An extinction event is currently ongoing that humans caused
One of the reasons why capitalism seems to work so well in Western democracies is because it’s short-sighted.
Capitalism focuses on the immediate future - the next year or a few years, and any material gains that can be made in that time frame. Businesses rarely plan for 10+ years into the future, because their products or services may no longer be financially feasible by then.
Just like our democratic governments focus on the next 4 years or less, because afterwards the government will likely change. No point making plans that your political opponents will benefit from. Which is also why the West can’t get anything substantial done.
short-sighted
years
You need to think shorter. No one above me talks in anything except the next quarter. That is the next 89 days. Nothing else matters.
You’re right. I was way too generous.
The US railroad was somewhat capitalistic and very forward thinking, it even liberated useless land from the previous inhabitants that lacked proper industrialization
Is this sarcasm?
Almost certainly
I don’t think Capitalism is the problem at all, the problem is a government that supports big corporations over small business
You want to go to the store and see a variety of TVs made by a variety of companies all competing with each other for sales by producing higher quality products for less money
The problem is that this is not what happens. Not because of Capitalism, but because of the government
I like to use the example of NYC Hot Dog carts
In theory I could pull out my grill, cook up a hot dog, and sell it to you for a buck. Why would you buy a $6 hot dog from the Nathan’s Hot Dog cart when you could by mine for $1? Now Nathan’s Hot Dogs have to compete with me, so they lower their prices or lose all their sales to me; capitalism
But, the government won’t let me do that
Now on one hand, that’s good. You want to know that the hot dog you buy is cooked well and cooked on a clean grill. If anybody could sell hot dogs anywhere at anytime the streets would be lines with hot dog carts and walking down the sidewalk would be near impossible. So you want the government to force business licenses on people, require inspections, and issue permits on who can sell where
However, you need the government to care more about you than they do Nathan’s Hot Dogs. Let’s pretend there are four spots available on the corners at Times Square. If the government gives all four spots to Nathan’s Hot Dogs they now have a small monopoly on that block and can sell worse hot dogs at higher prices because people will still buy them due to a lack of options. It’s not technically a Monopoly because there are other hot dog sellers in NYC, but locally, they control Times Square
So you need the government to not do that. You need them to make sure that all four corners go to different hot dog sellers
But, you need the government to do their homework. Giving the four corners to Nathan’s, Ball Park, Oscar Myer, and Bores doesn’t really do you, as a consumer, a lot of good. These are four huge corporations and while it’s not technically legal we all understand that they could easily just agree to sell hot dogs for $7. Not that they have to sell them at this price, they just all kind of agreed to do so because they’re all greedy corporations
Maybe they met up at a high-roller casino or charity event. Or maybe it’s just a simple nod and a wink or a friendly email informing the other corporations that “unfortunately” Ball Park has to raise prices on hot dogs and the other CEO’s understanding that this is a request asking if they want to do the same. “We at Oscar Myer are also in the unfortunate position of possibly having to raise prices to $7. We hope Ball Park understands”
How it happens, I don’t know, that’s not my point. My point is, the government handed the corners out to major corporations who continue to price gouge and offer worse and worse products. It looks like there is competition at Times Square, but there’s not.
Or worse, the government doesn’t do their homework (or they do and just don’t care) and they hand the four corners of Times Square to Nathans, Sheinhardt, and Williams. Now it looks like there are two small companies competing with a corporation. But upon further inspection we find that Sheinhardg and Williams are owned by Nathans and Nathans Hot Dog corporation owns Times Square. You have the illusion of choice, but there is no actual choice. The name on the cart is meaningless as all of them belong to Nathan’s
So you need the government to make sure shit like that doesn’t happen. That Nathan’s and Ball Park get two spots, but the other two go to small companies that will actually force real competition
The problem we have today is that the government does not want to help you, they want to help Nathan’s and Pepsi and Google. So the laws and regulations in place aren’t designed to hold them back and give you the upper hand, it’s designed to keep you from being able to even begin to compete while handing them what is essentially a Monopoly on markets
So yeah, you can go to Best Buy and find rows of TVs all from different companies but every single one of them is essentially the same over priced piece of shit trash filled with spy ware and advertisements
And yeah, maybe you do have the skills to make a TV without that shit and sell it, but good luck actually doing so. You need licences, permits, inspections, etc… you have to strike deals with Best Buy to get your TV on the shelf, you have to purchase licences from Netflix or Disney to run their apps, you have to buy licences from Microsoft or Apple or Roku or whatever for their OS, etc…
By the time you do all of this, you have to cut corners to lower the cost of production and jack up the price
But if the government cared about you, they’d make it so that those companies can’t do that shit to you. They’d work with you to encourage you to make a better TV
But you don’t have enough money to grease the right palms in congress
So Capitalism isn’t your problem, a government that doesn’t care about small business is
True, I put cadmium in my hot dogs to save money and outcompeted everyone, and the effects won’t be felt for 20 years so the consumer is none the wiser! Yet another win for unregulated capitalism!
