Nothing factually wrong with the article, but it has this sound of “this technology will solve all our problems” to it that I find highly problematic. Seven out of nine planetary boundaries are exceeded, climate change just being one of them. And all of them are exceeded because of our wasteful and growth-oriented way of life.
We can change our technology to be more sustainable or we can regress to a pre-industrial society with 90% of the population dying in the process. Which do you prefer?
That’s reductive. Seeing capitalism as the root cause of all problems is disingenuous. The particular ideology oligarchies are using to justify their rule is incidental.
Capitalism may be workable with strict regulation and proper social safety nets. The problem is that we have crony capitalism, which allows billionaires to essentially control the laws, which concentrates power into too few hands, similar to other oppressive forms of government. A key piece we are missing to make capitalism more workable is right in the word itself: “cap”. There should be a cap on how much wealth any one individual can accumulate.
I agree. The US have oligarchic crony capitalism supported by an utterly corrupt political system. Trying to abolish capitalism without restoring democracy and the rule of law is a fools errand. Not like it’s never been tried. And every time it just replaced one ruling clique of assholes with another one.
Capitalism is not reformable because it fundamentally relies on ever increasing rates of profit and exploitation. The first is impossible in a finite world, and the second is untenable to anyone who believes in justice.
Corporations that are incentivized to make number go up and grow indefinitely at the expense of all else are a big part of the problem. Proper anti-trust regulation that is actually enforced to limit their size, as well as an aggressive wealth tax to limit individual wealth would go a long way.
Fundamentally, though, capitalism rewards those who seek power over those who contribute to society and also doesn’t incentivize long-term societal well-being. Regulation would only limit how much power any one psychopath can gain. If we could start from scratch and create a new society with any system we wanted, it would not be Capitalism.
It makes a lot of sense, but I doubt we can have a rational debate about that. In short, people tend to be motivated by profit, so theoretically productivity goes up when the economic system rewards that.
The root of the problem has little to do with the economic system, and it’s like blaming bombs for war. The real problem is government structures that reward and encourage consolidation of power, both in the government itself and in the private sector. If you strip away capitalism, you just consolidate that power into the public sector, and for examples of that look at China and the USSR.
I would think that people on Lemmy who likely left other social media due to centralization wouldn’t be so enamored w/ more centralization in the government space. We need solutions that look like Lemmy in the public space to decentralize power so we don’t run into this type of problem. I don’t think there’s a magical structure that fixes everything, and I don’t even necessarily think that capitalism has to be the dominant economic system in play, I just think we need to come up with ideas on how to reduce the power of those at the top.
Specific example of the US military
We should dramatically reduce the federal standing military, increase the National Guard to match, and put stricter limits on when the President can use the National Guard. IMO, the only way the President should access the National Guard is if one of the following happen:
governor explicitly yields control, or the state’s legislature forces the governor to yield control
states vote with a super majority to declare war
legislative branch votes to declare war with a super majority
That’s it. The President would otherwise be left with a small standing military that’s enough to deter or perhaps assist in peacekeeping, but nowhere near large enough to invade another country.
I personally think we should embrace capitalism as it’s decentralized by nature, unless forces centralize it, and then create rules that discourage/punish over-centralization. For example, I think small companies should have liability protections, and larger companies should lose it, such that lawsuits could target specific individuals in the organization instead of allowing the organization to be used as a shield. For example, if a company files bankruptcy and it’s over a certain size (maybe $1B market cap? $100M?), then shareholders and top executives become responsible to cover whatever the debts are still unresolved after liquidation. If a crime is committed, it shouldn’t simply result in a fine that’s factored in as the cost of doing business, it should result in arrests. The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s corruption and protectionism.
The world isnt binary. There are plenty of options in between those two. We could reduce our global emissions drastically without any noticeable difference in quality of life for most people. There is so much junk and single use stuff being produced that we could replace or simply stop producing. Banning all forms of commercial AI would hurt literally nobody except the idiots that decided to make it their career. If governments were serious about fighting climate change they would just take control of large parts of the industry and force them to stop making pointless shit that nobody actually needs.
Question: would I have to give up my exploitative companies that fuel my bid to become the first King of Internet? Because that’s kind of a dealbreaker for me.
Are you inviting me to a money fight? I do love those. Let’s both put in ludicrous bids on some AI company and fight over ownership to pump it’s value in the market, I haven’t done one of those in months. Winner buys the next yacht we sink in the Bermuda Triangle to appease the Elder Ones, Respect upon their Unknowable Names. If only the poor knew how hard we worked to prevent this puny planet from being eaten by elder demons, they would be grateful.
Nothing factually wrong with the article, but it has this sound of “this technology will solve all our problems” to it that I find highly problematic. Seven out of nine planetary boundaries are exceeded, climate change just being one of them. And all of them are exceeded because of our wasteful and growth-oriented way of life.
