4 ms·

Great reading! Things could of course play out like this but, since we have no really no clue, aiming for the stars is the most exciting alternative. The bigge

Great reading! Things could of course play out like this but, since we have no really no clue, aiming for the stars is the most exciting alternative. The biggest mistake we could be making right now is to waste the current free oil reserves that are probably necessary to move to the next technological level. But I guess capitalism leaves no other option: we need the profit motive to keep things running. Maybe another economic system would be better suited to reach grand goals, but which one?

LogicalBorg 13y ago
Utopianism, of course. Imagine a civilization fueled entirely by hopium!!
- gonvaled 13y ago
  I am not suggesting that capitalism is not the economic system most suited for human nature: it probably is (at least more suited than communism, if we accept that the theory of evolution can be applied to historical processes, and thus capitalism has survived as the fittest alternative) What I am suggesting is that precisely because human nature is only compatible with capitalism, we are not going to be able to tackle long term existential problems.
  - LogicalBorg 13y ago
    That is a sensible criticism. I agree that the human race is wasting absurdly vast quantities of oil and that they seem to display no more awareness of this issue than the average monkey. I'm not sure if "capitalism" is the problem though, since greed and waste existed long before its ideas were articulated. I sometimes thing our economic system should be overhauled with better accounting techniques so we actually count the expenditure of resources as a loss rather than as a profit as we currently do, under the rather dubious assumption that more consumption is always better. I guess we'll find out how badly we have erred when the future teaches us. I hope its lessons are gentle...
    - gonvaled 13y ago
      It has nothing to do about articulating the ideas of capitalism. Capitalism exists whether or not we articulate it , the same way that the Andromeda Galaxy existed before we saw it in our telescopes. My point is that human nature seems to be very much correlated to capitalism. And the important question is whether this is a fundamental characteristic of life, or is it just a feature of this particular version of intelligent life that we have in planet Earth? Or maybe is just a consequence of the evolution of our social system? To state it clearly: is it possible to conceive an intelligent society collaborating by other means than the ones that we are currently using? Could catastrophe be averted by working together in other ways? Are we humans at all capable of this? Currently, the answer seems to be no, but who knows.
Daniel_Newby 13y ago
Capitalism has already solved the problem using nuclear power. This solution has been back-burnered to get votes in the system we call democracy.
- arethuza 13y ago
  Was there much involvement of private capital in the initial development of nuclear power? Or indeed in ongoing attempts to investigate fusion power?
  - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
    No, but because the initial development was a crash-priority war time project. The later generations of fission reactors were privately funded. General Fusion (lead vortex compression) is venture backed. Bussard's fusion company is private, although the get lots of funding from government contracts.

LogicalBorg 13y ago

Utopianism, of course. Imagine a civilization fueled entirely by hopium!!

gonvaled 13y ago
I am not suggesting that capitalism is not the economic system most suited for human nature: it probably is (at least more suited than communism, if we accept that the theory of evolution can be applied to historical processes, and thus capitalism has survived as the fittest alternative) What I am suggesting is that precisely because human nature is only compatible with capitalism, we are not going to be able to tackle long term existential problems.
- LogicalBorg 13y ago
  That is a sensible criticism. I agree that the human race is wasting absurdly vast quantities of oil and that they seem to display no more awareness of this issue than the average monkey. I'm not sure if "capitalism" is the problem though, since greed and waste existed long before its ideas were articulated. I sometimes thing our economic system should be overhauled with better accounting techniques so we actually count the expenditure of resources as a loss rather than as a profit as we currently do, under the rather dubious assumption that more consumption is always better. I guess we'll find out how badly we have erred when the future teaches us. I hope its lessons are gentle...
  - gonvaled 13y ago
    It has nothing to do about articulating the ideas of capitalism. Capitalism exists whether or not we articulate it , the same way that the Andromeda Galaxy existed before we saw it in our telescopes. My point is that human nature seems to be very much correlated to capitalism. And the important question is whether this is a fundamental characteristic of life, or is it just a feature of this particular version of intelligent life that we have in planet Earth? Or maybe is just a consequence of the evolution of our social system? To state it clearly: is it possible to conceive an intelligent society collaborating by other means than the ones that we are currently using? Could catastrophe be averted by working together in other ways? Are we humans at all capable of this? Currently, the answer seems to be no, but who knows.

Daniel_Newby 13y ago

Capitalism has already solved the problem using nuclear power. This solution has been back-burnered to get votes in the system we call democracy.

arethuza 13y ago
Was there much involvement of private capital in the initial development of nuclear power? Or indeed in ongoing attempts to investigate fusion power?
- Daniel_Newby 13y ago
  No, but because the initial development was a crash-priority war time project. The later generations of fission reactors were privately funded. General Fusion (lead vortex compression) is venture backed. Bussard's fusion company is private, although the get lots of funding from government contracts.