What kills me is that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. The longer they fight against change, the more people they will convince that capitalism itself is the problem.
I could see people who criticize the west being called tankies, but it seems like a reach to infer that criticism of capitalism means praise of whatever China is doing.
You literally just used an argument from fallacy while bitching about me somehow having set you up for a strawman (fucking where???)
You’ve made 0 real points, called names, and bitched and moaned. Go back to lurking in your own misery and do the rest of the readers a favor before you cause anymore brain damage
The mothers days day after I had a baby, they sent me a book in the mail about a boy and a dog (I think the dogs name was Otto) celebrating mothers. It was weird but historically accurate. They said that one of the founding fathers mother was a good mother because she taught the founding fathers the bible. Im not sure what to do with the book… Donate it?
I love animals. I hate mosquitoes. If one gets in my house I’ll hunt it down and smash it gleefully. Then apologize and tell it I feel bad because it didn’t choose to be born a mosquito
Same for this book. I love books and feel they should be respected, but perhaps this one is like a mosquito and maybe should be disposed of into the recycling
Send them another book, “The Wright Brothers”. At least their mom was an awesome lady, a goddamn mechanical engineer, and a college graduate. She taught them how to bang on and tinker with stuff and ta-da now we have airplanes.
This was the final straw for me to finally get off FB, toooooooo many (unhinged) “friends” quoting PU as facts & citing them as a source. Pure propaganda garbage.
The two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. It’s just that capital would grow slower. You can have a green capitalism. It just that no one invested in that
“Green capitalism” only exists if green energy is more profitable than climate-harming alternatives
Given the multiple decades of oil and gas infrastructure, that’s not realistic.
In theory, consumer demand for green energy could make this a reality, but it would have to be a massive swing. And in practice, most consumers will go for the cheapest option - in many cases, given their resources, they have to.
The other way that green energy could become more profitable is through heavy government regulation. So… yeah you could have a green ‘capitalism’ if the State manages the market, and withstands the corporate pressure to withdraw. But that has literally happened nowhere
I suppose hypothetically you could argue that IF a company invested heavily in green technology and IF that investment resulted in a cheaper form of energy, AND that technology also applied to the supply chain, then we could have green capitalism. But i mean that’s highly speculative and it also would be entirely a coincidence
While that’s most often the argument made by activists, in reality the war seems to be between the old money vs the new money.
The old money has all the well established influence, the infrastructure, the politicians and media in their back pocket etc…
But the new money has the new tech, all the innovation, the online discourse in support of it and the centralised ones have grown big enough to not be so easily buried by the old money (like the large scale solar/wind farms, the tidal energy farms etc…) and the decentralised ones work in such a way that crushing them all wouldn’t undo what they’ve already done (like selling home electricity systems like solar panels and smaller wind turbines that sit on the roofs of houses)
What we’re seeing now is the changing of the guard and its why our leadership is so geriatric and old. The old money has had them in their back pockets for decades and they’re finding it far more difficult to get the younger elected officials to get on board with them, but said younger officials are more than happy to accept lobbying from the new money industries (renewables) so the old money, who still hold control, are keeping “their guys” in power as long as they possibly can. But due to the internal politics of each party, that’s getting harder and harder.
Capitalism is still very much alive and well and any political revolution will only expedite the changing of the guard.
But as you said, activists often use climate change as an excuse for “overthrowing capitalism” and replacing it with a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, and I think this tweet is actually referencing this rather than thinking it to be the logical conclusion
Just look at the environmental record of self-professed socialist nations like the USSR and China (including before they opened up their market). Each was an ecological catastrophie. Removing capitalism in no way guarantees any sort of environmental protection or green policies.
If anything the best thing we can do is promote the new money clean energy industries.
Well if the people who really claim that humanity is heading for extinction really thought so in their heart of hearts, they’d be willing to make compromises and work with the capitalist system and those who disagree with them economically to steer civilization away from mass extinction. They’d say “Ok, fine, you’re a libertarian (or whatever), how can we come together and make a deal to turn this ship again.”
No one listenend to those people, the issue has been known at least for the last 50 years, there was enough time for compromises, but nearly nobody cared.
So now we’re here.
If I believed that our current system will be the cause for the extinction of my species, how could I still make a compromise with someone who still lives and thinks like it’s 1960?
