Using “tankie” to mean anything left of center, truly the mark of a complete moron. By the way, rightwingers aren’t people and don’t deserve to enjoy the benefits of being people.
A complete moron would start to make accusations from assumptions instead of asking to clarify. I don’t mean “anything left of center”. I’m very left of center. But I do mean the militant and belligerent tankies of the Fediverse of which I see many. I wonder, did the shoe fit or is it an anger management issue?
What about Communism assumes people are nice and honest, and won’t abuse power? If someone wasn’t nice and honest, and is willing to abuse power, what part of Communism specifically allows this to be taken advantage of?
Why is it more acceptable for a system based on abusing power and greed like Capitalism preferable over democratic control?
If you’d really like to know, there is a Wikipedia page that has a huge list of dictators killing their OWN population. Even the Austrian painter called his party (Nazionale) socialist…
But if you don’t count him, he would be one of the ONLY ones that has killed over a milion of their OWN people that was NOT a supposed communist.
COMMUNISM IS A FANTASTIC IDEA!
(but not more than that, unfortunately)
I WILL VOTE COMMUNIST WHEN THEIR LEADER IS me. Or an Ai.
Many of these dictators, such as Batista, Hitler, and Pinochet, were Capitalist. Yes, despite calling himself a National Socialist, Hitler actually entrenched corporate power and maintained Capitalism in Germany. He adopted aesthetics of Socialism and Marxism in order to persuade the Working Class, however firmly rejected Marxism and Socialism. He claimed he had “stolen Socialism from the Marxists.”
For the sake of argument, imagine we have the choice of transitioning a society to Socialism and then Communism in the future, or remaining Capitalist. Which would you choose, and why? What structural flaws are a necessity of Communism that aren’t present, or are less present, within Capitalism, and why? Do you think Communism is when Mr. Bureaucrat moves some lines on his excel sheet and then 30 people starve, because that’s the entire economy, or have you actually bothered to learn about what Communism is and what Communists advocate for?
15 años de correistas hijodep I’m talking about 11% interest payments to China for projects that aren’t EVER finished… To give 100million to Cuba for generators that are NEVER delivered.
That’s just a small taste of how a former president (Correa) can make 30 years of misery by signing away the country. Argentina even worse it’s now OWNED by China.
Of course not, my friend. The problem only arises when you make a BAD contract for 11% interest, discount on crude sales, overpriced project with 100% Chinese engineers and no warranty (just so Mr president can recieve some usd in cayman or Vatican # account…)
They may have visited for a month and talked to 40% of the people there tho, who are so uneducated they are indoctrinated by church and (state) political parties
Yup ignoring your actual argument about why Capitalism is better at regulating greed. Because they know it isn’t, they have to ignore that, and rely on whataboutisms, while ignoring the fact that Capitalism doesn’t even work on paper. Classic.
A small tiny example can be this: a communist government buys from China, shitty works, no guarantee, high interests, no local staff hired.
A capitalist government buys (loans) from us and actually has an insurance and guarantee and warranty that their hidroeléctric dam will be finished and 100% of promised capacity.
One is basically STEALING (with help of local president, in south am or Africa or Asia).
The other may make rich people Richer.
BUT AT LEAST THE PROJECT IS DONE.
AND THE US IS NOT ASKING FOR 11% INTERÉS NOR FOR 3$ DISCOUNT ON EACH BARREL OF CRUDE. NOR TO SIGN AWAY THE GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS IF DEFAULT ON DEBT. (this is Ecuador, I can do Venezuela or argentina or african countries too, just let me know which you want a passionate lecture on.
No, it’s the lack of respect for common sense and the extreme greed of its leaders. Historically 99.99% of comunist leaders live lavish lifestyles, kids in private schools and holidays in miami
Yesss! That works fine if your lefties are balanced with righties in a multinparty system in a modern healthy economy in a wester country. (e.g. EUROPE). it Shamefully does not work in ECUADOR, VENEZUELA ARGENTINA COLOMBIA PERÚ BRASIL And That’s Just the ones I know of.
Let disregard us of a(holes). They don’t have politics, just LOBBYists
Their point is still wrong, though. Their argument is purely against existing historical applications of Marxism-Leninism, not on the actual structures of Communism, nor what Communists believe.
Many Democratic Socialists are simply Communists that think society can be meaningfully reformed into Socialism, rather than revolution. All suggested forms of Communism are democratic to their core, that’s the underlying philosophy behind Communism.
