Capitalism Guarantees Rising Inequality

[gnarlylove]

I have consistently said humans have modified plants for millennia. The fact remains we have not used biotechnology until recently. You think the use of biotechnology is not a fundamental difference?
"Monsanto scientists became the first to genetically modify a plant cell in 1982. Five years later, Monsanto conducted the first field tests of genetically engineered crops."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#The_era_of_genetically_modified_crops_.281980s.29

 

[georgephillip]

If Mondragon is such a stunning success, then why isn't it expanding and taking over the entire Spanish economy? The answer is that its not a good business model. It can't make changes to it's employment without a huge political battle. That's why private enterprises are superior to government run enterprise. If they need to cut staffing they can do it in short order. Government almost never cuts staffing for anything.

Mondragon cooperatives are not part of Spain's government.

"Mondragon co-operatives are united by a humanist concept of business, a philosophy of participation and solidarity, and a shared business culture. The culture is rooted in a shared mission and a number of principles, corporate values and business policies."

If Mondragon is truly run by it's employees, then it's run the same way government is run. Do they take a majority vote when they want to decide whether to lay anyone off?

They aren't expanding for the same reason Spain has a 26% unemployment rate; global capitalism has wrecked the world economy for all but a fraction of 1% of humanity and their useful idiots

Mondragon Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Spain has a 26% unemployment rate because of all the government's destructive economic policies, not because of capitalism. So in a sense, your claim is correct. If capitalism is destroying world economy, then why does the United states have a 7.3% unemployment rate?

Spain's and the US unemployment rates have risen due to their banking systems buckling under the weight of a massive amount of toxic loans linked to the housing bubble. Wall Street owns both governments, and the best is yet to come.

"And the memo reveals a lot about Summers and Obama.

"While billions of sorry souls are still hurting from worldwide banker-made disaster, Rubin and Summers didn’t do too badly.

"Rubin’s deregulation of banks had permitted the creation of a financial monstrosity called 'Citigroup'.

"Within weeks of leaving office, Rubin was named director, then Chairman of Citigroup – which went bankrupt while managing to pay Rubin a total of $126 million.

"Then Rubin took on another post: as key campaign benefactor to a young State Senator, Barack Obama.

"Only days after his election as President, Obama, at Rubin’s insistence, gave Summers the odd post of US 'Economics Tsar' and made Geithner his Tsarina (that is, Secretary of Treasury).

"In 2010, Summers gave up his royalist robes to return to 'consulting' for Citibank and other creatures of bank deregulation whose payments have raised Summers’ net worth by $31 million since the 'end-game' memo.

"That Obama would, at Robert Rubin’s demand, now choose Summers to run the Federal Reserve Board means that, unfortunately, we are far from the end of the game."

Now...blame "government."

 

[georgephillip]

United Airlines was worker owned.

How'd that turn out?

'Tuned out better for Wall Street.
Are you surprised?

""In 1994 United's pilots, machinists, bag handlers and non-contract employees agreed to acquire 55% of company stock in exchange for 15% to 25% salary concessions.

"The flight attendants voted to not participate in the deal, and at the beginning some wore buttons saying 'we just work here.'

"The Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) made United the largest employee-owned corporation in the world..."

"The financial outcomes of the ESOP were decidedly uneven for different players.

"As part of ESOP agreement, United CEO Stephen Wolf resigned and took a consulting job with Lazard Freres, the very investment company he had hired to advise United's board during the ESOP buyout process.

"Stewart Oran, the key legal advisor to the pilots' union, received a $5.5 million package to join the management of the new employee-owned company as legal counsel after the ESOP was formed.[25]

"United's unions, having larger voice in running the company, later successfully bargained for significant pay increases, but the effect was only short-term.

"The rank and file employees were locked into their stock, which got wiped out in the eventual bankruptcy.

"It was around this period (in 1993) that United introduced its grey and blue color scheme. It had been criticized that the color scheme blended with the darkness during nighttime operations."

History of United Airlines - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) made United the largest employee-owned corporation in the world..."

Awesome! Screw those CEOs, we'll show how the working man can get it done!!!

"The rank and file employees were locked into their stock, which got wiped out in the eventual bankruptcy"

Wait, what?

