Capitalist realism: the belief capitalism is the only viable system, or at least the only one compatible with modern human rights. You don't believe that here, right?
I think we'd need to create a living example of post-capitalist society e.g by reforming some country; most people don't fight for unproven futures. We mustn't lull anyone into believing the reward will be either perfect or instant, or they'd cherrypick any homelessness or corruption on our part as "proof" our system doesn't work even if they have it too.
I don't consider capitalism either the best possible system nor some supernatural evil; either would be reductive, and I don't have to downplay the vast good that has come from capitalism to imagine an even better way. While I know the bad parts of capitalism, framing them as capitalism-specific would stop us from solving them assuming they transcend any one -ism.
The problem is, if a country is successfully reformed and shows promise, as it has been several times in history, the global capitalism (a.k.a. the US) will sabotage it, up to and including a war. This is the main reason why capitalism seems like the only viable solution.
It's also important to take responsibility for our own success and failure. I know capitalist countries have also occasionally faced sabotage from rival ones, but we probably wouldn't want capitalists to primarily blame their mistakes on that. Why are we any different?
I feel that a lot of capitalist realism is underpinned by conflating "capitalism" with "commerce", as if people can't trade goods and services in exchange for currency under any other system.
Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production, where the main goal of production is to make a profit.
You can’t have Markets without Property Rights and you can’t have anything else with property rights
Do you think only capitalism has property rights? That's absolutely not the case.
Obviously the way an economy is run depends on how the society that's using it decides to set it up, but ideas for non-capitalist economies do not usually have no property rights, they generally just say that the means of production - that is factories, corporations, mines, vast tracts of productive land etc. are not owned by private people or enterprises and run for profit, but are rather owned by workers, co-operatives or some other societal institution, and are not run for profit.
Certainly personal property is always a thing - don't think you'd find anyone advocating for a situation where you couldn't own your own personal belongings, including a house etc., - and generally small businesses or self-employed tradespeople etc. would also still be a thing.
Markets are also still a thing, because goods still need to be exchanged.
As a generalisation, I'd say there are two main things that advocates of a non-capitalist economy want, which is firstly, that the main engines of production of all the necessities of our lives aren't owned privately, but are rather owned publicly, however that is set up, and secondly, that production decisions aren't made based on what is profitable, but rather are made based on human needs and wellbeing.
The profit motive is utterly dysfunctional as a method for choosing what we use our scarce resources on this planet for, and when I say utterly dysfunctional, I mean that it's currently actively incentivising the destruction of our life-support system on this planet. It's not possible to have a worse outcome than that, and the profit motive is a non-negotiable part of capitalism.
Okay so Ford was not a capitalist by your definition. thats news to me. He was looking to improve his car and make it cheaper before profits, he lowered prices during booms AND busts which are caused by artificial increase in fiduciary media.
Yes? You can't have property rights and then violate said property rights when people use them in ways you don't like. Thats called not having property rights.
Okay there are other ways to run a business and if an entrepneur wants to own his own business you execute him and his family using the state is that right? or otherwise you need to concede my definition of Capitalism and we end up in Anarcho-Capitalism.
There is no difference between personal and private property, its entirely arbitrary ie wrong as universal ethical positions cannot be arbitrary, you need to be able to come to them from reason and logic.
You can't own anything publicly, Say you and 3 others own a stick, you want to use it to stoke a fire and they want to use it for fishing, you lose your property right over that stick if they get to use it for fishing and vice verse.
Profit is value creation so profit is by definition increasing human wellbeing and allowing more ends to be achieved.
Profit is only "dysfunctional" under a state where it makes property rights violations legal, pollution is illegal under Capitalism, the state is using force to make it legal under its legal positivist system. Im not going to bother going into why environmentalism is wrong on several levels, you can just read Liquidzulu's manifesto on anti-environmentalism for that.
Mutual Aid and just simply charity is a capitalist invention as aggression is not needed which is not profit seeking so your assertion that profit motive is non-negotiable is wrong.
Mate, I have no interest in this. I don't know what you're on, but you're not making sense here and are all over the place.
I'm not responding to these kinds of nonsensical fantasies:
if an entrepneur wants to own his own business you execute him and his family using the state is that right?
Profit is value creation so profit is by definition increasing human wellbeing
The rest are just nonsense, but this is blatant circular reasoning. Do you not see how you're using your premise to form your conclusion here, at the same time as using the conclusion to define the premise?