I keep repeating this to people. In less then 200 years we destroyed a balance that took millions of years to build itself.
You should measure by existence of society, not earth’s age. Same conclusion though.
Dinosaurs had capitalism.
Birds were socialists.
While not denying it is one of the main factors, let’s not forget the massive, continuous and egregious ecological disregard the directed economies had, and have.
Yeah we’ve gotten such a force multiplier from technology, people were always like this. Capitalism just adds on to it because people and businesses feel like they can’t stop sprinting towards catastrophe or they’re the ones losing out.
We’ve had a few extinction events, and I suspect even the Holocene extinction event (which is already in progress) will not be as bad as the Permian–Triassic.
Right now, three possibilities are in the running to kill off humans:
~ Climate-change induced famine and drought
~ Nuclear escalation (The US is looking at broader options… using low-yield nuclear weapons in a regional conflict)
~ AI takeover, which will likely look like the owner class developing armies of murderbots to annex the world before the AI accidentally determines they are a target as well. (And less so the Yudkowsky and Soares scenario.)But humans are more likely to do what Homo Erectus did and go through a low population phase. They had a population less than 10,000 for millennia for a while before expanding again, only to get wiped out by competition with their cousins.
But even if humans die, life on earth will regrow across millions of years, and may even evolve intelligence and technology.
A “low population phase” is a nice way to say “post apocalypse”.
I really enjoy this genre of fiction, but I don’t think I would enjoy it IRL.
Yeah, I don’t think you would. Many post-apocalyptic stories “forget” that most technology requires global supply lines that shouldn’t exist anymore. Even just food, water and electricity would be non-trivial depending on the scenario. Definitely not exciting
Hmm… No most post apoc fiction is mindful of these issues.
My main concern is that most novels have a token nerdy / accountant type who’s role is to demonstrate how useless our skills are in a post apocalyptic wasteland. That’s me really. An accountant.
I’d say even a techie would quickly end up with useless skills. Today’s devices rarely allow tinkering and damage is often permanent. In SciFi robots can be fixed or manipulated simply with changing some cables in their back. Anyone who’s been working in robotics knows this is almost impossible. Same with hacking into computer systems. There are some exceptions of course.
I was thinking of the Mad Max universe that still has gasoline even though it goes stale within 6 months in reality. Doesn’t make these universes and stories bad, but also not realistic. Real apocalypse sucks.
My passion is full-stack but high-level programming.
In the apocalypse, I’ll be okay at lifting and carrying things.
The five oldest professions will be forever: Farmers, soldiers, kings, courtesans, and accountants. The first three rely on the bean counters to make sure that everything is where it belongs.
You have job security.
I can keep track of how much food everyone should be getting. In exchange for more food.
Futurama episode 1 timelapse but remove the aliens
yeah, but another billion dollars and being so rich that you’ll never be able to spend it in MANY lifetimes is so great.
/s
I keep hearing this claim that “you can’t spend it in a lifetime” but other than silly anti crashing the market laws, what prevents them from commissioning personal fleets of luxury aircraft carriers to spend billions right there?
capitalism needs systems to internalize the negative externalities certian processes create
I don’t think any working class citizen should want to keep capitalism in any form. But I really don’t understand how we’ve decided democracy in government is necessary but not in our workplaces/economy. Somehow the objectively flawed system needs just a few more regulations? Its insanity to me.
Co-ops offer a path towards democratic control of the economy and it is more than just idealistic.
Greater job stability than traditional businesses
Higher productivity
Higher profits
More resiliant during economic downturn
Decrease in inequality
Greater job satisfactionIts just a start but what’s not to want?
publicly traded companies do generally have some level of democratic control, proportional to how much of it you own.
The fact that most workers are too poor to afford stocks is one of failing to develop generational wealth.
Yes, it is a failing of the poor for not creating generational wealth out of the crumbs they get to fight over.
You fucking idiot.
the choice to have more children than the parents can afford is not everyone else’s problem, the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” is great advice for wealth concentration when taken literally (few children inheriting from many parents)
The soviet union wasn’t exactly great environmental stewards either. Perhaps the problem is a technological gap between industrilization and sustainability.
