51–60 of 170 posts
Didn't Europe cut down most of it's forests before capitalism had a name? Are communist systems much different in their treatment of nature? This seems to be a more general problem than something which is the result of capitalism
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my take is that western and developed nations are just exporting all their problems to developing/manufacturing countries. it's not like europeans don't consume products that cause pollution, they just export the processes that create that pollution to other countries. if anything, europeans/americans are responsible for the majority of the pollution in china/india as a vast percentage of the goods produced end up be…
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The valuing of economic growth seems to be almost required as a Darwinian feature of nations. Resolve as a nation to value economic growth less than your neighbors, and you will soon be overpowered by them.
Not if all the nations do it together.
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Capitalism is the reason we have climate change: the environment is an externality that isn't priced in, and so it's treated as zero cost. Anybody who tries to incorporate that cost single-handledly will be at an economic disadvantage to somebody who doesn't, and capitalism will destroy the former and reward the latter.
That doesn't prescribe the solution, which is going to be a complex balance of millions of factors (both current and historical). Large, poor countries will have to play their parts, too.
But the lesson here is to identify what got us into this situation so that we can hope to find a way out. The free market caused it, and maybe it can be part of the solution -- but not unless there is also a non-free-market portion in which we all agree to stop treating the atmosphere as an infinite carbon sink.
It's only at that point that the real search for solutions can begin. But it's never going to happen while one country -- one of the largest carbon emitters both per-capita and collectively -- is unable to act because of enormous political influence from people who insist that it's a hoax.
Capitalism just values what people value. If nature is worth more as a tourist attraction than a farm, that is what it will be. I am not making excuses for capitalism here. I am just saying: you can either overthrow global capitalism and replace it with some new perfect system no one knows about yet OR we can start valuing different things as a society...
Capitalism values what capitalists value.
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> The idea of property came into existence long before capitalism, which seems to be the linchpin of your take. That is not what I understood. I understood a simplified definition of property under modern capitalism. Capitalist property value is overwhelmingly limited to physical utility and not to consequence of consumption. There are a few exceptions, in various countries and industry, notwithstanding. I did not se…
Prior to capitalism, I know of no system where “consequence of consumption” was a major aspect of the system. I’m trying to figure out where capitalism becomes a factor here.
Is every form of industrialization, from the USSR to the UK to the US to China, capitalist? Is the current energy transition, funded by massive amounts of capital, and the result of industrialization of technology, somehow less capitalistic? Are the ESG efforts somehow less capitalist? Sometimes, our mental frames are traps rather than tools for understanding the world. This essay makes me think that this person is q…
Can't say if every form of industrialization is capitalist, but the USSR and Communist China were/are state capitalist.
Is every form of industrialization, from the USSR to the UK to the US to China, capitalist? Is the current energy transition, funded by massive amounts of capital, and the result of industrialization of technology, somehow less capitalistic? Are the ESG efforts somehow less capitalist? Sometimes, our mental frames are traps rather than tools for understanding the world. This essay makes me think that this person is q…
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Where do you think all the products manufactured in China are going? The west is taking advantage of cheap labor in China and pushing all the externalities there. You're using a computer or smartphone that was presumably largely made in China to post this message. To then turn around and say that climate change is entirely China's fault is absurd. You have to look at what countries are actually consuming the products…
China consumes most of what they are making today. What do you think is happening? China is very different today than 20 years ago.
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Where do you think all the products manufactured in China are going? The west is taking advantage of cheap labor in China and pushing all the externalities there. You're using a computer or smartphone that was presumably largely made in China to post this message. To then turn around and say that climate change is entirely China's fault is absurd. You have to look at what countries are actually consuming the products…