To avoid confusion in the future, you may want to delineate quotations with quotation marks ("") so that others will know that the thoughts expressed are not original with you.

My contention that THE Free-market does "not act by any code of morality" is neither new or original with myself. Let me clarify with an analogy. The Free-market has the same code of morality as the Earth's atmosphere. Though many people, especially children, might label a sunny day or a light soaking rain as "Good" and a drought or hurricane as "Evil," none of these are as they are commonly labeled. They are just manifestations of the atmosphere trying to work out some equilibrium.

The Free-market works the same way. Good economic decisions are "rewarded" with high sales and profits and bad ones are "punished" by poor sales and bankruptcy. The Free-market also punishes government attempts to manipulate it with depressed economies.

Those who try to blame the results of the actions of governments to form a Manipulated-market - Mercantilism, Crony-capitalism - on the Free-market are usually doing so to scare the people into never wanting a truly free market and instead accept the blaming party's form of Manipulated-market - Communism, Fascism - and the catastrophic results that come with them.

I am quite familiar with Social Darwinism as I have been its intended victim on occasion. Man figured out how to speed up the process of evolution in his crops, livestock, and pets through selective breeding and culling and now some men intend to do the same with their fellow men - particularly through the culling process. A dastardly act if ever there was one...

Possibly a valid point but the " British regiments guarded the ports and warehouses in Ireland to guarantee absentee landlords and commodity speculators the "free market" profits." was taken directly from the link given by Danny.

If the troops had not enforced the "trade" do you believe starving Irish people would have abstained from trying to take food by force? Thus again we would not have a free market. The third option is the starving people refrain from survival behavior and allow "free trade" and die without resistance. This supports your contention that free markets do not act by any code of morality. Given option three as being antagonistic to the laws of nature, The first two scenarios might be construed to be the most realistic outcomes and evidence of Social Darwinism.

Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics.[1] It especially refers to notions of struggle for existence being used to justify social policies which make no distinction between those able to support themselves and those unable to support themselves. The most prominent form of such views stressed competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism; but it is also connected to the ideas of eugenics, scientific racism, imperialism,[2] fascism, Nazism and struggle between national or racial groups.[3][4]

We in the North West, Washington and British Columbia, are regularly hosts of "groups" warning us of water shortages and the necessity of water meters and rationing.
I always chuckle at the sagacity of these people, the last time they showed up we had not seen the sun or a dry day for weeks.

Our problem with water is somewhere to put it.

If "British regiments" were used to implement "Social Darwinism" then there was not a "free market" at work. This would be a "Hampered" or "Manipulated" market. Though individual participants may have their own moral codes of their own makings, the Free-market does not work by any code of morality; it just works...

Thanks Danny for this vital link. Two things stand out:

Readers should note that the above is mostly extracted from educational websites produced by countries bound by law to teach "genocide studies". History is often more opinion than science. While most historians agree that between 1845 and 1850, one million Irish starved to death, the question of whether Ireland was a net exporter of food is contested. Ed. This is contested but certainly I would believe their were significant exports.

The second statement: Dr. Kinealy's research proves beyond a reasonable doubt that there was sufficient food in Ireland to prevent mass starvation, and that the food was brought through the worst famine-stricken areas on its way to England.

British regiments guarded the ports and warehouses in Ireland to guarantee absentee landlords and commodity speculators their "free market" profits. This would tend to show the outcome of "free markets" in terms of compassion and morality in concern for fellow human beings. Social Darwinism was alive and well in Ireland.

Reply from The Daily Bell

Why then did Tony Blair apologize to the Irish over the famine? To hear the sound of his own his voice?

"What about all the poor unfortunates that you're supposed to take care of?"

Where does the "supposed to" come from? Religiously imposed guilt? Neighborly coercion? Direct government force? The use of force to take something from the person who rightfully owns it constitutes "robbery."

Mr Ghost, you completely miss the point.
"exercise of good private judgment most individuals should be able to take care of themselves. "
What about all the poor unfortunates that you're supposed to take care of?