ITT: “God I’m sick of getting stabbed in the spleen”.
“You should try unlimited free blowjobs instead!”
“I don’t know, the last seven buildings I went into with ‘unlimited free blowjobs’ signs also stabbed me in the spleen”
“OH, those weren’t real unlimited free blowjobs. No real unlimited free blowjobs has ever existed. You need to watch more porn.”
Maybe I’m too stupid but I don’t get the analogy. 💀
Unlimited free blowjobs = communism
Watch porn = read theory
i’m amazed this whole post didn’t get brigaded by ml’s and actually has a sensible top response
it almost like there’s no point being federated with them any more
ML and Today because last time I checked Today is still federated with Hexbear. But I haven’t checked in a while.
China also pollutes significantly more than India, even if the Chinese per person emission is lower than some other developed nations.
Plus, Capitalists invented the newer green power used by China and instead China invented bigger coal power plants.
India remains heavily underdeveloped domestically. And the cultural gap - most remarkably, India’s enormous vegetarian community - plays a bigger role than it’s economic model in curbing gross emissions.
It should also be noted that India has had and continues to have one of the largest active Communist Parties in history. In fact, the 34 years of the Left Front rule in West Bengal is the longest-serving democratically elected communist-led government in the world.
So you can’t really use India as a pure capitalist counterexample, unless you only want to discuss the corners of the county under decisive BJP rule (itself a relatively new political turn for India).
Many developing nations like India, Vietnam and Ethiopia are going to leapfrog the fossil fuel detour and go straight to renewables which will also help.
fingers crossed
Idk if they’re leapfrogging it so much as showing up late to a dry riverbed. There simply isn’t enough petroleum left to do in India / the Pacific Rim or Africa in the 2020s what China, Europe, and the US went through in the 1980s. But I guess the US and Europe are helping out by retarding their technological progress long enough for these other countries to catch up and move ahead.
Fascinating, thanks for sharing!
I think that’s a bit reductive. Firstly, I wouldn’t describe China as non-capatalist. Secondly, China has a nuanced relationship with environmentalism and green energy as one would expect from a nation that large.
The problem is there are a lot of Tankies on the Fediverse who consider China to be one of the ONLY non-Capitalist nations, so what I stated needed to be said just to counteract any potential Tankie disinformation attempting to make China look good.
Fair enough, I think I was also premptivly reacting fediverse to tankies and maybe read your comment as more agressive than it was. Sorry about that.
China is the manufacturing hub of the entire world. Of course it’s going to pollute significantly more than India, its energy consumption is 5 times of what India consumes.
And I don’t get this insinuation that China invests in coal power. China invests the most into renewable energy than anyone else in the world, almost 40% of global renewable investments come from China. And last I checked almost half of the energy China produces comes from renewables.
And the reason China had use fossil fuels in the first place is because renewable tech didn’t exist when they needed the energy. Why didn’t it exist? Because capitalists refused to invest into green energy even though the oil companies did the research and knew that fossil fuels are a dead end (that research was done back in the 70s and Exxon decided to bury it instead of acting on it). We see in Africa that countries are skipping fossil fuels and are going straight to renewable because the tech exists, so it’s reasonable assume the same would’ve happened in China had the tech existed.
If you want to shit on China, there are legitimate points to criticize. Renewable energy is not one of those points.
So all is forgiveable in the name of more industry? Including Chinese slave labour?
China produces a lot of cheap plastic shit and textiles nobody asked for, but they only recently became competitive in high tech after stealing from other nations like Taiwan and Korea.
So all is forgiveable in the name of more industry?
Is one country supposed to bear the burden of blame because every other western country moved their manufacturing there? If the rest of the world didn’t turn China into a manufacturing hub they wouldn’t be polluting that much now would they?
Including Chinese slave labour?
Now that is something you can criticize.
China produces a lot of cheap plastic shit and textiles nobody asked for
China produces a lot of cheap plastic shit because there’s a lot of international demand for it. The shit that ends up on Temu is the outcome of overproduction to meet the estimated demands of the foreign markets. If you want to blame anyone for China producing a lot of cheap shit, blame America who is their biggest importer of cheap shit.
but they only recently became competitive in high tech after stealing from other nations like Taiwan and Korea.
And that’s another thing you can criticize. As far as I know they’ve (allegedly) stolen DRAM technology and to that my answer is fuck the DRAM cartel. If stealing their tech is necessary to break their stranglehold on the memory production then I’m all for it. The reason we’re currently in the middle of a memory crisis is specifically because the 3 biggest memory manufacturers somehow magically all end up with similar RAM prices to a point where one of them deliberately shut down one of its fabs because RAM prices were getting too cheap.