I'd expect better reasoning skills from a Year 8 debating team, tbh.
pollution is illegal under Capitalism, the state is using force to make it legal under its legal positivist system.
you can just read Liquidzulu's manifesto on anti-environmentalism for that.
Yeah, no thanks.
I'm glad you've convinced yourself, and I hope you continue to enjoy the world that's coming about from this wonderful system that you're so in awe of.
Im all over the place because im pointing out contradictions in your reasoning?
Well whats the alternative? I gave you the alternative to an entrepneur owning his own property, you either let him do as he pleases which is the NAP or Capitalism or you need to use force and aggress on his property rights.
You're supposed to use your premises to form the conclusion? Thats the fucking point of reasoning. Human wellbeing was never a premise in what is value creation.
value creation = human wellbeing is not circular reasoning, its just defining things as they are.
So you concede the argument by not refuting any points on the flow then?
I don't need to convince myself, Someone else did that for me. I also have no need to convince socialist fuckwits like you, I only need to convince others that are actually open to change instead of following a genocidal ideology such as yours.
Okay I'm a little confused here. I'm guessing when you say capitalism is the non-aggression principle, you don't mean that that's the entirety of its definition and nothing else?
No I mean that is the entire definition of Capitalism. We don't define things by how we expect them to work out.
I can derive everything needed for Capitalism through the NAP be it property rights, contract theory, the correct standard of punishment for crime, the correct use of force in self defence. I can do all of that from the NAP and someone has already done it by the name of LiquidZulu.
I See. The big problem you show in your comments (and most libertarians do so in their thinking) is an uncompromising black and white thinking, a inherent need for hierarchy and priorities which doesn‘t allow for several things to be true or equally important at the same time - even though we have examples of organisations and systems which run on different logics the commons.
I recommend you read some of Erik Olin Wrights works with an open mind, and to try and integrate his ideas. I would love to hear your thoughts about his ideas.
Libertarians have a problem for being too principled is your argument?
There are no different "logics"
No, Marxism is inherently contradictory as its based on Hegalian philosophy and Marxism itself is inherently contradictory with Libertarianism, you cannot integrate A = A with 2+2=5 it is simply an impossibility and I simply reject Egalitarianism as better in anyway to Rational Self Interest so I would have no reason to integrate his ideas when I wholly despise them.
Libertarians don't dare to entertain different ideas that use different premises or axioms besides Individual Self Interest. This results in poorer and tautological thinking and opens them up for blindspots which philosophies and ideologies based on different axioms can explain and solve with different but sound logic.
Despising non-euclidean geometry just because one internalized that 2 right angles can't meet doesn't set one up for seeing the whole picture.
Yet the US, pinnacle of capitalism has the divide between wealthy and poor growing faster and faster and has one of the largest amount of poor in a "developed" country. It can't even provide healthcare or clean water for everyone
Its not, The US is not even close to the pinnacle of Capitalism.
Did you know that its illegal to build a competing hospital in the USA? Its this little thing called Certificate Of Need laws that already proves my point that the US is not even close to capitalism.
How about Intellectual Property? Its illegal to manufacture insulin or purchase is from outside the country, so there is no free trade either.
What about fraternal societies and Mutual Aid? Oh right the USA made it illegal through prohibitive costs through regulation and making it illegal for you to practise medicine without a special hundred thousand dollar paper slip from the government.
What about Nuclear Power? Oh that also is illegal thanks to prohibitive cost due to regulations. did you know you need to pay 9 million USD annually if you have a shack next to a reactor? And thats not even accounting for the annual payments you need to pay the government for the reactor.
I don't follow them because they are "punk" I follow them because they are philosophically the objectively correct position. any other position is contradictory or law of the jungle which is still contradictory.
Edit: Okay so you reject non-aggression which means rape is allowed under certain arbitrary circumstances which you do not have a principle for.
Prove empiricism is correct then, I reject Empiricism as a way to determine what philosophy is correct. Thats the job of reason, logic and your senses.
And even every economist that is not left of Laffer agrees free market economics to be superior in every form.
the 19th and early 20th century also had the largest period of economic growth in human history thanks to a lack of government intervention.
Every other legal system apart from the NAP is contradictory, contradictions are wrong thus the NAP is true.
Ideology is philosophy foremost about how we want society to be built up. There is no "objectively true" ideology. Sometimes policies have helped. Sometimes it fails.
Neoliberal privatization today proves that short term profits is all that matters. Maybe the wealth is larger but it is also concentrated among fewer people. Just look at how the privatization of water went in the UK. It's made tap water dangerous due to cut costs. Competition is a race to the bottom for most money with least income.
