Anyway, just read this on Ran, and wanted to post it here for posterity:

A second complication is that Shooter, like all Hollywood action films since Star Wars, follows the myth of redemption through violence. Redemption through violence is a fascist myth. Even when Joss Whedon uses it, even in The Matrix and Fight Club, it feeds domination because it makes us feel good about exercising power-over, and falsely tells us that killing the bad guys is a good way to fight evil. The tactics that really work for fighting evil do not make fun movies.

Yes, I meant just this particular thread.

I very much doubt that 9/11 (for example) would’ve resonated as strongly in any other county (other than the United States, that is,) in the world. Same with dams.

It’s certainly not just the United States; the 7 July 2005 bus bombings in London had an enormous effect on England, and the Japanese subway sarin incident has been compared in its social effect to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You may be right about the Second and Third Worlds, but it’s definitely bigger than just the U.S.—such a reaction would be common to the entire First World.

Of course, the failed states index probably provides the best proxy map of global collapse:

It’s the First World that’s propping up the Second and Third. Blowing up infrastructure there provides an opportunity for a new World Bank or IMF loan. Blowing up infrastructure in the First World mobilizes civilization against you. If any opportuities for an effective attack on physical infrastructure exist, they are few and far between, on very specific targets in very specific circumstances.

While I would certainly not deny that pre-industrial agriculture caused some pretty appalling damage, I don’t see how one could seriously defend the claim that the industry is no worse. The kind of damage might not be all that different, but the scale (especially if you take into account how brief the industrial blip has been) has gone off the charts.

I’m not so sure. It’s a common claim, but it usually neglects the scale of agricultural damage before that. Really—look at pictures of Iraq’s landscape. That used to be a forest.

I think it’s time for me to withdraw from this discussion. I think I’ve both contributed as much to it and gotten as much out of it as is reasonable to expect. So, barring unexpectedly interesting responses from others (Jason included, of course), I won’t be posting here anymore.

I hope you only mean the thread, because I very much value your contributions to the site in general. This has been a very good discussion on a very important topic, but of course, I don’t think either one of us will really be changing the other’s viewpoint any time soon, so it may well be time to move on to greener pastures, if you will.

As for pre-industrial agriculture vs. our current industrial system… While I would certainly not deny that pre-industrial agriculture caused some pretty appalling damage, I don’t see how one could seriously defend the claim that the industry is no worse. The kind of damage might not be all that different, but the scale (especially if you take into account how brief the industrial blip has been) has gone off the charts.

But anyway. I think it’s time for me to withdraw from this discussion. I think I’ve both contributed as much to it and gotten as much out of it as is reasonable to expect. So, barring unexpectedly interesting responses from others (Jason included, of course), I won’t be posting here anymore.

In some places you’ll end up with more infrastructure, in some places you’ll end up with less to the wrath of the locals, and in some places you’ll end up with less to the satisfaction of the locals.

I’m sure this is true, but while I can think of many examples where you’ll end up with more, I’m hard-pressed to think of situations where you’ll have less, so I think if there are such opportunities, they’re exceedingly rare, and will almost exclusively be smaller targets that no one cares about, so they’d really be a lot closer to vandalism.

Still, concerning the World Bank and Africa… I think that the World Bank would look at P1 and C only; as far as the World Bank and similar institutions are concerned, I very much doubt that M would count for much.

That’s true, but the infrastructure being built is of very little interest to the World Bank or the IMF. They’ll build dams over dry riverbeds and all manner of other, spectacularly useless infrastructure—whatever it takes to get Third World governments to take their loans and sink them in debt. So if an actually useful piece of infrastructure is destroyed, that’s a great opportunity to coerce a government into taking on another massive loan to rebuild it twice as big.

Industrial waste. Plastics. Toxic chemicals. Radiation (nuclear waste plus nuclear weapons of the depleted uranium sort). Oil spills. Global warming. Etc. etc.

