What kills me is that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. The longer they fight against change, the more people they will convince that capitalism itself is the problem.

Exactly. End both of them

↑ This, but without the /s.

In particular, we need to protect the free market by creating a carbon tax to compensate for fossil fuels’ negative externalities and level the playing field for “greener” competitors.

Not taxing carbon is anti-capitalist protectionism.

Make it and crosspost!

That’s a pretty shallow take on historic economics.

Capitalism had a role to serve as the transition out of feudal economics.

Now it’s time to do better.

regulation falls off the wayside and leads into corruption

And vice versa! Corruption leads to lack of regulation. It’s a shit circular dance that I feel like we’re doomed to repeat regardless of the economic system we pick.

Agreed. Capitalism is a horrible master but a good slave. Just like we regulated the other forces of nature (like fire) to harness them in our favour, so should we harness market forces to work for us.

Capitalism works well when there is plenty of potential for growth, but when there are non-monetary reasons (such as the literal end of ecosystems favorable to human life) that require adjustments or even degrowth, it quickly devolves into feudalism - and the problem is that we do not have the means to quickly stop CO2 emissions without tightening our belts in energy consumption, which in turn requires some degree of degrowth.

You don’t need to end capitalism to help the climate. Just properly regulate it.

Except that politicians (i.e. those that would be doing the regulating) all have a price, and for oil barons no price is too high; and bribing is still magnitudes cheaper than stopping the destruction of the environment.

It’s a tool just like every other economic system, and shouldn’t be hoisted to a higher pedestal.

If it’s not objectively better nor special, why not try something more equitable that doesn’t siphon 99% of all resources to the aristocracy elite and leaves everyone else fighting for the crumbs?

Why keep using a system that prescribes that the hungry should starve if they can’t afford food even though we already produce more than enough to feed the whole planet?

Yeah, we need regulation but no direct intervention like the state is currently doing to protect monopolies.

Like, make some rules to keep competition fair but don’t go to specific companies to protect them

Regulation? Sounds like communism to me

The problem is externalities. Companies have to be held responsible for their damage.

If governments held companies liable for the full cost of fixing their damage to humanity and earth I honestly don’t know how many would be left.

“Green capitalism” only exists if green energy is more profitable than climate-harming alternatives

Given the multiple decades of oil and gas infrastructure, that’s not realistic.

In theory, consumer demand for green energy could make this a reality, but it would have to be a massive swing. And in practice, most consumers will go for the cheapest option - in many cases, given their resources, they have to.

The other way that green energy could become more profitable is through heavy government regulation. So… yeah you could have a green ‘capitalism’ if the State manages the market, and withstands the corporate pressure to withdraw. But that has literally happened nowhere

I suppose hypothetically you could argue that IF a company invested heavily in green technology and IF that investment resulted in a cheaper form of energy, AND that technology also applied to the supply chain, then we could have green capitalism. But i mean that’s highly speculative and it also would be entirely a coincidence

But as you said, activists often use climate change as an excuse for “overthrowing capitalism” and replacing it with a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, and I think this tweet is actually referencing this rather than thinking it to be the logical conclusion

Is there a c/toiletpaperusa?

The mothers days day after I had a baby, they sent me a book in the mail about a boy and a dog (I think the dogs name was Otto) celebrating mothers. It was weird but historically accurate. They said that one of the founding fathers mother was a good mother because she taught the founding fathers the bible. Im not sure what to do with the book… Donate it?

They’re yet another cancer on society…

This was the final straw for me to finally get off FB, toooooooo many (unhinged) “friends” quoting PU as facts & citing them as a source. Pure propaganda garbage.

There are several ideas out there, but yes they generally require transitioning away from capitalism. The one I’m particularly fond of is called a “library economy”, where we no longer commoditize anything that isn’t consumable. Imagine instead of buying a wheelbarrow and shovel to do some yard work, you go to the gardening library and checkout the things you need. When you’re done in about 3 weeks, you return the items back to the library.

