I mean I dunno why you’d want to preserve capitalism. It’s not like the parts outside of climate change are going super well either.
(This comment brought to you by a hospital attempting to charge me $4,000 after telling me to eat a banana).
Yep, I hear the pain… my son got similar advice and then the bill - 500 USD 😒 🤦. That was the lsst time I sent him to a clinic.
American healthcare is a uniquely American problem - the other 37 OECD countries are all capitalist, and that wouldn’t have happened in any of them.
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I’ve been saying that for years, but everyone said I was nuts. You can’t solve anything in capitalism. If money and consumerism are your only goals, that can’t solve anything. Best you can do is patch… and that’s about it. There is no money in long term solutions.
Well you can. You just have to make the things you don’t like more expensive.
The problem is that US laws are written by the rich, and the rich don’t care.
…so I guess there is a capitalist government, which doesn’t work. But in theory a good government and otherwise capitalist society could work. But this sort of sounds like socialism with extra steps.
That is also patching a deep seeded problem - seing everything through monetary perspective. That will also stop working at some point.
I’m just saying that things like the Venus Project are the way to go if we wanna make a sustainable future. Combine that with socialisam and you can get a society that actually cares about humans, as well as everythin esle living on this earth. But, it has to be done on a global scale, while we’re still divided in countries, that is not gonna work as well.
Alas, even if we don’t do anything, the earth will be fine, no problem there, she’s survived a lot worse than us. We are the ones thatbare fucked!
It is useful to have a common motivator. If you don’t like something tax it, if you do like something subsidize/pay for it. I think that is one of the big questions to answer with other systems. If we remove money as a motivator (or at least greatly reduce its value) what will replace it? There will always be greedy people, even if most people can live comfortably. What will be used to motivate them to the common good?
Reeducation. Take back in moral values as real values, not something that is just admired on paper. Educate them from a very early age that if you prosper, everyone else prospers as well, if you work hard and everyone else works hard, the system works, if not, it doesn’t. If you embed these values in people, they will grow, it just takes time.
The problem is, people unite and decide to change things only when faced with grave danger. By that point, it might already be too late… but, I guess we’ll see what the future holds.
The problem is, socialism is worst. We have no choice. I heard about new autosustentable communities… I would like to know more about it
Um, you can have mixed economies that combine aspects of capitalism and socialism, there are several European countries that are doing decent with it. The rampant overconsumption mindset amongst the population, anti consumer behavior from businesses, and government corruption/apathy are some of the biggest issues in the US. Social programs and safetynets along with stricter advertising rules would help steer us into a better direction.
How would you know, have you ever lived in a socialist society? I have and I can tell you first hand, capitalism is so much worse. The problem is that everyone around is capitalist, and yes, you can’t compete with that (tech development and things like that) or you can, but it’s really hard. There are way to mitigate these discrepencies though, it just takes a lot of effort.
Take a look at the Venus Project, you might like that as well.
I don’t understand the reason for the downvotes. Explain your point instead of downvoting. By the way, I’m from a country (social context) full of Venezuelans and many people from Cuba and Nicaragua. They know what happens with this kind of approach.
Regarding your point, what you said about competing with capitalism in terms of technological development is interesting. So maybe, in my opinion and being open to what you have to say, we need better alternatives.I didn’t downvote you BTW, I never downvote, I either upvote or don’t vote at all.
Socialism as a regieme, for one, doesn’t have a bad name like communism does, and two, has been tried, but in a lot fewer countries than communism has. So, regarding that, I get why many liberal americans are pro socialism, but against communism (even though, there aren’t that many differences, except tye authorotorian nature of communism, but they already have that with their corps, just too blind to actually see it).
As I said, I’ve lived in both socialism and capitalism (no one ever notices that the first one is a socio-economic order, but the second one is just an economic order 🤔 😁, the social order is democracy 😂), and socialism was a lot better from a lot of aspects. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, there are things that can be made better, but than again, nothing is perfect. What I do firmly believe though is that socialism combined with something like the Venus Project, can make foundations for a great society that actually values human life and everything alive on this earth.
Hopes about to be crushed
I mean it’s entirely possible to live in a mostly capitalistic world and not have climate change. It just needs the right rules and regulations and taxes. Just imagine how the world would be if governments made the right decisions in the 1970s. We’d probably have no fossil fuels at all, electric cars were the norm and probably much more nuklear energy. Still capitalism but without climate change.
Capitalist capture of government institutions isn’t a bug of capitalism, it’s a feature. The ability to command vast amounts of productive resources enables capitalists to exert political influence.
Whatever clever policies we could come up with are irrelevant as long as those in power are the ones who stand to gain the most by resisting change.
There isn’t a way this works out in our favor. Even in countries with capitalism + social safety nets, we see that overtime the capitalists slowly erode public gains through privatization.
That might work on paper, but not in reality.
Look, capitalism was also a great idea on paper, no doubt there… how things panned out, that’s an entirely different story.
Capitalism was good, and useful, as an improvement over Feudalism.
Now, it’s time to do better and move towards the next stage in our evolution. Socialism.
That one’s been tried - spoiler: it’s worse.
Pick literally any former USSR state and compare the improvements in living standards before and after socialism.
No Leninist and Authoritarian society ever managed to turn control of the means of production over to the workers.
Besides, with more attentive you would find that even Lenin’s abortive revolution was preferable to Tsarist Russia.
Either way Makno’s Black Army territories are more illustrative of Socialism than examples based in Leninist counterrevolution and tyranny.
In theory yes, in reality no.
Rules and regulations are the opposite of free market capitalism. The only way to address climate change is to make society less capitalistic. The regulations required to fix climate change with capitalism would pretty much turn it into a different -ism.
And that’s without considering whether billionaires will even let that happen.
You’re missing how a free market is meant to work.
In a free market, ALL costs are captured and paid for at whatever rate the market determines is fair. At the moment, polluters aren’t paying for CO2 emissions - the cost of those emissions is being paid by society. In economics, that’s called an Externality, and most economists agree that the governments role is to capture externalities, because they’re a deviation from a proper free market.
To fix this, the government could enforce a rule that says all companies must be carbon neutral, and then allow businesses that are carbon-negative to trade their excess with companies who are carbon-positive. versions of this are being done in many places. The issue is the inertia of the existing systems, and the fact that you can’t just make these changes overnight.
That only matters of everyone is playing fair. It’s pretty clear that the government is controlled by corporations, and it’s kinda naive to think that we can just expect corporations to allow regulation to pass that hurts their profits. What we hear about free markets and externalities and regulations is just theory. Reality says that things will get much worse.
But then the problem isn’t capitalism, it’s corruption. Power corrupts, and Socialism places more power in fewer hands - I don’t see how that helps the environment.
I agree that corporations (especially big oil, coal, and legacy auto) are paying off politicians to slow progress on environmental issues. But abolishing those corporations and giving the power to unaccountable beuraucrats would be even worse.
Socialism doesn’t do that, authoritarian right wing divergence in Socialism do.
Leninism was a reactionary end to socialist revolution, not an illustrative example.
Makno’s Black Army territories much better illustrate how Socialism works.
Once again, Ukraine > Russia
It’s already been figured out that unfettered capitalism does not work. Rules and regs are required, but it also requires a government beholden to people instead of big business to actually enforce said rules and regulations.
Very true. Capitalist governments are compromised, and unable to perform their stated duties.
