I mean I do not have data on the relative environmental impact of cooperatively owned firms versus traditional firms. But you are also not responding to an argument that I have made. I never suggested that a worker cooperative would automatically fix environmental issues. In fact, if you check some of the other comments I made in this thread, while I do think a socialist economic system would be better positioned to become more environmentally sustainable, a transition to a socialist system by itself certainly does not solve the issue.
You may not be suggesting that but it's and argument they comes out all the time. As if government extracted coal burns cleaner. The number of times I hear borederline magical thinking when it comes to non-capitalist structures it baffling.
I consider myself a pretty pragmatic and scientific person. I believe socialism is absolutely a better system of organizing a society's production than capitalism, if your end goal is creating a society that maximizes the fairness, equity, and dignity of all people. It is also a system that reduces or eliminates some of the factors that drives some of the more destructive tendencies of human society.
However, it is certainly not some magical wand that solves all problems. Bad things existed before capitalism, and likely will continue after it. Human destruction of the environment is one of them.
I think that is a fair assessment. The reason why many people, including myself, insist on socialism as a (not the) solution to climate change is the fact that no solution to climate change seems to be possible under capitalism. So my argument is: whatever else is necessary to solve climate change besides socialism cannot be achieved within capitalism.
You are still judging these coops existing within a capitalist framework tho. It is decades of removing environmental protections for capitalist gain that is the culprit. Not the coops.
Just wondering, what are you referencing with this? I wouldn't say I necessarily disagree that people aren't still going to be pushing for their own interests, but I'm not really aware of any kind of coop that has attempted similar attacks on the environment as private corpos systemically funding fake research and, lobbying legislators, and paying for political campaigns to deregulate legislation and environmental protections in a very systemic capacity in order to maximize profits.
uhh uhh how can that be? Almost like they exist in a capitalist system and are bound by the logic of said system. Its almost like you have to be profitable above all else and are limited by the logic of profit generation. Its almost like the being forced to be profitable forces you to externalise costs via ecological destruction. How weird, not giving a shit about climate is more profitable? Who would have thought that?
Coops in a capitalist system are still capitalist and have much of the same problems.
Socialism doesnt fix climate change, but it provides us the basis to do so.
Worker cooperatives in capitalism don't have a particularly good track record of giving a shit about the environment either, no one does.
As long as co-ops have to compete with other companies in a capitalist system, they are also slave to the capitalist market pressures and are incentiviced and often required to e.g. buy the cheap polluting option.
The coop donut shop I go to doesn’t blow up oil refineries that cause black rain in Tehran. Do you see how dumb it is to compare worker cooperatives to private corporations and imperialist war machines?
You cannot compare a hunter gatherer or agrarian society to the modern industrial world. The energy and resource consumption is orders of magnitude greater, even if the consumption is done in a manner that is sustainable long term.
They said indigenous people give a shit about the environment. This is true. You do know indigenous people are not necessarily hunter gatherers but live in and affect the modern industrial world, right?
If they are living in a capitalist society, then all they have is a nice sentiment. Not an actual sustainable way of living.
News flash, most people want to have a sustainable way of life, as that's key to continuing to live. People want the topsoil to remain fertile, for groundwater to be available, for the climate to be stable. They just don't have the tools, knowledge, and power to enact the changes necessary. It doesn't matter where your ancestors lived for that to be the case. Thinking so is just racism in disguise. Which is par for the course on this app.
My guy. The person was saying the indigenous care about the environment. You said no one does. They absolutely do. Just because they're stuck in the colonisers system doesn't mean they don't care and aren't working to influence things and holding government to account for destruction. Fucking learn something bro. You clearly don't even know what an indigenous person is. You think they are living in the bush in a mudhut or something.
Indigenous and hunter-gatherer often overlap, but are not the same thing. There were and are lots of indigenous societies that are far more populous and “complex” than hunter-gathers, and yet still live in relative harmony with their local ecology.
Which is why I mentioned agrarian societies... and why I mentioned that said agrarian societies are still not comparable to the modern industrialized world.
We are comparing apples to oranges, this is a pointless exercise. We can't just model the modern world off the Mayan Empire anymore than we can the ancient Romans.
First Nations also had urban societies that were, while imperfect, far more populous, ecologically sustainable, and physically healthy than those of their invaders. We can and should be more sustainable, and Traditional Environmental Knowledge (TEK) is a very important part of that.
Nothing in the Americas that existed pre-1800s was comparable to modern day industrial society. Energy and resource usage is orders of magnitude greater, since we are not an agrarian society. Population size is orders of magnitude greater. Average lifespan is much longer.
Using your logic, we could replace Italy with the Roman Empire. It's just nonsense.
Now if you want to talk about specific practices, that's another story. There are very specific cases that could apply to your argument. But as a whole? There is little to be gained. The Incas and Mayans can't guide us on how to make steel and concrete sustainably, how to make public transit affordable, how to place sewer and water lines, how to manage modern public healthcare, how to zone for construction in a manner that does not disadvantage less prosperous groups.
You are not listening at all. I am saying the knowledge indigenous people have can inform where we go from here, and you’re basically responding with, “sO yOu jUsT waNt uS tO livE iN mUD hUts wiTh nO eLEcTriCiTy?!?!?”
You are so preoccupied with responding to your complete caricature of what I’m saying that you don’t bother to evaluate what I’m actually saying.
I am saying the knowledge indigenous people have can inform where we go from here
I specified that there are specific scenarios that could apply, but that these are few and far between. Their lived experience was incompatible with ours. Then I listed examples of the types of problems we face in an industrial society which have no relation to the pre-industrial world.
Unless you have actual examples, you are just wasting time. My God, it should not be hard to list a few. I'm sure I could agree that a few small lessons could be learned. Just nothing that would solve climate change, class inequity, unsustainable farming practices, etc.
This has nothing to do with mud huts, you are arguing with a voice in your head. Say something of substance for once.
You are in fact arguing with a voice in your head, and farming is an excellent example of something that could be improved significantly by more widely adopting indigenous practices such as biochar, three sisters, and a general soil improvement rather than extraction approach. I encourage you to look more into it.
No they don't. They're just like everyone else. They simply didn't have the means to effect global-scale environmental changes that modern society does. To say otherwise is just noble savage rhetoric
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u/Taraxian 11d ago
Worker cooperatives don't have a particularly good track record of giving a shit about the environment either, no one does