I laughed when Milton Friedman thinks free market could prevent climate change through climate dividends and carbon tax. Good luck, boyo, your "greed is good" bullshit is what led us to here.
Didn't know much about the guy except that he's a Nobel laureate. Happened to come across a YouTube video where a curious college student asks him about how slavery and colonialism contributed to Western wealth. He had an elaborate answer but within it he actually said Britain did not have slaves and America did not have colonies (for the most part).
Nevermind the fact that America absolutely had slaves and Britain certainly had colonies (he was selective on who didn't have what), Britain absolutely did profit from slavery also.
He added on that Britain spent more on administering colonies than it gained extracting their resources which may be one of the stupidest arguments I've ever heard. How can someone that worships at the altar of capitalism not understand that greed was the obvious motivator? Or is it only the motivator when it fits his narrative?
If this is the messaging we get from our intellectuals, what hope does truth have?
Income from India is the main driver of 18 century British naval dominance but even if we exclude India and the sugar growing Caribbean islands, there was tons of British colonial possessions that didn't directly contribute to the treasury enough to cover expenditures but still benefited the Empire economically and enriched upperclass brits individually. There are maybe a handful of remote islands that could be considered charitable to add to the British Empire; exploitation was the name of the game everywhere else.
Where I'd say Friedman is arguing in bad faith is that the obvious goal of colonialism is value extraction by force or coercion. He may argue that due to inefficiency or resistance it didn't actually produce significant wealth for Britain but the evidence shows otherwise.
That or he may argue that the East India Company (the origin of multinational capitalism) was not colonialism which would be divergent from historical consensus.
Fun fact, Britain had to create taxes in it's East African colonies not to raise income but because British economic interests struggled to recruit workers from people who had everything they needed without the British. Forcing them to pay taxes in currency forced them to accept employment to acquire that currency.
We call that extortion in our part of the world. I assume the British call it that today too.
I'd say coerced wage slavery.
What I never understand is, do the billionaires not care about their own children? Or tbh even themselves at this point as it's happening so fast even they will be affected (although they can probably mitigate the effects by moving to one of their 500 houses that's in a safe zone)
They have bunkers, they have stockpiles of food and medicine, and they have staff to maintain it all. They fully believe they have the means and resources to insulate themselves from all consequences.
We should start planning on fouling their air exchange systems now.
Which they wont, but they believe they will.
although they can probably mitigate the effects by moving to one of their 500 houses that's in a safe zone
That's why they don't care.
Climate change hits the poorest first and hardest (see: hurricanes in the Caribbean and SEA).
Billionaires can fly in, enjoy the sunshine, fly out and not get a drop of water on their skin.
And they'll keep "outrunning" climate change on an individual level, and only feel it when it hurts their net worth*.
*
At which point, they'll just re-organize their investments to exploit clean energy subsidies and real estate wherever everyone is fleeing to when the coasts flood.
Capitalism is kinda like a control system, if you aren't willing to do everything possible for profit you get outcompeted and fall. The billionaires at the top are the ones that truly believe they are doing right, and are building apocalypse bunkers for themselves and their immediate families.
do the billionaires not care about their own children?
Ummm...no? I sincerely believe some people are inherently evil. Look at Elon Musk and how he treats his children.
I was watching a documentary on the nature of evil. There is an incarcerated serial killer who acknowledges what he did is evil and wrong, but he doesn't feel empathy. CT scan of his brain showed that the part of the brain associated with empathy is not really active. Having said that, I heard that the longer someone is in power, the more that their brain physiologically changes.
Of course it is more complicated and nurture still plays a role on the person's development, but I think sometimes nature is stronger.
Once down the dark path you begin, forever with it dominate your destiny.
If we dont get rid of capitalism, rich will be the last one to be affected by climate change. Proletariat is as shield for them to face wrath of climate change first
I get this is a meme, but it is trying to talk about something serious. It's worth saying that fatalist arguments are actually beneficial to liberalism and capitalism. Capitalism is not going to kill us all, humans are exceptionally durable. Capitalism intends to kill us all though, whether through the dehumanization it requires to function or its inability to contend with the material limitations of reality. Climate change mitigation is a discussion around minimising the harm this system causes while it dies, and liberals often subscribe to fatalist narratives because they dont truly imagine a world that is not capitalist as one worth living in.
Yep, that's why we need to have revolutionary optimism. Right now, incredible strides are being made by socialist countries like China to combat climate change and push for electrification and sustainability.
Calling a country where the means of production are controlled by the upper classes "socialist" is a stretch even before we consider their mixed economy and rampant capitalism.
Public ownership is the principle aspect of their economy, and a working class party has domination over their state. The large firms and key industries are overwhelmingly publicly owned, with massive state owned enterprises forming the backbone of their economy. Private, cooperative, and joint-stock ownership covers mostly the small and medium firms, and the larger of these are heavily controlled and influenced by the CPC.
As for being "mixed," all economies are mixed, that doesn't mean we can't identify what the principle aspect of the economy is. Socialism isn't a "pure" mode of production, and neither is capitalism, you don't have X% capitalism, Y% socialism, etc. That's not how modes of production work.
Saying the public has ownership implies that they have some control of it which certainly isn't true. It's more like a Palace economy than anything.
The government is democratically run, and the working class is in control of it. It absolutely is true.
Capitalism will make the earth uninhabitable. That will kill us all. If you care about the future, you are thinking about how to murder an oligarch.
Any other kind of 'planning' for the future is delusional clown shit. Just chill the fuck out and do unreasonable amounts of drugs.
Someone's got their head buried in the sand. The number of critical problems that are gonna come to a head in the next 20 years that could collectively degrade the biosphere beyond supporting a substantial human population is nuts. It's not fatalist to say that billions could die and it's no consolation to the dead and their loved ones that "humans are exceptionally durable".
Wow, two pompous dudes who assume they know everything but don't even bother to read.
Nothing you just talked about was said by me. Doomer shit, as in saying "all life will end" or even "all human life will end," is in fact liberal, settler, bs. It presumes that a world that is not conducive to human life as it exists is not one worth imagining and especially not building. It is a convenient dead end that absolves you of the responsibility to participate in mitigation and reconstruction because, of course, it's too late and even if it isn't it will be and capitalism is powerful enough to apparently sustain a collapse of supply chains. It is foolish.
Nowhere did I say people won't die, I emphasised that they do and actually value the lives of people who will more than some dude who does fucking nothing because I at least recognize that there is a way to mitigate the amount of people who do die. Additionally, I acknowledged that this is not limited to human life. Capitalism will not destroy all life on this planet, this is straight up reality. No, human systems are not equal in power to fucking cosmic events.
Capitalism does try to survive despite the obvious reality that a system dependent on infinite resources cannot exist in a finite material world. It will do so by killing more and more life until it dies, and it will die whether that is from human action itself or the eventuality of a world that refuses to sustain its existence through environmental change and yes, the collapse of crucial ecosystems.
I say humans are durable because we are, do you have any fucking clue how insane this way of life is in the context of life on this planet? Do you have any idea how close humans have come to extinction in the past exactly because of ecological change? You don't, you refuse to because all of that is terribly inconvenient for someone who doesn't want life to change.
Grow up and help. I won't read a response as it's obvious you didn't grant me that level of respect.