Hard to find a common ground when the other person is not believing in climat change or that we have to do anything and it will not magically sort it self out.
Really? Because most of the large countries of the world are very much trying to cut emissions. But They’re not communists. They’re by and large neo-liberal.
Does compromise with a death cult ever work? Whether they’re racists, fascists, religious zealots, capitalist profiteers, or any other group that devalues human life, it doesn’t seem like compromise works or is even a possibility.
Really? Ancient civilizations didn’t much value human life. They didn’t emit much CO2 at all. They’re very much two separate things.
As I said to another person here, most of the neo-liberal governments of the world are very much trying to cut emissions. They value human life much more tham ancient civilizations or modern communist countries have.
Speaking of separate things, my post was about compromise, not CO2 emissions, but don’t let that get in the way of your enlightened capitalist proselytizing. Neo-liberal governments are setting goals that are convenient to capital (i.e. too little too late) while failing to even hit those goals and also bending rules (e.g. we reduced emissions by moving polluting manufacturing overseas, as if the pollution is not happening on the same planet).
In particular, we need to protect the free market by creating a carbon tax to compensate for fossil fuels’ negative externalities and level the playing field for “greener” competitors.
Not taxing carbon is anti-capitalist protectionism.
That or have the state stop giving money to corpos that definitely don’t need it, or by breaking up monopolies just so fair competition can be a thing.
Seriously, thinking that America’s system is capitalist is just as stupid as thinking it’s the land of the free
What murica has is what happens when you take the breaks off and let crap run to its logical extreme (and with rampant corruption where the cars breaks used to be)
Regulatory capture.
Revolving doors.
Political dark money.
Monopolies that manage to be technically not monopolies some frakkin how.
Rackets that never get charged as such.
Planned obsolescence.
Anticompetetive and anti consumer practices all over and the erosion of rights - you effectivly don’t own what you buy and can’t resell it anymore.
Trade agreements to export this insanity to other countries.
Granting corporations the ability to sue NATIONS over “lost profits” in response to resonable regulation!
Instead of “harnessing greed” its run rampant and unchecked to the point its destroying our environment at an insane pace. And its spreading beyond america. It has been for years most people just haven’t realized it yet. (Ed: by “it”, I mean this corrupt thing that America thinks of as capitalism, is overtaming what you may think of as calitalism)
The cancer has metastisized, and we’ll need to reinvent a strongly regulated similar system that rejects the clear broken parts in order to excise it - capitalism as is, is lost. It’s not sustainable.
I realize I’m talking in a very pro socialist/pro communist space but what I’m saying doesn’t mean I think capitalism was always terrible. But any good times it had are soon coming to an end.
Bold of you to assume that’s capitalist. If the state intervenes by favouring monopolies against any possible competition that’s definitely not a free market
You don't need to end capitalism to help the climate.
Just properly regulate it. It's a tool just like every other economic system, and shouldn't be hoisted to a higher pedestal. Every system that fails fails because regulation falls off the wayside and leads into corruption. Capitalism's only strength is it took longer to get there because all the power was spread out for awhile.
We've used every economic system by itself, and the only really successful version is a combination of them with proper regulation. What else do you do?
Well there was a guy with a funny beard who wrote about what happens when capitalism produces more goods and services than could ever be reasonably consumed by the populace of the world. He wrote about how there were basically 2 coutcomes. Either the the rising supply just keeps pushing prices down until the only issue comes down to a logistics and distribution problem and money functionally becomes pointless and state power doesnt have any heirarchy to enforce. Or the people with money and power enforce artificial scarcity, through tactics like letting crops die in the fields, or only release so many diamonds into the market and promiting it as a good thing, to protect their wealth and power.
Consider this: modern capitalism was pretty much inconceivable to people living in the feudal era. In the same way, it is possible that the system we need is inconceivable to us at the moment. Critiquing capitalism and advocating for a move away from it is still useful.