"Still, after United’s failure — not to mention the problems at Enron, WorldCom and all the dot-coms, where employees saw the retirement and stock-option fortunes they’d invested in their companies melt away — Americans may now be leerier than ever of the prospect of owning their bosses’ companies.

"Should they be?

"Does it make sense to have workers telling companies how to behave?

It does make sense if the plan is right. If you study what was wrong with United, and what’s right with successful companies in which employees have equity, one thing is consistent: When firms make employees feel as though they have a say in what a company does, and when employees feel as though they’re working alongside managers rather than against them, companies work better..."

"Owners and workers are bound to be at odds, goes traditional thinking — that’s basic capitalism.

"But that’s not true.

"Contrary to what some conservatives say, employee ownership can increase productivity, decrease production costs, and reduce the waste that comes with a bad labor-management environment.

"It can do a lot more, too.

"If the corporate world embraced employee ownership, we might see companies that were more accountable to their workers and to the world.

"We wouldn’t see CEOs making 500 times as much as the average worker, we wouldn’t see unions making obviously untenable demands of their companies, and — with all the new wealth flowing to workers — we could reduce the gap between the country’s rich and poor.

"And we could still call it capitalism."

United?s ESOP fable - Salon.com

 

[georgephillip]

If Mondragon is such a stunning success, then why isn't it expanding and taking over the entire Spanish economy? The answer is that its not a good business model. It can't make changes to it's employment without a huge political battle. That's why private enterprises are superior to government run enterprise. If they need to cut staffing they can do it in short order. Government almost never cuts staffing for anything.

Mondragon cooperatives are not part of Spain's government.

"Mondragon co-operatives are united by a humanist concept of business, a philosophy of participation and solidarity, and a shared business culture. The culture is rooted in a shared mission and a number of principles, corporate values and business policies."

They aren't expanding for the same reason Spain has a 26% unemployment rate; global capitalism has wrecked the world economy for all but a fraction of 1% of humanity and their useful idiots

Mondragon Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But the problems faced by Spain's government and its banks are just symptoms. The real issue is the mess that is Spain's economy.

Believe it or not, before 2008 Spain's government was one of the least spendthrift in the eurozone - unlike Greece. Or Germany.

The Spanish government's debts were a mere 36% of its gross domestic product (GDP) (the output of its economy) in 2007, while the German government's were 65%.

What's more, Madrid was in the process of paying its debts off - it earned more in tax revenues than its total spending. In contrast, Berlin regularly broke the maximum annual borrowing level laid down in the Maastricht Treaty of 3% of GDP.

Evidently, this crisis has nothing to do with the recklessness of Spain's government.

Instead, it was other people in Spain who behaved recklessly.

Interest rates fell to historic lows when the euro was launched in 1999. So Spain's banks, property developers and ordinary home-buyers collectively borrowed and fuelled an enormous property bubble.

BBC News - Spanish economy: What is to blame for its problems?

Please take time to read entirety of article ...

I did.
Then I read Krugman's explanation of Spain's crisis.
Do you agree with him?

"Consider the state of affairs in Spain, (2012) which is now the epicenter of the crisis.

"Never mind talk of recession; Spain is in full-on depression, with the overall unemployment rate at 23.6 percent, comparable to America at the depths of the Great Depression, and the youth unemployment rate over 50 percent.

"This can’t go on — and the realization that it can’t go on is what is sending Spanish borrowing costs ever higher.

"In a way, it doesn’t really matter how Spain got to this point — but for what it’s worth, the Spanish story bears no resemblance to the morality tales so popular among European officials, especially in Germany.

"Spain wasn’t fiscally profligate — on the eve of the crisis it had low debt and a budget surplus.

"Unfortunately, it also had an enormous housing bubble, a bubble made possible in large part by huge loans from German banks to their Spanish counterparts.

"When the bubble burst, the Spanish economy was left high and dry; Spain’s fiscal problems are a consequence of its depression, not its cause."

Is it worth asking who's gotten rich(er) from Spain's economic woes?

 

[georgephillip]

But *WHY* did US Steel sell off the factory? Answer? Because it was not making a profit.

If the Unions had bought the plant, can kept the same wage/cost structure, they would not have made a profit either. Socializing something, doesn't magically change the economic math.

This is yet another example, of dozens, where Noam Chomsky proves once again, he's a great linguist, and a terrible economist.