Why you bring that up
Sort of a famous counter-example.
A seventy year long break from capitalist economic practices over half of Europe and most of Asia seems like it should have produced a noticeably different set of ecological outcomes.
But industrialization appears to take the same ecological toll from Beijing to Belgrade.
when will that 70 year long break happen
It already happened, in the early 90s, when Yeltsin rode a tank up to the Moscow Parliament and started shelling it.
The USSR latest from 1922 to 1991, give or take a few years depending on how you want to count it.
Dengism, in China, kicked off in earnest at about the same time (Tianamen Square was largely a Maoist reaction to capitalist land reforms).
both have no motives or actions towards anything else than the same pyramid scheme, albeit with different lingo
Both? We’re taking about billions of people.
yes, both ussr and china, had and has billions of people under the global pyramid scheme
Because I believe ecological sustainability is achivable under any economic system!
Capitalism requires continuous and unlimited economic growth. Economic growth requires accelerated resource extraction. Capitalism is not ecologically sustainable in nature.
edit: replaced “by design” with “in nature”
Capitalism, like socialism, means many things to many different people. At it’s core capitalism is simply a philosophy built around the idea of the free exchange of goods and services between individuals. I don’t think most people would that infinite growth is an essential part of that equation as there are real examples of capitalistic economys that shrink every year.
Where are those capitalist “economies” that don’t require growth? Are they decoupled, and not relying on the growth of the global economy? Does their pension system not explode if economic growth would come to a halt? If so, what makes them capitalist?
I think government pension is probably one the least capitalist ideas out there. There’s no such thing as a pure capitalist society, just like how there’s never been a true socialist society. Only ones that subscribe more to their respective ideas more than their peers. To me, what makes a society capitalist is a foundations belief in a free markets and the voluntary trade of goods and services, and a socialist society is one where the means of production are pushed towards collective ownership.
The underlying mechanism of government pensions in their current state requires there to be more people paying in than being paid out, so growth is needed.
I don’t know a lot of government pensions that pay out enough for the recipients to even stay afloat, they rely heavily on there being additional private pension funds (401k/BVG), which by themselves presuppose that the economy grows, it doesn’t work otherwise. I guess you are right that we have different assumptions on what capitalism even is, you link it a lot to free trade but not to the fact that it is about investment and accumulation (letting the money ‘work for itself’), which is kinda the core principle of it. Trade and money has existed before capitalism, exchanging commodities and services is not what makes a system capitalist in itself. I am also not necessarily arguing in favor of socialism, I don’t know why you keep bringing that up. Economic systems are more complex than a dichotomy of capitalism/socialism. What I want to convey is that there can be no ecological sustainability withing the capitalist growth imperative. It can be your opinion that capitalism works without growth, but I’d like to see how that works and how we get there. If we can get there, I’d argue that such a system is no longer capitalist.
So you brought up a part of the current system with it failing?
Capitalisms faiilures on multiple cornerstones, in addition to ecology, are broadly documented. You’re allowed to update a belief with knowledge
I think our ecological failures are often misattributed to economic philosophy. Collectivist societies have also caused irreparable ecological harm in the past, so the issue can’t be capitalism exclusive.
It’s not exclusive and no one said it was. Just that capitalism as we have it now has no room for ecological considerations.
Meh. I’m no fan of capitalism, but I’d say the problem is humanity itself, or maybe an evolutionary system that favors short sighted local advantage at the expense of eventual extinction.
I already posted the great filter today, so…
the great filter
The problem with “Great Filter” Theory is that we have yet to identify even non-intelligent life outside of Earth.
It’s one thing to say intelligence is self-terminating. Or, at least, incapable of sustained extra-terrestrial expansion. It’s quite another to say every other observable planet in the galaxy must have already experienced intelligent life and wiped itself out before we started looking.
Far more likely that we’re in a Dark Forest than a Great Filter. Or, at a minimum, that we are unable to identify extraterrestrial life because we haven’t figured out how to spot it at such a large distance.
I don’t think there’s a conclusion that’s “far more likely” than other; multiple explanations explain the data equally well.
My preference for the great filter is just based on my pessimism on how not only power works, but how the human mind works. Since life is everywhere and always competitive, short-term survival is what life will always be programmed for; and beyond biology, we have systems. Greedy systems–systems that seek power at the expense of everything else–will be advantaged over systems that seek equilibrium.
