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Journalism fails miserably at explaining what is really happening to America
(www.inquirer.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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politics
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It is, and will always be- capitalism. When everything is for profit, lies become commodities. This system can work, until there is a crisis that markets can’t absorb. Climate change cannot be commodified because it affects consumers. Fascism is capital’s answer to the crisis. It can’t be voted away. We must demand for a planned economy to transform into a sustainable society. It’s our only hope. This is where we need to be.
I read an article not too long ago about a guy who started a worker owned restaurant. Everyone got a really good salary and any profits would be split evenly between all the workers. The article reveals that the business hasn't actually turned a profit but it didn't matter to the employees because the business made enough to cover it's expenses and all the workers were paid really well (IIRC they were making something like $30 an hour).
The concept really blew my mind: a business didn't need to be profitable to be successful.
Capitalism really does seem to be the problem.
Now imagine every business was ran this way. No overproduction. No expanding markets. Only producing what is needed. But there’s the rub. Who decides what is needed? Our whole cultural paradigm must change for this to be possible, and we don’t have generations to work out the kinks. It truly is the tragedy of the commons.
Hate to break it to you, but sometimes the opposite of a bad thing is another bad thing. Not even China rocks a planned economy anymore. They have these things like money and markets instead now.
Lol at the idea that China is the opposite of capitalism... 😂🤦♀️
I think that's his point: the China that existed as a planned economy collapsed decades ago and got replaced with their current quasi-capitalist system because the planned economy model was even worse than free market capitalism.
Planned economies didn’t work in the past with capitalist economies next door. Why have less, when your neighbor has more. Planned economies can work if its implemented worldwide. I’m only extrapolating the answer. Whether this happens sooner rather than later is the conundrum. Either we transition to a planned economy now and save lives and have a modicum of dignity. Or we ride this capitalist beast until billions are dead and we’re fighting over resources. The choice is clear.
I don't get the hate on the China economy. They've equaled the US in GDP if you figure in the US's debt. If you ignore the debt they're only at 1/2 the GDP (as opposed to 1/100th 2 decades ago).
By all metrics China is doing better than the US right now.
Again, that's the point. China turned away from central planning in the 1980s and 90s, after Mao died. Today's 'miracle' Chinese economy is basically capitalism. Capitalism with Chinese characteristics, if you prefer. If you want to know what command economy looks like, compare Mao's China and Brezhnev's USSR to the US or Europe.
Then China will collapse too. You have to get out of binary thinking. Us versus them. Any society based on growth will fail. Produce resources for survivability. That is all. Our way of doing things is gone. It can’t continue. Adapt or die.
While you're getting out of binary thinking, consider that perhaps fully capitalist and fully planned economies are both bad, and a compromise between the two, attempting to harness the best features of each, is necessary.
Just like over-eating and under-eating are both bad. A healthy balance is better.
Social Democracies would be adequate for humans, but not the planet. It still requires growth, which is no bueno for ecosystems. Selfishly, I would love for mixed economies to attempt sustainability, but the math and timelines don’t make that possible. Massive degrowth will either be implemented by us, or will be forced on us.
Oh, from that perspective things remain to be seen. For global warming to actually result in apocalypse, economical, large-scale carbon capture has to be impossible. We just don't know yet, it's a busy field.
I think your certainty is misplaced though.
I hope so. I hope I’m wrong. But the logistics involved do not seem promising. The technology isn’t ready for large scale carbon capture. And the production and materials needed to build it will still use carbon. It’s a carbon conundrum. Geoengineering might buy us time, but growth economies must be dismantled or the problems will persist into the future. This article explains the situation we’re in.
We certainly have challenging times ahead, regardless of how things go. No question about that one.
Even rolling out some ideal, sci fi solution today, we have still done some damage that will take time to repair. Heat absorbed by the ocean has built up for years and can only leave so quickly.
I do think a mixed economy can control its growth in a sustainable way, though. Not all economic value needs to be derived heavily from carbon-producing industries. Service economies can create value at a much reduced environmental cost, though their increasing wealth does often come with its own, new threats to the environment.
It's threading a needle, no question about it. But I do think it's within the realm of actual possibility. Where I'm not sure a fully planned and actually well-functioning economy really is. For political reasons, if not practical.
How about a steady-state economy?
I love it in theory, particularly as our data-processing continues to advance. In practice I think it'd be impossible to implement in my country (US) any time this century without a whole lot of blood in the streets, and a very high likelihood of the attempt failing due to corruption and sabotage, and resulting in a dramatic, reactionary shift in the country's direction to the far right.
In the future though, as our tools improve and attitudes toward tech change, something like this could become feasible. You'd have to deal with modern population decline via immigration, which is naturally unsustainable, but that bridge can be crossed in the future.
Where did he talk about China?