Hi all,
I’m seeing a lot of hate for capitalism here, and I’m wondering why that is and what the rationale behind it is. I’m pretty pro-capitalism myself, so I want to see the logic on the other side of the fence.
If this isn’t the right forum for a political/economic discussion-- I’m happy to take this somewhere else.
Cheers!
Climate change cannot be addressed under capitalism.
This is a big reason I’m anti capitalist as well, it has no mechanism outside of regulation for controlling the usage of resources, and so long as something is profitable it will be pursued.
This natural result is the regulation reduces profit and it is an adversarial relationship. Because Capitalism is incapable of this, and runaway consumption is driving climate change and many ecological problems, Capitalism must either be tamed and tightly controlled, or most likely replaced with a resource aware system, such as a central planning system that considers resource consumption and weighs it against ecological considerations.
To fix things, a drastic shift is necessary, and actually is so far overdue that it’s likely too late to do anything other than a near paradigm shift.
Huh? How do you explain the ban on ozone-depleting gasses? How do you explain carbon trading?
Of course climate change can be addressed under capitalism. It just can’t be addresses without regulation.
Speaking of short term gains, sure,
but isn’t it possible to imagine more long term capitalistic goals aligning with actually preserving our well-being?
Long term goals are too risky for capitalism
Regulated capitalism can direct capital to innovation in low/zero emission technologies and disincentivize investment in polluting technology very effectively,. More effectively than a corrupt command economy could do it. Fossil fuel companies have fought against interventions to push the market towards alternatives but the biggest failure has been on the political class and voters who haven’t done enough to push the market in the correct direction. Photo voltaics, storage technology and wind turbines have received a lot of investment and are growing rapidly despite the work of the big polluters to stall action.
Sure, it directs money towards alternatives, while doing absolutelyfucking nothing about actually reducing the harmful technologies. We may have more solar and wind (neither of which is perfect, nothing is), which is then used as propaganda to show “Oh, look at all the progress we’re making!”, while still mostly keeping oil and coal.
And, of course, everything is the fault of regular people, struggling to get by, companies are blameless.
Capitalism is what got us here my lemon.
Because? If it’s free market and people actually cared about climate then they’d boycott the businesses which aren’t doing their part. Otherwise it’s not an issue with capitalism. You’re just arguing that you need to police everyone otherwise.
Are you serious? You can’t boycott concrete. It’s not a personal decision. You can’t boycott coal, oil, or natural gas either.
The amount of climate change you mitigate by boycotting single use grocery bags is a joke.