The nuances are in historical applications of Vanguard parties, which tended on the authoritarian side, with flawed implementations of Democratic Centralism. Throwing the entire baby out with the bathwater, rather than attempting to address the system of Democratic Centralism and other structural flaws present in the USSR for example, is flawed thinking.
Liberal Democracy, as is the usual form presented by Democratic Socialists, is less Democratic than forms such as Council Communism, for example. There’s legitimate discussion to be had, Liberal Democracy being a requirement for Democracy touches on the subject of Capitalist Realism, by which the presence of Capitalism entrenches a sense of permanence on those living in it, even if unfounded.
Do you have a structural point to make, or are you admitting that you don’t?
Would you have argued against Capitalism and Liberal Democracy in the years shortly following the French Revolution, knowing what you currently know?
Do you legitimately think that the very specific conditions surrounding the USSR resulting in their specific flaws cannot be learned from and properly accounted for? Ie, do you think Socialism and Communism are impossible to implement democratically?
Ok monkey, you’re talking about a system of governance that everyone would be a part of in the richest country on Earth. That country being filled with people who have all been taught that “fuck you I got mine” is the law of the world.
Magically, somehow, in every one of every Communist garbage essays I’ve seen on this site; you people fail to recognize the key factor that will absolutely cause communism to fail. People. “No no, control will go to the right people, you’ll see!”
Mald, cope, seethe, all you’ve done is prove that you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.
Do you think democracy is a bad thing? Why do you think authoritarian structures are good if its labeled Capitalism? Do you think Communism is when Mr. Bureaucrat sits down in his government chair and does a Communism? Lmao.
Is it brigading if people just think you have shit takes and downvote you without organizing or trying to brigade? Is that how fragile you and your worldview are?
Where did this meme of “capitalism requires infinite growth, therefore it’s impossible and bad” come from? Capitalism doesn’t require infinite growth, the universe has basically infinite resources, modernity which is largely but not exclusively caused by capitalism has allowed us to do so much more with fewer resources than generations previous, and as societies get richer in material wealth they produce fewer children and have the luxury to pay attention to things like the environment and their impact on it.
The idea comes from stagnating wages with comparison to productivity, and the fact that the average Worker works more than before the Industrial Revolution despite this jump in productivity.
Interesting! Either way, it’s still a fact that wages have been stagnating as compared to productivity, and working hours have not proportionally lowered. Capitalism is good for development, but after a certain point ceases to dramatically contribute to quality of life.
I do believe productivity has increased quite a bit more than wages, but that makes sense if you think about it. Productivity gains in the last few decades are not due to workers getting more skilled or working harder (which may still be a factor), they’re because of technology, automation, information science, and global trade networks. If my boss upgrades my computer such that I can produce things twice as fast, why should I get paid more?
allowed us to do so much more with fewer resources than generations previous
Riiight… that’s why we’re the most destructive agent on the planet since the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs - because we “do more with less.” Wtf?
and as societies get richer in material wealth
Which societies, Clyde? The ones that capitalism has impoverished so that a small minority can pretend their privileged lives are (somehow) “normal?”
they produce fewer children
And that’s a good thing, is it? You know we could just achieve that easily by giving women reproductive rights, don’t you? As in… no capitalism required at all?
They’re just referring to the fact that the universe we live in is no “finite system” per the meme
Riiight… that’s why we’re the most destructive agent on the planet since the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs - because we “do more with less.” Wtf?
Yes exactly! They’re not saying that’s a good thing but that’s exactly why!
Which societies, Clyde? The ones that capitalism has impoverished so that a small minority can pretend their privileged lives are (somehow) “normal?”
Regardless if the distribution of that wealth is acceptable, growth has made the overall society richer in material wealth. The distribution of that wealth is an entirely different question.
And that’s a good thing, is it? You know we could just achieve that easily by giving women reproductive rights, don’t you? As in… no capitalism required at all?
For crying out loud, Clyde… you need a bunch of science nerds to tell you something this obvious? Fine.
Lol, very first sentence in that source:
Three mechanisms influence the fertility decision of educated women: (1) the relatively higher incomes and thus higher income forgone due to childbearing leads them to want fewer children. […]
Because you were replying to this statement by OP:
and as societies get richer in material wealth they produce fewer children and have the luxury to pay attention to things like the environment and their impact on it.
