can't have one without the other
(midwest.social)
solarpunk memesMemes aside, climate conversations get framed in extremes really fast. There’s probably more room for practical solutions than the usual “all or nothing” narratives suggest.
Is this supposed to be an argument against climate action?
It's Prager-U. They argue even against anti-slavery
Leaving this here in case anyone thinks you're joking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO_wmixXBdE
i went to check if this is a real tweet, and:
Good catch, they seem to be chasing that January 15th dragon. Doesn't seem like that line has been hitting the same since.
Or they are gauging general response to the tweet over time.
"I'm getting low on my Twitter engagement money"
They were so close to getting it
They tell on themselves constantly, but their audience is deaf to it.
If something isn't priced (eg environmental damage, loss of human safety or dignity, the world) then capitalism is blind to it and will sacrifice it to optimize for profit. Genuinely the point of capitalism.
It might just be because you can't capitalism your way out of real problems that don't involve making a small number of people absurdly rich at the expense of, well, everything, including the ability of life to exist on this planet.
Here's the thing. "End climate change" is a goal. On the other hand, "capitalism" is not a goal. It is a means.
If you cannot achieve your goals because capitalism, which again is just a means, gets in the way, then it is obvious that you are using the wrong means. Only an insane person would keep doing the same thing that doesn't work.
"End climate change always translates into "end profiteering from environmental destruction" and we have no fucking clue why people don't like that" - Prager u
Have you ever considered how much money it would cost to keep the Earth habitable for human life in the future?!
Funnily enough, it's actually many magnitudes less expensive to act on climate change
Fun fact, the hottest planet in our solarsystem isn't the one closest to the sun mercury. Sure it's hot, but it has no atmosphere to trap that heat. Venus has an atmosphere made up of mainly carbon dioxide which does traps that heat. Guess what we're dumping into out atmosphere at alarming rates.
Fun fact, most of the time, Mercury is the closest planet to Earth, due to its shorter orbit.
Clearly what we need is some crazy scheme to collect the CO2 from our atmosphere and fly it to Venus! A scheme that totally won't just be another method of funneling money to the rich, and would definitely be cheaper than any of the many deeply investigated plans that scientists have been screaming at us for decades.
I defend that simply doing what is needed to clean up all the shit we have left behind up to now, let alone prevention, energy transition, moving to biodegradable plastics, mass transit, etc, would create immense economic growth. It's essentially the fossil fuels cartel, and their political minions who keep us here.
Maybe if all of the renewable sector pooled together to lobby as hard as the fossils, there could be advances.
Maybe if all of the renewable sector pooled together
We don't need to wait for private companies to collude, though, the socialist policy of the Peoples Republic of China has made it so that 95%ish of solar panels are manufactured in that country, we just need to follow the Chinese example.
This is why I loathe a lot of the arguments against stuff that boil down to "it'd be a lot of work". There are tons of people who need jobs.
I know reality isn't so simple, but it's still frustrating as hell.
PragerU is awful right so I infer they mean this as a bad thing.
Yeah, they love themselves some horrifically under-regulated capitalism.
The world died because we needed even more plastic coffee pods. Capitalism is def the cause.
Every system can and will get exploited. I am not sure how another economic system will fix this. Assholes will be assholes and if we don't stop them from getting into positions of power this will continue.
Not to say that capitalism isn't a bucket full of shit. But I would argue setting the incentives right, can mitigate damage. The issue is getting this done politically. Which brings us back to assholes (+capitalism) again.
I am not sure how another economic system will fix this
You answer yourself shortly afterwards
The issue is getting this done politically
Under socialism, since there are no private owners of companies or oil, there is no incentive for them to lobby the policy in their favour. If you want evidence for this, I could pinpoint you to the People's Republic of China manufacturing some 95% of the world's supply of photovoltaic modules (already the cheapest form of energy available to humanity), spearheading electrification with Ultra-High-Voltage electric transmission lines and battery technology and supply, and leading the current generation of nuclear reactors. In contrast, my capitalist homeland of Spain had a "tax to the sun" during the previous decade that destroyed whatever solar industry we had, because in Spain the fossil fuel lobbyists do have the power to dictate policy, as opposed to China's socialist system.