My preference for the great filter is just based on my pessimism on how not only power works, but how the human mind works.
Humans, in small enough numbers (ie, Dunbar’s Number), play reasonably well together for extended periods of time. Environmental limitations and other social resource limits can cause conflicts. But humans have presented a fairly advanced skillset for mitigating violence between larger communities, equitably sharing resources across areas as large as continents, and both budgeting limited resources over time as well as expanding the accessible volume with advances in technology.
The human mind takes a lot of undeserved shit. But I’m in a room with dozens of other people right now. None of them are trying to crack my head open with a rock and feast on the delicious goo inside.
Greedy systems–systems that seek power at the expense of everything else–will be advantaged over systems that seek equilibrium.
I don’t know how you look at a modern day metropolis and see a system that has failed to achieve some high level of equilibrium.
I didn’t get into my problems with the way the mind works, but the root of it is the mind prefers comfort to truth. That’s how we get the just world fallacy. And you’ll also see how people oppressed by systems are often the ones who defend it the most fiercely.
I do like cities, and they are, on the whole, remarkably stable. I will consider this.
the mind prefers comfort to truth
Everything has its limits, and you need to burn a lot of calories to hunt for Big-T Truths. So people spend some of their time in introspection, but they don’t explore forever. Eventually, they want to exploit their understanding to some benefit.
This is an experiment that’s played out iteratively across billions of people and thousands of generations. Minds aren’t static or perfectly elastic, they do amazing work over a 20-40 year period, and then they fall into a more stable pattern of survival and preservation.
And you’ll also see how people oppressed by systems are often the ones who defend it the most fiercely.
Individuals don’t all value abstract notions of justices equally highly. And systems of oppression tend to be layered. Also, the same guy who vocally defends the System of Oppression when he’s getting the Good News on TV will decide actually, he hates oppression, and wants it overthrown when the TV (or his boss or his credit card company) tells him the Bad News instead.
But, even more broadly, when you go looking for the Big Truths, sometimes you don’t find Liberal Progressive Egalitarianism. Sometimes you find an enduring history of bigotry and a real material advantage to exploitation and a certain cosmic understanding of your own insignificance that washes away personal guilt for global phenomena.
Sometimes you need to be a bit naive, delusional, and straight up stupid to do the Right Thing or to blaze a trail into the wilderness or to go down a rabbit hole of scientific inquiry that - 9 times out of 10 - wastes a career when it terminates at a dead end.
Sometimes you’re playing a very strategic game of chess on a board that stretches to infinity. And other times, you’re just one of the rungs on a Plinko board that other people are bouncing off of. And that’s not a consequence of the human mind or the nature of evolution or reality, beyond the simple fact that we’re not Gods. We have a certain limited scope of action and opportunity, a certain limited amount of information to act on, and thousands - perhaps millions or billions - of years to try things and fail and let our successors know what we found out as a result.
Everything has its limits, and you need to burn a lot of calories to hunt for Big-T Truths.
This makes me think we’re talking about different things. I’m talking about existential truths, truths that threaten our sense of meaning and belonging and purpose. Truths like we are all going to die or that we live in a fundamentally unjust world. The only caloric cost of “discovering” these truths is the increase in anxiety.
Individuals don’t all value abstract notions of justices equally highly.
Yup. And we have no control over what our values are, and its good to know when your difference of opinion with someone is based on values or facts. But the reality is most people value group loyalty, belonging, and existential comfort over everything else. People who value truth over existential comfort are relatively rarer. And maybe this is necessarily so.
Sometimes you need to be a bit naive, delusional, and straight up stupid to do the Right Thing or to blaze a trail into the wilderness or to go down a rabbit hole of scientific inquiry that - 9 times out of 10 - wastes a career when it terminates at a dead end.
Do you have an example?
I don’t think we’re disagreeing. Do you think we’re disagreeing? I think you’re trying to argue me out of a pessimistic frame of mind, but that is based on averages and you’re discussing exceptions; like I’m saying, “on a long enough time line, the average of 2d6 rolls is 7” and you’re saying, “but you can get a bunch of 12s in a row!”
I’m talking about existential truths, truths that threaten our sense of meaning and belonging and purpose. Truths like we are all going to die or that we live in a fundamentally unjust world.
None of that is immediately intuitive. It takes a long time for an individual to have a full sense of the world and a coherent view of Justice as a concept. And there’s no firm consensus on any of it, anyway. Sitting around and pondering the clockwork mechanisms of the world and how to improve upon them is a luxury at the best of times.
