I know Chinatown, but what’s Pacific Edge?
Sounds like a straight to video parody of Pacific Rim.
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This guy literally wrote the book on California water law.
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Pacific Edge is a semi utopian/ post climate disaster anarchist SF novel by Kim Stanley Robinson. It has a set piece in the middle where they go out to meet a water lawyer and discuss the evolution of water law in California and its origin and general fucked upness and the all round head scratching omplexity of fixing the issues involved. It’s done in the context of a rhapsodic tribute to the beauty of California from the perspective of a hike in the mountains.
I don’t remember many details of the legal rights involved (and by the by: property rights are not, and never were quite like the man in this story thinks they are: they are always curtailed by competing rights, they are not always tied to “ownership” of the land… I could go on at length!) but I found it very interesting that in the California the legal rights are derived from Spanish law concepts.Given how totally fucked water is in contemporary Spain (and the horror of the Spanish polytunnel, near-slave powered, chemically intense, desertifying agricultural miracle and just look at the little trickle which used to be the Guadalquivir when Cristobal Colon would have sailed from Cordóba…) I’m not that surprised…
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Well, it also implies that the ground doesn’t collapse above it and remove the space for the aquifer. And the 6000 years is refilling without being used, so there are assumptions on both sides that are going unsaid.
Plus, I felt it important that some people understand that the effects are really long term, so I hope you understand any sarcasm was not aimed at you.
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Not at all! I just felt the need to explain myself. It’s a childish urge: we don’t always have to appear to be right and derail every conversation into the niceties of why we weren’t really in our minds wrong. But I still do a bit unfortunately…
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You might note, though, that the ‘water scandal’ in Chinatown is entirely fictional.
It’s (very very VERY loosely) based on an alleged ‘San Fernando Valley Water scandal’ that took place in a very different period (1905, not 1937) , and it gets the players, the motives, the tactics, and the politics entirely wrong.
It’s a brilliant film, but anyone who comes away from it assuming that they know more about the history of California water politics than when they went in is fooling themselves.
The knowing-but-cynical “forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown” references that pop up every time water in California is mentioned are a good measure of just how little real history most people know.
There’s been plenty of scandal and intrigue and double-dealing around water in California, but Chinatown is not an informative portrayal of any of it.
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Water shouldn’t be commoditized, since it’s a necessity to live.
That might be why jerwin has that whole “plot devices in popular entertainment” part literally in the sentence just in front of Chinatown. They have noted it. And very well.
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Capitalism blinded the elites to the point that they see everything and everyone as mere tools for their own success.
So your business excuse is fallible because it’s the whole concept of business that we’re worried about when it comes to morality; especially when they have history of bypassing and manipulating public opinion to obtain and maintain wealth.
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The portion of the article quoted by BoingBoing specifically notes that they’re wanting to get around the BLM’s ruling which will trigger an environmental review of the plan.
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Same with food, air, land, and shelter.
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Exactly. Add healthcare to that list. The things we need to live shouldn’t be a means of enriching a few.
(Also, I’m out of likes!)
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This brings up a very good question:
Why the hell do we need to commodify anything to begin with?
So some people can make money off of it, which of course is the highest moral good, smart people like Ayn Rand said so… And if you disagree, you’re a commie-pinko-scum who wants to control humanity and hates FRRREEEEEEEDOOOMMMMM… duh! /s
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I feel as though the word “commodity” has become detached from it’s original connotation as a a “substitutable” good. A steelmaker doesn’t really care where the iron ore comes from; if it’s somehow cheaper to import ore from china than it is to procure ore from the upper peninsula, so be it.
On the other hand, a cell phone with a camera is not a substitute for a Leica. Beyond the Veblen status associated with Leica, the Leica has certain engineering advantages over the cell phone that should translate into better pictures.
We should also, I think, be aware of where goods come from, because it can have moral consequences, as we’ve seen historically. Sure, maybe you can get cheaper ore from China, but what does that mean in terms of jobs, who your dollars are supporting, etc. Or to use the example of sugar, it led to a change in slavery as a labor system, which still reverberates in the new world today.
Like it or not, commodities (as they’ve come to be understood and defined under the capitalist system of production) have come to have moral consequences as well as economics ones, and that’s been true for a while now. We take that for granted at our peril, I think. There is a reason that, no matter how horrible the lived experience of the Marxist state actually was in the 20th century, Marx still has resonance today - he had something to say about these things that emerge out of capitalism and what they’ve changed in our world, good and bad.
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Isn’t majority of the products (especially the ones that were made from mined materials) we purchased came from forced labor (all of which should be replaced by robots by now)?
