And most of the time you'd be right.
I wouldn't say all problems are because of capitalism. I do believe that most of the problems I face are exacerbated by capitalism.
Blaming everything on capitalism is oversimplistic and reductive, to be honest.
Climate collapse is a result of industrialization and not capitalism, to start. Unless you want to explain how Stalin and Mao were still burning coal.
Whatever social economic model which can funnel power and authority to the very top is bond to ruin us. Humans are too greedy to sit at the top of such hierarchies.
Yep, that's why decentralization is so important, and why leftist organizational structure ie decentralization and democratization of production is going to be so critical moving forward.
Besides what another commenter noted about indistrialization being product of capitalism and then fierce competition, here's one more thing:
Do you see all those green activists buying reusable bags? Taking their bottles, recycling everything? Well, this has already been there in the past, and most notably - in socialist countries. Pretty much till its death USSR, for example, heavily favored reusable things, there just weren't plastic bags and plastic bottles and all that waste, and recycling, especially of glass and metal and paper, was a super normal thing and people got money/trade-in for that.
Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution are inseparable from one another. The failure of 20th century Socialist states to adequately address green energy goals can be attributed to rapid industrialization to attempt to keep pace with Capitalist entities.
Going forward, the reason why Green Energy isn't the standard in the US is due to oil companies, not efficiency. The profit motive stands in direct confrontation with the good of all.
That's just Climate Change, too. Capitalism's failures of hierarchical and consumerist nature will exist as long as Capitalism exists.
Not every problem is because of Capitalism, but many are, and at the end of the day this is just a meme.
What kind of f*cked up argument is that? I don't think the climate models were quite as advanced back then.
They had no idea that influencing the global climate was even a possibility, so you can hardly judge the morality of their decision-making by how much CO2 they produced. Or do you want to blame them for not building enough solar panels as well?
The problem with capitalism in this regard is not that it produced a lot of CO2 back in the days, but that it won't stop even after learning about the destructive effects.
The USSR totally knew about climate change being a thing. Climate change is not a "new thing". Oil companies have known about it for almost a century now, they built their oil rigs to withstand rising sea levels for example.
The USSR did know about it as well, at least since the sixties: https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_329370_smxx.pdf
Fedorov’s article appears to be one of the earliest direct engagements with the problems associated with climate change and, more specifically, anthropogenic climate change in the Soviet Union. However, this theme received more concerted discussion and debate from the early 1960s. Two meetings of particular note took place in Leningrad in April 1961 and June 1962, both of which were organised by the Main Geophysical Observatory in tandem with the Institute of Applied Geophysics and the Institute of Geography and brought together a range of Soviet scientists, including geographers, in order to discuss the ‘problem of the transformation of the climate’ (see Gal’tsov, 1961; Gal’tsov and Cheplygina, 1962).
Wherever there is a need there is potential for exploitation by greed. Of course capitalists without a leash are going to wreak havoc on everything.
Capitalism acts like a car hurtling down a highway with no brakes, powered by the roaring engine of industry.
Its insatiable thirst for growth and profits accelerates industrial activity to reckless speeds, steamrolling environmental concerns in its pursuit of relentless expansion.
Industry isn't the villain; it's merely the engine being pushed to its limits by capitalism's uncontrolled, destructive momentum.
Funnily enough, capitalist do the same thing. See a problem? Apply capitalism
And it's the root cause vast majority of the time.
Most times is Ronald Reagan, but yeah, capitalism in it's most exalted forms of exploitation is the reason.
I'd encourage you to expand your worldview - a lot of problems we attribute to capitalism are mostly because of hierarchy.
It's funny cause it's true.
It's funny because it's the dominant system and any other proposed system would handle the respective situation worse on average but is highly situational. You get into arguments that devolved into, "well, there's massive starvation and war but at least we are all equal"
You're expressing the notion of "capitalist realism" which is argued to be an effect of neoliberal ideaology. The idea that not only is capitalism the only viable solution, but you can't even imagine a viable alternative. There's a book of the same title that you'd probably get a lot out of since it might make you more critical of ideas you may have taken for granted, which is my personal favorite kind of book.
Well, you're usually in the general vicinity of the root cause of any problem by that assumption.
The greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity.
Memes
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