CATO vs CASSE : skygod vs earthling , battling thinktanks

Duelling think tanks, on a flatlining planet....

The CATO Institute, spawner of the denier movement and of all mean things Koch-able, is a powerhouse in the think tank business worldwide.

(And man oh man is it ever a business.

 In most think tanks it provides steady, pensionable, profitable employment for wannabe academics who can't get tenure or peer-reviewed publication. A first rate sort of home for the second rate sort of thinker....)

And I can't think of an organization more worthy of being called the skygod of all skygods - the denier of deniers on all the biological and material limits that humanity must face up to and deal with.

By contrast,Brian Czech's  CASSE ,  the Centre for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy ,is virtually unknown outside a relatively small circle of friends and supporters ( albeit friends like David Suzuki and Herman Daly !)

I couldn't even seem to find it on Wikipedia, normally a fount of information on all things obscure.

(I might try seeing it I can edit a token bit about CASSE for Wikipedia and rely on the good will and bad bile of regular wikipedia editors to do it up right.)

But CASSE would seem the natural choice for becoming the planet's leading green think tank.

This is because the advocating a steady state economy is the ONLY thing that truly divides real Green parties from the pro-environment 'greenish' wings of the other parties who remain stubbornly and foolheartedly pro-bloat.

Any party or individual that advocates perpetual growth is really preparing mentally to abandon the Earth, once it is raped to resource-exhaustion, for other worlds.

But CASSE really seems to deserve the title of Earthling of the Earthlings.

Please support it - sign its petition and live and think and talk up a steady state economy.

Be 100% green - not 1% green.

Because 1% of anything might make you rich, but it won't make you happy....

Is anything LEFT ? What is RIGHT ? Death spiral of traditional politics

Political Parties deathwatch

The only thing dying faster than paid newspapers and TV news is the political party.

Membership is down badly - even worse than voter turnout.

Above all, the greying memberships' spirit is gone - they haven't got enough energy left to get angry or to get happy.

What is so socialist about our socialist parties ?

They try to collect a grab bag of ever changing ideas to attract their supporters ----- just as the free-enterprise-less capitalist parties struggle to find their grab bag of ideas to get their 15% of the electorate to the polls.

When the winning government party got 33% of the votes of the one half of the electorate who sought to be added to the election lists and then bothered to show up to vote, you know you have serious dry rot.

Thank goodness for deniers vs greens : genuine anger and energy

God bless the deniers and the greens - at least those two still get fired up and angry at each other.

The older parties can't do it anymore - not even with the promise of government patronage to act as their Viagra.

We need to find a new line in the sand that divides and angers voters enough to take out memberships, knock on doors, put out a sign, give money, vote.

And left vs right ain't it - not after 150 years, it is just played out : both parties believe in an ever-growing economy and only quibble over the details of dividing the swag.

CATO vs CASSE , now there is an electoral fight I'd like to have a pony in : Endless Growth in the very short term versus an Eternal Steady State of Happiness.....

Human Exceptionalists versus CASSE is the new "ballot question" in all future elections

Denying limits is the Kool Aid of Denial

Denying that humans must face the same biological and material restraints as all other lifeforms , is the hallmark of the climate denier and of the libertarian.

They call it "human exceptionalism" - extending to all humans the virtue they once thought only belonged to Americans.

Like skygods, they live in a plane (neat pun, yes ?) well above Nature and its material limits.

Human willpower will inevitably triumph material limits : "mind over matter".

CASSE disputes the CATO's Room 101

Herman Daly has promoted the idea of a steady state economy for decades.

He and his supporters (count me as one) argue that a world with a steady number of people consuming a steady (not ever growing) amount of the world's resources can just about manage to keep human civilization afloat for a few more generations.

His organization is known as CASSE --- think of it as the Matter to the Cato Institute's Anti-Matter ( another clever pun, no ?)

 CASSE as a sort of Earthling Central versus CATO as Skygod Central.

If we got rid of all the parties - including the Greens - and had Cato vs CASSE duke it out for our votes, we might have both a more interesting election AND truly an earth-settling election.

Doom on one side - Hope on the other....

Now, please sign the CASSE Petition  ! *

* And a hat tip to Brian Czech for telling us all about the progress this steady steady idea is making among even the "limitless-growth-is-a-law-of-nature" economists.