Guaranteed
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Wed Sep-24-08 05:33 PM
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Great Analogy Showing Why ChimpCo's Bailout Plan is Wrong- The Trophic Pyramid |
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I don't know how many folks around here are biology buffs- I'm really not- but I paid enough attention back in high school to hang on to some of the most basic ideas.
One of them was the trophic pyramids animals are classified into based on whether they are primary producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers or predators. The pyramid shows a difference in biomass at each trophic level, with predators being at the top of the pyramid and producers being at the bottom- i.e., as producers, plants, at the bottom of the pyramid, account for a helluva lot more of the biomass in an ecosystem than the predators who feed on the plants' consumers. Those consumers, in turn, are more numerous than predators, but not as numerous as the plant producers.
The pyramid sets up a number of dynamics, including the tendency for ecological toxins to concentrate in an ecosystem's predators since they are essentially the end-point of a narrowing food chain that can not easily dissipate some chemicals (DDT, for example). That's not the point though.
The point is that a balanced pyramid has far fewer predators than producers with regard to biomass. Our economy hasn't seen balance like that for a long, long time. Our culture aggrandizes predators- the paper-pushing rich guys on "top" of the pyramid. The "Big Shots." So our market is flooded with people not producing anything. When a natural ecosystem encounters a situation like that, the predators start dying out until there are enough primary and secondary consumers to support them.
ChimpCo doesn't want to let that happen, though- the predators in our particular economic situation just happen to be his best buddies. And he wants to use a massive amount of federal money to try to fix what is wrong- by giving it to the predators.
That's wrong, though. The best thing to do to fix a growing ecosystem that doesn't have enough food for its predators is to give the (financial) adrenaline shot down at the producer level- not at the top. If you have a bunch of predatory animals that are starving to death, you're not going to fix what is wrong unless you make sure that there are enough consumers for them to feed on. And how do you grow the consumer trophic level? More plants. More producers. Chimpy wants to make some artificial meat and feed his predators with it to stave off starvation for them just a little while longer. The mother of all corporate giveaways before he gets the boot. But it won't work because it doesn't address the imbalance.
If the feds really want to do something that will help fix this situation, they'll take that $700B and help homeowners on the brink of foreclosure pay their mortgages. They are the producers in the housing trophic pyramid- they supply the real money in the market. They are the base of the chain. They are the ones who currently can't support the voracious appetites of the very same clowns to whom Chimpy wants to wastefully give the money.
Besides- doesn't it seem right that the taxpayers getting shafted by this giveaway should at least be given a chance to keep their homes? Personally, I'd be pretty damned pissed if my tax dollars got given away to the same greedy bastards who kicked me out of my house- especially when they are the ones who screwed the economy up so badly anyway with their reckless scheming.
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Guaranteed
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Wed Sep-24-08 06:08 PM
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WritersBlock
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Wed Sep-24-08 06:09 PM
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2. Here... lemme kick this for you this time... |
Guaranteed
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Wed Sep-24-08 06:19 PM
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Guaranteed
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Thu Sep-25-08 04:58 PM
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hootinholler
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Wed Sep-24-08 07:19 PM
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4. Or you can shoot some predators. n/t |
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Wed Apr 17th 2024, 04:10 PM
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