> Do you think an emergency has some objective trigger??
No. But it feels faulty to define an emergency by the reaction of the government. For example if we would have multiple years of crop failures, with associated mass starvation and unrest but let’s say the government sticks their fingers in their ears and proclaims “let them eat cake”. That would not count as an emergency per your definition. Do you feel that is right?
In fact when people are arguing if it is an emergency or not, they often argue about it because they do expect their government to do/don’t do things based on which side they are arguing. If we would define an emergency based on the actions of the government solely this would be totally falacious. But it is not. “We are in a climate emergency therefore the gov should do X.” is a perfectly valid thing to believe in. (And so is the opposite of course.)
> Think about the Marshall Plan...
Did the Marshall plan employ every able bodied adult? I must have missed that part of the history.
> I am sure we can get every man and woman to work on the manufacture and use of whatever device can collect CO2 from the atmosphere or whatever.
I will go with whatever then. We have these things called factories. They made manufacturing very efficient. There is zero chance that you could employ every man and woman meaningfully on a task like this. Simply you would run out of raw materials or organisational capacity before that happens.
There is a more fitting historical paralel to what you are proposing. It is very much akin to Mao’s Great Leap Forward. He got a lot of people to do a thing, but since it wasn’t the right thing to do it ended up as a total catastrophy.
No, but that would never happen in a democracy. I am using "government" here losely as "the voice of the people" which is roughly correct in most democratic, non-corrupt countries.
> Did the Marshall plan employ every able bodied adult? I must have missed that part of the history.
I don't know why you feel the need to ridiculize my argument. You know all too well, I'm sure, that while not every single person was involved, as many as deemed necessary were... if things got so bad the germans/japanese were approaching the American shore, I don't doubt every single person, except those already tasked with food production, would be called and happily accept their call of duty.
No. But it feels faulty to define an emergency by the reaction of the government. For example if we would have multiple years of crop failures, with associated mass starvation and unrest but let’s say the government sticks their fingers in their ears and proclaims “let them eat cake”. That would not count as an emergency per your definition. Do you feel that is right?
In fact when people are arguing if it is an emergency or not, they often argue about it because they do expect their government to do/don’t do things based on which side they are arguing. If we would define an emergency based on the actions of the government solely this would be totally falacious. But it is not. “We are in a climate emergency therefore the gov should do X.” is a perfectly valid thing to believe in. (And so is the opposite of course.)
> Think about the Marshall Plan...
Did the Marshall plan employ every able bodied adult? I must have missed that part of the history.
> I am sure we can get every man and woman to work on the manufacture and use of whatever device can collect CO2 from the atmosphere or whatever.
I will go with whatever then. We have these things called factories. They made manufacturing very efficient. There is zero chance that you could employ every man and woman meaningfully on a task like this. Simply you would run out of raw materials or organisational capacity before that happens.
There is a more fitting historical paralel to what you are proposing. It is very much akin to Mao’s Great Leap Forward. He got a lot of people to do a thing, but since it wasn’t the right thing to do it ended up as a total catastrophy.