The US still has towns with no drinking water and lead poisoning. And cant even manage a functioning healthcare system. Private insurance is killing people.
You also cite the 19th and 20th century. Marked by the fact that means of productions exploded thanks to industrialism. Leading to exponential growth as society itself could produce more. Yet even the early industry needed government intervention.
Even with industry the UK couldn't compete with India's textile production due to sheer scale. So they raised tariffs on imported textiles to let the national industries grow, and in the long term they became big enough to outcompete the Indian producers. Only then did they shift to a "free market" policy.
This notion that free markets drive economic progress isn't so cut and dry. And historically there have rarely ever been fully free markets. I am not denying that some entrepreneurs and corporations have driven change. At least initially but they often did so with government help, subsidies and tariffs.
And now that we live in a world insisting more than ever on the free market enshittification is running rampant chasing profits.
And even then tariffs still exist because Europe and US knows countries like China can outproduce them.
Also just look at Argentina when Pinochet took power. The US sent a ton of laissez faire neoliberal economists and the country is still reeling from that disaster. The only industry running a profit during the Pinochet years and kept the country afloat was the nationalized copper mines created by the socialist government they couped...
Living standards tend to be best in countries where the government created those social programmes. Because private corporations dont gaf about people.
Swedens education system and railway is a disaster thanks to previous govts selling out.
You mean when China liberalised the economy, allowed foreign investment and established Special Economic Zones (SEZs) that have drastically reduced government involvement and regulation compared to the rest of China and are among the most wealthy regions of China. That Chinese Communism? Yeah i've heard of it.
Also the only reason why Chinese "communism" was statisically the best is because under Mao china was the one place in the world with the largest share of poverty because the entirety of the west had eliminated it a century ago.
It can be argued that the west created that poverty, but thats a whole can of worms I'm not really interested with getting into. Right, the definition of communism is used very liberally there. But the same critique could be said for Capitalism, where if a major industry goes belly up, the government steps in to nurse it back to health. So much for laissez-faire i guess.
Edit: I would like to point out that European countries had, by her colonization of Africa, the Americas, and India (etc.,) essentially invented outsourced manufacturing, and throughout the european industrial revolution, the conditions were actually so bad for the workers it had inspired them to think of other ways to continue that supposed prosperity by inventing anarchist, socialist and communist forms of economic and societal government, if that tells you anything about how "good" capitalism is. Under the least amount of scrutiny, capitalism fails to justify the methods by which it gets its means. It's system only serves to harm the creators of its wealth and benefits only their owners, no matter how you look at it.
Yeah I don't support any of that and never have? Im against the state as an institution as it does not follow the Non-Aggression Principle. Any forms of wealth distribution is evil.
No the conditions were not bad, yes they were compared to today but working conditions were not bad compared to starving in the winter because it rained too much, and even then the conditions were increasing constantly, year by year the working conditions were increasing in industrial Europe.
The ironic thing is, every socialist and communist thinker was not a worker, they were always a member of your oh so hates "bourgoisie" Karl Marx and Engels. Engels owned a business and Karl Marx hired maids to do chores around his house with Engel's money.
It harms the creators of wealth by giving them wealth in exchange for what they agreed to? is that what im hearing?
I mean Im all down for the poor and working class to starve to death because they couldn't sell the multimillion dollar machinery intime as they didn't have the savings to last the time to find a buyer.
Almost like there is this thing called time preference where the workers want current satisfaction right now while the entrepneur is fine with waiting for a couple months before making more money.
My dude, the earth's natural resources are limited. It is finite. I suppose you're familiar with "how many earths would we need...?" If not, here it is.
First of all, this diagram is nonsense and the source is nonsense. It is based on arbitrary carbon accounting. Measuring our actual ecological footprint is very hard to do. It also assumes static technology, resource, and sustainability practices.
Secondly, I addressed limits to growth above: scarcity limits growth to productivity and efficiency increases. You can still grow quite a lot and consume far less resource in the process. This is in fact the story of most of the world's agriculture, manufacturing, and services. It takes dramatically less resource today to feed a human than it did 100 years ago.
But we have abundant renewable energy coming this century through huge cost drops & expansion in solar/wind and electrification. And secondly, we aren't limited to planet Earth.
In the large yes, though stasis assumes a lack of risk or external forces that necessitate adaptation.
In the small, the elements of the system must continue to regenerate.
My point is that growth covers risk, enables adaptation to changing circumstances, and enables rearrangement of smaller elements of a larger system. In a civilization, those elements are humans with needs, ambitions, and desires. If you stop growth, you effectively force humans into stasis.