And you've proved, yet again, you're neither.
Neither are you particularly knowledgeable about worker owned enterprises, like Mondragon, which doesn't pay management at a rate of hundreds of times the average worker.
If you are going to criticize my sources, give me a good reason to believe you possess the necessary intellectual qualifications to make an informed opinion.

Thank you. I get to illustrate the difference between you and me, right here right now.

You cited Chomsky, who said "it could have worked", and that was your 'evidence'.

Here's mine.

Mondragon: Trouble in workers? paradise | The Economist

Mondragon - Trouble in workers’ paradise

NEWS that Spain’s largest appliance-maker is heading for bankruptcy will not come as a complete shock in the crisis-ridden country. Yet Fagor is a special case. It is part of Mondragon, the world’s biggest group of worker-owned co-operatives.

Fagor has lost money for five years and has run up debts of €850m ($1.2 billion). Its factories all ceased production three weeks ago. (written Nov 9th 2013)

In the past, losses in one part of the group have been covered by the others, but this time Fagor’s pleas for a €170m lifeline were rejected. Eroski, another co-operative in the Mondragon group and one of Spain’s largest retailers, is also struggling in the face of stiff competition, and it and two other co-ops vetoed Fagor’s plan.

This was a blow to Sergio Treviño, Fagor’s boss since April. He had planned to move the bulk of production to Poland and to turn Fagor into an ordinary company with outside shareholders. Its Polish unit has now filed for creditor protection and the French unit will follow, triggering cross-default clauses in Spain. As we went to press Fagor looked likely to file for bankruptcy imminently.

Fagor, with 5,600 workers, is a relatively small part of the whole. Even so, Mr Treviño warns that its fall “will have an uncontrollable domino effect on the rest of the group with major social implications.” He believes Fagor’s liquidation would create a €480m hole at Mondragon, including inter-group loans and payments the group’s insurance arm would have to make on Fagor workers’ unemployment policies. Mondragon has promised to find new jobs or offer early-retirement terms for as many as it can of Fagor’s Spanish workers, but this is a tall order in a country with 27% unemployment. Besides their jobs, workers stand to lose the money they had invested in the co-op if it is liquidated.

Britain’s even older co-operative movement (founded in 1844 and nominally owned by its customers rather than its employees) is undergoing a similarly harsh encounter with economic realities. Its banking arm, hit by huge bad debts after taking over another mutual lender, is having to bring in American hedge funds as outside shareholders, because its parent movement was unable to rescue it alone. The co-operative model has its virtues, but there are times when those nasty, money-obsessed capitalists have their uses too.

Let's recap shall we?

Spanish co-op Fagor, has been losing money for 5 years. Why didn't they invest to reduce costs, or cut pay enough to be profitable?

Because they were a co-op.

The CEO of Fagor tried to privatize the company, and was veto'd by fellow co-ops. Thus the company closed all operation, and is filing bankruptcy.

Mondragon, the owner of all the co-ops, is now having a crisis, because all the cross-co-op-lending and financing, is going to be crippled by the massive default of Fagor.

Equally, Brittan's Co-op, founded in 1844, is now selling out to evil capitalist American Hedge Funds, in order to avoid bankruptcy.


Now, did you notice the difference between what you do on this thread, and what I do?

You quoted the OPINION of a LINGUIST, as your 'evidence'.

I quoted what is ACTUALLY HAPPENING in the world around us, as my evidence.

You quoted a single anonymous source which ACTUALLY isn't all that impressive, but it is a big improvement over your usual arguments.

"Almost 28,000 companies have declared bankruptcy during Spain's five-year economic crisis, hitting a peak of 2,854 during the first three months of 2013.

"But Fagor Electrodomésticos is not just any business.

"Launched in 1956 by a Catholic priest named José María Arizmendiarrieta and five students from a technical college he started in the wake of the Spanish Civil War, Fagor is the foundational unit of Mondragón, the world's biggest conglomerate of worker-owned cooperatives..."

"Similarly, when Richard Wolff, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, visited Fagor two years ago, he was impressed by the seriousness with which management handled buying assembly line equipment, which came from outside the Mondragón family of industrial companies. 'They gave me a lecture on policy: You buy within Mondragón if quality or price was competitive. If not, you go outside,' he says..."

"So why did Fagor fail?

