We are producing enough food (and clothes, and appliances, etc., etc.) for 10 billion people, and the planet is burning. It is not sustainable long term. And, by “long term”, I don’t mean “the next 20 years”, I mean “the next 100-200 years”.
And the “manufactured crisis” of population decline hits really hard if you’re 12 and have no clue how the retirement system works.
They arrive at the right conclusion (capitalism is currently the cause of all suffering), but through completely stupid reasoning.
We should be ecstatic about the population decline. The surplus production from automated/industrial systems can more than make up for the decline in population. The resource issues are purely a matter of distribution. The people who oppose the common sense solutions to the distribution issues can be sidelined or composted.
I would agree with you if we went all in on UBI, including Universal Basic Pension. Because without that, population decline means slowly starving out the elderly, or throwing so much work on the younger generations, that they reproduce even less.
Throw so much work at the young that they literally cannot do anything else but work.
Completely restructure how the retirement system works on a fundamental level.
1 is impossible because Capitalism.
2 ends in an even bigger disaster than we have now.
3 is inconceivable. Would probably require some form of “communism for old people” where everything is provided without money being required and they get a relatively small amount of cash in case they want to travel. Won’t ever happen because greed exists.
1 is of course the only actually sustainable solution, but I’m trying to say that even 1 isn’t completely smooth sailing in an aging society even when you get rid of capitalism. Or, rather, people are going to have to accept a lower standard of life.
If you get rid of the capitalist leeches, yes, you have more workers left over because there’s no more demand for yachts and other shit. But really, it’s only the luxury goods that demand will go away for. The rich hold nearly all of the purchasing power in the world, and they own a bunch of land and other assets, but for the most part their wealth is still on paper, not in tangible usable goods they’ve bought. Elon Musk COULD liquidate all his stock, but firstly he’d lose at least half of it due to the massive value drop when he sells so much Tesla stock at once, and then if he tries to spend it all on, say, rice or something, he’ll find that there’s a limit to how much rice is actually produced, and he literally couldn’t spend all of it at the current market price of rice, without a bunch of new rice production happening first.
There’s still so much in the world that gets made or maintained by human labour, that we take for granted. From food, to working plumbing, to medical supplies. Unless we can ALSO automate production of most things we consume, we still need to have a bunch of young people working.
This is not to say that I support capitalism as the best economic system. It’s far from it, and billionaires shouldn’t exist. But at the end of the day, we still need people to do jobs. More equality in the distribution of resources doesn’t mean we suddenly get said resources without any work. It just means we have less bullshit work (building yachts and skyscrapers, anything to do with stock trading, etc), but I think most people overestimate the share of bullshit work in a healthy modern society (the US does NOT count as a healthy one).
Of course the irony is that if we manage to automate the production of (nearly) everything and there’s truly no more need for anyone to work, young people might start having more children again and there’ll be more people who could work.
I also don’t think there’s a need for UBP if there’s already UBI. The U implies nobody is left behind. If you work, you get UBI, if you don’t work, you still get UBI. If you’re 120 years old, you still get UBI.
As for your idea #3, that’s just unfair towards the people who have to work. The idea of UBI is that everyone’s taken care of, but those who work can afford more nice things. If you don’t do UBI, but instead do “communism for old people”, that means that young people have to work to even have food, whereas the old people just get to enjoy the spoils of young people’s labour. UBI is more fair, in that those who put more effort into society still get more. If society is productive enough, UBI could be big enough that those who don’t work can also have nice things (like travelling). I’d say that for sustainability and fairness, it has to be either UBI, or communism for all, but not “communism for one part of society”.
If you get rid of the capitalist leeches, yes, you have more workers left over because there’s no more demand for yachts and other shit
Yeah, you can’t think like that.
The “demand for yachts” means a lot of employment in very specialised, expensive areas. That means high tax revenue. Yes, the capitalist leeches should be eliminated, but eliminating “the demand for yachts” doesn’t suddenly usher the age of prosperity, it might actually lower the tax revenue.
But yeah, in terms of literally freeing hands to instead do plumbing, that is correct.
We are producing enough food (and clothes, and appliances, etc., etc.) for 10 billion people, and the planet is burning. It is not sustainable long term.
That’s not necessarily true. How much of our overall greenhouse emissions come from which sector?
From this chart, decarbonizing electricity and transport will go a long, long way, and decarbonizing manufacturing and construction could also give some room to reduce overall emissions by more than the entire agricultural sector produces.