But the reality is most people value group loyalty, belonging, and existential comfort over everything else.
These things are real, tangible, and approachable by the vast majority of people. Even past that, I think there’s a certain nihilism in dismissing the fate of an entire species, because you look around in disgust at a lot of young people who desire something as crass and fleeting as Love. Much less older people who still cling to or covet it. “Ah, well, fuck all of you! Lazing around naked in bed with a full belly and another warm body and a bit of free time?! Don’t you realize death still exists? Don’t you realize that someone, somewhere is being treated unjustily?! You’ll doom us all!” Its just a bleak attitude to carry as you go through your life.
Do you have an example?
Any college student who aspires to be a daycare teacher rather than an office manager or a civil engineer rather than a petroleum engineer, just for starters. Anyone who studies Pure Math, without an eye towards joining the Quant pool at a hedge fund. Or a physical therapist instead of a supplements salesperson. Or a mechanic rather than a used car salesman. Or a plumber rather than a real estate agent. Anyone who chooses to be a parent and to give it their full time and attention.
That’s just career level. You can find a thousand examples of individuals who sacrifice their own personal comfort or future prosperity for some higher goal or passion or personal sense of duty. We’re not all just getting dragged around life by our genitals when we’re young and our aching backs when we get older.
I wouldn’t say human beings are a virus, but parasitism is a survival strategy for about 65% of life. In the case of human beings, we have complex social structures which allows for parasitism of ourselves.
The owner class behaves like a parasite, and we’ve seen this in feudal ages, in which the warrior castes dominate agricultural castes.
In capitalism, the ownership class behaves very much like a cancer. Resources consolidate at the very top with those who are in the owner class getting smaller and smaller. Currently, in the US, the difference of wealth between the 0.1%, the 0.01% and the 0.001% are stark, not to mention between them and the rest of us.
Multiple economists, including Nobel laureates are saying the ultra-wealthy are too rich, and have more wealth (total or percentage of the whole) than any other time in history, and the only way out of this mess is to redistribute it all. If we don’t then the oligarchs dominating the US will soon turn their eyes and power to the rest of the developed world.
Yes, 100% agree with on the inherent dangers of the current economic system. But I also can’t ignore that parasitic wealth concentration was not invented by capitalism and has been a feature of human societies since forever. Look at any empire in history and you’ll find a class of parasites sitting at the top; therefore there is likely no permanent solution to this problem, just a constant struggle away from it (or, more realistically speaking, revolutions that happen cyclically or cyclical societal collapse).
Evolution only cares about passing on genes. It’s rare in the animal kingdom for menopause to exist. For the most part there’s no point in an animal living if it’s unable to mate. Scientists have the “grandmother hypothesis” for why this happens in a few whales, humans and some chimps: in a species where the grandmother might help care for a baby that has some of her genes, the grandmother can be useful to the mechanism of passing on genes even if she’s no longer able to pass on her own.
That means that a creature might care about how the world looks maybe 25 years past the point where it can have offspring. Caring about environmental degradation that takes place on a multi-century scale is just not something that evolution prepared us for. Why would it? No creature in history has ever been able to modify its environment the way humans can.
Viruses are actually a good analogy. A virus depends on a living host. But, viruses often kill their hosts. Like humans, it can actually modify its environment in a way that that environment becomes toxic to the virus’s existence. That seems bad. For any individual virus though, its “life” is so short compared to the life of the host that any mechanism that made it try to avoid killing the host would just be a useless genetic trait that would not be optimal.
Humans have these immense brains, and they allow us to do things that aren’t simply the result of evolutionary drives. But, we’re still animals. Those drives really structure everything we do.
Viruses eventually evolve to be less deadly to their host. It just takes many failed viruses to get there. In that context, the collapse of the US and the rise of the EU, and China, just means that we are seeing one breed dying out.
I think that humanity will do fine, it is just that some societies will not be around in the centuries to come.
Altruism can actually be evolutionarily advantageous. For example, vampire bats share food with hungry individuals, and this can be reciprocated later. Insects like ants and bees have workers that give up their own reproduction to help raise relatives, thereby still passing on shared genes. Even among unrelated animals, repeated cooperation can favour altruistic behaviour.
I don’t know why you need to go farther than humanity itself to clearly demonstrate the benefits of an altruistic survival model.
Modern human health care is predicated on individuals dedicating decades of their lives to education and research before dedicating decades more to the grueling physical labor of providing health care. And yet, our 8 billion person population size is wholely predicated on the massive bump in the human survival rate where professional medical services exist.