"It's easy to say that Mondragon's cooperative model wasn't up to dealing with economic crisis -- that it was too touchy-feely for tough times -- but the reality has less to do with ideology than with simple economics.

"'Co-operatives are subject to changing tastes, technologies, mismanagement -- all the usual reasons why an enterprise can have trouble,' says Wolff. 'It would make no more sense to question co-ops because one goes out of business than to look at Detroit and say, "'Isn't capitalism a failure.'"

"In the case of Fagor, which was the biggest appliance maker in Spain and France, the Spanish housing bubble allowed it to ignore longstanding business problems, says Adrián Zelaia, who spent 25 years at Mondragón, including 10 as secretary general, before leaving in a management dispute in 2010.

"As a European maker of mid-range appliances, Fagor did not have the low costs of emerging market brands, nor did it have the superior technology of the top German factories, Zelaia says. To deal with this, the company took advantage of easy credit to expand, most notably by buying the French appliance company Brandt in 2005.

"'It was a temptation for medium and large businesses to flee from their problems via acquisitions,' says Zelaia, now president of the Ekai Center, a think tank.

"Fagor was thus saddled with debt when the housing bubble burst in 2008.

"It marked the beginning of the end for the company, which had 5,700 employees, 2,000 of whom were in Spain.

"'The housing bubble popped, and that combined with a financial crisis, so credit was cut back, consumption dropped, products came in from low-cost countries, and raw material prices rose,'... 'We're a cooperative, but we don't live outside the market.'"

Defiant Spanish workers stage lock-in, resist layoffs - Fortune Management

 

[georgephillip]

I know GMO exists. What's your point? Is that what you repeated four times now?

Yes, we've been modifying plant genes for thousands of years.
Long before Monsanto existed.

Explain how we've been modifying plant genes for thousands of years.

 

[georgephillip]

And you've proved, yet again, you're neither.
Neither are you particularly knowledgeable about worker owned enterprises, like Mondragon, which doesn't pay management at a rate of hundreds of times the average worker.
If you are going to criticize my sources, give me a good reason to believe you possess the necessary intellectual qualifications to make an informed opinion.

Thank you. I get to illustrate the difference between you and me, right here right now.

You cited Chomsky, who said "it could have worked", and that was your 'evidence'.

Here's mine.

Mondragon: Trouble in workers? paradise | The Economist

Mondragon - Trouble in workers’ paradise

NEWS that Spain’s largest appliance-maker is heading for bankruptcy will not come as a complete shock in the crisis-ridden country. Yet Fagor is a special case. It is part of Mondragon, the world’s biggest group of worker-owned co-operatives.

Fagor has lost money for five years and has run up debts of €850m ($1.2 billion). Its factories all ceased production three weeks ago. (written Nov 9th 2013)

In the past, losses in one part of the group have been covered by the others, but this time Fagor’s pleas for a €170m lifeline were rejected. Eroski, another co-operative in the Mondragon group and one of Spain’s largest retailers, is also struggling in the face of stiff competition, and it and two other co-ops vetoed Fagor’s plan.

This was a blow to Sergio Treviño, Fagor’s boss since April. He had planned to move the bulk of production to Poland and to turn Fagor into an ordinary company with outside shareholders. Its Polish unit has now filed for creditor protection and the French unit will follow, triggering cross-default clauses in Spain. As we went to press Fagor looked likely to file for bankruptcy imminently.

Fagor, with 5,600 workers, is a relatively small part of the whole. Even so, Mr Treviño warns that its fall “will have an uncontrollable domino effect on the rest of the group with major social implications.” He believes Fagor’s liquidation would create a €480m hole at Mondragon, including inter-group loans and payments the group’s insurance arm would have to make on Fagor workers’ unemployment policies. Mondragon has promised to find new jobs or offer early-retirement terms for as many as it can of Fagor’s Spanish workers, but this is a tall order in a country with 27% unemployment. Besides their jobs, workers stand to lose the money they had invested in the co-op if it is liquidated.

Britain’s even older co-operative movement (founded in 1844 and nominally owned by its customers rather than its employees) is undergoing a similarly harsh encounter with economic realities. Its banking arm, hit by huge bad debts after taking over another mutual lender, is having to bring in American hedge funds as outside shareholders, because its parent movement was unable to rescue it alone. The co-operative model has its virtues, but there are times when those nasty, money-obsessed capitalists have their uses too.

