this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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The memes of the climate
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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.
That's a pretty shallow take on historic economics.
Capitalism had a role to serve as the transition out of feudal economics.
Now it's time to do better.
Better as in what though?
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.
That seems more like a jab at capitalism than anything I said in that previous question.
Better as in what? What else hasn't been tried?
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:
Okay, fair enough.
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.
I like how someone writing something 100 years ago makes it true
Cool, we still use Socratic Dialogue as an instructional tool and that has existed for 2500 years. Something being old doesn't make it useless.
I didn't say the problem is the age
You literally did say that.
No? I said the fact that he said it 100 years ago isn't evidence what he said is true.
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.
People often- although not always follow incentives. The wealthy aren't unique in that- and that isn't surprising.
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.
So the artificial scarcity doesn't ring true to you?
They did give you two options. They didn't say those are the only two options.
Oh the guy who only complained and made effective criticisms with no realistic alternative, yeah sounds like a modern communist to me.
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.
So it's better just because the guy who created it said so?
Like half of Marx's theories are gross oversimplifications that are definitely biased towards his point
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.
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.
Corruption nearly always leads to more regulation but targeted against competitors.
I think it's pretty clear we aren't necessarily talking only about the quantity of bills passed, but also the quality
This (please don't stone me for just saying a word, but I tried to express this point in another comment)
Lack of regulation? I'd say it creates even more regulation to keep corruption going
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.
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.
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?
Regulation? Sounds like communism to me
Regulating is definitely not like a command economy
Not being serious there feller
Yeah, we need regulation but no direct intervention like the state is currently doing to protect monopolies.
Like, make some rules to keep competition fair but don't go to specific companies to protect them