In short your source doesn’t support your claim, but it does story OP’s claim
How deep does one’s head have to be up one’s own arrse to believe that this…
and as societies get richer in material wealth they produce fewer children and have the luxury to pay attention to things like the environment and their impact on it.
I’d say destructiveness of humans is kind of a Bell curve shape where the X axis is wealth. Cavemen don’t affect the environment that much mostly because there can’t be that many of them. Their production methods can’t sustain large or dense populations. Then people in 1900 are quite destructive because they can sustain billions of people while spewing pollutants, etc. Then people today are less destructive because we have the wealth to care about such things. Wealthy countries are doing pretty well.
90% of the stuff you encounter day to day would have been considered science fiction only a few decades ago. That doesn’t answer whether capitalism actually requires growth, which it doesn’t, or where the meme came from.
Our production efficiency, production per inputs, is larger now than in the past. That’s doing more with less.
Which societies
These countries tend to be the most capitalist, meaning private ownership of the means and subsequent free exchange of goods and services, and they also tend to be the most wealthy with low poverty. That distribution matches fertility fairly closely. Link
that’s a good thing, is it?
It is if the thing you’re worried about is the impact of the human species on the rest of the planet. Fewer people means less impact with the same per person impact.
we could just achieve that easily by giving women reproductive rights
been considered science fiction only a few decades ago.
Feel free to show us the “infinite” resources you have access to any time you feel like, Clyde.
That’s doing more with less.
No. We are doing more with more. The rate at which our industries are churning through resources would have been unimaginable to anyone a century ago… and so would the wastage it creates.
private ownership - free exchange of goods
Try not to get entangled in logical contradictions in the very same sentence, Clyde. When everything is privately owned, it’s only the private owners that gets to engage in a “free exchange of goods.”
the most wealthy with low poverty.
And the fact that these countries are all beneficiaries of hundreds of years of hyper-violent colonialism has nothing to do with any of this, of course.
It is if the thing you’re worried
No, I’m actually not worried about it. The “overpopulation” myth is right-wing propaganda and nothing else - it’s the ravenous and utterly parasitic profiteering of capitalists themselves that are driving over-consumption. Not the world’s poor.
Legal rights are a luxury good, unfortunately. Kinda seems like capitalism is in fact required.
So you are fine with your modern-day feudalism… as long as your capitalist overlords throws slightly more crumbs your way than they do everybody else.
It’s not a meme, its both the theory and practice to require constant unending increase in profit. That is the central point that eliminates all of your points except for the one about the universe having infinite resources - my dude we do not have access to the UNIVERSE, all we have is this one planet, and due to the distances involved, space opera is bunk and every stellar system is going to have just that stellar system. Do you think that a trade route that takes 400 years to travel is going to be of practical use over a lifetime?
This is a popular take that is just completely wrong. Capitalism as a system does not require growth. Capitalism is a system in which the factors of production are owned by private parties and can be freely traded. The capitalists believe is that markets will allocate those factors of production to the owners that can best exploit them. This can result in growth, but it isn’t necessary for the system to function.
There are literally a thousand issues with the system ranging from inequality to environmental concerns to market concentration (all of which capitalists tend to ignore). I really do not understand why people pick this one to quibble over.
Because shareholders demand almost always increasing growth despite the factual impossibility to provide that. The gaming sector is a good showcase where trust, release quality & creativity and monetization practices continually degrade the overall experience until the company starts to sink in its entirety. Ubisoft comes to mind. I have been burned so bad by them, started to refuse their products and certainly I seem to not be the only person.
the u.s. economy is measured in “growth” by average economy anylyst assholes since forever. it’s GPD per X. shitheads love that kind of metric.
There are literally a thousand issues with the system ranging from inequality to environmental concerns to market concentration (all of which capitalists tend to ignore). I really do not understand why people pick this one to quibble over.
so why are you yelling about tangential bullshit that other people are yelling about?
in biology normal cells are controlled by nucleus and it’s hereditory… so it is nepotism and zero rights for others so it’s also bad thing like communism
This doesn’t make any sense, since when earth became a closed system?
Also capitalism is a system. A human one. Its not biological in nature as it is an abstraction. As such it can change or disappear or be re used again and again and again.
There is no internal mechanism for human systems that say “hey create more of this system and then die at this point” or “hey build more of this system to fix this and that” or “hey created these new systems to evolve”
Humans do that, not the systems we create
Like it or not nobody wants to die, not even a tiny cancer cell. so it is in our best interests to expand into space to multiply our chances of survival.
