4 ms·

>Why not give libertarianism a shot? Because it's capitalism on steroids? Are you not aware of the world we're living in? Every major forest destroyed, countle

>Why not give libertarianism a shot? Because it's capitalism on steroids? Are you not aware of the world we're living in? Every major forest destroyed, countless species exctinct, climate change reaching point of no return, etc. We urgently need to slow down, not speed up.

steve_rambo 3y ago
The most developed countries should show us an example then. I am not Argentinian or from South America at all, but we have the same problems. As long as an average American keeps their consumption levels at more than 10× of ours, I am not listening to what they think we should or shouldn't do. Same for other poor countries, I guess.
- thworp 3y ago
  That's the spirit. There really is no other way than development. If we try to go back to 19th-century resource consumption and CO2 emissions we also need 19th-century population numbers. If the "degrowth" (a euphemism for poverty and societal collapse) movement got absolute power that will be precisely the result, intentional or not.
thworp 3y ago
This is such a tired argument. The socialist block was, at least by the 1980s, much more wasteful and destructive to the environment than the capitalist world. I encourage you to search for videos like "1980s krakow winter" or "Elbe river GDR" to see a few examples. Then for comparison research when capitalist countries passed their various environmental protection laws. More than that, it's easy to make abstract statements like "we need to slow down", but how do you imagine that could be done? Who decides which sectors need to be frozen and how do we make sure we don't accidentally starve millions of Africans while doing it (look up food self-sufficiency numbers)?
- notahacker 3y ago
  > Then for comparison research when capitalist countries passed their various environmental protection laws. Then, for comparison, research the position people describing themselves as libertarians hold and held on the existence of these laws... (I'm not a big fan of blanket statements on growth like "we should slow down" either, but libertarians deserve no more credit for the enactment of environmental laws they campaigned against than Stalinists do for the reunification of Germany)
  - thworp 3y ago
    My comment was specifically a response to the "because it is capitalism on steroids" line of reasoning which implied that global warming and environment destruction are consequences of capitalism.

steve_rambo 3y ago

The most developed countries should show us an example then. I am not Argentinian or from South America at all, but we have the same problems. As long as an average American keeps their consumption levels at more than 10× of ours, I am not listening to what they think we should or shouldn't do. Same for other poor countries, I guess.

thworp 3y ago
That's the spirit. There really is no other way than development. If we try to go back to 19th-century resource consumption and CO2 emissions we also need 19th-century population numbers. If the "degrowth" (a euphemism for poverty and societal collapse) movement got absolute power that will be precisely the result, intentional or not.

thworp 3y ago

This is such a tired argument. The socialist block was, at least by the 1980s, much more wasteful and destructive to the environment than the capitalist world. I encourage you to search for videos like "1980s krakow winter" or "Elbe river GDR" to see a few examples. Then for comparison research when capitalist countries passed their various environmental protection laws. More than that, it's easy to make abstract statements like "we need to slow down", but how do you imagine that could be done? Who decides which sectors need to be frozen and how do we make sure we don't accidentally starve millions of Africans while doing it (look up food self-sufficiency numbers)?

notahacker 3y ago
> Then for comparison research when capitalist countries passed their various environmental protection laws. Then, for comparison, research the position people describing themselves as libertarians hold and held on the existence of these laws... (I'm not a big fan of blanket statements on growth like "we should slow down" either, but libertarians deserve no more credit for the enactment of environmental laws they campaigned against than Stalinists do for the reunification of Germany)
- thworp 3y ago
  My comment was specifically a response to the "because it is capitalism on steroids" line of reasoning which implied that global warming and environment destruction are consequences of capitalism.