Yes, there’s some advantage to the survival of the community, not just the genes. But, it’s sort of an expensive gamble. Not just sharing with an individual that might out-compete you later, but also the energy / effort / “programming” etc. required to act in an altruistic way. That’s why you sometimes see altruism in nature, but it’s not the rule.
You have been lost to right wing propaganda. That is exactly what they want you to believe, so you stop believing in a way out. So why not just keep the status quo with oligarchs using all of our resources and destroying our planet?
“Humans are bad and have always been bad” is not only factually wrong, it is a belief which only serves one political purpose.
Meh. So you’re choosing to evaluate a claim not based on whether or not it is true, but whether or not it supports political change. Fine.
What I’m directly attacking is the “Myth of Progress”, a hangover from Christianity, the idea that we are inexorably progressing to a materially perfect future. When Obama quotes MLK, “The arc history is long, but it bends towards justice,” that is what he is talking about. If he just wait it out, all our problems will be solved. So believing in progress can potentially be as debilitating as not believing in progress.
For my part, I think change is possible, but I do not need the motivation of heaven on earth to motivate me. There will always be a struggle to share power and resources in a society, no matter what the system.
Cringe ecofash r/im14andthisisdeep ahh take
I remember learning that the sun would go out in 3rd grade earth science and it really fucked me up. It wasn’t until 30 years later that I realized I’d had a childhood existential crisis, and now I had the capacity to read, well, if not existentialist philosophers, at least comic books about existential philosophy.
You seem willing to quickly discredit ideas that make you uncomfortable, which, congratulations, is a very mature and adult take.
seem willing to quickly discredit ideas that make you uncomfortable
No just tired of ecofascists and useful idiots repeating the same tired trope which by the way happens to be rooted in eugenicism and racism. You’re damn right eugenics makes me uncomfortable. Maybe educate yourself and you’ll see why you’re wrong.
https://srslywrong.com/podcast/ep-159-misanthropy-is-a-death-cult/
I think the entire human race is cursed, so I don´t know how I could be accused of racism or eugenicism? But I’ll listen to the podcast, though, I suspect they are rejecting a premise based on not liking its conclusion.
I don´t know how I could be accused of racism or eugenicism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism#Ideological_origins
You are not in good company.
Also, I think our conclusions are basically different. Like Paul Ehrlich, Malthus-repackager and Population Bomb author, thinks we should turn the rest of world into a military prison to enforce his population control policies while people in the US are merely offered tax incentives or some shit. I don’t agree with that.
In fact, if I were going to choose which population to control and/or exterminate, I’d pick societies that are highly extractive, like the one I live in, and prefer the ones that make lower demands on the environment, like the ones the people you say I agree with want to genocide.
But I’m not about controlling population or exterminating anyone. I just think the human race, like this conversation, is doomed.
controlling population or exterminating anyone.
Unfortunately this is the natural conclusion of arguing that “humanity is a virus.” Wittingly or not, you are spreading ecofascist rhetoric and ideology. I’m guessing you’re not a true ecofascist, just a useful idiot.
Sigh. I can not believe I am doing this:
Yeah, the AI are the bad guys in that movie. But it’s the humans that blot out the sun.
Yes but some systems push the bad side of human and other the good side
The systems that can feed the most bodies and enslave the most minds conquer, Borg-like, the ones the feed & enslave less. Wars grow bigger as their opponents grow bigger. Eventually we are all engulfed in one fragile system that has to fail but once.
Ackshuuully there’s no such thing as overpopulation or overconsumption or carrying capacity overshoot. Those are myths made up by ecofascists, a very real and very scary right-wing political movement. The obvious true solution is for the whole world to come together and agree to follow my preferred system of government (or absence thereof) and then there will be plenty of resources to go around for everybody and billions of humans can live sustainably ever after.
And if you say that’s unrealistic and won’t happen, it must be because you are a literal exterminist Nazi who hates life and wants to do eugenics by genociding everybody- especially the brown ones and the poor ones- even though you didn’t say that- but come on, we all know you were thinking it.
So be ashamed of yourself, you Nazi, and go away now so I can win this argument by default- before I’m forced to post the well supported counterargument which I totally have.
COVID-19 has drawn much of this discussion into the public sphere. Whereas it’s generally seen as poor taste to refer to groups of people as infections, diseases, and plagues – for good reason – this seems to be forgiven when the group being referred to is non-specific. Hand waving at humanity in general, as if being vague is ethical bulletproofing, gets a pass. It is relatively common today to find another viral tweet with tens of thousands of likes gesturing towards the clearing waters of Venetian canals, or the wandering deer of Japan navigating neon-lit city centres and declaring that the Earth is healing itself; the smog-cleared skies of California receive a probing enquiry – perhaps we were the real virus all along?