We are not adding materials (…yet, mining asteroids isn’t that far fetched anymore), but we also aren’t removing any either and can recycle old stuff into new stuff. Also we get a constant supply of virtually limitless energy from the sun.
We can just recycle coal/natural gas/oil after burning it?
Indeed we can. That’s not to say we should keep burning those resources right now, but the carbon is not disappearing into an alternate universe either.
Earth is definitely a closed system. When you propose expanding to space, you are literally going out wide that system, but Earth is definitely limited
and just like in biology, you need a system to fight the cancer, you can’t just wish it away.
since we’ve refused to maintain such an immune system, we’re now going to have to go through a miserable period of chemo treatment to rid ourselves of the tumors.
WW1? I;m curious as to why your mind went there? I assumed they were referring to WW2, and having to fight against fascism AGAIN. Fascism is the malignant tumor.
Because interstellar space believe it or not it’s not empty so we also get mass from it?
My god even if we chopped all the trees and burned all the petroleum and bombed the whole Small part of the planet we live in with nuclear weapons, even if all humanity that ever lived in this planet was alive and lived their lives again for a million years, we’d still have about 50 thousand trillion trillions of atmosphere to go before we consume it all. And don’t get me started on the water
And guess what, even making that effort it wouldn’t be enough because life would continue.
That’s right, we suck even when trying to destroy the planet
All organizations fail eventually. Companies lose focus at the top (management), become like a cancer, over extend, and then die off. The remaining assets are picked off. Same thing with governments. Same with unions. Hell, the same happened with boy scouts. Same thing with churches.
What is described is a human condition, not a problem specific to capitalism. Greed cannot be organized out, legislated against, nor fought with fists.
this is literally capitalist propaganda, human nature is the exact opposite, we’re an absurdly generous and non-greedy species due to how social we are, just like how ants don’t hoard food.
a few select humans who most likely have a number of mental illnesses are greedy, and they have for thousands of years now managed to convince everyone else that they for some reason deserve special treatment to the detriment of the rest of society.
I don’t know about greed, but self interest is the least disorderly instinct a creature can have. Your genetic line will die off very quickly if you constantly sacrifice yourself for society, which would mean the self sacrificing instinct would never propagate. Of course humans are social, cooperative, and self sacrificing under some circumstances, and that’s good because we are often better off sacrificing occasionally. Maybe investing would be a better word. But some base level self interest is good. Kinda like how you’re supposed to put your own oxygen mask on first in a plane emergency. If you try to get someone else’s first, you’ll both go unconscious and then you’re both screwed.
Did you actually read their comment? Everyone wants to improve their own material conditions, but the specific idea that everyone wants to do so at the expense of others is wrong.
It’s also been shown to be true of society as a whole time immaterial. In disaster scenarios, it’s not madness and chaos, it’s everyone in the vicinity working together to save as many people as possible.
Hell, in a lot of countries that are far more agrarian that commercial, you see much, much stronger communities.
this is literally capitalist propaganda, human nature is the exact opposite, we’re an absurdly generous and non-greedy species due to how social we are, just like how ants don’t hoard food.
Pretty cool universe you live in. How can I join? Mine sucks.
We never had barbarians pillaging for millennia before the existence of capitalism? Not to mention monarchic governments, conqueror empires? Capitalism is like 400 years old. That other stuff predates it by tens of thousands of years.
yes i said as such in my comment, the majority of leaders in the past were the same as capitalists today, likely narcissists and/or psychopaths who didn’t care that they ruined lives for their own gain, as opposed to the other 99.999999999999% of humanity that is fundamentally programmed to cooperate
It isn’t a bad analogy we are quite literally killing our planet and its ecosystems we need to survive because it is profitable. Capitalism and the greed it fosters isn’t the status quo for humanity regardless of what Capitalist propaganda has tricked you into believing.
This is a comment thread, not a paper. China is the biggest and most successful communist country. They ravage the shit out of the environment and pollute to an extent that is unfathomable. The scams going on are mind blowing. The greed of people is the failure.
That doesn’t answer my question at all, lol. That same thing happens in Capitalism, see: Batista’s Cuba, Pinochet’s Chile, Hitler’s Germany, etc.
Assuming democratic measures are in place, why is a class-based system like Capitalism less susceptible to issues stemming from greed than Socialism or Communism?