Have you moved into your grass hut yet? Cutting back on crass appetite starts at home, you know.

There may not be a shortage of water where you live, but the Floridan aquifer is being depleted faster than it is being replenished. Maybe we would have enough water if nuclear power plants didn't use over 40% of the water available.

Big agriculture in Florida ruins the land by watering crops and never allowing the land to lie fallow. Salts accumulate in the soil. Salt water incursion is a reality all along the coast of Florida. Only about 8% of the water used in the United States is due to people. Desalination is expensive and often doesn't really work (see articles in the Tampa Tribune in 2010 related to their expensive desalination plant).

Since the Fukushima Dai-ichi, Japan nuclear power plant meltdowns in March of 2011, radioactive water runoff has been polluting the Pacific ocean. Ocean currents will carry this around the globe and radiation will move up the food chain. Since Fukushima is an ongoing catastrophe and nobody knows how to stop it, maybe the question of water sufficiency is moot.


Florida has been in a drought since 2005. Far too many people have been permitted to move into Florida. The land here cannot sustain the population we presently have unless we somehow prevent the overuse of water by agriculture and industry. I'm a fourth generation native and have witnessed the ruination of this once beautiful state in my lifetime. I think there will continue to be water shortages here in future. A good start toward conserving water anywhere would be to decommission all nuclear power plants.

However, it is true that the last time I was in Switzerland there appeared to be no water shortage there. So, Daily Bell, this is your boots-on-the-ground report from Florida, USA.

Correct, DB. The 'water shortage' wail is an elite ruse that has been around awhile. It's identical to their population explosion cries. Which Oz tried to use to float humanity's CO2 exhales as one cause of global warming; that along with cow belches, cow gas, and cow patties.

Surely they jest.

Their purpose behind the warming lie was to install a global CO2 tax on human exhales. It backfired when the hacker posted their bogus 'warming models' on line.

Look yonder! Is that another water (gas? oil? rare metals?) shortage crisis? Was it Einstein that gave the world the definition of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

In the Western U.S., the feds hide behind the 'Endangered' Species Act and other environmental gibberish to confiscate and claim 'ownership' of water flowing across 'their [federal] land' in repeated attempts to force ranchers that have depended on-and used-that water for centuries; trying to put them out of business and force them off their property in a thinly veiled and illegal confiscation attempt.

Wayne Hage, a western states rancher, successfully fought the feds more than 17 years after they attempted to cut off his water. A federal judge finally ruled in his favor of his lawsuit, but the feds keep stalling payment to his family (Hage and his wife have since passed away.)

In states with little federal 'property,' well-heeled entrepreneurs are scurrying about buying up water rights beneath huge tracks of land; all the while beating the so-called 'shortage' drum in an attempt to drive local water 'markets' up. The problem, like that with the globe's 'food shortages,' lies in getting water to the places it's needed. There's plenty to go around.

Given, wells go dry during droughts. Wells, creeks, lakes, ponds and springs have always gone dry during droughts. The planet will always have droughts. And there will always be water shortages in deserts.

This current 'water shortage,' as you point out, is just another in a long line of global fear memes by Oz like cap and con and population explosion; all to be followed by a 'special tax' to 'fix' the problem, from which they can siphon money for hidden agendas like their global government scheme.

The Internet is routinely throwing the break switch on these type scams nowadays.

Got to be frustrating for Oz.

There were huge quantities of food exported from Ireland during the famines.
Click to view link
But, Blair apologized so everything is OK.
Click to view link

Reply from The Daily Bell

Thanks for the links. The "famine" was a "crime."

"OK, Danny B. We stand corrected. We can't wait for the UN to take charge and make things better. "
I cited important research that would help reduce Ag water consumption. I did NOT cite any U.N. programs. If the Click to view linkn convince people not to crap in their water source, then I will cite the U.N.
Up to 40% of water is lost to leaks [worldwide] Kofi needs to call a plumber, not a summit.
Click to view link

Gosh - where to start?

