Oddbean new post about login | logout Our fundamental problem is capitalism. As an environmentalist, I tend not to buy things that I don't need. My daughter knows better than to ask for lemonade at the fair because it'll come in plastic. We brought water bottles for a reason. She can drink that perfectly fine. She knows I get annoyed at grandma buying all that plastic trash from the dollar store because it gets played with a few days and turn into landfill. This behaviour is terrible for the economy. The big businesses need infinite economic growth. They need us to buy 3% more trash a year. We have so much stuff that there are industries making legit coin storing our trash that we will realistically never use again. We have entire sectors that make a lot of money off of throwing out our trash for us. Environmentalism means that many of these new industries will disappear very quickly. It means that fossil fuel billionaires will lose a lot of wealth very quickly. Does this sound like a system that will change because we sent some politicians backed by rich people to a summit somewhere to talk about it? The reality is that billionaires' wealth is at stake and they would take complete social and ecological collapse before a dent in their wealth. They want the entire ship to go down believing that they have enough flotation devices they'll come back out on top. It's not that billionaires don't believe in climate change. They just lied to enough people to convince them of it. They plan on taking advantage of climate change eliminating a lot of the population so they have more resources for themselves. This is nothing short of murder with a borrowed hand. #ClimateCrisis
What do you mean by capitalism? Private property, free trade and capital accumulation? Because you are describing is a centralised government/big corporation alliance who brainwash people into destroying their capital to buy cheap and stupid stuff. It has nothing to do with what I see as capitalism.
you're describing a money problem, not a capitalism problem (environmental waste happens under communism or feudal rule). bad money leads to bad incentives which is where the incentive to produce waste comes from. the future can't be valued if money loses value; giving control over the money to a handful of central banks and the individuals behind them allows perverse incentives to set the value of the "environment"
damn, thought you were speaking to @Chu T the artist 😃
You contradict yourself. Initially, you argue, “Big businesses need infinite economic growth.” Later, you claim, “They plan on taking advantage of climate change reducing the population to have more resources for themselves.” How can they achieve infinite economic growth with a significantly reduced population? Moreover, if climate change were to reduce the population, it would likely be the poorest who suffer the most, as they control the least resources. This wouldn’t necessarily leave more resources for the wealthy. Additionally, who would be left to work in their factories? While I agree that there is an excessive production of unnecessary plastic products, I don’t believe capitalism is to blame. What we currently have isn’t true capitalism. It’s a system where profits are privatized while losses are socialized. It also directs significant public funds into the military-industrial complex, which is a major contributor to pollution