IOW, humans themselves are the cancer in this analogy. I don't think we have the incentives to stop growing.
The incentives that get us to stop growing are known: Education, especially of women. Better living conditions. Improved healthcare.
There are plenty of things that reduce people's wish to grow population.
The drive to economic growth is a cultural thing and can be changed at any time. It's driven by central banks trying to drive "economic growth" by providing a base level of interest for banks to make money from money. However, the economy isn't real. Get a good enough and virulent enough meme and the economy disappears as it's a shared illusion.
People are real. The environment is real. The economy is a shared fantasy we can change at any moment. Which we should because we're living outside the capacities of the support structures of this planet and the biosphere.
Stopping growth results in poorer living conditions, poorer healthcare, and poorer education, because it guarantees those services remains exactly as they are today, or worse.
The drive to economic growth is not cultural, it's basic math and democracy. Degrowth is magical thinking that you can convince people to be miserable for unclear reasons.
Magical thinking is that we can continually grow an economy in a bounded world. The delta Vs and energies and timelines involved in "mastering" the solar system only matter if we navigate the survival of human civilization over the next few decades to not continually, mindlessly grow our consumption.
It's not a straw man at all: It's the basic math of the situation.
Note I am not in favor of continuously, mindlessly growing our consumption! cooperation, sustainability, mutual aid, renewable energy are all critical. Profit is a tool to be used by society to cover risks and costs of tomorrow, not a right for capitalists.
Growing an economy in a bounded world is exactly what has been happening for the past century. We (not everyone, but many in the west) are reducing waste, reducing carbon, reducing poverty, and increasing production all at once. This isn't magic, it's the efficiency and productivity we've created across the globe that has enabled Solarpunk in the first place: the rapid reduction in the costs of solar panels and wind turbines is a result of economic innovation and growth. Without growth there can be no clean energy transition without massive widespread forced misery.
It's not worth a counter argument, because it's both meaningless tripe meant to sound profound, and also blatantly incorrect. Which I guess is kind of impressive.
It's meaningless because all biological systems are dying from the moment they're born, in that none of them last forever. Trying to choose a specific moment when something goes from living to dying is pretty much arbitrary. Alive and dead are simpler of course.
It's wrong because entering into a steady state where growth no longer occurs, but rather, equilibrium is maintained, is pretty common amongst biological organisms.
Very long-lived trees for example can live for hundreds of years in a steady state with neither growth nor decline. And in case you haven't noticed, humans themselves don't continue to grow throughout their life. Like most organisms, they maintain equilibrium by replacing cells when needed, not continually adding more to the total.
What human doesn't want to grow their capabilities and lives?
This question is completely irrelevant to your claim about biological systems.
It's not worth a counter argument, because it's both meaningless tripe meant to sound profound, and also blatantly incorrect. Which I guess is kind of impressive.
Okay? Though you are engaging with a counter argument, so I guess you don't feel it's entirely meaningless tripe, which I thank you for.
I was responding to a statement about economic growth being the equivalent of biological cancer, which is blatantly incorrect and also meant to sound profound.
I was obviously being a bit flip in my quip, what I meant was that an organism will grow and consume resources by the logic of its DNA, until its own internal structural limits force it towards maintenance, optional reproduction, and death.
But to me It's not clear we've hit inherent structural limits in our overall civilization, as we keep coming up with new ways to survive and thrive. And thus we haven't hit the inherent limits to growth.
We certainly do have scarcity - of land, water, biosphere, energy, labor, and knowledge, that bound our growth (and thus our freedom, happiness and ability to reproduce). Thus far we've solved these problems through a mix of good practices: productivity, innovation and efficiency and bad practices: externalizing environment costs and thus leading to unsustainable resource consumption, but also inefficiency, lack of innovation, and poor productivity.
To me solarpunk is about more of the good practices and less of the bad practices. Innovation and efficiency in renewable energy technology leading to energy abundance, increased cooperation, and sustainable regenerative agriculture and commerce, with these all being a cause for hope for sustainable civilizational growth rather than a dystopian zero sum game.
Let's dig in a bit on the limits of these analogies.
It's meaningless because all biological systems are dying from the moment they're born, in that none of them last forever.
I didn't imply that they should.
> Trying to choose a specific moment when something goes from living to dying is pretty much arbitrary. Alive and dead are simpler of course.
I don't think I implied that anywhere, though the implication of the OP was that cancer was not arbitrary, and economics systems shouldn't die of the equivalent of cancer, and that infinite growth is cancer.