Because of
our wasteful and growth-oriented way of lifecapitalism.FTFY.
Partially. It’s more that people don’t click unless the headline is sensational.
We can change our technology to be more sustainable or we can regress to a pre-industrial society with 90% of the population dying in the process. Which do you prefer?
That’s a false dichotomy. We can also improve our technology while ditching capitalism.
That’s reductive. Seeing capitalism as the root cause of all problems is disingenuous. The particular ideology oligarchies are using to justify their rule is incidental.
Capitalism may be workable with strict regulation and proper social safety nets. The problem is that we have crony capitalism, which allows billionaires to essentially control the laws, which concentrates power into too few hands, similar to other oppressive forms of government. A key piece we are missing to make capitalism more workable is right in the word itself: “cap”. There should be a cap on how much wealth any one individual can accumulate.
I agree. The US have oligarchic crony capitalism supported by an utterly corrupt political system. Trying to abolish capitalism without restoring democracy and the rule of law is a fools errand. Not like it’s never been tried. And every time it just replaced one ruling clique of assholes with another one.
Capitalism is not reformable because it fundamentally relies on ever increasing rates of profit and exploitation. The first is impossible in a finite world, and the second is untenable to anyone who believes in justice.
Corporations that are incentivized to make number go up and grow indefinitely at the expense of all else are a big part of the problem. Proper anti-trust regulation that is actually enforced to limit their size, as well as an aggressive wealth tax to limit individual wealth would go a long way.
Fundamentally, though, capitalism rewards those who seek power over those who contribute to society and also doesn’t incentivize long-term societal well-being. Regulation would only limit how much power any one psychopath can gain. If we could start from scratch and create a new society with any system we wanted, it would not be Capitalism.
But… It is the root of a lot of problems and it helps the oligarchs… And it just sucks and makes no sense in general?
It makes a lot of sense, but I doubt we can have a rational debate about that. In short, people tend to be motivated by profit, so theoretically productivity goes up when the economic system rewards that.
The root of the problem has little to do with the economic system, and it’s like blaming bombs for war. The real problem is government structures that reward and encourage consolidation of power, both in the government itself and in the private sector. If you strip away capitalism, you just consolidate that power into the public sector, and for examples of that look at China and the USSR.
I would think that people on Lemmy who likely left other social media due to centralization wouldn’t be so enamored w/ more centralization in the government space. We need solutions that look like Lemmy in the public space to decentralize power so we don’t run into this type of problem. I don’t think there’s a magical structure that fixes everything, and I don’t even necessarily think that capitalism has to be the dominant economic system in play, I just think we need to come up with ideas on how to reduce the power of those at the top.
Specific example of the US military
We should dramatically reduce the federal standing military, increase the National Guard to match, and put stricter limits on when the President can use the National Guard. IMO, the only way the President should access the National Guard is if one of the following happen:
That’s it. The President would otherwise be left with a small standing military that’s enough to deter or perhaps assist in peacekeeping, but nowhere near large enough to invade another country.
I personally think we should embrace capitalism as it’s decentralized by nature, unless forces centralize it, and then create rules that discourage/punish over-centralization. For example, I think small companies should have liability protections, and larger companies should lose it, such that lawsuits could target specific individuals in the organization instead of allowing the organization to be used as a shield. For example, if a company files bankruptcy and it’s over a certain size (maybe $1B market cap? $100M?), then shareholders and top executives become responsible to cover whatever the debts are still unresolved after liquidation. If a crime is committed, it shouldn’t simply result in a fine that’s factored in as the cost of doing business, it should result in arrests. The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s corruption and protectionism.
Only in a society that commodifies your existence and success based on the wealth you generate/hold
Unless we’re changing the definition of profit to status
Yes.
The world isnt binary. There are plenty of options in between those two. We could reduce our global emissions drastically without any noticeable difference in quality of life for most people. There is so much junk and single use stuff being produced that we could replace or simply stop producing. Banning all forms of commercial AI would hurt literally nobody except the idiots that decided to make it their career. If governments were serious about fighting climate change they would just take control of large parts of the industry and force them to stop making pointless shit that nobody actually needs.
Question: would I have to give up my exploitative companies that fuel my bid to become the first King of Internet? Because that’s kind of a dealbreaker for me.
What are you talking about, you filthy usurper? I’m the only legitimate king of the internet!
Are you inviting me to a money fight? I do love those. Let’s both put in ludicrous bids on some AI company and fight over ownership to pump it’s value in the market, I haven’t done one of those in months. Winner buys the next yacht we sink in the Bermuda Triangle to appease the Elder Ones, Respect upon their Unknowable Names. If only the poor knew how hard we worked to prevent this puny planet from being eaten by elder demons, they would be grateful.
Pathetic! My penis rocket is much bigger than your penis rocket!
How tf does this dumb shit get 15 upvotes?