Let's recap shall we?

Spanish co-op Fagor, has been losing money for 5 years. Why didn't they invest to reduce costs, or cut pay enough to be profitable?

Because they were a co-op.

The CEO of Fagor tried to privatize the company, and was veto'd by fellow co-ops. Thus the company closed all operation, and is filing bankruptcy.

Mondragon, the owner of all the co-ops, is now having a crisis, because all the cross-co-op-lending and financing, is going to be crippled by the massive default of Fagor.

Equally, Brittan's Co-op, founded in 1844, is now selling out to evil capitalist American Hedge Funds, in order to avoid bankruptcy.

Such is the inevitable fate of all COOPs unless they enjoy some kind of government enforced monopoly, like the Pistachio growers COOP or they get a bailout from the government.

The socialists continue to claim that their ideals will lead to greater wealth, economic security and well being, but they continually fail wherever they are put into practice.

Some socialists see the problem you're blind to:

"As we have explained before, the two fault lines of the crisis of capitalism in Spain are the massive debts accumulated in its banking system as a result of the housing bubble which fuelled the previous growth cycle, and the budget deficit which has been accumulated by the state as a result of the economic crisis itself and the initial bailout of the banks..."

"(T)he problem with Spain (and also Italy) is that these two countries’ economies, unlike Ireland, Portugal and Greece, are too big to be bailed out.

"Spain is the fourth largest economy in the euro-zone.

"The cost would be unbearable for the European economy as a whole.

"However, they are also too big to be allowed to collapse.

"This is the contradiction that Spanish and European (in particular German) capitalists are faced with."

Naturally, being good capitalists, they'll use government to socialize the cost by cutting pensions and raising the retirement age while privatizing profits for all the vulture capitalists who caused the Great Recession.

Deepening crisis of capitalism in Spain building up to a social explosion

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

I know GMO exists. What's your point? Is that what you repeated four times now?

Yes, we've been modifying plant genes for thousands of years.
Long before Monsanto existed.

Explain how we've been modifying plant genes for thousands of years.

Very slowly. Check it out.

Unmodified.

Modified.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

I know GMO exists. What's your point? Is that what you repeated four times now?

Yes, we've been modifying plant genes for thousands of years.
Long before Monsanto existed.

We did not create GMO plants until early 1980s, according to Monsanto. Monsanto's March into Biotechnology (A) - Harvard Business Review
1983 is 31 years ago.
31 years is not thousands of years.
Therefore we have not created GMO plants for thousands of years.

We have randomly and selectively modified plants for thousands of years and they have modified themselves through mutation. If that's your idea of GMO, you're being silly. The type of modification that's been going on thousands of years does not include the use of biotechnology. We have only been capable of using biotechnology to genetically modify seeds in the last 32 years. I agree with you that we have modified plants in a variety of ways unconscious and conscious ways but we did not use biotechnology. We simply selected a seed over another because it grew faster for example. GMO as used by Monsanto represents the use of genetic engineering through biotechnology to alter specific genes and their function. Humans have not been doing that for thousands of years.

We did not create GMO plants until early 1980s

We modified plant genes long before GMOs. Long before Monsanto.
Long before we knew that genes existed.

31 years is not thousands of years.

Durr.

We have randomly and selectively modified plants for thousands of years and they have modified themselves through mutation.

Yes!

If that's your idea of GMO, you're being silly.

Why? Slow genetic modifications don't count as genetic modifications?
Please tell me why. Be as specific as you can. Use science, not just feelings. Thanks!

We have only been capable of using biotechnology to genetically modify seeds in the last 32 years.

It's true. Now we can make modifications faster and more safely than we did in the past.

We simply selected a seed over another because it grew faster for example.

Yes. That is one way to modify the genes of a plant.

GMO as used by Monsanto represents the use of genetic engineering through biotechnology to alter specific genes and their function. Humans have not been doing that for thousands of years

I never claimed the way Monsanto modified genes was identical to the way humans have modified genes for thousands of years.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Mondragon cooperatives are not part of Spain's government.

"Mondragon co-operatives are united by a humanist concept of business, a philosophy of participation and solidarity, and a shared business culture. The culture is rooted in a shared mission and a number of principles, corporate values and business policies."