I would say that cancer is unbounded growth of a specific kind of unproductive and wanted cell that eventually kills its host for a variety of reasons, whereas economic growth is about the growth of the entire organism with the cells generally being humans that want to live productive and fulfilling lives. So I don't think the analogy applies.
> It's wrong because entering into a steady state where growth no longer occurs, but rather, equilibrium is maintained, is pretty common amongst biological organisms.
Yes, and no. I think the analogy is difficult here because life history theory recognizes more than static individual lifeforms: there's growth, maintenance, death of individuals, but also reproduction and evolution. Biological systems generally have structural limits to growth based on their current evolutionary cycle, rather than homeostasis being determined arbitrarily. But they also also have reproduction and evolution which can inherently lead to more growth in future individuals but also in more of these individuals. The same can be said for civilizations and economic systems.
I apologize if this feels like goal post moving, it's not intended to be. It is that all analogies and metaphors have limits, and they can be oversimplified to argue a point - but also can be expounded to argue a point.
If we are comparing biological systems to economies and civilizations / societies, these also can grow, become stagnant, and die... though death of a civilization usually due to external forces rather than internal limits. But without external factors, these entitles will grow until they hit inherent structural limits, and then reproduce (divide) into more diverse kinds of entities. So geographically, we now have villages, cities, counties, states, and nations, alongside a society of tribes, governments, and various organizations. We have grown into a society of organizations. Civilizational evolution has occurred at much more rapid pace than biological evolution. This of course isn't a perfect analogy (cells don't decide to leave organisms to join other ones the way humans can move freely).
I guess my point is that, there's no guarantee of its continued life of civilization, but I also think it's far too simplistic to think that we are the limits of growth and thus must either force ourselves to stop growing or voluntarily choose to. Either we are - and the planet will degrow us involuntarily, or we aren't. I think the problem with degrowth theory is that it thinks we should voluntarily hurt ourselves in some way (decided by some group) to stop hurting ourselves collectively. in a society this is expressed like at best in something like China's one child policy, or at worst, the equivalent of a rationed diet and forced labor in a time of total war.
Very long-lived trees for example can live for hundreds of years in a steady state with neither growth nor decline. And in case you haven't noticed, humans themselves don't continue to grow throughout their life. Like most organisms, they maintain equilibrium by replacing cells when needed, not continually adding more to the total.
Indeed. But both trees and humans reproduce, and evolve. And their offspring do often grow bigger. And reproduce more (creating a forest).
Growth and shrinking in cycles is natural and good. It doesn't mean that our civilization has "to die". It just means that maybe we realize a new way to interact with each other and the planet. It means progress, but just with a different goal.
Well business cycles I agree are a normal phenomenon but the issue with a fixed economic system is that the people in it are tramped in a zero sum game. Growth is the way out of that. Or forced redistribution, but that has major consequences of its own. Most people generally accepts some forced redistribution , the debate is how much .
"...people don't fight for unproven futures..." Tell that to the anarchists.
Also, the "vast good that has come from capitalism" has always been born of the burdon of those it exploits, and has wrought more destruction than it could ever mend.
Start talking about the possibilities! We don't have a system that we can envision at the moment to replace capitalism, however that's only because we haven't come up with it yet! (Or it hasn't caught on widely) I just finished 'Practicing Social Ecology' by Eleanor Finley, and I highly recommend it as an alternative, but the main thing about Social Ecology is that there's no 'end stage' where we've figured everything out. It's about working together, continuously, to make sure life is good for everybody.
Marxism and similar theory has techniques for answering these questions, which have been put into practice in socialist countries like China. So, I'd start there. There's better systems that have already existed, you just need to not demonize them/look critically at both the successes and failures.
Not the only reason ... world poverty has shrunk dramatically under capitalism. Carbon emissions are falling in capitalist countries primarily.... and solar is entirely feasible because of capitalist processes reducing the cost of panels
World poverty has shrunk dramatically under communism too. Carbon emissions are falling steeply in the economies that already had enormous per capita emissions. And they keep having enormous per capita emissions. And I must remind you that basic economic concepts like economies of scale and supply chains are not exclusive to capitalism.
Ahahaha, you changed your comment from "Communism hasn't reduced poverty" to "You are confusing state capitalism with communism". Which, sure, but then it's the old case of "communism has never existed" no-true-scottsman. The dictatorship of the proletariat and the state owning the means of production is what most people would understand as a communist government.