I am not sure how another economic system will fix this.
Other economic systems have assholes, true, but capitalism is uniquely myopic in this respect. A socialist system would take away the polluters' power to hinder change. There's a reason (still capitalist to be fair) China is a world leader in renewable energy, and that's because they don't have rich and powerful lobbies forcing fossil fuels down people's throats.
But I would argue setting the incentives right, can mitigate damage
Until capitalists use their wealth and power to remove those incentives, which leads us back to "end capitalism." This is the fundamental problem with reformism; under capitalism there will naturally be mechanisms for resisting and winding back said reform, making "nicer" versions of it mere interludes interrupting the crushing boot of exploitation and destruction we all know and love.
And the rollback of the incentive adjustments isn't theoretical. Incentives got adjusted around The Great Depression in many western countries like in the US and those changes have been slowly rolled back till the 70s, then much more quickly since then. And at breakneck speed since the dissolution of the Soviet bloc.
To the extent you associate that "capitalism" means "rich people and corporations get to do whatever the hell they want with impunity", then yes. Absolutely. If you have a problem with that, I'll tell you where to shove it.
See, I think capitalism can work, we just need way more controls. Taxes that prevent billionaires from ever happening. Incentives for corporations to invest most of their profits into R&D.
Make smaller profit margins necessary to stay afloat. That means they either need to cut prices and/or invest in people (which is essentially what R&D is).
Actually enforce antitrust laws. Make forming a corporation, let alone a conglomerate, unpalatable compared to forming an NPO.
The biggest poison is the profit-driven media landscape (traditional and social). Particularly "news". Something needs to happen there, first.
Put a 500% tax on political contributions from PACs and a hard cap on total political donations from an individual (that's actually enforced and loopholes closed up).
Capitalism without corporations. Without billionaires. With strong regulation and very limited lobbying. It could work. It'll never happen, but it could work...and it's probably a necessary stepping stone to full blown socialist utopia.
Billionaires are hard to prevent. Musk for example is a billionaire because tesla has been successful, you couldn't prevent that with taxes on him as the value is in the company he owns a significant portion of.
I think overall you have good ideas, but they're hard to implement
See, I think capitalism can work, we just need way more controls
But that's literally the problem right there. We don't lack control because there isn't enough scientific knowledge or because the people naturally oppose this control. We don't and we won't have control because the capitalists, who happen to be in power, profit more from fossil fuels whose supply they can control than from renewables which are endless and affordable.
If you want an example of somewhere where there is this control, I can point you towards China, the manufacturer of some 95% of the world's supply of photovoltaic modules and the spearhead of electrification. In China it's not capitalists in power, it's the people through their communist party, and this results in, well, actual policy.
Your comment, to me, reads like "we don't need to abolish absolutist monarchy, we just need controls on the rights of the serfs". Like, it's literally the system preventing these controls, and once abolished, the problems sort themselves out rather automatically.
So you're imaging capitalism except capitalism is suborned to the state
Like in the USSR and China
Like in the USSR
There was no capitalism in the USSR.
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There was no exploitation of surplus value because surplus value was reallocated to all society through public ownership, since there was no owning class reaping those benefits as demonstrated by the USSR having the lowest levels of inequality in the history of the region by a long shot.
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There were no markets in the USSR. Goods were not allocated according to market rules but according to a rational plan, and goods didn't have prices determined by market rules but by economic planning.
You should definitely get better informed before discussing topics you don't understand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy
The New Economic Policy was always, explicitly, a temporary setback caused by the utter destruction of the country by the civil war. It lasted a whopping 8 years, from 1921 to 1929, and as soon as it was abolished, industrial growth skyrocketed to previously unimaginable figures of 10-15% per year, uplifting hundreds of millions from destitute poverty and doubling life expectancy in 30 years. The USSR's industrial revolution was literally founded on economic planning, the polar opposite of capitalist markets. What's your point?
