Capitalism is Killing the Planet

[RestlessSoul]

IMO, people are killing the planet, not the economic system.
The opposite of obedience is anarchy. Neither extreme seems inviting.
Hopefully humanity will find it's way to someplace in the middle.

Exactly. There’s always a middle way, and most human beings are quite reasonable if they are allowed to be; less so, when we feel threatened

 

[Nakosis]

If employment is a right, then would this mean
that it can be imposed upon an employer against
their will? Nah.

I think I'd be ok with taking all of the unemployed and giving them a job in the government.
Provide housing and a minimum wage. We can start by replacing the people in Congress and the Senate.

 

[Twilight Hue]

- Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction | George Monbiot

"In consenting to the continued destruction of our life-support systems, we accommodate the desires of the ultra-rich and the powerful corporations they control.

We will endure only if we cease to consent. The 19th-century democracy campaigners knew this, the suffragettes knew it, Gandhi knew it, Martin Luther King knew it. The environmental protesters who demand systemic change have also grasped this fundamental truth .... we see people, mostly young people, refusing to consent. What they understand is history’s most important lesson. Our survival depends on disobedience."

Thoughts?

Um... no.

Has anyone thought of a feasibility study before making your own bow and arrow and looking for supper in the woods?

 

[Altfish]

It is your central heating, my car, her holiday in the Seychelles, his concrete flooring.....

None of these things is the fault of capitalism, regulated or otherwise. All of us have lifestyles, which we have chosen for ourselves, that create the problem.

What I object to is this business of "othering" the problem, as if it is nothing to do with virtuous Guardian readers. This is just the Leftie version of the denial of responsibility we all see on the Right.

Apart from the hypocrisy, I think it is a huge mistake to try to connect blame for the climate crisis with politics. All that does is make others think it is just another political cause, peddled by the same people they have always disagreed with about politics. That is not the way to get people on board and, even worse, it implies the solution requires some kind of radical change to our economic system, pushing the solution way out into never-never-land, instead of buckling down and getting on with it.

No, because capitalism is all about profit and shareholder dividends.
Without regulation you have polluted rivers and land, exploited workers, tax avoidance, etc.

 

[Altfish]

No capitalist economy on this planet is unregulated.

Who said it was?
It's the amount of regulation and the amount of enforcement that matters

 

[robocop (actually)]

- Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction | George Monbiot

"In consenting to the continued destruction of our life-support systems, we accommodate the desires of the ultra-rich and the powerful corporations they control.

We will endure only if we cease to consent. The 19th-century democracy campaigners knew this, the suffragettes knew it, Gandhi knew it, Martin Luther King knew it. The environmental protesters who demand systemic change have also grasped this fundamental truth .... we see people, mostly young people, refusing to consent. What they understand is history’s most important lesson. Our survival depends on disobedience."

Thoughts?

In fighting climate change, we need both parties one to cut emissions and the other to innovate, imo

 

[metis]

The real failure of capitalism and the culture that we are living in that accommodates it is that it's based on competition instead of cooperation.

And five decades ago Desmond Morris, a British anthropologist, predicted that America would have too much internal turmoil in the future because of excessive competition, as "a divided house cannot stand", and we're seeing this happening right now and in spades as there's concern that we could break out into civil war-- literally. And imagine what that would be like with over 350,000,000 guns in our country.

We're playing with fire, and yet we're being too dumb to recognize the danger signs.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I would not agree, it is UNCONTROLLED/UNREGULATED capitalism that causes the problem.

I have a somewhat liberal conscience -- I like the idea of social supports for a variety of things. I agree with another poster that capitalism really does create wealth, and that is necessary. But I agree with you -- everything we humans do needs some measure of regulation.

 

[Brinne]

Kind of unfortunately to be expected when the current system rewards and encourages greed

 

[Ponder This]

- Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction | George Monbiot

"In consenting to the continued destruction of our life-support systems, we accommodate the desires of the ultra-rich and the powerful corporations they control.

We will endure only if we cease to consent. The 19th-century democracy campaigners knew this, the suffragettes knew it, Gandhi knew it, Martin Luther King knew it. The environmental protesters who demand systemic change have also grasped this fundamental truth .... we see people, mostly young people, refusing to consent. What they understand is history’s most important lesson. Our survival depends on disobedience."

Thoughts?

Nothing screams gullible quite like a person who believes that if you take away Roman Abramovitch's yacht and force Bill Gates to stop flying personal jets, pollution is going to magically stop.

His use of Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and suffragettes to promote wealth redistribution is reprehensible. He seems to want people to use their methods but ignore their philosophies. They were all opposed to communism in fundamental ways.

Ghandi, "Those who talk about class war as being inevitable, have not understood the implications of nonviolence or have understood them only skin-deep."
Ghandi again, "I do not want to dispossess anybody. I should then be departing from the rule of ahimsa. If somebody else possesses more than I do, let him."
Martin Luther King, "Man becomes hardly more, in communism, than a depersonalized cog in the turning wheel of the state"
Famous suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst became a member of the Conservative Party in opposition to Bolshevism.

 

[Revoltingest]

Ugh, social justice.

Social justice is a fine thing.
But SJWs are the unreasonable wing,
willing to sacrifice free speech & such.

 

[Revoltingest]

No, but your Declaration of Independence held certain truths to be self evident.

That always struck me as a dumb thing to say.

By any reasonable interpretation, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must surely imply the right to work, and to be paid fairly for doing that work?

Who should be compelled to hire & pay the worker no one wants?

 

[Kooky]

Social justice is a fine thing.
But SJWs are the unreasonable wing,
willing to sacrifice free speech & such.

Last time I checked, SJWs mostly petition private media platforms and media providers to stop employing bigots and bigoted speech, which is freedom of speech working as intended.

 

[Revoltingest]

Last time I checked, SJWs mostly petition private media platforms and media providers to stop employing bigots and bigoted speech, which is freedom of speech working as intended.

It seems that I see a broader spectrum of them than dost thou.
But SJWs do favor freedom of speech...for themselves.

 

[Kooky]

I have a somewhat liberal conscience -- I like the idea of social supports for a variety of things. I agree with another poster that capitalism really does create wealth, and that is necessary. But I agree with you -- everything we humans do needs some measure of regulation.

Consider this:
What we're seeing in our day and age is a Capitalism that is already regulated to the maximum that is politically possible these days.

 

[Kooky]

Ghandi, "Those who talk about class war as being inevitable, have not understood the implications of nonviolence or have understood them only skin-deep."
Ghandi again, "I do not want to dispossess anybody. I should then be departing from the rule of ahimsa. If somebody else possesses more than I do, let him."

Also Ghandi: "Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice."
(my emphasis)

Martin Luther King, "Man becomes hardly more, in communism, than a depersonalized cog in the turning wheel of the state"

Also Martin Luther King, Jr:
"It is natural for Negroes to turn to the labor movement because it was the first and pioneer anti-poverty program...."

"The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty."

 

[PureX]

Not Ghandi: "As the distance between bodies in an expanding universe increase, so too the distance between rich and the poor in an expanding economy."

 

[Secret Chief]

IMO, people are killing the planet, not the economic system.
The opposite of obedience is anarchy. Neither extreme seems inviting.
Hopefully humanity will find it's way to someplace in the middle.

Yes, 7800000000 people is rather a lot.

 

[Revoltingest]

Who said it was?
It's the amount of regulation and the amount of enforcement that matters

It's the kind of regulation that matters.

 

[Kooky]

Has anyone thought of a feasibility study before making your own bow and arrow and looking for supper in the woods?

How did you manage to access the Internet as a stone age hunter-gatherer?