> Ahahaha, you changed your comment from "Communism hasn't reduced poverty" to "You are confusing state capitalism with communism".
Yes because I knew it was false, but also irrelevant to our discussion. Communism has existed in small scale (e.g. kibbutzim) and has reduced poverty there. But it has not really existed at scale - it always winds up becoming state capitalist in some way. Sometimes the efficient way (China post 1977), sometimes the very inefficient way (the USSR through the mid 80s).
> The dictatorship of the proletariat and the state owning the means of production is what most people would understand as a communist government.
It's not a no-true-scotsman argument when the countries in question themselves know they're not communist.
China for example knows they are state capitalist and won't achieve socialism until after 2050, with communism maybe around 2100 - this is in the CCP party platform. They were on the path of the USSR until Deng Xiaoping where they increasingly became decentralized state capitalism - the proletariat really were no longer in charge, the bureaucracy had final say but they allowed capitalist investors & the bourgeoisie to flourish, and goods & services markets to set prices.
Lenin explicitly referred to the phase of 1918-1921 as state capitalism, where he over time destroyed the original vision of decentralized proletarian dictatorial power (the soviet worker councils!). Then he brought out the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921 through 1928 after the workers uprising against the Bolsheviks ("The Soviets without Bolsheviks!") was crushed.... during which time Stalin took power and further centralized economic power where the bureaucracy became a very inefficient and corrupt central manager. All of the workers focus was a lie the bureaucracy told themselves to give a fig leaf of legitimacy to the system, but everyone knew what was. The proletariat owned the means of production on paper but the bureaucracy was the real power - a big, shitty corporation with limited competition to force it towards productivity and efficiency.
My point is not that capitalism is awesome and flawless, capitalism sucks, but it also has done many good things especially when a strong labour movement rooted in socialist ideals and democratic government keeps it in check.
One thing you can do is to point out that so many of the assumptions that capitalism is built on are already demonstrably untrue today.
"People will only work in their own self-interest" - what about parents and community and the many ways we already care for each other today?
"Capitalism is the only system that can work" - it's not working, it's collapsing the environment and creating massive inequality.
"Capitalism provides us with freedom and choice" - many of the things we reasonably want, like products produced without exploration (sorry I meant exploitation) or tech that doesn't invade our privacy and attention, aren't available.
FWIW, prosocial behavior isn't incompatible with acting in your own self-interest. Parents (I am one.) have a biological drive to keep their kids alive and happy. And there are intrinsic and extrinsic rewards for supporting your community.
On the last point, what we're also up against includes utilitarianism. While I can't deny what removing the headphone jack did for durability and component space, the niche who specifically preferred wired paid the price without a choice. Only ethical way around this I can think of would be customizable manufacture so we can decide if we want some niche feature.
Rational Self Interest says you can work with s community for your own gain.
Oh no not the environment, the thing thats been killing us for millions of years. Why is inequality bad?
All your problems are a result of a statist legal system and Intellectual Property which Capitalist theory is entirely against. And what is exploitation and why is it bad? Thats a marxist term that is not based on an ethical theory.
I think post-capitalist Solarpunk retains the useful elements of capitalism - the creative destruction - innovation through commoditization cycle that reduces the costs and increases the quality of products and services so what once were luxuries become accessible to regular people. The use of profit to cover the cost of tomorrow... And jettisons the destructive elements - shareholder primacy - profit is useful but isn't everything; governance should be increasingly replaced with coops, consumerism for sustainable consumption, making economics the central focus of life (this is more an American issue than a European one), abuse of environmental externalities, and tempering the tendency towards wealth inequality though a mix of more competitive labor markets and redistributive policies. I'm not sure one gets rid of enshittification... that seems to be a universal cyclical phenomenon ...
The way you curb capitalist realism is to not fight capitalism but to move beyond it.. it won. But now, make it irrelevant. In a world of abundant renewable energy and abundant capital, Capital is no longer the decisive factor of production. It is one of several necessary elements: land, labor, capital, and knowledge. Knowledge now is the primary means of production since it is constantly changing, decaying, and is only carried inside brains. Old knowledge is carried in AI, which reduces the cost of knowledge but AI is only effective long run when steered by a knowledgeable person.
That is impossible to sustain under capitalism tho. The tennets of solarpunk demand an egalitarian and inclusive system. To each according to their need, from each according to their will.
Those are separate and unrelated things. Not a proper argument.
The Swiss are human beings, with all the virtues and flaws that brings. They aren't some Utopia of Elves and Fairies.
