you gotta make it happen.
Covid 2.0 could definitely do us all in.
Because lard ass orange pile of shit is not preparing the world for a new pandemic and instead is destroying green energy and allowing AI to waste and pollute the environment.
The industrial mechanisms that promote climate change would not die with capitalism.
What would die is the goal of limitless growth (and limitless externalities). And it would presumably put the decision making about the right tradeoff between “industrial mechanisms” and the climate back in the hands of the people… instead of leaving that choice to self-interested billionaires.
If capitalism collapses, we’re most likely going back to feudalism, not ten-forward to Star Trek.
For a while. Maybe the rest of our lives. We’d come out of it eventually.
Maybe in 1000 years democracy will have a resurgence and we’ll have a global democratic government.
Until people get complacent and it stops working and the whole thing collapses in on itself resulting in a return to feudalism.
Capitalism will burn itself out but that literally comes with the burn out of humanity. The only way to reverse capitalism is to revolt and impose our own socialist agenda. I know its not what you want to hear but its the only solution to not ending our lives in horrible desperation. Our new policies for climate change will ensure mitigation of greenhouse gasses but the button has been pressed on our future and we will see climate disasters and a global warming that we will need to endure. Endurance and ensurance are the only outcomes possible with the impotence our society is achieving. We are so stuck in this capitalist hellscape and incapable of fighting the systems that rob resources and leeches on the world. We only have this planet and we are sucking it dry quite literally.
I’m a time traveler, I came back from the future just to tell you guys that we will naturally evolve from capitalism to democratic socialism, aka market socialism. It’s still capitalism, but better. You still have free markets, but cooperatives will beat corporations on account of simply being more competitive - you see, in a level playing field, cooperatives don’t need to squeeze their customers, employees, & vendors to maintain a profit margin for their investors, unlike every investor led corporation in the world. You can even ask the incoming mayor of New York about it. Wait a minute, is he a time traveler too?
I also wish all my problems would go away magically
My sweet summer child… We missed our chance. The revolution isn’t coming. Or maybe it will happen and then we will die anyways. The climate is fucked. There is no unfucking it. We can fuck it a little less than we currently are every year, but that isn’t going to save us.
The effects of this will rival the Permian extinction in the near term and in the long term, barring a miraculous turnaround through geological processes after a few thousand years, it will certainly be worse.
For reference, the Permian extinction wiped out 90% of ALL LIFE. Like 75% of land based life and 95% of all sea life (of which there was considerably more) at the time died out. It was caused by a sudden and severe increase in atmospheric greenhouse gasses over the course of several thousand years. We are outpacing that by orders of magnitude. So we could quite conceivably reach the levels seen during that time and we could do it much faster, giving all life even less time to adapt to the worst catastrophy in the history of life.
We’re boned, my dude.
lol.
Stop the passive waiting, OP
Burning everything will surely help Climate Change!
I mean, in this theoretical situation it would. Ignoring the fact that it’s metaphorical, it’s sort of like saying we shouldn’t build windmills or nuclear power plants because the construction produces co2
I mean… maybe burning everything down would mitigate climate change. But the collapse of global supply chains would lead to billions losing access to sufficient food, clean drinking water, internet, electricity/modern heating, medicine, etc. We would see mass migrations, war, famine, disease, and ecological devastation, all on a scale never before seen in the history of humanity. Ie, all the things we are trying to stop climate change in order to avoid.
Like, let’s say you murder the CEO of Exxon Mobile and light all their facilities on fire. The company vanishes, and everyone is scared to try to fill their niche (this wouldn’t happen, btw, they would just beef up security). Now whatever nation you are in has no oil. Immediately, the entire economy based on ICE vehicles grinds to a halt. Food shortages start within days. So do shortages of critcial medicines. Rural people are forced to decide between scratching a living off the land or abandoning their homes. All production of new plastics stops. Everyone who used to drive a car now spends hours more commuting each day. Everyone involved in oil and gas loses their jobs and start rioting in the streets. Blackouts and brownouts become common as coal and NG plants go offline. People start burning whatever is nearby in order to stay warm. Stressed out moms start murdering each other at the grocery store over rolls of paper towels. Etc.
I mean… in a sense it would, no? (Not that I would want that tho)
There are so many people like you wanting the violence, but waiting for someone else to shoulder the risk. Performative rebellion.
That’s a lot of assuming you’re doing there.
Are you out there burning it to the ground?
If they were, it would be extremely foolish to answer your question honestly.
Even if they did say yes, you wouldn’t believe them anyway, so what’s the point in asking?