Oh, they were up to global warming, too (see Ruddiman). Their mining operations and tanneries produced a good bit of toxins even before any of our radioactive waste or oil spills. They did pretty well on that number al the same. Most of the Allegheny Forest was wiped out with such technologies.

Oh, and, although Monsanto has not yet turned the Great Plains into Sahara, if you give it a few more centuries… Nah. It wouldn’t need a few more centuries. A few more decades should do the trick.

Most likely. We are grading the arch-demons here, so I’m hardly suggesting that Monsanto is benevolent, or even that things have gotten much better, only that pre-industrial agriculture was hardly benign.

Still, concerning the World Bank and Africa… I think that the World Bank would look at P1 and C only; as far as the World Bank and similar institutions are concerned, I very much doubt that M would count for much. And I don’t think that, in Africa, you’d wind up with P1 > C.

[quote]Actually, they did about as bad as we did, they just did it on a more localized scale. The Romans absolutely denuded the Mediterranean, and as bad as Monsanto is, it has not yet turned the Great Plains into the Sahara, as the first farmers did. So I can’t say I entirely agree with the assessment that industrial infrastructure makes that much of a difference. [/quote]

Industrial waste. Plastics. Toxic chemicals. Radiation (nuclear waste plus nuclear weapons of the depleted uranium sort). Oil spills. Global warming. Etc. etc.

First of all, Jason, you said earlier that my Eastern Europe scenario looked plausible. Have you since changed your mind?

I can’t really speak to the situation in Eastern Europe; I’m not too familiar with it. If your analysis is accurate, there might be a possibility there. But I think you’ve consistently underestimated the level of investment, so I’m not sure how accurate your analysis is for other areas that I’m not familiar with.

Does it get rebuild? In Africa? Almost certainly not. Much of Asia (think Bangladesh)? Same answer. Latin America? I guess it depends

Really? That’s how the World Bank makes its money, after all.

Second, while it is, without a shadow of a doubt, far better to blow up infrastructure with the consent of the locals than without it, the question is, what do you do when support isn’t there and it doesn’t look like it’ll be there any time soon?

You take an honest assessment of the damage it’s causing, and weigh it against the damage you’ll cause by blowing it up.

Also, as for your P1+M > C analysis, well sure, but M can only do so much.

M can be more than P₁, particularly in the contemporary First World.

The Egyptians and the Romans made a mess of their local habitat, but not to the extent that we have, and this is due to the fact that they lacked industrial infrastructure.

Actually, they did about as bad as we did, they just did it on a more localized scale. The Romans absolutely denuded the Mediterranean, and as bad as Monsanto is, it has not yet turned the Great Plains into the Sahara, as the first farmers did. So I can’t say I entirely agree with the assessment that industrial infrastructure makes that much of a difference.

But remember, we’re not really at odds over the destruction industrial infrastructure entails. The question is, if you blow up part of it, will it be gone in five years, or will there be twice as much as what you destroyed? I’m saying that tactics like this result in more industrial infrastructure. Which is precisely what makes them so bad.

Second, while it is, without a shadow of a doubt, far better to blow up infrastructure with the consent of the locals than without it, the question is, what do you do when support isn’t there and it doesn’t look like it’ll be there any time soon?

Also, as for your P1+M > C analysis, well sure, but M can only do so much. The Egyptians and the Romans made a mess of their local habitat, but not to the extent that we have, and this is due to the fact that they lacked industrial infrastructure. Their lack of industrial infrastructure had to do with P1 (which was sky-high without the fossil fuels etc.), far more than it did with M. So… How does this affect your denial that dams would stay down in many places around the globe (Africa etc.) and with your projected 2012-15 tipping point?

Finally, jhereg, of course, you’re absolutely right that a person in Montana would react very differently than a person in L.A. And a person in Bangladesh would, of course, react very differently from a person anywhere in America. Good reminder for both me and everyone else.