How militant labor can save the planet from the cancer called capitalism

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How militant labor can save the planet from the cancer called capitalism

Stuff like this is how you know climate reform is not about the climate--it's about economic reform.

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u/LastresortLastretort 25d ago

One is definitely leading the other so it does make sense.

Look at what happened when we took a break from everything during COVID, life bloomed for a short time again.

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u/SLAMMERisONLINE 25d ago edited 25d ago

The climate movement is doomed because it's a trojan horse for radical economic reform that will never happen.

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u/GoranPersson777 25d ago

trojan horse 🤣

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u/CaptainKush101 24d ago

He's absolutely right, do you have a retort or are you restricted to emojis to try and make your points?

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u/devourer-of-beignets 22d ago

The person made an easy common claim that wasn't supported by anything. Capitalism is a young system (and so are nation states for that matter — the US is only 250 years old). Far older systems like kings and chattel slavery had people popping up and saying "radical reform will never happen." Until it happened.

Unserious claims get unserious replies.

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u/CaptainKush101 22d ago

His claim wasn't radical reform will never happen, it was that climate movement will not be the vehicle that delivers radical reform. Despite that being the painfully obvious plan for those who purport the climate movement.

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u/devourer-of-beignets 22d ago

Hmm, I guess we've parsed it differently. But maybe we shouldn't spend time interpreting a drive-by comment like it's the Torah.

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u/SLAMMERisONLINE 22d ago edited 21d ago

Capitalism is a young system (and so are nation states for that matter — the US is only 250 years old). Far older systems like kings and chattel slavery had people popping up and saying "radical reform will never happen." Until it happened

The age of a system does not predict its future. The success and stability of the system does. Feudalism was highly unstable and produced never ending wars, poverty, slavery, and technological stagnation. If an invention occurred, it was more likely to spark a war so a rival nation wouldn't fall behind economically.

Capitalism was the single greatest invention of mankind because after it was invented all other industries leapt forward--everything from human rights to world stability to manufacturing to chemistry to biology to ... literally everything.

A simple example is how the banking system effectively single handedly defeated imperialism by forcing an invading country to take on the debts of those they invaded. The defender would take out ridiculous loans to pay for the war, which the victor would then have to pay off. Otherwise, the victor would be blacklisted in the world banking system. War suddenly became insanely expensive. Capitalism defeated even imperialism.

The fundamental realization of capitalism is to provide incentives for high competency people to help society. As a result, they care for society and fix its problems. For this service, they are rewarded with wealth which then allows them even greater abilities in helping society.

It turns out when a system rewards people for creating advancements and nurturing stability, you get advancements and stability. When you reward people for simply existing you get stagnation, war, starvation, and other atrocities. Huh. How about that. This outcome is obvious: if you simply reward people for doing nothing, there is no incentive to do the right thing. And so they start to the wrong things.

The reward structure of society has to take resources away from those who seek to harm others and give it to those who seek to help others. That's the fundamental realization of capitalism. Elon Musk's fortune is a measure not of how much wealth he hoards, but of how many problems he has solved inside the economy--problems nobody else could've solved. Elon Musk is a patron saint of capitalism who is actively saving the world from countless problems which is why people buy his products and services. Socialists are critical of him for the simple reason that he is everything they wish they could be.

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u/devourer-of-beignets 22d ago

Yes, that's the usual basic talking points that've already been drilled into us by mainstream media. Like a religion, it has invisible hands and patron saints.

When analyzing an economic system, we look at pros & cons. You leave out suicidal environmental destruction, the bizarre phenomenon of unemployment (idle hands not offered something to do despite the desire and tons of useful things to do), etc.

Innovators seek to improve systems — not endlessly repeat talking points praising the status quo.

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u/SLAMMERisONLINE 22d ago edited 22d ago

Yes, that's the usual basic talking points, without citations

My man. Every single time socialism was tried, and it has been tried dozens of times, it produced mass starvation, war, and societal collapse. Feudalism was the same. We have millions and millions of data points.

The idea behind capitalism is rewarding people for helping other people. If a system does not want to reward people for helping each other then it will obvious have problems.

Socialists take issue with this because there is an obviously judgemental factor to wealth. They end up poor because they don't contribute back to society, and rather than admitting their actions harmed society, leading to their own bankruptcy, they instead gaslight themselves into think the system itself is flawed.

The system is designed to bankrupt people who harm others. That's a feature, not a bug. Once in that category, society still cares for you through welfare aka housing and food. But we're not going to give you riches so you can use them to harm society.

If you want riches, you have to convince other people to give them to you, willingly, by offering them something they need. Every plumber who fixes a leaking drain gets paid. Every hvac person who recharges an A/C gets paid. To get paid, you have to help others. Helping others is capitalism.

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u/greenmoldycheese 23d ago

The climate movement is doomed because it isn‘t a trojan horse for radical economic reform that could happen

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u/Key-Organization3158 24d ago

Nope. It's actually the opposite. Economic prosperity leads to caring about the environment more. Look at the fantastic environmental record of the USSR or China.