In general though, any planned economy would be far more efficient and less wasteful. Imagine that instead of 30 different TV’s with the exact same panel, there’s 2 or 3 types of tv with that panel. The way Walmart operates is a perfect example of a planned economy.

Any system that has some growth built into it will eventually cause problems, it’s just that some of them, like capitalism, are very efficient at getting us to these points faster. The best system for the climate was discarded long ago, as we moved out of the hunter-gather phase and discovered techniques in maximizing our energy into other things besides just surviving. Agriculture and all that it allowed were the first steps into taxing the earth’s balance.

I think one way to make capitalism suck less would be abolishing publicly owned corporations. Having shareholders to please creates pressure to grow the company’s value even when there is no good reason to. I think it would be far better if companies stayed as family owned mom and pop shops and weren’t allowed to snowball.

Remember that the only reason for the enshittification of Reddit is that it’s doing an IPO. Likewise, I recently noticed that the company that owns my local mini golf course is publicly traded. Since the course has already been built there is no room for meaningful growth and any attempt to grow the company’s value by turning visits into an ‘experience’ or a ‘package day out’ will irritate people like me who are just looking to pay to use a barbones course.

If you want to avoid saying socialism, communism, or true communism (anarchism) then try library economy or gift economy. Some nice examples I’ve heard.

Socialism.

Capitalism is inherently a wasteful of resources and also doesn’t value human life nor the planet’s life. The planet and people are just something to be exploited to enrich the top capitalists who contribute nothing.

It encourages planned obsolescence, short term profit making, and production of commodities which exist solely to turn profit, etc.

A socialist economy, if not being constantly undermined and sabotaged by the capitalist imperial core cough , would exist to meet the needs of the people, the workers. There is no capitalist class under this economy. All surplus value goes to some collective, the state usually, to be held and used in common for the betterment of the people who labored. If all countries adopted this outlook and abolished their capitalist classes and liberal democracies which exist solely to protect the capitalists, then all resources could/would go straight to necessary resource production. Things like food, housing, etc. would be met very quickly due to technology that already exists. This is absolutely not an issue. It’s only an issue due to hoarding, poor/zero distribution of resources under capitalism, and purposeful scarcity as a “disciplining” tool for labor.

Once basic needs are met, luxury commodities can also be created. This is where BUT NO IPHONE? VUVUZELA? comes in. People incorrectly attribute technological innovations to the economic system instead of realizing that 1) capitalism had absolutely nothing to do with smartphones or the internet existing and 2) these things would exist under a socialist economy as well, however the end result may look different simply due to a focus on things that last longer and aren’t meant to be chucked in the bin after 2 years. The only reason our gadgets die so quickly is so we can be sold more gadgets and this causes more surplus labor (profits) to be sucked into the capitalist class. Remove that thievish incentive and you remove the excessive waste associated with it while retaining better commodities that meet the desires of society in a “fair” way that doesn’t destroy the world for the benefit of the few.

Basically imagine a world run by those who labor and importantly a world not designed to simply suck all the profits of exploitative labor under bullshit made up reasons to the 1% and 0.1%. Some people call it utopian. To some, the idea of people cooperating, which is the “natural” state of man, instead of being at each other’s throats because some rich thieving class put them in that position, is inconceivable. And to those people, they should examine why it is they so readily accept the bullshit shoveled down to them from those with every incentive to kill them and the planet and why they dismiss so easily as “utopian” the most obvious solutions. “Oil companies are raping the earth to enrich a few people? What if we… didn’t have… oil companies…?” That logic is never allowed. And it’s worth asking why it is people don’t look to the simple answers that we can very clearly see would be better for the average person. Your “honest question” (ok dude) here is a perfect example of this fascinating phenomenon. You already knew the answer, yet something prevented you from embracing the solution and instead posting bad faith questions. Well, anyway, that’s a different topic, I suppose.