I have no idea why you're being so hostile or pedantic. My point was that socialist countries can use capitalism as a tool when it's suborned to the state. You conceded my point. What's YOUR point?
My point is "capitalism subordinated to the state like the USSR" is an extremely misleading claim, and it's often used by anticommunists who make uninformed accusations of "USSR was state capitalism so it was the same as capitalism" without knowledge of the topic. If that's not the claim you're making, I apologize
instance checks out, anyways this wouldn't be Like in the USSR and China, this would be like in the EU but more regulations.
more regulations because who says so?
english is not my first language so, I can't easily understand what "more regulations because who says so?" means.
instance checks out
Is the language barrier responsible for you being a snippy little asshole?
i am not a pair of scissors, and please don't stick scissors up your asshole.
I wasn't using an idiom, I was speaking in plain language.
The problem with all those measures aiming to make things fairer, is that the ones able to implement them are the ones benefitting from the most. This directly for the political measures, and indirectly for the corpo ones (due to the political measures)
The only way this is being changed is with a revolution or being forced due to protests. But social media is not only profit driven, but also an excellent way to control the flow of information.
And with the surveillance state that every country is seemingly moving towards this is only gonna get better.
I totally agree with you. Its obvious to anyone that "capitalism" as most people know it is super simple on the surface: I have thing or skill. You want things or skill. Depending how many people want thing or skill, I get paid fairly for it. To be honest, for me (healthy, able bodied and have a support network) I don't mind working and getting paid fairly for my skills; its a normal part of human life to work to get food. Granted, I'm in a VERY lucky minority. There needs to be Norway style welfare for the old, sick, and unable to work. As far as dumb/ignorant people (be honest, you've met them) who are able bodied but just can't do anything useful, I'm not sure what to do about them.
But then we have money in politics, monopolies, 1 person (fucking Rupert) owning every media outlet, and the system quickly falls apart.
I have thing or skill. You want things or skill. Depending how many people want thing or skill, I get paid fairly for it
This is famously not how capitalism works. What you're describing is primitive manufacture as it happened in medieval workshops: a class of tradespeople who owned their tools and their workshop and sold the fruits of their own labour by themselves.
Capitalism works differently because the people with the skills don't own the tools or the workshop, the workshops and tools are owned by people who happen to have generational wealth, called the capitalist class. These people don't have skills, they have money, and with this money they acquire means of producing things, like factories. Then, the skilled workers who don't have the money to buy such factories, enter into "free and voluntary" contracts (not so free or voluntary when unemployment exists) in which they get paid not according to how much they produce, but according to how much they can manage to scrape from the capitalist owner, which always gets a profit from the labour of said people.
This has been well-understood for 200 years since the first formal definitions of capitalism appeared, what you're describing is 13th century primitive capitalism
I envision more of a hybrid utopia...strong social programs (potentially even UBI), paid for largely by taxes by businesses.
Income taxes are straight-up bullshit and intended solely to fuck the lower and middle classes. I exponentially incrementing taxes on additional real estate. I want higher taxes on luxury goods. I want a higher gas tax and further incentives for green energy and public transit expansions.
Middle class, especially, gets all of the stick and barely any of the carrot. That needs to change.
But I also think essential industries should also be entirely socialized (like healthcare) or implement point-solutions to bolster the bottom 90% when markets get all fucky...such as heavily subsidizing first-time homebuyers, government pays x% upto $Y. (While at the same time also promoting more development of high- and medium- density housing, and transit to service it)
Anyway, that's my utopia. I don't think capitalism is inherently evil. I don't think a true socialist utopia can exist unless we are post-scarcity and solve a lot of other blockers. I do think that both systems have pros and cons, and some sort of middle-ground needs to be found. One that actually favors the majority of the people.
