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On the contrary I don't agree that capitalism is responsible for environmental decline. If anything environmental decline can be attributed to the form of demo

On the contrary I don't agree that capitalism is responsible for environmental decline. If anything environmental decline can be attributed to the form of democracy in which companies control government policy via donations and lobbyists. The government policy thus serves the interests not of the people but of the companies. Companies have no interest in anything but furthering their own goals, typically to make money without any attribution of the collateral costs such as environmental vandalism. This is not about capitalism - it's about broken democracy, subverted to become some weird system of government that serves companies and vested interest above those of the citizens. Nor are billionaires the cause of poverty. There's plenty of money to go around and plenty of resources to go around with room to spare for billionaires. Poverty exists because governments expend the resources to the betterment of companies rather than the citizens. If we suddenly took all the money from all the billionaires this would make zero difference to poverty because the reasons for poverty have little or no relationship to the existence of billionaires.

omegaworks 7y ago
>Companies have no interest in anything but furthering their own goals, typically to make money without any attribution of the collateral costs such as environmental vandalism. These kinds of companies are precisely the form in which capitalism has shaped them. Cost externalization (collateral costs, as you call them) are a competitive advantage, and under an improperly regulated capitalism these entities are incentivized to find and exploit every single one of these advantages to dominate and eventually monopolize their market. What we are debating now is if it even possible to create a system of properly regulated capitalism. Will capitalism necessarily exhaust the planet, capture and subsume every form of regulatory control and destroy itself.
- andrewstuart 7y ago
  I agree. I think our current form of government is completely unsuited to saving civilisation. There will be an environment driven revolution within 20 years. The current generation of children will include deeply radicalised kids so disillusioned with government that it will lead to an overthrow. Exactly what that will look like cannot be predicted. I think it will be violent because the government has so many protections in place to prevent fundamental change, but that is what future generations will want, due to the dying earth.
  - omegaworks 7y ago
    >There will be an environment driven revolution within 20 years. Whether it takes the form of eco-socialism or eco-fascism is the choice we have to make.
  - crispinb 7y ago
    > The current generation of children will include deeply radicalised kids so disillusioned with government that it will lead to an overthrow. We're seeing hints of that now, and it's one of the few chinks of light. I don't see how they can succeed, but I don't take my own predictions too seriously
cryptica 7y ago
>> If we suddenly took all the money from all the billionaires this would make zero difference to poverty It would make a massive difference. Without billionaires, there would be more millionaires[1], and their collective ability (and collective incentive) to invest their money efficiently would be far greater. More minds making more sophisticated investment decisions under more pressure using smaller amounts of money. A billionaire investor is a lazy investor. They can afford to make blanket decisions which ignore all the intricate negative ramifications of those decisions. When you factor in the inefficiencies created by corporate monopolies and index funds which reward lazy investors without any risk[2], the people who end up paying for those inefficiencies are members of the working class. [1] When we consider that supply tends to adjust to meet demand, we can deduce that if we were to artificially limit the amount of supply that any single person could reap the rewards from (which is equivalent to artificially limiting wealth accumulation of a single person), then we would need a larger number of people to supply the same quantity of goods/services. [2] The risk is essentially 0 because index funds such as S&P500 spread risk across many stocks such that only the complete and sudden collapse of human society could result in any significant loss of investment. As a human investor, if society were to collapse completely, you probably wouldn't survive anyway, so within the scope of human experience, your risk of living to see your investment fail is 0.
panarky 7y ago
> I don't agree that capitalism is responsible for environmental decline > environmental decline can be attributed to the form of democracy in which companies control government policy These are the same thing everywhere except in theory.
- crispinb 7y ago
  Yeah. Capitalism apologists now sound very much like the credulous lefties who made excuses for the Soviet Union's many catastrophes, long after it was manifestly a disaster. A benign idealist version might exist in some Platonic realm, but for now the capitalism we have is a dire threat to all.
crispinb 7y ago
> Nor are billionaires the cause of poverty Whether that's true or not, many billionaires (Bezos, Thiel etc) are certainly propagandists of death cult capitalism.

omegaworks 7y ago

>Companies have no interest in anything but furthering their own goals, typically to make money without any attribution of the collateral costs such as environmental vandalism. These kinds of companies are precisely the form in which capitalism has shaped them. Cost externalization (collateral costs, as you call them) are a competitive advantage, and under an improperly regulated capitalism these entities are incentivized to find and exploit every single one of these advantages to dominate and eventually monopolize their market. What we are debating now is if it even possible to create a system of properly regulated capitalism. Will capitalism necessarily exhaust the planet, capture and subsume every form of regulatory control and destroy itself.

andrewstuart 7y ago
I agree. I think our current form of government is completely unsuited to saving civilisation. There will be an environment driven revolution within 20 years. The current generation of children will include deeply radicalised kids so disillusioned with government that it will lead to an overthrow. Exactly what that will look like cannot be predicted. I think it will be violent because the government has so many protections in place to prevent fundamental change, but that is what future generations will want, due to the dying earth.
- omegaworks 7y ago
  >There will be an environment driven revolution within 20 years. Whether it takes the form of eco-socialism or eco-fascism is the choice we have to make.
- crispinb 7y ago
  > The current generation of children will include deeply radicalised kids so disillusioned with government that it will lead to an overthrow. We're seeing hints of that now, and it's one of the few chinks of light. I don't see how they can succeed, but I don't take my own predictions too seriously

cryptica 7y ago

>> If we suddenly took all the money from all the billionaires this would make zero difference to poverty It would make a massive difference. Without billionaires, there would be more millionaires[1], and their collective ability (and collective incentive) to invest their money efficiently would be far greater. More minds making more sophisticated investment decisions under more pressure using smaller amounts of money. A billionaire investor is a lazy investor. They can afford to make blanket decisions which ignore all the intricate negative ramifications of those decisions. When you factor in the inefficiencies created by corporate monopolies and index funds which reward lazy investors without any risk[2], the people who end up paying for those inefficiencies are members of the working class. [1] When we consider that supply tends to adjust to meet demand, we can deduce that if we were to artificially limit the amount of supply that any single person could reap the rewards from (which is equivalent to artificially limiting wealth accumulation of a single person), then we would need a larger number of people to supply the same quantity of goods/services. [2] The risk is essentially 0 because index funds such as S&P500 spread risk across many stocks such that only the complete and sudden collapse of human society could result in any significant loss of investment. As a human investor, if society were to collapse completely, you probably wouldn't survive anyway, so within the scope of human experience, your risk of living to see your investment fail is 0.

panarky 7y ago

> I don't agree that capitalism is responsible for environmental decline > environmental decline can be attributed to the form of democracy in which companies control government policy These are the same thing everywhere except in theory.

crispinb 7y ago
Yeah. Capitalism apologists now sound very much like the credulous lefties who made excuses for the Soviet Union's many catastrophes, long after it was manifestly a disaster. A benign idealist version might exist in some Platonic realm, but for now the capitalism we have is a dire threat to all.

crispinb 7y ago

> Nor are billionaires the cause of poverty Whether that's true or not, many billionaires (Bezos, Thiel etc) are certainly propagandists of death cult capitalism.