Aquifers - exhaustion of. Happens, and has happened, many times in many places. People find other solutions. Rain hasn't stopped falling, and people are successfully farming areas where rain rarely falls and there is NO groundwater (look up the Nabataeans, and ask yourself how they would have fared if foreign bureaucrats had to approve their work).

Climate change happens, of course - it has always happened. But it isn't necessarily going the way the bureaurats say it is. Remember "hide the decline?" Humans have successfully handled climate change since the last Ice Age 13,000 years ago, and we are far better equipped to do so now, assuming that even becomes necessary.

Desalination includes many techniques. Surprisingly, RO is very economical of energy. Unfortunately, the energy required for it is very high-grade, namely shaft power to operate high-pressure pumps. Other desal techniques use low-grade heat to drive multistage distillation processes.

Fact is, there is a lot of slack in our water supply system. For example, at present all domestic water is required to meet potable-water standard (it doesn't, but that's another story), at least in developed countries. This means you are flushing the toilet with drinking water, bathing in it, etc. Introduce separate grey-water and potable water circuits, and suddenly you have an 90+ percent saving of potable water, or to put it another way, a tenfold expansion of potable water supply! And this without an increase of output.
I'm with the Bell on this one: this promotion isn't about water; it's about control.

It's true that there's plenty of water. It's just not in the right places. In a general sense, the places with the longest growing season have the least water. Water is very heavy and the transport is expensive.
Then, there is the problem with contamination.
"• 2.2 million people in developing countries, most of them children, die every year from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.

• Half of the world's hospital beds are filled with people suffering from water related illnesses."
Click to view link

Having traveled around the world by road [where possible], I can attest to the problem of contaminated water. It is a common sight to see people dig their well within a few meters of their outhouse.
I stayed on a houseboat in Kashmir. It had 3 toilets that emptied into Dal lake. It also had a water pump to fill the water tanks from the lake.
Click to view link
This isn't a problem that is limited to the undeveloped world.

In the resort town of Carpenteria, California, the city posts the water testing results AT the beach. The ocean water in front of the State Park has 10 times the fecal-coliform bacteria count that is in the water in front of the adjacent private condos.

There is a shortage of uncontaminated water. There is a shortage of water in many areas that have a long growing season. There are solutions slowly being developed. The israelis developed drip irrigation if I recall correctly. There has also been a recent development in desert countries to severely shorten the growing season. It was discovered that plants wilt from a lack of carbon. Researchers found that if they sprayed a mist of alcohol on plants, they, matured in half the normal time and needed half the water.
This only worked for plant lines that had come into existence when the CO2 levels were much higher.
There are also some very exciting discoveries that pull food production AWAY from genetic modification.
Click to view link

BTW, there are several major aquifers that are dropping dramatically.

Reply from The Daily Bell

OK, Danny B. We stand corrected. We can't wait for the UN to take charge and make things better.

How Engineering the Human Body Could Combat Climate Change
Click to view link

From drugs to help you avoid eating meat to genetically engineered cat-like eyes to reduce the need for lighting, a wild interview about changes humans could make to themselves to battle climate change.

Perhaps the DB should allow a 0 rating as their argument is so absurd.
The Ogallala Aquifer, also known as the High Plains Aquifer, is a vast yet shallow underground water table aquifer located beneath the Great Plains in the United States. One of the world's largest aquifers, it covers an area of approximately 174,000 mi² (450,000 km²) in portions of the eight states of South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. It was named in 1898 by N.H. Darton from its type locality near the town of Ogallala, Nebraska.[1]

About 27 percent of the irrigated land in the United States overlies this aquifer system, which yields about 30 percent of the nation's ground water used for irrigation. In addition, the aquifer system provides drinking water to 82 percent of the people who live within the aquifer boundary.[2]

GUESS WHAT? This aquifer is being consumed much faster than it can be replenished. Climate change is a REALITY. The Great Pyramids of Giza once were very close to the Nile River and the climate supported agriculture-not the desert we see now. Desalinization takes a lot of energy (reverse osmosis) in commercial applications. The population needs to stop reproducing like rabbits. You speak of England not starving but fail to speak about the incredible loss of life during the Irish Potato famine? Our oil based fertilizers allow crops to be grown devoid of nutrition. There are 72 trace minerals and typically NPK is replace every year while the rest of the soil becomes depleted of ht e remaining nutrients. Your last line reminds me of the new National Geographic show on families preparing for the near distant collapse of society. This in my opinion is one of your worst articles- a new low. Congratulations and still no real proof of a one world conspiracy.

