Memes aside, climate conversations get framed in extremes really fast. There’s probably more room for practical solutions than the usual “all or nothing” narratives suggest.
Maybe 80 years ago.
Now we very much have to stop and then think of ways to reach a middle ground between production and saving humanity.
See, I think capitalism can work, we just need way more controls. Taxes that prevent billionaires from ever happening. Incentives for corporations to invest most of their profits into R&D.
Make smaller profit margins necessary to stay afloat. That means they either need to cut prices and/or invest in people (which is essentially what R&D is).
Actually enforce antitrust laws. Make forming a corporation, let alone a conglomerate, unpalatable compared to forming an NPO.
The biggest poison is the profit-driven media landscape (traditional and social). Particularly “news”. Something needs to happen there, first.
Put a 500% tax on political contributions from PACs and a hard cap on total political donations from an individual (that’s actually enforced and loopholes closed up).
Capitalism without corporations. Without billionaires. With strong regulation and very limited lobbying. It could work. It’ll never happen, but it could work…and it’s probably a necessary stepping stone to full blown socialist utopia.
So you’re imaging capitalism except capitalism is suborned to the state
Like in the USSR and China
instance checks out, anyways this wouldn’t be Like in the USSR and China, this would be like in the EU but more regulations.
more regulations because who says so?
english is not my first language so, I can’t easily understand what “more regulations because who says so?” means.
instance checks out
Is the language barrier responsible for you being a snippy little asshole?
i am not a pair of scissors, and please don’t stick scissors up your asshole.
I wasn’t using an idiom, I was speaking in plain language.
One of the core pieces of capitalism - “You do the work and I keep the profits” - is undesirable. I would say it’s even unjust. Children would recognize it as a problem.
Billionaires are hard to prevent. Musk for example is a billionaire because tesla has been successful, you couldn’t prevent that with taxes on him as the value is in the company he owns a significant portion of.
I think overall you have good ideas, but they’re hard to implement
I totally agree with you. Its obvious to anyone that “capitalism” as most people know it is super simple on the surface: I have thing or skill. You want things or skill. Depending how many people want thing or skill, I get paid fairly for it. To be honest, for me (healthy, able bodied and have a support network) I don’t mind working and getting paid fairly for my skills; its a normal part of human life to work to get food. Granted, I’m in a VERY lucky minority. There needs to be Norway style welfare for the old, sick, and unable to work. As far as dumb/ignorant people (be honest, you’ve met them) who are able bodied but just can’t do anything useful, I’m not sure what to do about them.
But then we have money in politics, monopolies, 1 person (fucking Rupert) owning every media outlet, and the system quickly falls apart.
I envision more of a hybrid utopia…strong social programs (potentially even UBI), paid for largely by taxes by businesses.
Income taxes are straight-up bullshit and intended solely to fuck the lower and middle classes. I exponentially incrementing taxes on additional real estate. I want higher taxes on luxury goods. I want a higher gas tax and further incentives for green energy and public transit expansions.
Middle class, especially, gets all of the stick and barely any of the carrot. That needs to change.
But I also think essential industries should also be entirely socialized (like healthcare) or implement point-solutions to bolster the bottom 90% when markets get all fucky…such as heavily subsidizing first-time homebuyers, government pays x% upto $Y. (While at the same time also promoting more development of high- and medium- density housing, and transit to service it)
Anyway, that’s my utopia. I don’t think capitalism is inherently evil. I don’t think a true socialist utopia can exist unless we are post-scarcity and solve a lot of other blockers. I do think that both systems have pros and cons, and some sort of middle-ground needs to be found. One that actually favors the majority of the people.
They were so close to getting it
They tell on themselves constantly, but their audience is deaf to it.
It might just be because you can’t capitalism your way out of real problems that don’t involve making a small number of people absurdly rich at the expense of, well, everything, including the ability of life to exist on this planet.
“End climate change always translates into “end profiteering from environmental destruction” and we have no fucking clue why people don’t like that” - Prager u
“I’m getting low on my Twitter engagement money”
Good catch, they seem to be chasing that January 15th dragon. Doesn’t seem like that line has been hitting the same since.
Or they are gauging general response to the tweet over time.
I prefer to be uncharitable to conservative outlets.
PragerU is awful right so I infer they mean this as a bad thing.
Here’s the thing. “End climate change” is a goal. On the other hand, “capitalism” is not a goal. It is a means.
If you cannot achieve your goals because capitalism, which again is just a means, gets in the way, then it is obvious that you are using the wrong means. Only an insane person would keep doing the same thing that doesn’t work.
Have you ever considered how much money it would cost to keep the Earth habitable for human life in the future?!
Funnily enough, it’s actually many magnitudes less expensive to act on climate change
Fun fact, the hottest planet in our solarsystem isn’t the one closest to the sun mercury. Sure it’s hot, but it has no atmosphere to trap that heat. Venus has an atmosphere made up of mainly carbon dioxide which does traps that heat. Guess what we’re dumping into out atmosphere at alarming rates.
Fun fact, most of the time, Mercury is the closest planet to Earth, due to its shorter orbit.
I defend that simply doing what is needed to clean up all the shit we have left behind up to now, let alone prevention, energy transition, moving to biodegradable plastics, mass transit, etc, would create immense economic growth. It’s essentially the fossil fuels cartel, and their political minions who keep us here.
Maybe if all of the renewable sector pooled together to lobby as hard as the fossils, there could be advances.
If something isn’t priced (eg environmental damage, loss of human safety or dignity, the world) then capitalism is blind to it and will sacrifice it to optimize for profit. Genuinely the point of capitalism.
To the extent you associate that “capitalism” means “rich people and corporations get to do whatever the hell they want with impunity”, then yes. Absolutely. If you have a problem with that, I’ll tell you where to shove it.
The world died because we needed even more plastic coffee pods. Capitalism is def the cause.