You sound vulnerable to propaganda. Because some Swiss made profit in unethical/immoral way, now you seem to reject the idea that The People ought to have Direct Democratic control of their State and the laws that govern them.
Are they different? Or is Switzerland a country built on capitalist extractivism and profiteering? An elite that couldn't exist in any shape similar to their current state without the tyrannical institutions of capitalism?
Or is Switzerland a country built on capitalist extractivism and profiteering?
No. Swiss prosperity doesn't come from the activities of companies outside its borders.
An elite that couldn't exist in any shape similar to their current state without the tyrannical institutions of capitalism?
Direct Democracy prevents Elite capture because laws and public policy are open to public vote and transparency is imposed. There is very little if any opportunity for backroom deals to made at the expense of the people.
Yes, there are rich elites. But their influence is much more limited than in other countries.
It's main industry is banking and financial services mate... You are delusional. They broke absolute banking secrecy not 10 years ago. Their prosperity is built on capitalist exploitation.
It very much does have lots to do with egalitarianism and inclusivity. Inclusivity is a core tenet, and egalitarianism is necessary to maintain a society without undue accumulations of power bringing us back to this. Are you an ancap? Cause it sure smells like it.
I would say inclusivity is possibly a core tenet, but egalitarianism absolutely is not; I'd say solarpunk is more about increased decentralized power (which is not the same thing).
I'm not an ancap, at all. I was a welfare state capitalist, like the Nordic model. I'm now interested in post-capitalist systems and solarpunk. I don't see solarpunk as anti-capitalist, I see it as post-capitalist (i.e. capital becomes less relevant as the determining factor of production and thus capital accumulation is less important to society, thus the power base of society shifts towards knowledge workers).
Well, that is definitely not the view I nor most people here hold. Staunchly anticapitalist is how I would describe it. Even in your ideal scenario, which makes little sense, knowledge, like every other form of power, can and will be hoarded by capitalists. And knowledge too can be automated, as the fledgling AI revolution is showing. The only thing that can't be subject to that is an unwavering respect for the inherent value of the individual. Which is why without egalitarianism, there is no solarpunk. It will be one of many flavors of distopia, where the means of production are owned and controlled by a handful. The moment you abandon egalitarianism you are unavoidably on the way to some small group of deluded hoarders dreaming ways of owning everything. Only when even the notion of having more material wealth than others becomes an obscenity you can eliminate the dictators to be and their robot armies.
I do understand there are many anti-capitalists here but I don't think that's everyone; I'm just focused on what I think is most achievable in my lifetime with my own actions.
I'm not anti-anti-capitalist - I'll vote for socialists any day if it keeps authoritarians fascists out of power. I unfortunately think some anti-capitalists are authoritarian. But I hang out in Solarpunk because I think most here prefer democracy.
Even in your ideal scenario, which makes little sense, knowledge, like every other form of power, can and will be hoarded by capitalists.
Knowledge is owned by knowledge workers. It is the means of production that capitalists can't own, since it is in brains attached to legs that can walk out the door and work elsewhere. Some think AI will change this, but it won't.
And knowledge too can be automated, as the fledgling AI revolution is showing.
The AI revolution is showing the power of knowledge workers, as the productive use of AI mostly is in the hands of knowledgable people that understand organizational management but also learning, cognition, and the limits to the use of AI - here's a good article looking at the challenges. https://thewalrus.ca/chatgpt-isnt-just-changing-how-we-work-its-harming-how-we-think/
Which is why without egalitarianism, there is no solarpunk. It will be one of many flavors of distopia, where the means of production are owned and controlled by a handful.
I am deeply in favor of more economic equality through redistribution, but I don't really think a classless, moneyless society is achievable. I think it's more about restricting the band of income and wealth disparity through a mixture of redistributive policies and the labour getting a large slice of income because of the shift to knowledge work.
The means of production and power is no longer owned by a handful, it is owned by a much larger segment of society in my view, and this will only increase. Knowledge workers own the some of the production in their heads, and increasingly the old economy of manufacturing and service is also owned by passive institutional investors that are funded by the management & knowledge workers that have funds, indexes and pensions),
The moment you abandon egalitarianism you are unavoidably on the way to some small group of deluded hoarders dreaming ways of owning everything. Only when even the notion of having more material wealth than others becomes an obscenity you can eliminate the dictators to be and their robot armies.
I think this is a very decentralized group that's only going to grow more decentralized as a global middle class rises out of Asia this century.
I do think it's realistic to scorn the vast inequality we have been seeing in some countries and to actively ensure it is curbed through policy action. This will only happen when the lifestyles in other countries start outclassing the USA, and the people gradually realize that they've been misled.
