So many times I see someone blame environmental destruction or poverty or warfare or whatever on “capitalism”
Can’t imagine what the BP Horizon rig explosion or the economic emiseration caused by prison privatization or the MIC arms export industry would have to do with capitalism.
These people are probably just on too much TikTok.
Obviously bad stuff like that happens. The point is that it’s not caused by capitalism, but by more basic and general human nature. The people who think “if only we could get rid of capitalism these bad things wouldn’t happen” are being ridiculous.
In that sense, capitalism is absolutely responsible for Net Increase In Per Capita Pollution.
It isn’t merely that bad things happen. It is that in a private model, the economic benefit of production is given priority over the social cost of ecological degradation. Soviet central planned economies, operating as a holistic body, must account for waste. And while they can have a tolerance of it in pursuit of longer term goals, they cannot ignore ecological costs indefinitely. The Dengist industrial period is a perfect case in point. Although, under Lenin at least, the Russian Soviets gave ecological preservation a priority not known since at least Catherine the Great.
“Capitalism” in the functional sense is an ecological moral hazard. Westward expansion is uniformly recognized as an ecological blight, with a number of very plain incentives to wage war through ecological destruction, most notably during the Indian Wars. And plantation ecology was nearly as bad as its labor practice, with southern tobacco farming rapidly depleting the soil and causing crop failure that even 18th century rural aristocrats couldn’t ignore.
These two economic systems are not the same in this regard.
Irrelevant, they were around when the things I linked to happened.
I’m a little surprised you didn’t pivot to China.
I’ve mentioned China in one of my other comments in this thread, specifically the Great Chinese Famine. I’m not interested in making an exhaustive list when a few counterexamples prove the point fine on their own.
My point has never been that only capitalist/non-capitalist countries do awful things to the environment or economy or whatnot. My point is the opposite, in fact. There’s no particular correlation, people are selfish and short-sighted regardless of what economic system they’re working within. Because people remain people.
Yes, the Great Chinese Famine, in which tens of millions of people starved to death due to botched agricultural policies under a communist government. A collectivist agricultural system, in which the farms were very much not “privatized.”
Can’t imagine what the BP Horizon rig explosion or the economic emiseration caused by prison privatization or the MIC arms export industry would have to do with capitalism.
These people are probably just on too much TikTok.
So for example the Soviet Union never had environmental disasters, prison labor and slavery, or its own military-industrial complex?
Obviously bad stuff like that happens. The point is that it’s not caused by capitalism, but by more basic and general human nature. The people who think “if only we could get rid of capitalism these bad things wouldn’t happen” are being ridiculous.
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. So certainly not since then.
I’m a little surprised you didn’t pivot to China. But then you might have to ask what they’ve been up to in the Gobi Desert or with their domestic air pollution or in pursuit of zero-emissions international bulk shipping
In fact China is one of the only countries set to OVERACHIEVE its climate goals by 2030
If we’re just running the numbers, we’ll consistently find that privatization consistently increases the rate of pollution despite reducing gross productive volumes.
In that sense, capitalism is absolutely responsible for Net Increase In Per Capita Pollution.
It isn’t merely that bad things happen. It is that in a private model, the economic benefit of production is given priority over the social cost of ecological degradation. Soviet central planned economies, operating as a holistic body, must account for waste. And while they can have a tolerance of it in pursuit of longer term goals, they cannot ignore ecological costs indefinitely. The Dengist industrial period is a perfect case in point. Although, under Lenin at least, the Russian Soviets gave ecological preservation a priority not known since at least Catherine the Great.
“Capitalism” in the functional sense is an ecological moral hazard. Westward expansion is uniformly recognized as an ecological blight, with a number of very plain incentives to wage war through ecological destruction, most notably during the Indian Wars. And plantation ecology was nearly as bad as its labor practice, with southern tobacco farming rapidly depleting the soil and causing crop failure that even 18th century rural aristocrats couldn’t ignore.
These two economic systems are not the same in this regard.
Irrelevant, they were around when the things I linked to happened.
I’ve mentioned China in one of my other comments in this thread, specifically the Great Chinese Famine. I’m not interested in making an exhaustive list when a few counterexamples prove the point fine on their own.
My point has never been that only capitalist/non-capitalist countries do awful things to the environment or economy or whatnot. My point is the opposite, in fact. There’s no particular correlation, people are selfish and short-sighted regardless of what economic system they’re working within. Because people remain people.
Might want to consult the recent history of plastics and the per capita rate of fossil fuel consumption before and after.
The Last Chinese Famine? The one right before Chinese industrial agriculture ended famines in the country ever since?
Whatever policy you have or practice you perform, privatization makes the ecological harm worse.
Once you decouple the cost of waste from the surplus of production, your industrial practices get worse.
That means capitalism is directly leading to excess waste.
Yes, the Great Chinese Famine, in which tens of millions of people starved to death due to botched agricultural policies under a communist government. A collectivist agricultural system, in which the farms were very much not “privatized.”
The botched agricultural policies in China were the same adopted in Western states for decades.
Are you seriously arguing the problem with China in 1959 was a lack of landlords?
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