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> We could easily cut our use of fossil fuels if we weren't trying to balance that with an arbitrary GDP growth target. We could stop incentivizing people and
by avgcorrection 3y ago
> We could easily cut our use of fossil fuels if we weren't trying to balance that with an arbitrary GDP growth target. We could stop incentivizing people and companies to consume disposable products. We could stop subsidizing massive industrial farms and instead focus on eating locally and growing some of your own food.
Then it's the small task of changing the economic model of the entire developed (and less developed, and exploited) world. The model that all of the richest and most powerful people depend on.
- flagrant_taco 3y agoThe economic model is going to change one way or another. A model designed around perpetual growth will always fail, and there are already plenty of cracks showing. A major economic change sounds impossible, but we've done it in the US at least three times in the last century.
- quonn 3y agoThat was true 200 years ago and maybe even 200.000 years ago. Some day there will be no more growth - but it could be another 200.000 years.
- xkcd-sucks 3y agoThat's the value of space colonization, or the hope and promise of space colonization -- Preservation on of the economy
- avgcorrection 3y ago> A major economic change sounds impossible, but we've done it in the US at least three times in the last century. No.
- flagrant_taco 3y agoCreating the Federal Reserve was a fundamental change. Confiscating gold then pegging the US dollar to a gold-backed value was a fundamental change. Getting rid of the gold standard and going full fiat sad a fundamental change. The economic model, monetary policy, and incentives of each system were completely different. We may not have renamed the currency or the country, but that doesn't change the fact that those were major economic shifts.
- qubex 3y agoAnd just on cue there it is: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of Capitalism”, variously attributed to Frederic Jameson and Mark Fisher (amongst others).
- avgcorrection 3y agoOk?
- azinman2 3y agoBecause communist countries don’t pollute?
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y agoIf someone says "end of capitalism" and this is assumed to be "about communist countries", because it's binary, what else is there? Then this is precisely the dangerous failure of imagination being pointed to.
- qubex 3y agoI’m quite stunned by the virulence of the responses and how strong the (false) dichotomy between ‘communism’ and ‘capitalism’ is.
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y agoThe knee is jerking for sure. The virulence suggests insecurity.
- qubex 3y agoIt’s not an observation about communism-vs-capitalism (or at least that’s not how I understand it): it’s about how we’re collectively as a society so fixated upon the inevitability of property rights and capitalism and return on investment and the primacy of profit that we cannot contemplate that we may need to abandon all these precepts in order to avert climatic disaster (or some other existential threat).