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Capitalism's relentless drive for growth and deregulation would like a word with you. My favorite book of 2020 if you'd like to read more: https://www.jasonhic

Capitalism's relentless drive for growth and deregulation would like a word with you. My favorite book of 2020 if you'd like to read more: https://www.jasonhickel.org/less-is-more https://www.jasonhickel.org/less-is-more

indymike 6y ago
Physics is not an economic system.
- dm319 6y ago
  The pursuit of continuous growth has an effect on our physical world.
  - indymike 6y ago
    Capitalism is not the pursuit of continuous growth, either.
    - allworknoplay 6y ago
      GDP and GDP growth are the universal metrics by which every major international organization judges and ranks economies. IMF voting is literally determined by your GDP. There are no other metrics that are remotely commonly used to determine real international policies. Every nation on earth is in explicit competition with every other to grow faster because of this. These policies are prescriptions by capitalist countries that weren't like this before and likely wouldn't be after. It's beyond silly to claim that capitalism doesn't require endless growth.
      - kortilla 6y ago
        GDP doesn’t mean growth. A country going through an economic contraction still has a massive GDP. There are no IMF policies that favor growth rates, just the raw GDP. > It's beyond silly to claim that capitalism doesn't require endless growth. Capitalism requires no such thing. It’s human reproduction and striving for better conditions that requires economic expansion. That doesn’t change under socialism/communism/whatever. Finally, GDP growth does not imply anything about carbon production. Some of the biggest growth sectors going forward are entirely about clean energy.
        allworknoplay 6y ago
        I said GDP and GDP growth, and if two countries are competing on GDP, the mechanism by which they compete is growth. I know you've seen my book recommendation in the thread here; it's about the incentives behind growth, and how de-growth can work and still encourage human flourishing. Rather than just reacting negatively, why not look it up?
        indymike 6y ago
        tl,dr; You may have a really good idea, but your presentation is distracting people from the idea. I think you are incorrectly characterizing capitalism, and people are off-put by the inaccuracy and it's implication that property must be taken from people. Capitalism is simple: it is an economic system where the means of production are owned and controlled by private citizens and operated for profit (the definition of profit is not always making lots of money). Nothing more, nothing less. A lot of the startup and tech economy is based squarely on private ownership of the means of production (i.e. companies). GDP and the focus on GDP growth is somewhat exclusive of whatever ism your country's economy is based on.
      - missedthecue 6y ago
        It doesn't drive for endless growth. It drives for endless improvements in efficiency, which are theoretically finite, but practically infinite. A good example of this is agriculture. We have less of that precious Iowan topsoil than we did 100 years ago, but crop yields are higher than ever. That's what capitalism is.
      - imtringued 6y ago
        Capitalism isn't about endless growth, it's about growing as quickly as possible. The dark ages have their name for a reason. We simply did not have a societal model that rewarded improving ourselves. We were simply stuck in the status quo. The Renaissance was purely about changing this mode of thinking on a societal level and capitalism is the most effective way of rewarding growth. Communism tends to fall behind because the system is built around people willing to accept their current life as is. If we for some reason end up in a situation where we have done everything that is possible capitalism will cease to provide growth beyond inflation.
        erik_seaberg 6y ago
        Capitalism rewards efficiency with market share. During contraction of an industry, efficient producers should be scaling down slowly while others collapse. We may think it depends on growth, but that’s because we put it to work sustaining an exploding population for several generations.
- allworknoplay 6y ago
  Our ability to organize the resources equitably and sustainably is the first barrier here, only then can we look at the resources as the hard limit.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
mulmen 6y ago
I’m counting on capitalism. We have already seen renewables become more affordable than coal and nuclear. Now it’s just a matter of handling base loads and we have no shortage of ideas there. Excess energy can be dumped in to carbon sequestration. Market forces have and will drive all of this.
- kolinko 6y ago
  hear hear. capitalism already works in solar’s favour and the moment solar+storage become cheaper than coal the energy sector will switch almost instantly. with other sectors we need governments still to make the transition
  - epistasis 6y ago
    We also need to make sure that the government does not prevent the transition to solar. This is a huge problem, with large moneyed interests sponsoring state legislation to prevent deployment of renewables. State legislators have been arrested in Ohio for taking bribes to pass anti-renewable legislation, but despite their arrest, the legislation they enacted is still on the books. The companies got what they wanted, the government still is suppressing solar in Ohio, despite the legal system putting corrupt politicians in jail.
- foerbert 6y ago
  What market force do you see driving the use of excess energy to sequester carbon? What force is going to ensure enough carbon is sequestered? Climate change is a kind of prototypical example of a tragedy of the commons. Capitalism has not been particularly noteworthy for solving these sorts of problems. I can certainly see it helping to make renewables more affordable, but that's simply not enough at this point.
  - mulmen 6y ago
    Quick quack suggests CO2 can be converted to carbon fiber. Also looks promising as a feed stock in the chemical and plastics industries. We figured out a use for gasoline, I’m sure we will think of something. Doesn’t hurt for the government to put a thumb on the scale either.
wussboy 6y ago
I’m not so sure. The third sentence on that web site is untrue: “Capitalism demands perpetual expansion”. It does not. If the author is going to be so free with facts right from the beginning, why would I trust the rest of his work?
- allworknoplay 6y ago
  Glad you asked! He's a marxist, so statements like that are grounded in a historical materialist analysis -- very basically, that the material result of policies is their reality, not whatever ideals they might aspire to. He makes a very solid case that capitalism can't really do anything else -- he doesn't just ask the reader to take this on faith (I would have hated it if that were the case). The book does use a lot of such analysis, which can be pretty offputting if you're not used to it, but each such example is really cogent and well supported, so overall I found it a pretty phenomenal aggregation of history and very solid analysis/math for how we think about what's sustainable and what isn't. His pattern in the book tends to be 1. strong assertion => 2. actual argument => 3. repeat assertion; I did find myself reacting to the first assertion there negatively because they often sound like overgeneralizations at first, but in each case he really did support them.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    > He's a marxist, so statements like that are grounded in a historical materialist analysis -- very basically, that the material result of policies is their reality, not whatever ideals they might aspire to. Not a very sound way of thinking if you care about confounding variables. Presumably there are always special exemptions when not analyzing capitalism? I.e. The material result of communist policies in the USSR (total collapse) don’t apply to communism because it wasn’t true communism? If so, then we don’t really have true capitalism either so you can’t really make any assertions about capitalism.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - allworknoplay 6y ago

