I've been saying that for years, but everyone said I was nuts. You can't solve anything in capitalism. If money and consumerism are your only goals, that can't solve anything. Best you can do is patch... and that's about it. There is no money in long term solutions.
Well you can. You just have to make the things you don't like more expensive.
The problem is that US laws are written by the rich, and the rich don't care.
...so I guess there is a capitalist government, which doesn't work. But in theory a good government and otherwise capitalist society could work. But this sort of sounds like socialism with extra steps.
That is also patching a deep seeded problem - seing everything through monetary perspective. That will also stop working at some point.
I'm just saying that things like the Venus Project are the way to go if we wanna make a sustainable future. Combine that with socialisam and you can get a society that actually cares about humans, as well as everythin esle living on this earth. But, it has to be done on a global scale, while we're still divided in countries, that is not gonna work as well.
Alas, even if we don't do anything, the earth will be fine, no problem there, she's survived a lot worse than us. We are the ones thatbare fucked!
How would you know, have you ever lived in a socialist society? I have and I can tell you first hand, capitalism is so much worse. The problem is that everyone around is capitalist, and yes, you can't compete with that (tech development and things like that) or you can, but it's really hard. There are way to mitigate these discrepencies though, it just takes a lot of effort.
Take a look at the Venus Project, you might like that as well.
Um, you can have mixed economies that combine aspects of capitalism and socialism, there are several European countries that are doing decent with it. The rampant overconsumption mindset amongst the population, anti consumer behavior from businesses, and government corruption/apathy are some of the biggest issues in the US. Social programs and safetynets along with stricter advertising rules would help steer us into a better direction.
I mean it's entirely possible to live in a mostly capitalistic world and not have climate change. It just needs the right rules and regulations and taxes. Just imagine how the world would be if governments made the right decisions in the 1970s. We'd probably have no fossil fuels at all, electric cars were the norm and probably much more nuklear energy. Still capitalism but without climate change.
Capitalist capture of government institutions isn’t a bug of capitalism, it’s a feature. The ability to command vast amounts of productive resources enables capitalists to exert political influence.
Whatever clever policies we could come up with are irrelevant as long as those in power are the ones who stand to gain the most by resisting change.
There isn’t a way this works out in our favor. Even in countries with capitalism + social safety nets, we see that overtime the capitalists slowly erode public gains through privatization.
Rules and regulations are the opposite of free market capitalism. The only way to address climate change is to make society less capitalistic. The regulations required to fix climate change with capitalism would pretty much turn it into a different -ism.
And that's without considering whether billionaires will even let that happen.
It's already been figured out that unfettered capitalism does not work. Rules and regs are required, but it also requires a government beholden to people instead of big business to actually enforce said rules and regulations.
You’re missing how a free market is meant to work.
In a free market, ALL costs are captured and paid for at whatever rate the market determines is fair. At the moment, polluters aren’t paying for CO2 emissions - the cost of those emissions is being paid by society. In economics, that’s called an Externality, and most economists agree that the governments role is to capture externalities, because they’re a deviation from a proper free market.
To fix this, the government could enforce a rule that says all companies must be carbon neutral, and then allow businesses that are carbon-negative to trade their excess with companies who are carbon-positive. versions of this are being done in many places. The issue is the inertia of the existing systems, and the fact that you can’t just make these changes overnight.