Is this supposed to be an argument against climate action?
It’s Prager-U. They argue even against anti-slavery
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.
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.
So you’re imaging capitalism except capitalism is suborned to the state
Like in the USSR and China
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 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.
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.
The world died because we needed even more plastic coffee pods. Capitalism is def the cause.
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.
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.
They were so close to getting it
They tell on themselves constantly, but their audience is deaf to it.
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.
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.
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.
“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
PragerU is awful right so I infer they mean this as a bad thing.
Yeah, they love themselves some horrifically under-regulated capitalism.