Authoritarian systems with lots of power in few hands are risky. Can happen in capitalist systems aswell, but have there been any non authoritarian communist nations?
I agree, authoritarian systems with lots of power in few hands are indeed risky. Why is that necessary for Socialism or Communism, and why is it okay in Capitalism?
Depends. How do you define authoritarian? I’d argue all states are authoritarian, Capitalist or not, but get less so with development. Still, Capitalism remains a limiting factor, as it’s by structure authoritarian.
Not an immediate solution but if or when we can make space safe to work and live in, that might unlock an infinite supply of resources, which would support infinite growth.
Lack of resources isn’t the reason everything is shit. If we get to space it’ll just be another exploitable thing for the ultra rich to use to get more rich.
I’m all for an individual decreasing their own consumption for the environment. I try to do that. But decreasing someone else’s quality of life is where it gets dicy. You can very easily get discrimination.
Put a high upper limit only. Don’t touch the bottomline.
For example, no more than 4 cars per person: Average Joe won’t even know this rule exists but it will still reduce mineral mining due to people who collect cars.
Possible problems with my shitty example: Now a car is a controlled substance. Who decides the limit and how? What if there is a mental disease (with a better example this would make more sense) which requires a person to have 20 cars?
I believe that’s called Clarkson’s Disease and mostly affects lovable assholes.
I think a better solution is to give everyone less reasons to need and use cars, that a ban becomes unnecessary. But if we’re putting limits on things to reduce their consumption, that’s what excise taxes are for, most places already do it for fuel.
And of course there could always be taxation relative to a person or company’s environmental impact. People get angry at this one.
Cars already have defined limits. You already have to have insurance, for example. They are already registered in a person’s name. This could be actually easily implemented.
Decreasing someones consumption will likely decrease their quality of life. Assuming they wanted to maximize their quality of life, they would consume what would do that. Though there are exceptions, like limiting addiction or short range fights.
I would argue that a lot of consumption, at least in “developed” nations, is driven by artificial demand. Some examples: the tobacco industry, the invention of “halitosis,” bottled water, planned obsolescence. So much of what we produce doesn’t raise, and often lowers, quality of life. Having to meet these levels of demand is deleterious directly and indirectly; being overworked and living in a polluted environment also lowers quality of life.
But that’s not really the point. Viewing quality of life as identical to consumption is pathological and borderline offensive. If you want to increase your quality of life, spend more time with your friends, family, and neighbors. Create in ways that inspire you. Rest and relax. Spend more time in the moment. Go outside and visit nature. Volunteer and give back to others. There is so much more to being human than having the latest phone.
I absolutely agree about artificial demand, especially in situations of addiction or mental trickery. So I think those should be regulated.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, when you reduce someone else’s consumption, you’re saying you know better than them what is good for them. That can often be the case, like in gambling, scams, addiction, and a lot of marketing. But it can be dangerous if you don’t actually know better than them what’s best for them, but think you do.
I guess consumption is a bad word for it. Those activities you mention still have an opportunity cost associated with them, but you’re right, they shouldn’t really be called consumption. Let’s say allocating your effort? People usually know themselves better than someone else how they can allocate their effort for their own good. Limiting how they can do that should only be done when you’re pretty sure you know better than them what’s good for them.
Not necessarily in favor of degrowth, but consumption and consumerism doesn’t necessarily mean higher quality of life. Consumerism is purely fed by Capitalism, without advertising people generally “want” far less.
Lemme give you a very small concrete example where reduced consumption will not alter the quality of life.
Take a small neighbourhood, maybe 10ish families there. Everybody in that neighbourhood has basic tools that they use maybe once a month or less. Hammers, screwdrivers, spanners, etc. Instead of each family having those tools, have a tool library where you have 2-3 of each tool. Anyone in the neighbourhood can borrow the tools they need when they need them and give them back when done. Congratulations, you’ve reduced tool consumption by 70-80% with no downsides.
This is just one small example, but there are methods for more efficiently allocating resources within communities.
You decrease quality of life by increasing travel time and resistance to getting the tools, plus rarely not being able to use a tool because it’s in use. But it is an efficiency improvement. Same idea with gymns, everyone can share one place instead of duplicating resources. But then you need to make sure everything gets put away and you need to keep the lights on, so you need to charge for it. All that works under normal markets. It’s just not as good as ideal because people take advantage of each other. We need more oversight to minimize that, but I don’t think it means throwing out the system.