If Mondragon is truly run by it's employees, then it's run the same way government is run. Do they take a majority vote when they want to decide whether to lay anyone off?

They aren't expanding for the same reason Spain has a 26% unemployment rate; global capitalism has wrecked the world economy for all but a fraction of 1% of humanity and their useful idiots

Mondragon Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Spain has a 26% unemployment rate because of all the government's destructive economic policies, not because of capitalism. So in a sense, your claim is correct. If capitalism is destroying world economy, then why does the United states have a 7.3% unemployment rate?

Spain's and the US unemployment rates have risen due to their banking systems buckling under the weight of a massive amount of toxic loans linked to the housing bubble. Wall Street owns both governments, and the best is yet to come.

"And the memo reveals a lot about Summers and Obama.

"While billions of sorry souls are still hurting from worldwide banker-made disaster, Rubin and Summers didn’t do too badly.

"Rubin’s deregulation of banks had permitted the creation of a financial monstrosity called 'Citigroup'.

"Within weeks of leaving office, Rubin was named director, then Chairman of Citigroup – which went bankrupt while managing to pay Rubin a total of $126 million.

"Then Rubin took on another post: as key campaign benefactor to a young State Senator, Barack Obama.

"Only days after his election as President, Obama, at Rubin’s insistence, gave Summers the odd post of US 'Economics Tsar' and made Geithner his Tsarina (that is, Secretary of Treasury).

"In 2010, Summers gave up his royalist robes to return to 'consulting' for Citibank and other creatures of bank deregulation whose payments have raised Summers’ net worth by $31 million since the 'end-game' memo.

"That Obama would, at Robert Rubin’s demand, now choose Summers to run the Federal Reserve Board means that, unfortunately, we are far from the end of the game."

Now...blame "government."

"Within weeks of leaving office, Rubin was named director, then Chairman of Citigroup – which went bankrupt while managing to pay Rubin a total of $126 million"

Citigroup never went bankrupt.

 

[gnarlylove]

How did the seed become modified as a seed? We all know corn seeds grow into corn stalks. That doesn't explain how the seed repels roundup brand weed control. You do realize that's a major point of GMO, right? To not kill the plant when using toxic chemicals like roundup and other pesticides. You need pictures of how a normal seed that doesn't repel roundup was transformed into a seed that does repels roundup, which you don't have.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

How did the seed become modified as a seed? We all know corn seeds grow into corn stalks. That doesn't explain how the seed repels roundup brand weed control. You do realize that's a major point of GMO, right? To not kill the plant when using toxic chemicals like roundup and other pesticides. You need pictures of how a normal seed that doesn't repel roundup was transformed into a seed that does repels roundup, which you don't have.

How did the seed become modified as a seed?

Which one? Where?

That doesn't explain how the seed repels roundup brand weed control.

I could explain it to you, but I don't think you're up to speed on science yet.
Are you still confused about old fashioned, very slow, genetic modification?

The kind that also turned wolves into everything from Great Danes to Chihuahuas?

To not kill the plant when using toxic chemicals like roundup and other pesticides.

Roundup is toxic? According to what definition of the word?
And it isn't a pesticide, BTW.

You need pictures of how a normal seed that doesn't repel roundup was transformed into a seed that does repels roundup,

Why would I need that to show that humans genetically modified plants for thousands of years before Monsanto?

 

[gnarlylove]

That doesn't explain how the seed repels roundup brand weed control.

I could explain it to you, but I don't think you're up to speed on science yet.
Are you still confused about old fashioned, very slow, genetic modification?

The kind that also turned wolves into everything from Great Danes to Chihuahuas?

So you make a difference between modern GMO and as you call it "old-fashioned genetic modification?"

If you recall, my whole point was to get you to recognize the difference between, what I called regular human modification, and modern genetic engineering. It looks like by the fact of your own words, you made a plain difference between GMO products that result in roundup resistance and another "very slow genetic modification." It looks like you admitted my point, finally, that what we would call (modern) GMO, which uses biotechnology is not the same thing as modification through selection or as you call it "slow genetic modification."

Why did it take this long for you to understand the difference?

Roundup is toxic? According to what definition of the word?

It nuetralizes and terminates plants effectively. That surely qualifies for meeting the standards of a toxin, aka poison.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

That doesn't explain how the seed repels roundup brand weed control.

