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You might consider how hunter-gatherers (probably) ate all the mammoths, and other elephant-alikes, and the giant kangaroos. I mean capitalism isn't crucial to
by card_zero 2mo ago
You might consider how hunter-gatherers (probably) ate all the mammoths, and other elephant-alikes, and the giant kangaroos. I mean capitalism isn't crucial to making humans immoderate although I suppose it gets them better boats.
- annzabelle 2mo agoThe Māori ate all the Moa before Europeans showed up, and they had some pretty damn good boats before capitalism. Not disagreeing or anything, just thought it was a funny anecdote.
- card_zero 2mo agoThere's some kind of tacit ideological downvote gunfight going on in this thread. Run for cover!
- red-iron-pine 2mo agoits a startup incubator, capitalism is why they here
- riffraff 2mo agoThe book "not the end of the world" by Hanna Ritchie makes a neat point that humans have never lived in what we would call a sustainable way, but it's possible for this generation to be the first one that does.
- pjc50 2mo agoEither there is a first sustainable generation, or one day there will be a last unsustainable generation.
- gonzalohm 2mo agoHow is that possible? At some point there were a small amount of humans and they probably were not able to consume resources faster than nature can replenish them
- expedition32 2mo agoNomadic tribes have to be constantly on the move because they stripped the land around them.
- nickserv 2mo agoNomads typically live in areas very poor in resources (like Touaregs in deserts) or with high seasonal variation (like Sioux in plains). There is nothing inherently destructive with the lifestyle, and in fact many other animals are nomadic or have seasonal migrations.
- vkou 2mo agoNomads also live in those areas because agrarians pushes them out of more productive land. Prior to the development of agriculture, there wasn't such a distinction.
- inigyou 2mo agoThat's sustainable if the average area per tribe that exists is much greater than the tribe actually needs in total.
- M95D 2mo agoThat was sustainable as long as they killed each other at the same rate as they reproduced, so they didn't fill all the available area. Civilized societies and medicine destroyed any chance of sustainability until contraception was invented. Now, only the pension funds propaganda keeps us from reaching a sustainable population again.
- ocodo 2mo agoHanna mention there were 8x less of us 120 years ago? (also that population replacement is failing, so it's not all bad.)
- vintermann 2mo agoCapitalism is just one form of "let people with power use that power freely to accumulate more power", which never ends well. But the alternative "overthrow power" is costly enough that we usually procrastinate.
- philipallstar 2mo agoCapitalism explicitly wants to separate power decisions, e.g. "throw that man in jail" from money decisions, e.g. "consumer demand shows we should build more of widget X and less of widget Y". Things like Communism, Fascism, monarchy want to combine them, so the government/leader has the power and the money decisions.
- roenxi 2mo agoThere are famously capitalist countries that are monarchies (like the UK), so as written that has to be wrong. There isn't really a definition of what "capitalism" means, although we can be fairly confident it involves people owning capital. Arguably it means that the people who own the capital should control the lion's share of political power (which, coincidentally, is how the US works). The thing that makes communism (and fascism to a lesser extent) anti-capitalist are that it rejects the idea people should be allowed to own and control capital. So there is a clear incompatibility with communism even if the exact nature of capitalism isn't clear.
- vintermann 2mo ago> Arguably it means that the people who own the capital should control the lion's share of political power The ideology, such as it is, doesn't have to explicitly say that capital should have political power. It merely says that it's a moral outrage to prevent the rich from spending their money however they choose. But the ideology is secondary to capital anyway. If we let the rich get rich enough, that's strong incentive for inventing ideological justifications for it; after all to be friends with the powerful gives an easy life, and to be their enemy give a hard one.
- soco 2mo agoThe main difference being the scale we can (and we do) bring species to extinction nowadays, even collaterally. Also nowadays we know exactly what we are doing, yet we press the gas pedal even harder to maximize shareholder value. So no, the comparison doesn't hold.
- pasquinelli 2mo agoso capitalism gets the credit for technological advancement but not the blame for environmental degradation?
- bluGill 2mo agoCorrect. Capitalism is one of many different systems that degraded the environment. By contrast nothing else has really advanced humans. Arguably capitalism is the first system to see environmental problems and try to solve them.
- inigyou 2mo agoWho invented the internet and for what ideology?
- M95D 2mo agoArguably? Capitalism will crash and burn before it will solve any env problem. May I remind you that without NASA (not a private entity) and without gov regulations (not industry self-regulation) we wouldn't have an ozone layer today.
- anon84873628 2mo ago