but only for nations that can’t afford to bring their own cool air.
You can’t remove individual differences but there ought to be a level playing field at least at the actual competition. Is it acceptable to provide better accommodation to rich countries? White countries? I think at the games everyone should be treated equally.
Climate change will never be solved. It wont even be mitigated.
It will just continue to get worse until it stops being a curiosity the rich invest into solutions (which will never be practical for scale) for positive coverage, and shift their money into their survival plans… Bunkers, Sea Living (under sea or on ships), or space ships to get to lunar colonies or mars.
A small, lucky few of the proletariate might even get selected to be “Saved” along side them, because afterall… the Rich need their menial labor.
And everyone else will suffer and die.
The geothermal energy system will ensure that the temperature in the athlete apartments in the Seine-Saint-Denis suburb does not rise above 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit) at night
Sorry, but fuck that. Hopefully the system will help the ACs that everyone will need to bring to use less power though.
Ok, maybe I’m just spoiled somehow, but that’s REALLY high for sleeping. If it’s over about 72 I just straight-up cannot sleep. I can flex that a little with good airflow and low humidity (windows open).
I can’t possible imagine having to sleep in that temp after a full day of strenuous physical activity. I guess if you were somehow used to it but that seems crazy.
Furthermore, does this cooling strategy (minus the AC units shipped in) even come close to offsetting the burned fossil fuels to actually move all these athletes to another country and set up the games? Asking cause that seems kinda relevant…
I can barely sleep at 70 degrees. Anything more and I just wake up covered in sweat and dying. 79? I’d probably just die.
I set my ac to 74 over night. Sometimes even 75. Depending on humidity levels and outdoor air temp, I might drop the indoor temp to 74 and then once that indoor air temp is hit, just turn off the ac and open the windows. Place stays cool over night.
But 79? Yeah… No.
Yea, I live in bog swamp-ass Houston. It’s currently 83 degrees out at 10 pm. No way in hell I’d open a window to sleep. And if I did I would probably get west nile or some shit.
So instead of Spiderman you’d become Mosquito-man?
Pls no radioactive mosquitoes. Pls no radioactive mosquitoes!
Seriously though don’t you guys have screens on your windows to keep the bugs out?
That’s a standard feature here in Minnesota.
How could you be spoiled when you only sleep in a refrigerator??
If they gave a fuck about sustainability they wouldn’t be hosting the Olympics in Paris in the middle of summer.
How many carbon emissions will the chartered plans release when they transport all of the athletes and their gear to France?
Why aren’t Olympic games distributed between, let’s say, 8-10 countries? Maybe make them continent games. Distribute the cost and benefits, and maybe make then bi-annual, fairer to athletes by enlarging the window of opportunity.
Because the bidding/bribing process is where a lot of grifters get rich. The construction contracts are where the others get rich. With your simpler less wasteful system all those worthless people might have to work for a living.
Olympic organizers have touted plans to cool rooms in the Athletes Village, which will house more than 15,000 Olympians and sports officials over the course of the games, using a system of cooling pipes underneath the floors.
The average high in Paris on Aug. 1 is 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit). The objective is to keep the rooms between 23-26 degrees (73-79 degrees Fahrenheit). The rooms will also be equipped with fans.
That could be a tad warm depending on sun exposure.
I wonder how the electrical grid in the Olympic Village will fare when it will be overloaded with probably thousands of unexpected ACs.
And I also wonder what the organizers had in mind when they designed this “low carbon” thing. I assume the houses will be used for other means after this summer - did they expect those people to live without AC, too?
Yes, that has been the norm in Europe. Most people here do not have AC.
I know. I live in Europe. But I think this should be at least considered when building new housing.
Why? Just burn a few tires if you hate the environment that much.
Because people die from the heat.
We did the damage 20 years ago.
https://earth.org/data_visualization/the-time-lag-of-climate-change/
Not sure why I am being downvoted other than useless chuds don’t like the message.
Burning tires now just says you hate kids.
If they were especially designed without an AC, there might be no need for it.
Plenty houses in Central Europe don’t have AC and they’re fine.
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When they say “bring” they mean buying it in France right? Cuz the mains are different.
Maybe they’re also bringing a converter.
Probably not. The US electric grid is 60hz and France is 50hz. An inverter large enough to rectify the AC electric into DC then invert back into 60hz AC would be absolutely massive. It would also be severely inefficient. I’m not sure what system them will be bringing but I’d guess it’s something like what the US military uses overseas.
As well they should.
Why not Air Source AC? They are right now the most efficient climate control systems, to the point that many countries give tax credits for installation or replacement of older systems. Geothermal is probably better, but Air Source can be installed anywhere.
I can now get AS splits for less that 400 (500-600 installed)€ in Spain, where AC is common. I fail to understand why Paris didn’t go that route.
When planning and building, Air source + solar is essentially free (cost and carbon) climate control.
Air source heat pumps are just air conditioners that can move the heat in two directions because they have an extra valve installed. They’re no more special then air conditioners that only work one way. It’s the same science.
Yeah, no. That’an inverter, which they ALSO are. please read a bit. Inverters have been arund for a long time.
I can now get AS splits for less that 400 (500-600 installed)€ in Spain, where AC is common.
In Netherlands there’s a crazy markup on that. You need a local installer. Local installers get huge kickbacks from Dutch sellers. As a result pretty much all installers refuse to install anything bought yourself. Meaning, it costs thousands per AC instead of what it should be.
Maybe shutdown just 1 shitty AI company and we can all run AC for a decade.
