Comments | syncretistfool: Remedial lessons in logic

syncretistfool

Remedial lessons in logic

Oct 17, 2008 22:53

Critically important ones.

New Scientist magazine, special issue: An economy based on constant growth uses up the planet.

( Read more... )

politics

Comments 3

foolcat October 18 2008, 04:32:38 UTC

The reason for a system that demands ever-growing components may be, unfortunately, incurable. It stems from the basic disconnection of modern capitalism. The owners of a company are the stockholders, who have no other connection to a company. It's only a set of numbers on a screen to them. And those numbers must go up. Anyone proposing that a company move toward a more sustainable set of methods, if those methods result in those numbers going down, is promptly fired. If the proposer is the CFO; he may even face criminal charges for not acting in the stockholders' best interests.
Any solution is all a bunch of band-aids anyway. 'Sustainable' practices only lead to new rises in population to wipe any gains for the planet out.

syncretistfool October 18 2008, 19:34:55 UTC

Yes, we have to give up on modern capitalism to fix this, for the reasons you describe. To do so would be immensely difficult, but I'm not convinced it's incurable yet.

Not sure I follow you about sustainable practices leading to rises in population. Improvement in quality of life does *not* map to increased population, to the best of my knowledge.

'Sustainable' capitalism is a misleading band-aid and maybe causing more harm than good. But there are ways to practice actual, radical (from the root) sustainability and I think doing that actually does matter.

As an example of what I'm talking about with radical sustainability:
http://www.rhizomecollective.org/rust.html
Went to this last month. It was awesome. Working on implementing several things. It doesn't solve all the problems, but these are some of the skills that will make a difference if they are available to lots of people.

foolcat October 19 2008, 04:54:23 UTC

If you propose to completely replace capitalism? Replace it with what?
As far as population increasing; historically it has always done so with every advance we make. To the new level of sustainability and beyond.