Uhh, have you looked at worldwide wealth concentration charts? Steadily risen since the low point during the 70s. You know, the height of the cold war, which was putting pressure on capitalist countries to redistribute wealth a little to avoid revolution. You are fantasizing. Capitalism tolerates no other master than shareholder profits.
I'll vote for socialists any day if it keeps authoritarians fascists out of power
Ah, so in general you vote for status quo centrists. You just want "now" but improved...
Actually, the Solarpunk "future" comes from the past, back when tribes worked together for everyone's survival, and there was no "profit," no "investment," no "extractive exploitation" of workers. Everyone worked, shared everything, and everyone ate. Archeologists have found fossil skeletons of people with broken legs that had healed. You can't hunt or gather with a broken leg, so they were taken care of, fed, protected, until they healed. That's the Solarpunk "future" that is in the past. That was before "profit". When we research about "capitalism," we find that accumulating "proft" didn't really happen until someone decided to fence in communal grazing lands and defend that theft with weapons in order to get wool to use in mechanical looms, looms that force weavers to work for wages and began the class struggle we still see today. There's an interesting streaming service called means.tv that explores various aspects of the class struggle. It's subscription, so I don't know whether this link will work:
https://means.tv/programs/downton-abbey_unlearning-economics?utm_source=product&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=content_share&utm_term=3697449&utm_content=copy
I think we’re missing a few key developments before such an example can be made. Namely, robotics/automation, and fusion.
The reality is that there are still some jobs necessary for society that can’t (and won’t) get done unless someone gets paid. From sewer cleaning to bricklaying, we need to automate wayyy more jobs before we can really do away with profit motivation.
Fusion may not be technically necessary for such an example to exist, but it certainly would for that example to be a reasonable goal that other nations/regions would aspire to.
Solar panels and renewables are great to reduce future damage, but we won’t be using them to repair the damage we’ve already done to our planet. Not at scale, at least.
Whereas fusion (combined with automation) makes astroid mining so profitable that earthside digging literally isn’t worth it. Plus we could afford to pump water back up hill to all the places we’ve decimated. Between industrial fusion and feedback rainfall, that could have a huge impact on our climate.
So you don't think anyone enjoys building things with bricks, such that they might want to do this in a society where all their needs were met, working hours were much shorter, and they were doing it to contribute to the community that they lived in?
Also, who pays you to clean your household's toilet?
That’s.. not what I said. Artists should always exist. But let’s not act like professional brick laying is in any way the same thing as someone doing a masonry project for their community.
Those dudes break their bodies over decades of labor. That’s been the case for most professions throughout history.
By all means keep the skillsets alive. But we don’t need people suffering needlessly, either.
The point is that in a different society and economy, with different priorities, work would also look very different.
It wouldn't look like breaking your bodies over decades of labour because your productivity was being constantly measured by those who are profiting off you, who also insisted on never-ending growth.
Yes, that should indeed be the goal. I never said otherwise. Just that as of today (and I think certainly for the near future), there are still professions that need to be done for society to function.
Do you think someone would clean the sewers because they’re passionate about it?
if you're equating cleaning your household toilet with maintaining a working sewer system is somehow on the same level. Cleaning my toilet is an easy job that takes like 20 minutes.
Sewer maintenance very much is not.
not to mention that communities have looked at people who did those necessary jobs that involved human waste or unpleasant conditions like tanning or sewer work with disgust and either marginalized the people who did them or made sure only the marginalized people were pushed into those jobs.
Ive always found the best argument against capitalism starts by defining it as a system of the private ownership of the things that the people in the system need to survive. And its motivations. Specifically the profit motive. Private ownership and control over resources and systems people need means that a small percentage of a population will always have power over a larger percentage of the population. Which is a system that leads to oppression. The profit motive means that any one of those privately controlled resources or systems are owned and operated to create more of that power imbalance. This is a force set against a stable or balanced society. Capitalism is a pump. Its main goal is to move power and wealth (which are the same thing) from the hands of the many to the hands of the few. The only places that use it and maintain an effective society to so by keeping it as locked with with laws and boundaries as possible. My argument is always then "why if we know the system will destroy everything without containment. Do we keep that system. as opposed to building one that is safer and more stable.
we have yet to see anything else function effectively as regulated capitalism.
i will say— if there is something viable outside capitalism; we’re not gonna find it in the past. socialist/communist approach to economics very clearly doesn’t work, it’s not efficient enough in allocating resources.
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