I don’t think walking 1 minute to a library inside your immediate vicinity qualifies as a reduction in QoL. Fair point on the potential very unlikely case of 5 people all needing a screwdriver at the same time, but that can be solved by buying 1-2 extra screwdrivers.
I went to this example specifically because I thought it was not controversial and low-hanging fruit. Nobody is talking about throwing out the system. Book libraries exist, and they haven’t caused the downfall of modern civilization. All I’m trying to say here is that even in the context of our modern capitalist reality, there are ways of reducing consumption without any aggreived parties that we’re just not doing.
I have seen what other people do to communal tools.
Could you elaborate a bit on that? I used to be part of a maker space and the tools were generally well cared for, and members normally donated anything we were missing
The biggest thing is tools just going missing. Joe brings it home to work on whatever and never brings it back. It’s pretty common with hand tools if people are allowed to bring them to their homes.
Other common problems are people not caring for stuff properly. Not changing the oil on lawn mowers, for example.
I already have a robust maintenance and tracking system. The tools live on a specific shelf and they return to that shelf when unused. When spring rolls around, the lawn mower is getting its oil changed too.
As I said, I won’t prevent you from using communal tools, don’t prevent me from using the fruits of my labor to purchase my own tools. One would think we could agree that is a fair system to all.
Nothing about capitalism prevents you from doing this. I just looked online and there are multiple apps that let you do this. It’s just a hammer is a relatively inconsequential purchase and fairly cheap. It might take $5 in gas and $20 in lost wages just to save the materials in a $10 tool. Not too mention the administration required to maintain this system. Car sharing though and parking share have become popular though.
So you’re going to ban products that you personally don’t like? Or anything that isn’t strictly utilitarian? No flavour in our drinks, no snacks, no smoking, no anything else…
Are you suggesting I’ve never had oranges squeezed then drunk the juice? What an absolutely bizarre assumption.
I’m fascinated to be honest, like at some point you’ve had fresh orange juice and it was such a magical experience you can’t imagine anyone else living through it? Or you found a dusty shack in the woods where a wizened old man let you use the juicer hes been hiding ever since whatever dystopian hell you’re from banned them.
Fresh orange is pretty good, I very much recommend spending a day in a spanish orange grove, smoking weed, listening to miles Davis and drinking fresh orange over ice. The stuff in bottles is pretty much as good, in the US they do frozen concentrate which is really good because it’s frozen when fresh so you still get all the nutrition and taste plus it takes up less volume so easier to transport and better for the environment.
By almost as good I mean like good stuff is a tier, fresh off the tree on a sunny day is a tier
Maybe I’m misunderstanding degrowth. Is it trying to decrease GDP? How does it do that? Or is it moreso increased worker rights and protections with decreased GDP growth as a byproduct? Because I’m all for the second version.
I believe that the intent is to shift focus away from material goods, since we have long passed the point of diminishing returns on increasing material wealth increasing individual well-being, and focusing on things that actually do improve it, which our system overall neglects. That would be things like meaningful work, community, art, leisure, et cetera. In short, the things that make us happy, but which GDP doesn’t measure.
at least to my understanding degrowth is about not doing things that are ultimately not actually productive for our quality of life, the prime example being the clothing industry which churns out more clothes than we would ever need every year and literally just throws it in the garbage, going so far as cutting things up just so people won’t fish it out of the container and wear it without paying.
There are a ton of things like that, which basically only serve to enrich the already wealthy, and if we stop doing that shit and just give people what they need to live regardless of if they have an employment, we can all enjoy life more while also being more sustainable.
Yeah, but if everyone decreases work, you get less production and less stuff, and then increased poverty. It’s easy to say more stuff isn’t always better from the comfort of the Internet, but the truth is that abundance of material production is responsible for the relative extreme wealth we do have today.
And poverty is many many times lower today than it was a few hundred years ago before capitalism. Even entertaining the idea that it’s not is completely insane. Capitalism correlates extremely strongly with low poverty country to country within a single time period, as well. 2023, for example.
Objectively if we were to scale back enough, many people currently struggling would die. Excess is the only reason they’re still living. Think the rainforest and rain passing the canopy trees enough to still allow life below. Remove the mass amount of rain, that ecosystem suffers.
I mean, yes, if we scaled back enough, people would die. But if we scaled up enough, people would also die. If you drink enough water it will kill you.
many people currently struggling would die
Many people currently struggling are dying because of how much consumption is taking place.