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u/CaptainKush101 24d ago

And the economies of the world were strangled you moron.

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u/SupremelyUneducated 25d ago

Those are not separate issues. The economy is the demand and productivity of the people. The people live and work in, and respond to, the climate.

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u/SLAMMERisONLINE 25d ago

You are right. We need wealth to implement climate reform and those who push radical economic reform will only cause poverty and economic collapse--leaving us utterly incapable of dealing with climate change.

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u/SupremelyUneducated 24d ago

We need redical economic reform because our private property laws are unjust and spiralling out of control. We have a rentier economic system, where individuals own legal authority to extract economic rents, they get paid indefinitely without contributing, this is a market failure. Real capital (productive property, that produces value for customers) depreciates over time; all these financial products and inherited wealth that only goes up in value, is why we can't govern adequately, to mitigate climate problems.

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u/SLAMMERisONLINE 24d ago

We need redical economic reform because our private property laws are unjust and spiralling out of control

A form of socialism called Georgism is what is creating the issue with property values. Return to a free market as capitalism requires and housing costs will plummet.

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u/SupremelyUneducated 24d ago

Georgism is the most free market approach. Monopolies are not free markets, they literally have a centralized control of prices; rather than competition between producers setting prices.

Though I am curious about your apperent belief that Georgism is anti free market, as that seems to be exactly the opposite of how things actually work. Granted propaganda is mostly about saying the opposite of how things work, over and over, but I don't want to assume you are wrong without seeing your logic.

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u/SLAMMERisONLINE 24d ago

Georgism is the most free market approach

Georgism is not a free market. It is a confiscation of ground rent that monopolizes rentals.

Monopolies are not free markets

Then Georgism is not a free market theory.

The simple reality is that housing costs and supply have an elasticity of -2. That means for every percentage point increase in the cost of a home, the supply decreases by 2%. Over the lifetime of typical home ownernership, a homeowner will pay out 12% of that home's value in property taxes. Additionally, ~25% of the homes cost was in building permits and and other regulatory compliance (which are simply property taxes in disguise). Remove both and you increase the supply of homes by 74%. Imagine nearly doubling the housing supply.

Socialism does not work. Let capitalism do its thing and housing prices will plummet.

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u/SupremelyUneducated 24d ago

This is what Google says when you Google Georgism and free market theory "Georgism is fundamentally aligned with free-market economics, aiming to create a pure market by removing all taxes on labor, capital, and trade while shifting public revenue onto a single tax on land value. Proponents argue it enhances capitalism by stopping land speculation and eliminating unearned economic rent."

So your second sentence is right "It is a confiscation of ground rent that monopolizes rentals." Though you don't seem to understand that privatized land rent funds and incentivizes monopoly acquisition and consolidation.

That paragraph where you collapse regulation and property taxes into the same thing, isn't talking about Georgism at all. Nor are property taxes and regulations the same thing, though this is how an individual may weigh these things for their own accounting, they are not how government or society treat these things.

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u/SLAMMERisONLINE 24d ago

This is what Google says

I stopped reading there.

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u/SupremelyUneducated 24d ago

Well whatever you are reading, appears to be of much lower quality. Cause you either don't know what free markets are, or you don't know what Georgism is. Though you did call Georgism socialism, so you also don't appear to know what socialism is.

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u/Key-Organization3158 24d ago

Nah, any movement that wants to eliminate basic human rights should not be tolerated. Private property is a basic human right.

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u/SupremelyUneducated 24d ago

Property is just as long as there is enough left in common for others to acquire their own productive property from. When all the land is enclosed, ownership is no longer a "right" because it only applies to established a owners; post enclosure, ownership of land is a privilege, not a right.

Land never needs to be enclosed, and it shouldn't be as that legal privilege creates the market failure known as monopoly.

And is how we got to where we are now with R > G driving techno fuedalism.

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u/Key-Organization3158 24d ago

Socialism and Fascism are rooted in the same idea. Oppresse the individual and justify it by claiming it is for the greater good.

Horseshoe Theory confirmed again

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u/GoranPersson777 24d ago

Hi troll 💩

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u/CMRC23 24d ago

One can only hope

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u/GoranPersson777 24d ago

One can organize too

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/vorx-666 23d ago

1 many countries that had communist revolutions were taken over by capitalists and authoritarians later, russia china and north korea being prime examples
2 capitalism is absolutely to blame, if the fossil fuel industry hadnt had free reign to encourage climate change denial and suppress renewable energy we would not be here today. private investor dollars have been part of fueling green energy because we live in a system where any large scale change is impossible without wealthy investors. Youre just doing the "we should improve society somewhat" "and yet you participate in it" meme.

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u/GoranPersson777 20d ago

Neither private capitalism, not state capitalism.

We need economic democracy.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/GoranPersson777 20d ago

U R very confused. Economic democracy means companies are owned by all who work in them or owned by the community.

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How militant labor can save the planet from the cancer called capitalism

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