I could explain it to you, but I don't think you're up to speed on science yet.
Are you still confused about old fashioned, very slow, genetic modification?

The kind that also turned wolves into everything from Great Danes to Chihuahuas?

So you make a difference between modern GMO and as you call it "old-fashioned genetic modification?"

If you recall, my whole point was to get you to recognize the difference between, what I called regular human modification, and modern genetic engineering. It looks like by the fact of your own words, you made a plain difference between GMO products that result in roundup resistance and another "very slow genetic modification." It looks like you admitted my point, finally, that what we would call (modern) GMO, which uses biotechnology is not the same thing as modification through selection or as you call it "slow genetic modification."

Why did it take this long for you to understand the difference?

Roundup is toxic? According to what definition of the word?

It nuetralizes and terminates plants effectively. That surely qualifies for meeting the standards of a toxin, aka poison.

If you recall, my whole point was to get you to recognize the difference between, what I called regular human modification, and modern genetic engineering.

My whole point was to get you to recognize that most of our food has been genetically modified for thousands of years. I've always known the difference between what Monsanto scientists do and what American Indians took thousands of years to do.

It looks like by the fact of your own words, you made a plain difference between GMO products that result in roundup resistance and another "very slow genetic modification."

There is a plain difference, one is much faster.
There is a similarity, they both modify genes.

It looks like you admitted my point

Your point was we didn't genetically modify plants before Monsanto.
Your point was wrong.

Why did it take this long for you to understand the difference?

I've understood the difference for decades.
Glad you finally admit the similarity. Or do you?

It nuetralizes and terminates plants effectively

That would make it an herbicide.
You know the difference between an herbicide and a pesticide, right?

 

[gnarlylove]

It's cute how you turned your argument 180 degrees and accused me of not making the distinction. let's go back to the original post where this started:

Almost all the food you eat has been modified by humans. You should stop eating.

Does GMO mean modified by humans? Your comment only has meaning if GMO means simply modified by humans. But we all know GMO stands for something quite specific, so sadly your left stinky brown diarrhea for us all to read. Do us a favor and think before you type.

Throughout I've mentioned the fact that there is a difference between simple modification and selection (which includes the selection of certain phenotypes) and the very specific meaning that GMO carries.

So who kept saying GMO has been around thousands of years? You did. GMO has a specific definition that uses biotechnology to engineer seeds to have certain characteristics. That means GMO has not been around for thousands of years. This does not mean the genetic modification has not occurred, it definitely has through human intervention. However, this intervention did not use biotechnology and therefore was not a product of GMO. I was trying to alert you to the difference between these two types of modification, one general type that includes gradual modification of genes, and one specific type using biotechnology on genes.

The fact is, you've and I both have completed the purpose of this discussion. We both understand the difference and I'm glad we could reach common ground. Can you believe you agree with me on something? I bet you feel sick.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

It's cute how you turned your argument 180 degrees and accused me of not making the distinction. let's go back to the original post where this started:

Almost all the food you eat has been modified by humans. You should stop eating.

Does GMO mean modified by humans? Your comment only has meaning if GMO means simply modified by humans. But we all know GMO stands for something quite specific, so sadly your left stinky brown diarrhea for us all to read. Do us a favor and think before you type.

Throughout I've mentioned the fact that there is a difference between simple modification and selection (which includes the selection of certain phenotypes) and the very specific meaning that GMO carries.

So who kept saying GMO has been around thousands of years? You did. GMO has a specific definition that uses biotechnology to engineer seeds to have certain characteristics. I was trying to alert you to the difference between these two types of modification, one general type that includes genes, and one specific type using biotechnology.

The fact is, you've and I both have completed the purpose of this discussion. We both understand the difference and I'm glad we could reach common ground.

GMO is a genetically modified organism.

Do you deny that humans have genetically modified plants for thousands of years?

Do you deny we genetically modified this.....

To turn it into this....

Centuries before Monsanto?

 

[gnarlylove]

The problem is you are equivocating between (very slow) genetic modification and (biotechnology) genetic modification (i.e. "GMO").

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Does GMO mean modified by humans? Your comment only has meaning if GMO means simply modified by humans. But we all know GMO stands for something quite specific, so sadly your left stinky brown diarrhea for us all to read. Do us a favor and think before you type.

Does GMO mean modified by humans?

