91–100 of 311 posts
* (real) war
eg. "large" ones between superpowers ... not decimating goat-herders equipped with not much more than ak47 & towels around their heads somewhere in the lesser developed areas of the planet.
* climate-change
eg. taming the resource-hunger of capitalism.
The world population is collapsing at a rapid pace. Our economic growth is based on a growing productive population. Our economic prosperity is based on a growing productive population. Different parts of the world are dealing with population collapse. Look at Japan, a xenophobic country facing population collapse. The total GDP has remain stagnant over the past 20 years. Look at UAE, a country facing population coll…
A huge problem… for capitalism. I think the refusal to marry and have kids (regardless of it being necessary or by choice) is basically the ultimate worker’s strike. So far capitalists have relied upon the fact that there will always be workers to exploit, since they consider any care work necessary to raise families (for the next batch of exploited workers) as simply just given. Now that this is going away (people c…
Climate and the reason that nothing significant have been done regarding that in 40+ years. Problems will not stop to appear while that is not solved. The whole system becomes fragile, and minor disturbances will become major ones.
Why would this be the likely outcome?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technology literally means getting more value from the same amount of inputs. Earth has essentially unlimited resources in its crust, and with better technology we'll have access to more and more of them. Not to mention offworld resources. Sure, there's a few things that we need to figure out - like stopping fossil C release into the atmosphere, and how to spread good agritech to poor, non-democratic countries (hint:…
I think we are talking past each other on what is meant by degrowth. Degrowth means not tying the success of nations and people to that of GDP YoY. It is not sustainable. What I mean by degrowth is removing the growth imperative from economy and switching to a sustainable economy. The studies have shown (referenced in Hickel's book) that material consumption goes up with technological innovation. This means that the…
But it’s not complicated. GDP is literally ”the total sum of what humans value” (per year). GDP growth is “creating more of what humans value”, and profit is “reward for those who create value”. You can split what humans value into essentials (food, sex, medicine, security, …) and non-essentials (nice car, nice house, nice vacations, nice nature, …). The basic premise of Western civilisation (i.e. the most well-functioning society we’ve invented so far) is to satisfy the essentials of almost everyone and allow many people to satisfy many of their non-essentials.
> More products, more material extraction, more profits, more reinvestment - all to grow.
Sounds like a good thing! More people getting their needs met.
As it turns out, people do value nature etc but only after their basic needs are fulfilled. So the best way to protect nature is to create companies that make profit satisfying essential needs and higher-priority non-essential needs, so people start valuing nature etc.
Which isn’t to say capitalism is without problems - e.g. tragedy of the commons, principal-agent problem, negative externalities - but they should be solved within capitalism (maybe with better regulation or more aligned market incentives).
But if you support “degrowth” you literally support people living worse lives (less non-essentials) and dying (less essentials). And if you don’t, well, your movement needs better marketing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> to providing equitable outcomes for all people and the planet The top 10% who hold essentially all the wealth in the world have very little interest in that goal.
Yep 100% agree. Unfortunately
A decent fraction would need to become nurses, and frankly, with less pay/worse conditions than they currently get. A small fraction will need to study a lot more so more treatments can be provided, which requires doctors and researchers. And we'll all have to do with less (much less) because this will cost a lot even disregarding wages.
The biggest problem domain worth pursuing is figuring out fusion. If we can unlock what is effectively limitless power a lot of problems become far more tractable. Everything else is a distraction. We need cheaper and more available power. Every physicist and engineer in the world should probably try dedicating at least one or two month of their life to figuring out fusion. If humanity could pay a trillion dollars to…
Reports released by IPCC and other organizations [0] indicate that we have 15 years to take drastic action on the environment. This tracks with the extremely accurate prediction from The Limits to Growth [1] published in 1972. If we do not take action on climate _now_ then _nothing_ is going to matter. We will enter into an irreversible feedback loop that causes human extinction, yet it won't be apparent until it is…
1: https://tenor.com/view/truck-crash-test-pole-doesnt-reach-gi...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we are talking past each other on what is meant by degrowth. Degrowth means not tying the success of nations and people to that of GDP YoY. It is not sustainable. What I mean by degrowth is removing the growth imperative from economy and switching to a sustainable economy. The studies have shown (referenced in Hickel's book) that material consumption goes up with technological innovation. This means that the…
The problem is you swallowed the “capitalism is evil” pill and now you’re confusing everything. But it’s not complicated. GDP is literally ”the total sum of what humans value” (per year). GDP growth is “creating more of what humans value”, and profit is “reward for those who create value”. You can split what humans value into essentials (food, sex, medicine, security, …) and non-essentials (nice car, nice house, nice…
Degrowth doesn't mean ending capitalism, it just means living a little bit more communal, you need to check out items from the local community garage which there'd be one every two blocks.
With less material possessions also comes the need for less space in homes, so we can build homes just big enough, saving resources, etc. We can also use new building techniques life binishell homes that cost under 20k and are earthquake proof and very well insulated.
Nothing I've said ends capitalism, it just tapers materialism a bit
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So having >= 1,000,000,000 USD is somehow bad? How about 999,999,999? Still bad? How about 900,000,000? No? Hm. How much is too much, and why?
I appreciate your mathematical approach but what I consider bad is not having $1e9 or $9e8 but ability to pay less taxes per dollar than poorer folks. Bad thing is that kingpins of: mining, slavery and proprietary software are so rich while providing so little value to society/environment. Examples: mining materials from Earth is important, but the revenues should belong to all who live on the planet being mined. Sla…
Climate change, environmental remediation, therapeutics solving for cancer and similar maladies.