And it’s not just some kind of pipe dream. We’re doing real work at decarbonizing electricity, heat, transport, shipping, construction, etc., as the prices of low or zero emissions options start to outcompete the higher emission options for many applications.
Plus if the data center boom crashes as a bubble, a lot of the infrastructure investment into increasing energy production and distribution with both high carbon and low carbon sources will at least have financed a lot of low carbon energy and the potential for curtailing the least carbon efficient generation methods.
Too narrow a view. You’re looking at it purely through the climate change lens.
Our farming activities have other issues as well though, which won’t go away no matter how successful decarbonization is going to be.
Eutrophication of soil and bodies of water through intensive use of fertilizer and the loss of biodiversity which comes with that, as well as with widespread pesticide use and the loss of small scale structures across agricultural land is one huge example. Top-soil erosion is another one.
Those issues are really only a result of overuse of inputs driven by meat consumption, fuel ethanol production, and basic misunderstanding/incompetence at agroecology. Not hard problems to solve if regulatory tools can be used. Wouldn’t be an issue if you could get rid of industry groups and lobbyists etc.
It wouldn’t be an issue if you suddenly had to tell everyone in the western world they need to cut their meat consumption to like 1/10? I’ve seen how even the seemingly smartest, most rational western leftist reacts to the mere suggestion that their personal consumption habits are unsustainable, no matter the economic system. Good luck…
Wouldn’t be an issue if you could get rid of industry groups and lobbyists etc.
and we all know how easy that is…
I didn’t mean to sound too gloomy, those things can definitely be changed as well. I just meant to say, that if you purely focus on climate issues, those issues still remain unchanged.
I disagree with your analysis however. It’s not just meat consumption and energy crops. I mean, both of those are particularly bad, sure, but other fields (pun intended) are also not super sustainable.
I take your point, but I also think that all the other stuff can improve, too. Fertilizer use peaked in the US in 2013, and better land use practices are trying to use less water and less fertilizer and allow less erosion.
None of this is by any means guaranteed to get better, but it’s also not inevitable that it will get worse. The work needs to be done.
There’s definitely a lot of work to be done.
The relevant question for this discussion is, if we’re going to have to take cuts to productivity during the transformation to more sustainable practices.
I can’t give a qualified answer to that, but I guess we’d have to. However there are also promising new technologies emerging, that might be able to mitigate those; like precision farming and agro-robotics.
We are producing enough food (and clothes, and appliances, etc., etc.) for 10 billion people, and the planet is burning. It is not sustainable long term. And, by “long term”, I don’t mean “the next 20 years”, I mean “the next 100-200 years”.
And the “manufactured crisis” of population decline hits really hard if you’re 12 and have no clue how the retirement system works.
They arrive at the right conclusion (capitalism is currently the cause of all suffering), but through completely stupid reasoning.
We should be ecstatic about the population decline. The surplus production from automated/industrial systems can more than make up for the decline in population. The resource issues are purely a matter of distribution. The people who oppose the common sense solutions to the distribution issues can be sidelined or composted.
I would agree with you if we went all in on UBI, including Universal Basic Pension. Because without that, population decline means slowly starving out the elderly, or throwing so much work on the younger generations, that they reproduce even less.
If everyone is old and nobody is left to work, it doesn’t matter how big the pension is, there’s nothing to buy
There are only three solutions to this problem:
1 is impossible because Capitalism.
2 ends in an even bigger disaster than we have now.
3 is inconceivable. Would probably require some form of “communism for old people” where everything is provided without money being required and they get a relatively small amount of cash in case they want to travel. Won’t ever happen because greed exists.
1 is of course the only actually sustainable solution, but I’m trying to say that even 1 isn’t completely smooth sailing in an aging society even when you get rid of capitalism. Or, rather, people are going to have to accept a lower standard of life.
If you get rid of the capitalist leeches, yes, you have more workers left over because there’s no more demand for yachts and other shit. But really, it’s only the luxury goods that demand will go away for. The rich hold nearly all of the purchasing power in the world, and they own a bunch of land and other assets, but for the most part their wealth is still on paper, not in tangible usable goods they’ve bought. Elon Musk COULD liquidate all his stock, but firstly he’d lose at least half of it due to the massive value drop when he sells so much Tesla stock at once, and then if he tries to spend it all on, say, rice or something, he’ll find that there’s a limit to how much rice is actually produced, and he literally couldn’t spend all of it at the current market price of rice, without a bunch of new rice production happening first.