indymike 6y ago

Physics is not an economic system.

dm319 6y ago
The pursuit of continuous growth has an effect on our physical world.
- indymike 6y ago
  Capitalism is not the pursuit of continuous growth, either.
  - allworknoplay 6y ago
    GDP and GDP growth are the universal metrics by which every major international organization judges and ranks economies. IMF voting is literally determined by your GDP. There are no other metrics that are remotely commonly used to determine real international policies. Every nation on earth is in explicit competition with every other to grow faster because of this. These policies are prescriptions by capitalist countries that weren't like this before and likely wouldn't be after. It's beyond silly to claim that capitalism doesn't require endless growth.
    - kortilla 6y ago
      GDP doesn’t mean growth. A country going through an economic contraction still has a massive GDP. There are no IMF policies that favor growth rates, just the raw GDP. > It's beyond silly to claim that capitalism doesn't require endless growth. Capitalism requires no such thing. It’s human reproduction and striving for better conditions that requires economic expansion. That doesn’t change under socialism/communism/whatever. Finally, GDP growth does not imply anything about carbon production. Some of the biggest growth sectors going forward are entirely about clean energy.
      - allworknoplay 6y ago
        I said GDP and GDP growth, and if two countries are competing on GDP, the mechanism by which they compete is growth. I know you've seen my book recommendation in the thread here; it's about the incentives behind growth, and how de-growth can work and still encourage human flourishing. Rather than just reacting negatively, why not look it up?
        indymike 6y ago
        tl,dr; You may have a really good idea, but your presentation is distracting people from the idea. I think you are incorrectly characterizing capitalism, and people are off-put by the inaccuracy and it's implication that property must be taken from people. Capitalism is simple: it is an economic system where the means of production are owned and controlled by private citizens and operated for profit (the definition of profit is not always making lots of money). Nothing more, nothing less. A lot of the startup and tech economy is based squarely on private ownership of the means of production (i.e. companies). GDP and the focus on GDP growth is somewhat exclusive of whatever ism your country's economy is based on.
    - missedthecue 6y ago
      It doesn't drive for endless growth. It drives for endless improvements in efficiency, which are theoretically finite, but practically infinite. A good example of this is agriculture. We have less of that precious Iowan topsoil than we did 100 years ago, but crop yields are higher than ever. That's what capitalism is.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      Capitalism isn't about endless growth, it's about growing as quickly as possible. The dark ages have their name for a reason. We simply did not have a societal model that rewarded improving ourselves. We were simply stuck in the status quo. The Renaissance was purely about changing this mode of thinking on a societal level and capitalism is the most effective way of rewarding growth. Communism tends to fall behind because the system is built around people willing to accept their current life as is. If we for some reason end up in a situation where we have done everything that is possible capitalism will cease to provide growth beyond inflation.
      - erik_seaberg 6y ago
        Capitalism rewards efficiency with market share. During contraction of an industry, efficient producers should be scaling down slowly while others collapse. We may think it depends on growth, but that’s because we put it to work sustaining an exploding population for several generations.
allworknoplay 6y ago
Our ability to organize the resources equitably and sustainably is the first barrier here, only then can we look at the resources as the hard limit.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