Oooh using gasoline to fight climate change. Literally fighting fire with fire. I like it.
We’re a lot more likely to Balkanize and divide
I think we might see some form of separation.
While i too yearn for the downfall of capitalism, pre-capitalist societies were still responsible for environmental distruction, slavery and genocide.
As long as individuals or a small elite have enough power to enforce their needs over the needs of everyone else, we’ll always have capital-b Badnesses.
We have to usher in the collapse of perminant heirarchies, whatever form they take.
We have to usher in the collapse of [permanent hierarchies]
That would be nice, but is it realistic? It’s not just that humanity has always had hierarchies. It’s that it seems to be a feature of even the animal kingdom. It also seems like when people try to create a system without hierarchies, someone steps into the power vacuum. The end result is that things are even worse for the people at the bottom.
Maybe a better plan is to accept that human animals are going to end up having hierarchies, and instead of trying to completely eliminate them, instead aim to shrink them as much as possible while still maintaining a functional government that at least somewhat answers to the people at the bottom.
We really need the death of money more than we need the death of capitalism. Because you’re right, even before rampant capitalism, we still weren’t really great to each other.
What’s amazing to me is I’m perfectly content to live and let live. My neighbors, friends, family, all of us…ain’t got no beef with anybody. Why does this fail so badly when scaled up?
Before there was money there was debt. Debt goes back thousands and thousands of years.
My neighbors, friends, family, all of us
That’s exactly why. You described a band, a tribe, a group. People not in that group are not in your band / tribe / group. So, you don’t really need to share your wealth with people from outside your group. Nobody can know and love 8 billion other people. Humans are still fundamentally apes, and that’s just not in our ape nature.
There’s a lot of neuroscience showing that social power suppresses empathy in the brain. Status, privilege, wealth, etc. make almost everyone less able to consider the pain of others.
Most of us can be reasonable with people we know. But the socially powerful are making most of the important higher-scale decisions, and they are neurologically the least capable of making good decisions on behalf of others.
Or that’s how i see the problem.
Well that makes the problem even more blatantly obvious…the problem is social hierarchy. It’s impossible to have equality and hierarchy simultaneously…they are mutually exclusive.
They (the ruling classes) are vastly outnumbered, yet they manage to gain control over the masses below them, such that we must support them or the whole thing crumbles.
They’ve got the supporting class believing that we need them…but really that couldn’t be further from the truth.
The problem is, though, as soon as one ruler is gone, another replaces them, and that one is equally corrupt. And the cycle repeats.
But conversely, I don’t see how a non-hierarchal society could function, because that implies there must be some sort of order, mediation, and enforcement, which automatically means that some people will have authority over others, no matter how you slice it.
There are lots of ways to organize people that aren’t heirarchical, or that dilute or limit power rather than concentrating it.
Directly voting for laws, appointing officials by sortition - like being picked for jury duty, pushing decisions down to neighbourhood councils, consensus decision making, a culture that always permits insulting the successful and plenty else has been suggested.
It all comes with drawbacks of it’s own, of course. And having grown up in a heirarchical society, it can be very hard to imagine anything else, until you read about all the times and places where people have organized themselves differently.
Central planning economies have ruined the planet disproportionately compared to their liberal, market economy counterparts. Consider the USSR: compared to the US, a better environmental record might be expected due to their command economy. To the contrary
Total emissions in the USSR in 1988 were about 79% of the US total. Considering that the Soviet GNP was only some 54% of that of the USA, this means that the Soviet Union generated 1.5 times more pollution than the USA per unit of GNP.
Their planners considered pollution control
unnecessary hindrance to economic development and industrialization
and
By the 1990s, 40% of Russia’s territory began demonstrating symptoms of significant ecological stress, largely due to a diverse number of environmental issues, including deforestation, energy irresponsibility, pollution, and nuclear waste.
And this generously glosses over the extent of water contamination, hazardous dumping of toxic & nuclear waste into oceans, etc.
Humans are the problem, and the planet is better off without them.
But what about the meme economy?
I’m willing to sacrifice the value of your meme collection in order to save the planet
My Meme Collection?
No comrade, our meme collection will wave the planet!
That’s the only economy in which communism works
Everyone can have memes, there is no scarcity of it. Happy cake day!
Thank you!
Before it goes it will be proceeded be decades of massive corruption, general enshittification of everything, corporate rule and oppression.
When you are running away from corporate sentry drones, because you were outsite after curfew in hunger games type society, it’s better time to start waiting.
We’ve already had decades of massive corruption and general enshittification. Nothing stopping us from making things better.
So more of the same then