There’s still so much in the world that gets made or maintained by human labour, that we take for granted. From food, to working plumbing, to medical supplies. Unless we can ALSO automate production of most things we consume, we still need to have a bunch of young people working.
This is not to say that I support capitalism as the best economic system. It’s far from it, and billionaires shouldn’t exist. But at the end of the day, we still need people to do jobs. More equality in the distribution of resources doesn’t mean we suddenly get said resources without any work. It just means we have less bullshit work (building yachts and skyscrapers, anything to do with stock trading, etc), but I think most people overestimate the share of bullshit work in a healthy modern society (the US does NOT count as a healthy one).
Of course the irony is that if we manage to automate the production of (nearly) everything and there’s truly no more need for anyone to work, young people might start having more children again and there’ll be more people who could work.
I also don’t think there’s a need for UBP if there’s already UBI. The U implies nobody is left behind. If you work, you get UBI, if you don’t work, you still get UBI. If you’re 120 years old, you still get UBI.
As for your idea #3, that’s just unfair towards the people who have to work. The idea of UBI is that everyone’s taken care of, but those who work can afford more nice things. If you don’t do UBI, but instead do “communism for old people”, that means that young people have to work to even have food, whereas the old people just get to enjoy the spoils of young people’s labour. UBI is more fair, in that those who put more effort into society still get more. If society is productive enough, UBI could be big enough that those who don’t work can also have nice things (like travelling). I’d say that for sustainability and fairness, it has to be either UBI, or communism for all, but not “communism for one part of society”.
Yeah, you can’t think like that.
The “demand for yachts” means a lot of employment in very specialised, expensive areas. That means high tax revenue. Yes, the capitalist leeches should be eliminated, but eliminating “the demand for yachts” doesn’t suddenly usher the age of prosperity, it might actually lower the tax revenue.
But yeah, in terms of literally freeing hands to instead do plumbing, that is correct.
Otherwise - fully agree!
That’s not necessarily true. How much of our overall greenhouse emissions come from which sector?
From this chart, decarbonizing electricity and transport will go a long, long way, and decarbonizing manufacturing and construction could also give some room to reduce overall emissions by more than the entire agricultural sector produces.
And it’s not just some kind of pipe dream. We’re doing real work at decarbonizing electricity, heat, transport, shipping, construction, etc., as the prices of low or zero emissions options start to outcompete the higher emission options for many applications.
Plus if the data center boom crashes as a bubble, a lot of the infrastructure investment into increasing energy production and distribution with both high carbon and low carbon sources will at least have financed a lot of low carbon energy and the potential for curtailing the least carbon efficient generation methods.
Too narrow a view. You’re looking at it purely through the climate change lens.
Our farming activities have other issues as well though, which won’t go away no matter how successful decarbonization is going to be.
Eutrophication of soil and bodies of water through intensive use of fertilizer and the loss of biodiversity which comes with that, as well as with widespread pesticide use and the loss of small scale structures across agricultural land is one huge example. Top-soil erosion is another one.
Those issues are really only a result of overuse of inputs driven by meat consumption, fuel ethanol production, and basic misunderstanding/incompetence at agroecology. Not hard problems to solve if regulatory tools can be used. Wouldn’t be an issue if you could get rid of industry groups and lobbyists etc.
It wouldn’t be an issue if you suddenly had to tell everyone in the western world they need to cut their meat consumption to like 1/10? I’ve seen how even the seemingly smartest, most rational western leftist reacts to the mere suggestion that their personal consumption habits are unsustainable, no matter the economic system. Good luck…
and we all know how easy that is…
I didn’t mean to sound too gloomy, those things can definitely be changed as well. I just meant to say, that if you purely focus on climate issues, those issues still remain unchanged.
I disagree with your analysis however. It’s not just meat consumption and energy crops. I mean, both of those are particularly bad, sure, but other fields (pun intended) are also not super sustainable.
I take your point, but I also think that all the other stuff can improve, too. Fertilizer use peaked in the US in 2013, and better land use practices are trying to use less water and less fertilizer and allow less erosion.
None of this is by any means guaranteed to get better, but it’s also not inevitable that it will get worse. The work needs to be done.
There’s definitely a lot of work to be done. The relevant question for this discussion is, if we’re going to have to take cuts to productivity during the transformation to more sustainable practices.
I can’t give a qualified answer to that, but I guess we’d have to. However there are also promising new technologies emerging, that might be able to mitigate those; like precision farming and agro-robotics.