There are plenty of things that haven’t been tried aside from small-scale examples:
Socialism is probably the most realistic solution that’s been “half tried” (and yes there’s a difference between socialism and communism, the right just doesn’t want people to know it because they might start thinking there’s a viable alternative)… State run non profit corporations for all essential needs, capitalism for things that aren’t essential. We went as far as creating some state run corporations, some of them non profit, but we never moved far enough in that direction to truly see how beneficial it can be for the masses to not have to enrich investors when buying food or clothing or renting an apartment…
It is a jab at capitalism. But the theory as the funny beard man stated it would be an evolution of capitalism. Capitalism was very good at making technological progress, advancing productive capacity immensely. His critique is that all that progress wasn’t used to make people’s lives better.
The major iterations of communism that everyone points to didn’t start with fully industrialized societies. They were predominantly agrarian societies coming out of a monarchy, that were pushed through industrialization very rapidly and were left extremely unstable and subject to extreme authoritarianism.
Cool and yet his descriptions of how the wealthy class would rather artificially limit production rather than give up the power that money has are accurate.
Which is why it’s important to critically examine the systems that we live within and change them when the incentives put forward by said system cause harm to more and more people.
Because a few hundred years with constantly changing technology is an exhaustive test of every possible version of organizing society. Pack up folks, it’s all been tried and only one thing works or will ever work.
Well communism has been tried and it didn’t work. It was trounced by the capitalist world which, nevertheless, adopted some socialist ideas, especially in Europe.
So no, it’s not time to do better. Communism isn’t the next step after capitalism. It clearly isn’t remotely capable of competing with capitalism in the long term. No matter how many thousands of pages of theoretical wishful thinking people have written about it, if it doesn’t work in the real world it doesn’t work. It always ends up in authoritarian, repressive regimes that are economic backwaters. To the extent that they desire secular growth they have to open up markets like China did, and simply become authoritarian and somewhat economically free.
The biggest issue is that this is a doomer self defeating argument. If you don’t believe something is possible, then it isn’t. Even if total communism is an unreachable goal, why not try to move closer to it? Liberalism is a walking contradiction, with economic liberalism being almost incompatible with social liberalism. That hasn’t stopped it from having drastic positive and negative effects on human history from people trying to live by it.
Furthermore, the idea that communism is a dead end reinforces the toxic view that anyone attempting to strive closer towards it is a threat that must be eliminated. Anti-communist sentiment has led to and enabled some of the worst atrocities of all time. The best part is that many of the people accused of being communists merely wanted liberation.
The fact is, if communism was wiped from existence and Karl Marx erased from history, the same ideas would evolve out of Christianity, or liberalism, or any ideology that isn’t a fucking death cult. This is because Marx did not make a unique and unprecedented observation, he just put the pieces together first. Egalitarianism and sharing is as important to human success as territorialism and self interest.
Finally, Marx did believe communism would come out of industrialized societies with enough resources to go around. That is not the state that the Soviet Union or China were in when they declared themselves communist. Making absolute statements about the end state of all attempts at something is setting yourself up for failure far more than trying a new way to make something theoretically possible happen.
regulation falls off the wayside and leads into corruption
And vice versa! Corruption leads to lack of regulation. It’s a shit circular dance that I feel like we’re doomed to repeat regardless of the economic system we pick.
Agreed. Capitalism is a horrible master but a good slave. Just like we regulated the other forces of nature (like fire) to harness them in our favour, so should we harness market forces to work for us.
Capitalism works well when there is plenty of potential for growth, but when there are non-monetary reasons (such as the literal end of ecosystems favorable to human life) that require adjustments or even degrowth, it quickly devolves into feudalism - and the problem is that we do not have the means to quickly stop CO2 emissions without tightening our belts in energy consumption, which in turn requires some degree of degrowth.
You don’t need to end capitalism to help the climate. Just properly regulate it.
Except that politicians (i.e. those that would be doing the regulating) all have a price, and for oil barons no price is too high; and bribing is still magnitudes cheaper than stopping the destruction of the environment.
It’s a tool just like every other economic system, and shouldn’t be hoisted to a higher pedestal.
If it’s not objectively better nor special, why not try something more equitable that doesn’t siphon 99% of all resources to the aristocracy elite and leaves everyone else fighting for the crumbs?
Why keep using a system that prescribes that the hungry should starve if they can’t afford food even though we already produce more than enough to feed the whole planet?
I recently switched to lemmy and now sort out my old reddit downloads. As I cane by this picture I thought I could post it and I think it was a good thing, looking at the discussion about socialism and library economy in the comments.
