4 ms·

Self sustaining societies will always be out competed and subsumed by extractive ones.

nine_k 6y ago
Not always, but as long as the unsustainable extraction lasts. By definition, it has to run out of the stuff it's extracting.
titzer 6y ago
Extractive ones will always burn out in the long run as they will run out of resources to extract. They either learn to live in the waste they've produced, i.e. they become recyclers, or they simply die off. It's a question of how much collateral damage they do over their lifetime. No matter how bad they screw up, in the very long run, Earth has a tendency to figure out how to recycle the raw materials. After all, Earth's ecosystems are the result of surviving cataclysm after cataclysm, from volcanism to asteroid strikes to climate change, to invasive species after invasive species. It's got a lot of experience dealing with giant debris piles left over from one shitstorm after another, be that a biological plague or the ash of an impact event.
- _carbyau_ 6y ago
  Yeah, mother earth is fine. Whether humanity will suffer a catastrophe of our own making is another question.
  - javajosh 6y ago
    "Mother earth is fine." I think this ignores the human status as a thinking animal, and the glaringly obvious responsibility we collectively share for keeping our biosphere in good condition. That is, that we keep the remarkable diversity of life intact, and do not pointlessly throw the most unique and precious part of our universe in a chipper to make more particle board furniture. It is interesting that by incrementally converting the life-support system of our planet into dollar store trash, we could have similar impact on the biosphere as an ELE meteor impact! The tragedy is that, at least theoretically, this particular cause is avoidable. Or was. (Maybe science really is to blame? Wouldn't that be sad.)
    - _carbyau_ 6y ago
      While I think our views are similar, I clearly have a differing take on "Mother earth is fine." To me, it implies that planet earth is as implacable as the rest of the universe. It doesn't have feelings. It doesn't care. And it will still be here for millennia yet. This changes the conversation from: "We're hurting mother earth." to "We're thinking animals and yet we're making a poor future for ourselves." https://www.gocomics.com/joelpett/2009/12/13 https://www.gocomics.com/joelpett/2009/12/13
      - titzer 6y ago
        I'm much more fatalistic for humans than either of you. We've been downright nasty to all other forms of life on this planet for millenia, and now we've stepped up from just being nasty to being positively ecocidal, ratcheting up the biodiversity loss with each new techno-monstrosity we create. We are 100% headed for the trash heap, IMHO. You're right that we are "thinking animals", but we've got a global animus now that is obsessed money and growth. We're infected with a greed virus that I think is fatal to its host. And the problem, as I see it, and alluded to in my OP, is that local incentives are all wrong now. Nearly every decision that is rewarded by the markets at a local level is bad in the long term. You can teach a small fraction of people so that they may become enlightened, but greed spreads faster, and is better rewarded. In a game-theoretic view of this, it will always pay to defect from those conserving and living sustainably, as you externalize the losses onto an unseen and uncared-for future, and spread that loss among everyone else. Moral hazard, everywhere. But now, with global civilization and industrialization, and instant communication, we've become more than a diseased troop of chimps headed for a brawl in the forest; we're an insanely overpowerful superorganism driven by unquenchable lust for exponential growth and armed with millions of years of energy reserves--even nuclear weapons! There's literally nowhere on Earth that we can't or won't go in search of resources or vacation potential. As much of an atheist as I am, I can't help but feel a pang of spirituality about this, and that pang is, unfortunately, despair for the inhabitants of this green jewel that is being ravaged. And by inhabitants, I'm broad in including all living things, regardless if they are cute or have fangs and spit venom. All those funny animals, frogs, plants, fungi. They got fucked because money.
  - anonporridge 6y ago
    Mother earth will be fine only until the sun expands to the point that it boils off the oceans and completely sterilizes all life within the next billion years. I guess the dead rock ball will still be fine.

Not always, but as long as the unsustainable extraction lasts. By definition, it has to run out of the stuff it's extracting.

titzer 6y ago

Extractive ones will always burn out in the long run as they will run out of resources to extract. They either learn to live in the waste they've produced, i.e. they become recyclers, or they simply die off. It's a question of how much collateral damage they do over their lifetime. No matter how bad they screw up, in the very long run, Earth has a tendency to figure out how to recycle the raw materials. After all, Earth's ecosystems are the result of surviving cataclysm after cataclysm, from volcanism to asteroid strikes to climate change, to invasive species after invasive species. It's got a lot of experience dealing with giant debris piles left over from one shitstorm after another, be that a biological plague or the ash of an impact event.

_carbyau_ 6y ago
Yeah, mother earth is fine. Whether humanity will suffer a catastrophe of our own making is another question.
- javajosh 6y ago
  "Mother earth is fine." I think this ignores the human status as a thinking animal, and the glaringly obvious responsibility we collectively share for keeping our biosphere in good condition. That is, that we keep the remarkable diversity of life intact, and do not pointlessly throw the most unique and precious part of our universe in a chipper to make more particle board furniture. It is interesting that by incrementally converting the life-support system of our planet into dollar store trash, we could have similar impact on the biosphere as an ELE meteor impact! The tragedy is that, at least theoretically, this particular cause is avoidable. Or was. (Maybe science really is to blame? Wouldn't that be sad.)
  - _carbyau_ 6y ago
    While I think our views are similar, I clearly have a differing take on "Mother earth is fine." To me, it implies that planet earth is as implacable as the rest of the universe. It doesn't have feelings. It doesn't care. And it will still be here for millennia yet. This changes the conversation from: "We're hurting mother earth." to "We're thinking animals and yet we're making a poor future for ourselves." https://www.gocomics.com/joelpett/2009/12/13 https://www.gocomics.com/joelpett/2009/12/13
    - titzer 6y ago
      I'm much more fatalistic for humans than either of you. We've been downright nasty to all other forms of life on this planet for millenia, and now we've stepped up from just being nasty to being positively ecocidal, ratcheting up the biodiversity loss with each new techno-monstrosity we create. We are 100% headed for the trash heap, IMHO. You're right that we are "thinking animals", but we've got a global animus now that is obsessed money and growth. We're infected with a greed virus that I think is fatal to its host. And the problem, as I see it, and alluded to in my OP, is that local incentives are all wrong now. Nearly every decision that is rewarded by the markets at a local level is bad in the long term. You can teach a small fraction of people so that they may become enlightened, but greed spreads faster, and is better rewarded. In a game-theoretic view of this, it will always pay to defect from those conserving and living sustainably, as you externalize the losses onto an unseen and uncared-for future, and spread that loss among everyone else. Moral hazard, everywhere. But now, with global civilization and industrialization, and instant communication, we've become more than a diseased troop of chimps headed for a brawl in the forest; we're an insanely overpowerful superorganism driven by unquenchable lust for exponential growth and armed with millions of years of energy reserves--even nuclear weapons! There's literally nowhere on Earth that we can't or won't go in search of resources or vacation potential. As much of an atheist as I am, I can't help but feel a pang of spirituality about this, and that pang is, unfortunately, despair for the inhabitants of this green jewel that is being ravaged. And by inhabitants, I'm broad in including all living things, regardless if they are cute or have fangs and spit venom. All those funny animals, frogs, plants, fungi. They got fucked because money.
- anonporridge 6y ago
  Mother earth will be fine only until the sun expands to the point that it boils off the oceans and completely sterilizes all life within the next billion years. I guess the dead rock ball will still be fine.