Reply from The Daily Bell

You speak of England not starving but fail to speak about the incredible loss of life during the Irish Potato famine?

This is the problem with you, Seer. In your zeal to debunk every DB article at every turn, you often reveal economic and historical ignorance. In this case, it apparently never occurred to you that maybe the Crown and the City of London had something to do with the "potato famine." That left to their own devices, the Irish would have figured out a way to eat. That maybe they couldn't because of "larger forces?" that were intent on pushing a famine. D'you think it possible? Or do you think the Irish simply sat in their "huts" and dumbly starved. Read some history. Real history.

Great article DB!

Reply from The Daily Bell

Thanks.

The title off to the side really sets it off. "A World Without People" Are they giving us a hint?

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and since what is postulated is only an opinion then it cannot be wrong but it can be faulty if it is based on a false premise. Your whole diatribe against the Free-market falls apart because you start with a false premise:

"What was free for the taking for early man has been made into a product to be sold, by the free market."

It was not then nor is it now "free for the taking." One has to work to obtain it and those who work to bring it to you are due their wages for their labor. This is the beginning of the Free-market through the development of the earliest professions: Resource Collector, Transporter, Producer, Protector, Merchandiser.

"There are too many among us who would stand by, critique, and wait for others to do the job!"

Yes there is and, for the foreseeable future, there always will be. We call these people, "government"...

Reply from The Daily Bell

Yes - never free for the taking. EVERYTHING is transformed by labor. Even picking berries from a bush transforms a berry from blossom to breakfast. But don't get in the way of one of Nithsdale's snarky rants. If you make him think too much he'll get a headache ...

Water and Food! Goodness Gracious, how we have transformed both!

What was free for the taking for early man has been made into a product to be sold, by the free market. Elites and givernments did not add flavorings to water, making some water different from others, Food was canned by individuals, and here again the free market changed the process, canning all in a multitude of "clads" and then distributing in an ever widening area. Again not by the elites.

Government got involved because bigger facilities were required as populations grew... . roads, harbors had to be improved, and more people clammored to be served over great areas, even across oceans. The whole massive development required every element in society to be involved, especially as innovations began to change simple directions and distribution into more complex interchanges.

What was once just sustinence for life is now a very interlaced trade of millions of items where once just a dozen or so were required by people to live. Water no longer comes from nature by hand to your mouth but now requires resevoirs, canals, piping, plumbing and taps and with these manmade improvements, comes the need for purifiers, chemicals to assist and to add insult to injury to this simple process, the free market introduces bottles, with lots of health propaganda, to insure the public get the message how to use them!

I won't bother to repeat the mantra of how the food supply was also "expanded", with Man's clever assistances.

The elites did not do all this but millions of smart people did. We also made water and food part of the new production of everything... .. clothing,building, metalcrafting, refining food and nature's many geological treasures and each time we increased the usage of both, we had to scramble for more supplies as prodution and industry grew!

It is the gross, crass appetite of people like us, including economists like you, that have put so many in a bind now. We have taken what was the simple life and made it so complex that we must turn to some who think they can help us sort out what we must have from what we can't have to continue.

When catastrophe happens, like to Japan last year, and this year, no one can turn to "free markets" when millions must be helped. It takes the concerted efforts of all. The free market does not work in such a meme. There are too many among us who would stand by, critique, and wait for others to do the job!

Collapse is nature's answer to Man's wont to make life so complex that most cannot fend for themselves. This is why no civilization lives very long. Those who insist that they can go it alone are the first to expire.