Strange as though it may seem, musings of this kind have become more and more common as the weeks have gone by and the evidence of nature ‘reclaiming’ previously populated areas has begun to accumulate. Suffice it to say, there is more than a little of the eco-fascist ideology floating around in the assumptions of that question; when somebody asks if humanity is the ‘real virus’, they set up a system in which the Earth is a being and humanity a problem that needs to be solved. The solution being proposed is rarely stated outright, but it doesn’t have to be because it’s implicit in the question; you cure a virus by getting rid of it. Beneath the surface level wonder at seeing a wild boar shuffle across Italian cobblestones, there is a lurking belief that maybe the world would be better off without us. Or, more commonly, the world would be better off without some of us, with who that some is being left as a blank to be filled in by the subconscious of the questioner. Unquestionably, whoever that somebody is, will be someone else.
[…]
The language of the eco-fascist claims that human beings are the problem, and that with their self-isolation – that is, their removal from the system – has come ecological recovery. Such individualised and atomised analysis prevents the ever-important systematic approach; the real problem is capitalism, and it is with the interruptions and staggerings of capitalism that recovery has come along. Deeply embedded in the language of the right wing, the misattribution of the worst elements of capitalism to the mere existence of human beings exists as a dual weapon.
Firstly, it allows them to turn their vitriol upon individuals… Secondly, it allows them to imply a connection between the two; to link the existence of capitalism to the existence of individuals and bind them together ideologically; to present capitalism as human and therefore inevitable and inescapable.
Fraser, J. (2020). Eco-Fascism: The Rhetoric of the Virus. Organise Magazine. Archived at https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jay-fraser-eco-fascism-the-rhetoric-of-the-virus.
Humans have beenaaround a lot longer than capitalism, and we didn’t destroy the planet until recently.
The problem is not humans, as many small groups of people across the globe have proven they can live with the environment, and take care of it.
Look up what happened to the Maya.
Power not derived from the movement of animals is very new. The industrial revolution is what greatly changed the damage humans can do to the environment. The industrial revolution led to capitalism, not the other way around.
I think the seeds were there long before the industrial revolution, like for example when you’ve got large segments of the population devoted to being agricultural workers on land they don’t own.
But obviously yeah I don’t think you can get capitalism of the form and scale as we recognize it today without the industrial revolution and then the financialization of most lifeways available to workers
I mean, I guess in theory that’s how it’s supposed to work. Imagine something just outside our grasp, like a structuralists geometry of social dynamics. You might never know what kind of intelligent social system with generational knowledge actually has the opportunity to bypass the great filter. Evolution is a never ending game of FAFO. Maybe it stands to reason, the Neanderthals went extinct… such intelligent life forms tend to kill each other and eventually themselves?
I wonder if an advanced fungus based intelligence could do better. Or a silicon crystalline one, on hotter planets, with much lower temporal awareness of course.
Part of me wonders, if evolution can make a generally intelligent life form capable of advancing itself as a unit part in thanks to connective technology like the internet… and that’s in just a few hundred million years, what kind of life forms could theoretically exist with such abilities innate to their being? Perhaps in 30 billion years of evolution, might you come across a species that would find internet technology redundant and inefficient in contrast to their biological abilities?
What probably lead to the ultimate destruction of the neanderthals was a lack of calories. They are like a SUV: Big, and powerful, but takes a lot of energy to keep going. Odds are that they are just as smart as us, but the human brain is very expensive. Combine that with an ice age, and an economical competitor, it is pretty likely for the more efficient critter to become numerous.
Also, their raw power might have disincentivized the adoption of technology. They were just better than us at surviving trauma and in athletics, so things like bows, spears, and so forth, likely weren’t a big priority. Why bother with fancy sticks, when you can walk up to a giant sloth and cave in its brain with a heavy log?
That scene has always haunted me with how accurate it was
Glad I live now then 100 years from now, I’ll be dead before the earth implodes
Yeah, turns out we experienced the peak of civilization. Someday, people will be begging to party like it’s 1999.
Hasn’t every generation experienced “the peak of civilization” absent a few minor regional fluctuations, such as the European Dark Ages?
Seems a bit premature to say the ride is over, unless you’re only concerned with a handful of Western counties consciously bucking a global trend over the span of a few decades.
We were well on the way before that
So true. All fed by greed.
We aren’t gonna let another asteroid beat us to it. Not again, anyways.