Most of the food you eat is genetically different than it was before man.
Do you need examples?

Do us a favor and think before you type.

Do me a favor and think. It would be a nice change.

I said it once but you didn't seem to understand because you're too busy defaming me. Use your rational faculties and pull your brain out of the murky waters of one-ups-manship.

GMO does not mean modified by humans.

GMO specifically means genetic modification by humans and it has no other meaning.

Thus, we must ask are their instances where "modification by humans" does not entail genetic modification? Does tattooing count as modification of the body? Yes. Is it genetic modification? No. Thus, your joke that someone should stop eating because all food has been "modified by humans" is inane. Of course, you don't care how imprecise you are because your arguments are fueled on misrepresentation.

The argument is not that we should not eat food because it's been "modified by humans" but we should be aware of what is GMO and is not. We don't have this option as most labels do not carry this information. And as you correctly identify most foods are GMO like corn. The argument is not to stop eating food, but it is to allow the public awareness of what they are eating. See the difference? I hope so but I doubt it because it nullifies your pointless post and inane joke.

GMO specifically means genetic modification by humans and it has no other meaning.

See, you had it way back here, then you lost it again.

 

[georgephillip]

If Mondragon is truly run by it's employees, then it's run the same way government is run. Do they take a majority vote when they want to decide whether to lay anyone off?



Spain has a 26% unemployment rate because of all the government's destructive economic policies, not because of capitalism. So in a sense, your claim is correct. If capitalism is destroying world economy, then why does the United states have a 7.3% unemployment rate?

Spain's and the US unemployment rates have risen due to their banking systems buckling under the weight of a massive amount of toxic loans linked to the housing bubble. Wall Street owns both governments, and the best is yet to come.

"And the memo reveals a lot about Summers and Obama.

"While billions of sorry souls are still hurting from worldwide banker-made disaster, Rubin and Summers didn’t do too badly.

"Rubin’s deregulation of banks had permitted the creation of a financial monstrosity called 'Citigroup'.

"Within weeks of leaving office, Rubin was named director, then Chairman of Citigroup – which went bankrupt while managing to pay Rubin a total of $126 million.

"Then Rubin took on another post: as key campaign benefactor to a young State Senator, Barack Obama.

"Only days after his election as President, Obama, at Rubin’s insistence, gave Summers the odd post of US 'Economics Tsar' and made Geithner his Tsarina (that is, Secretary of Treasury).

"In 2010, Summers gave up his royalist robes to return to 'consulting' for Citibank and other creatures of bank deregulation whose payments have raised Summers’ net worth by $31 million since the 'end-game' memo.

"That Obama would, at Robert Rubin’s demand, now choose Summers to run the Federal Reserve Board means that, unfortunately, we are far from the end of the game."

Now...blame "government."

"Within weeks of leaving office, Rubin was named director, then Chairman of Citigroup – which went bankrupt while managing to pay Rubin a total of $126 million"

Citigroup never went bankrupt.

Why not?

 

[Andylusion]

I have consistently said humans have modified plants for millennia. The fact remains we have not used biotechnology until recently. You think the use of biotechnology is not a fundamental difference?
"Monsanto scientists became the first to genetically modify a plant cell in 1982. Five years later, Monsanto conducted the first field tests of genetically engineered crops."
Monsanto - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Genetic switches can be switched on and off, using traditional methods, or biotechnology. The end result is exactly the same.

If you want a dog with long ears, you can breed them in such a way to have the genetic switch turned on, or you can have the switched turned on in a lab.

In either case, the fundamental change is the same. The key aspect of having the switch turned on in a lab, is that the switch is fully activated, and that more switches are accessible.

With the breeding system, you never know if you have bred out the maximum ear size of the dog. With a lab, you can know for certain the genetic switch is maxed out, and that this is the largest ear this breed of dog can have.

Also, there are more difficult genetic switches to activate. Switching these switches in a lab, can do in months, what traditional breeding techniques would take decades to accomplish.

What really fascinates me about this topic, is that if a person on the right, were to question the myth of man-made global warming, leftists would accuse them of being anti-science. Yet the entire thing is largely opinion.

However in this case, we have clear cut science, well documented, well established, has clearly proven benefits to society.... and yet the left is now the anti-science crowd, trying to stop something that has benefited humanity the world over.