mulmen 6y ago

I’m counting on capitalism. We have already seen renewables become more affordable than coal and nuclear. Now it’s just a matter of handling base loads and we have no shortage of ideas there. Excess energy can be dumped in to carbon sequestration. Market forces have and will drive all of this.

kolinko 6y ago
hear hear. capitalism already works in solar’s favour and the moment solar+storage become cheaper than coal the energy sector will switch almost instantly. with other sectors we need governments still to make the transition
- epistasis 6y ago
  We also need to make sure that the government does not prevent the transition to solar. This is a huge problem, with large moneyed interests sponsoring state legislation to prevent deployment of renewables. State legislators have been arrested in Ohio for taking bribes to pass anti-renewable legislation, but despite their arrest, the legislation they enacted is still on the books. The companies got what they wanted, the government still is suppressing solar in Ohio, despite the legal system putting corrupt politicians in jail.
foerbert 6y ago
What market force do you see driving the use of excess energy to sequester carbon? What force is going to ensure enough carbon is sequestered? Climate change is a kind of prototypical example of a tragedy of the commons. Capitalism has not been particularly noteworthy for solving these sorts of problems. I can certainly see it helping to make renewables more affordable, but that's simply not enough at this point.
- mulmen 6y ago
  Quick quack suggests CO2 can be converted to carbon fiber. Also looks promising as a feed stock in the chemical and plastics industries. We figured out a use for gasoline, I’m sure we will think of something. Doesn’t hurt for the government to put a thumb on the scale either.

wussboy 6y ago

I’m not so sure. The third sentence on that web site is untrue: “Capitalism demands perpetual expansion”. It does not. If the author is going to be so free with facts right from the beginning, why would I trust the rest of his work?

allworknoplay 6y ago
Glad you asked! He's a marxist, so statements like that are grounded in a historical materialist analysis -- very basically, that the material result of policies is their reality, not whatever ideals they might aspire to. He makes a very solid case that capitalism can't really do anything else -- he doesn't just ask the reader to take this on faith (I would have hated it if that were the case). The book does use a lot of such analysis, which can be pretty offputting if you're not used to it, but each such example is really cogent and well supported, so overall I found it a pretty phenomenal aggregation of history and very solid analysis/math for how we think about what's sustainable and what isn't. His pattern in the book tends to be 1. strong assertion => 2. actual argument => 3. repeat assertion; I did find myself reacting to the first assertion there negatively because they often sound like overgeneralizations at first, but in each case he really did support them.
- kortilla 6y ago
  > He's a marxist, so statements like that are grounded in a historical materialist analysis -- very basically, that the material result of policies is their reality, not whatever ideals they might aspire to. Not a very sound way of thinking if you care about confounding variables. Presumably there are always special exemptions when not analyzing capitalism? I.e. The material result of communist policies in the USSR (total collapse) don’t apply to communism because it wasn’t true communism? If so, then we don’t really have true capitalism either so you can’t really make any assertions about capitalism.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - allworknoplay 6y ago