Handing out new rain to the trees in the canopy may or may not increase rain at the lower levels, but reducing rain at the canopy for sure reduces rain at lower levels.
Things like apps, media, or art can be more valuable without taking any more resources. Plus through greater efficiency, the same resources go much further. But it’s often easier to grow by just consuming more, so companies to that since they don’t really care. The sad thing is, I think we can have limitless growth if it’s slow and deliberate and conscious of it’s impact to the planet. But the current system doesn’t incentive that, instead everyone is flooring the growth pedal to catastrophic effect.
It also consumes human labor when people absorb the marketing. This is an externality not accounted for in the cost of marketing, it is large, and it makes resources unavailable for more productive tasks.
Marketing is the distribution of information. Its value is not just a trick or something. You can argue we’re over valuing it, but it’s definitely extremely valuable.
I am saying the costs that are not accounted for, namely the effort spent by every not buying a product consuming an advertisement, is extremely high and outweighs the value of products sold. Moreover, there is no clear reason to think the persuasion of people in mass is good based just on selling more products. Finally, if a person is only persuaded to buy a different brand of product the value is effectively only the small marginal difference between brands.
Limitless growth of what? Limitless growth of time past is inevitable for example. Wealth can grow with increased comfort, so I guess to come to maximum wealth you’d need to achieve total human fulfillment. I hope you can agree we’ve got a long long way to go till that.
You think money can’t buy happiness? Somehow some rich people manage to still be miserable, but most poor people would be free to be much more happy with more money.
Infinite growth of what? Is infinite growth of happiness possible?
People need to meet their most basic needs, doesn’t have to be through money. We’ve just set up society to work that way.
Capitalism in particular, is an incredibly stubborn idea that’s difficult to throw away. And we’ve rigged the system to make it difficult (almost impossible) to give up.
Hell, the U.S. is notorious for trying to overthrow governments around the world who don’t subscribe to capitalism, and the U.S. governments way of thinking.
Oh yeah, you could distribute resources differently. Money is just very effecent at matching supply to demand. Something like a UBI could retain that while decreasing inequality inherent to the increased efficiency.
At the scale of mankind, the universe is effectively infinite. The sun has another billion year to go and outputs so much energy it’s virtually infinite to us.
No, that’s literally the definition of growth (the variation of GDP from one year to the next, the GDP itself is defined as the sum of gross value added). We can make growth out of thin air if we want, it’s a purely accounting metric.
I sell you a pebble for a $1000 and you sell it back to me and we created $2000 of growth without anything physically happening.
You missed the point. Everything you are describing is hypothetical. Cash and dollars are physical, but “value” and “growth” that you have described are hypothetical.
I’m not sure what you mean by “hypothetical”, these aren’t hypothesis, these are their definition. And their definition means they are limitless, just as the definition of “beauty” or “numbers” make them limitless. They aren’t bound by the physical world.
(also dollars are equally abstract, currencies exists as human convention, having $1 billion more in your bank account is just a few bits flipped in a database)
Things like apps, media, or art can be more valuable without taking any more resources.
They take energy and memory on the local devices and in the cloud. Uploading and downloading also does. Better software often needs better (new) hardware. The developers take office space and hardware and energy. Do you want me to go on?
The bigger question for my is why growth is supposed to be a good thing. With all the technology, we could work less but on the whole, we work more.
R&D resources are usually small compared to the efficacy improvements they allow. You don’t need advertisement. Though to achieve sustanability , you’d also need a very long life on products and almost complete recycling.
The topic is growth. There is no growth in sustainability. For your company to grow, you need new features, new customers, … People say this is achievable without resources, I doubt it. That’s what I’m saying.
Games, but games can also just be better and more optimized on the same hardware. It’s just easier to throw more silicon at the problem, and we don’t incentive caring about the planet enough.
I try to use my phones as long as I can and I ran into situations where I couldn’t update or install apps because my phone didn’t meet the requirements
Interestingly, better computer hardware is often actually less physical matter. What’s valuable about computers isn’t the amount of material, it’s the arrangement of matter. That applies to both hardware and software. A phone and that same phone smashed have the same number of atoms. That phone and an equivalent from 10 years earlier are pretty close in number of atoms. My monitors and TVs today are a tenth as many atoms as the ones I had years ago.
Buying a phone every year is still about five times the matter of buying a phone every five years. Also: it is quite cynical to count atoms while children work in cobalt mines. The question of resources is more complex.
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