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No, capitalism is the problem. You can't fix capitalism with more capitalism. Growth at all costs is what is killing us. Populations don't stabilize due to g
by pmiller2 6y ago
No, capitalism is the problem. You can't fix capitalism with more capitalism. Growth at all costs is what is killing us.
Populations don't stabilize due to growth. They stabilize when the standard of living reaches a point where having many children stops making sense. If only there was a way we could share our prosperity with everyone.... hmm. Is that called capitalism? Why, no, it is not.
We're not a virus on the Earth; we're cancer. Cancer only kills people if it grows too fast. For example, many men die with prostate cancer, while relatively few die of it.
- kodah 6y ago> No, capitalism is the problem. Blanket statements like this almost never help. They readily fall in danger of presenting a moralistic or normalizing argument in debate, which require zero baseline. If you're going to debate people you need to provide an actual solution that doesn't just say, "stop what you're doing", "you're the problem", etc... Conservation may have worked sometime in the 60's or earlier, however, economies would've stalled and our present would likely be quite different. It is possible to engineer our way out of climate change, but it will take the best minds being 100% committed to it and incentives that align to it.
- pmiller2 6y agoThe solution is ecosocialism.
- fastball 6y agoSocialism will never work before you get to a post-scarcity economy. Guess what the best way to get to a post-scarcity economy is? You guessed it, growth. Innovation. Progress. Not stalling it.
- pmiller2 6y agoWe already have enough wealth in the world to share. There's no need to continue oppressing the global south in order to fuel growth that's going to kill us. I may have agreed with you before capitalism pissed away our future. But, we just don't have the time left, and we must sacrifice in the short term to save the long term. These are facts. If we don't take drastic action now, climate change will abolish capitalism for us in a few decades. Is that what you want?
- 0-_-0 6y agoWhat would you replace capitalism with? Would the unintended sideeffects of that system be much worse than capitalism?
- fastball 6y agoNobody proposed growth at all costs, but I don't think we have the same understanding of what growth means. To wit: how does your standard of living "reach a certain point" without growth? How does your SoL get higher without growing your manufacturing capabilities; without growing your power generation capacity? We're neither a virus nor a cancer. We're the only thing that matters. The earth doesn't care if it dies. It doesn't have feelings. The last [insert endangered species here] doesn't know that it is the last of its kind, it doesn't care either. The only reason these things matter is because people care. The solution is therefore never going to be "make people's lives worse".
- pmiller2 6y agoVery easily. Share the wealth now, and population growth will slow. When there are fewer humans on the planet, standards of living will rise. If humanity can't accept the temporary reduction of some people's standard of living to save civilization, then there is no hope. Therefore, I choose to believe you are wrong here. Incidentally, the people who have made everyone's life worse aren't those who are going to fix the situation. They're those who kept borrowing from future generations to make their lives better.
- fastball 6y agoAh, I see the problem. You think when I say "growth" I mean population growth. I do not. Well I do, but that's the minority of what I'm talking about when I say "growth". > If humanity can't accept the temporary reduction of some people's standard of living to save civilization, then there is no hope Citation very much needed. You asserting that we need to reduce certain people's SoL is not the same as demonstrating such, and neither you nor anyone else has done so. Don't know who you're referring to with your last statement, but OK.
- pmiller2 6y agoNo, I mean growth in consumption. People borrowed from the future by consuming too much. It was, and is unsustainable. Reduction in population is the way to achieve reduction in consumption. Show me you're willing to be convinced, and I'll give you every citation you need.