The Story of Stuff rebuttal, part two

Photo compliments of Miqul's photostream on Flickr

This is the final installment on my stewardship series. In the first, I examined The Story of Stuff. In the second, I looked at valid points made in a rebuttal entitled How the World Works.

Now it is time to point out the biases and problems with this rebuttal. As with the last article, reviewing the link to part two of four of his rebuttals will help to make the points I have below more clear.

1. Boasting about having a featured discussion on this with Glenn Beck (9/22), a noted Obama-hater, does not lend confidence into a person's objectivity.
2. Does he really think you can put toxic chemical into materials without those material becoming toxic?
3. What is the point of bring up the jelly-fish? The toxic material she is talking about are ones we are using and thus exposed to, not at all like a New York resident with an Australian jelly-fish.
4. Are toxics only problems if they are eaten? Is this new? Because I know there are many toxins that can kill you without being ingested.
5. Sure, we have toxins in our bodies, but are you seriously trying to tell me we shouldn’t limit the number of additional ones we add?
6. The BFR stat was based on the lives saved in the last ten years but applied to the number of deaths in 1971! This is like a liberal saying that handgun deaths are down 20 percent in the last ten years and crediting the Gun Control Act of 1968. You can't use stats from two different years—this is elementary science, and comparing apples to oranges. This also all but invalidates point number three in the previous article—the one I said was perhaps his most valid.
7. I also do not think it is a good idea to use a neurotoxin (which, by the way, studies have shown to be cancer-causing, contrary to this man’s claim) in a pillow we rest our head on, but he completely dismisses that as a concern. How many lives are saved by pillows catching fire, anyway, and isn’t it the personal responsibility (a term often—and appropriately—used by conservatives to minimize over-governing by liberals) of the user (or parent) not to put anything near a pillow that might set it on fire?
8. Breast-feeding is still listed as best for the child by the woman who did The Story of Stuff because because of the psychological and God-designed benefits as well as other consumer impacts of formula, not because those toxics are less of a problem. And it does nothing to change the fact that we should minimize contaminants (most of which are fat-soluable and therefore not only carried by breast milk but stored almost indefinitely in the body of a developing baby) in the only source of food for our most vulnerable members of society.
9. His representing of the option “to work in a place with a really low risk of harm” as better ignores the fact that it is not a necessary step in the chain. If we are not producing and working with as many toxics, fewer people work with them. Moreover, this man’s opinion about the low-risk is highly debatable, which is why people feel compelled to produce and watch this video.
10. Some of the people are compelled to make the above choice because the destruction wrought to bring materials makes their environment worse to the point of needing to become part of the process that created that environment. Just because it is better for them in the short-term does not mean it is better for their people or the planet for the long-run.
11. Toxic chemicals are meaningless words? Really? Is he serious?
12. Workers are paid on supply and demand, but those natural elements of a free market and pushed and pulled by those in power. Walmart makes a ton of money for their stockholders, but they are also the number one employer of people on welfare. In other words, our taxes are footing their bills, and many of the people working there have no choice—they are not all high school cashiers. To suggest this is an egregious and intentional corruption of the truth. I suggest to my readers they see, “Walmart, the High Cost of Low Price.”
13. It is absolutely externalizing costs to put things like health care on the government. The tax-base is the third party in this equation. To present her as not understanding the meaning of this term when it is he who does not (or more likely, simply refuses to recognize taxpayers as a third party) is deceitful and hypocritical.
14. The reason he thinks the process of bringing her a cheap radio is beautiful when she made it sound ugly is he missed her point. It is not about who took part, it is about how the costs that would have to come with a world-wide effort bringing such a cheap product to her hands have consequences. This is a classic shell-game: distract the viewer from the point by making an unrelated one.
15. Just because life expectancy is up does not mean that there are not increased risks. How hypocritical it is for him to accuse her of ignoring other variable and then ignore all the medical advances that contribute to our longer lives? It is like saying that even though a record number of people are dying from drug abuse, that is clearly a false statistic because the average age is higher. This is another example of using multiple variables in an equation, making me question whether this individual can even be considered a valid scientist.
16. How is noting that workers are having to foot the bill for their own health insurance diametrically opposed to not wanting the costs to come out from third parties? This is the second failed argument on third parties, making me believe he does not understand this concept, either. Her point is that paying more for a product is better for the people in the chain of bringing it to you, and incurs fewer collateral costs like higher taxes to pay for workers’ insurance and welfare.
17. He essentially offered the philosophy of the trickle down theory to support lower cost items. The problem is that theory has been proven false. Over the years since Ronald Reagan made this national policy through tax cuts, wealth in this country has been concentrated in fewer hands, and richest one percent of this country once again owns more than the poorest ninety percent; the most dramatic shifts in this were seen with the Bush tax cuts that gave $40,000 in “relief” for the highest tax bracket and only $40 for those just above the poverty line. This plan led to the economy that has crashed, just like similar policies led to the Great Depression.

So the count for valid vs. invalid points in this segment is 17-11 in favour of The Story of Stuff over How the World Works, and this does not even consider that one of the valid points he made was invalidated entirely by one of the above points, nor that two of his valid points were basically the same one applied again.

Or for all of you like the commenter with the moniker "TedinAK" who are determined to see a bias when you do not agree with someone, it shows I have a 60.7 percent liberal bias. I can live with that, since it is barely left of centre.