Capitalism is killing the world’s wildlife populations, not ‘humanity’ | Hacker News Reader

Capitalism is killing the world’s wildlife populations, not ‘humanity’

theconversation.com

It's time to face facts. Universities in the United States have completely failed. They have brainwashed impressionable young students with unbelievably bad political opinions and faulty logic while putting them in inescapable lifelong debt. It's absolutely criminal.

I'm not even acknowledging the article because it's pure propaganda and I was unable to get through it after several honest attempts.

The brainwashing and propaganda are by design. The system was hijacked by Marxists who were playing the long game.

STEM or skilled trades. I'm not saving money every month for my kids college 529 plans so that it can be spent to send them to a $100,000 political re-education camp for 4 years.

The word is out about the humanities in US Universities. They are a melting pot of resentful people who actively restrict free speech/thought while pushing an awful mix of proven bad ideas.

You're 100% right but the problem is that society will ultimately collapse because of those indoctrinated students. It's probably too late to reverse course. We should've paid more attention 30 years ago.

Cool. Back to the feudal times, folks!

Come for the mud huts and starvation, stay for the sky-high infant mortality!

But hey, at least you'll get to work outside!

Socialists/Communists and anti-vaxers are similar in their irrationality. Literally no amount of data over any time period could get them to even question their position.

They are also similar in the fact that their ideas seek to undo over a century of progress that massively reduced human suffering.

Capitalism and vaccinations are two of the greatest achievements in human history in terms of improving the quality of human life on earth. Why anyone would advocate abandoning them after learning about what life was like before them is completely incomprehensible.

I would say that blaming capitalism is too short sighted as well - neoliberalism is the real cause (see also: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/29/neolib...)

It's not capitalism. It's greediness. Most resources are abused not because they need to be abused to progress but because some CEO or investor somewhere is not satisfied with a 100% profit, he wants more.

Resource abuse also happens/happened in communist/socialist countries.

We have to separate resource use from abuse.

Compared to what? Sure, if the alternative was stasis where the majority of humanity was stuck in abject poverty, we would preserve the world’s ecosystems, but humanaity would be mostly miserable (and population would probably shrink violently and dramatically).

Meanwhile capitalism has also been gradually eradicating extreme poverty - over a billion lives in the last 20+ years. https://amp.economist.com/leaders/2013/06/01/towards-the-end...

Is that worth the price? I don’t know. Self preservation and advancement seems to be our thing.

I can agree that capitalism has massive, terrible problems. But these sorts of essays tend not to be an argument, they are a supposition laced with unjustified certainty, with the fig lead covering the suggested solution being some form of collectivism. Humanity’s large scale experiments in that regard were not environmental paradises either, though - arguably far worse than capitalist democracies!

One might assume it’s possible to find a third way. It will be very hard. It will take a long time. It’s a conversation worth having. But a large part of the West is in denial that there is even a problem. I don’t think that’s a capitalism problem, that’s a humanity problem.

You can’t congratulate capitalism for lifting people out of poverty when it was capitalism (with its friends like racism and colonialism) that put them there. Capitalism is inherently wrong, unless you belong to the winners. And no, a programmer making 200k a year isn’t a winner. He is bribed with toys and a comfortable lifestyle, at the cost of immense suffering outside of his view, to support a system that is eventually going to cost him as well. The only winners are in the board rooms of multinationals.

Capitalism is flawed from its very core and no matter how many fixes and laws and regulations you implement, it will always be rotten. Just one leader like Trump and all its nastiness will show again by simply removing those laws and regulations. Capitalism cannot be fixed, but, like cancer, it must be cut out.

The solution is of course anarchism. No gods, no masters, no ceo’s. That will most likely mean no iPhones, as keeping global trade alive will be impossible without the dictatorships of corporations. but that is a small price to no longer have a system that rewards poisoning rivers halfway across the world to make things for a bored population that is completely divorced from its society.

Basically all of humanity was in extreme poverty until a rapid uptick in living standards started coincident with the industrial revolution that has exploded in the last 40 years. The uptick was because worker productivity aided by machines is vastly greater than in subsistence farming, and industrial production is far more efficient than pre-industrial. This combination has lead to a miracle in the rising of human living standards. To suggest that capitalism put people into extreme poverty is pure ideological distortion.

Not to mention that the same data shows that we are poised to absolutely crush climate change with carbon sequestration, renewables, and innovations in supply chain / logistics in every industry.

What a strange fantasy you live in.

You started with an incorrect assertion that contradicts every data point available and end by advocating anarchy and a general collapse of civilization. I admire your conviction.

Communists are insane and violent individuals who don't care about data and reality.

lol you got downvoted.... I can't imagine what kind of person wouldn't agree with this statement. Falling for Communism in 1917 is one thing, but falling for it with access to a 20th century history book... well that's a mental disorder.

I don't know where this idea that anarchism has no masters came from. If anarchy were to truly set in, there would be at least one group of men with AK's and a tank, wandering around stealing food and women. Their leader would soon become your master.

Impossible, we all know that communism means equality and prosperity for all. /s

Capitalism is not inherently wrong. It is a system of allocating productive resources, with tremendously positive benefits, and terrible drawbacks. You are offering an alternative utopian solution - Anarchism - that comes in many forms, one of which is Anarcho-Capitalism, or "even more capitalism", but you hand wave this away. I empathize with some Anarchist theory (Proudhon and mutualism comes to mind) but it's going to take a tremendous amount of time and strife to flesh out such a system.

Coinciding with this report on wildlife, it turns out the countries with intact remaining wilderness are varying degrees of capitalist (Russia, Canada, Australia, the United States, and Brazil): http://time.com/5441282/five-countries-worlds-last-wildernes... I believe that unchecked, unregulated anything (including capitalism) is what is depleting our world. Social democracy as a check on these impulses is sorely needed, but unfortunately in regression everywhere in favour of strongmen to hand wave these problems away, or blame some minority.

We also need to look beyond our world in the long run.

The fact that anyone could downvote this post is telling. It's completely reasonable and easily verifiable with data. You even cited the Economist which is a reputable resource.

It's also reasonable to assert that self preservation is arguably the most important thing to individual humans as well as all other species on earth.

You acknowledge the counter argument that capitalism isn't perfect. You also admit that while it may be possible to find a new system, it may be difficult to implement and take a long time. You end by encouraging an open conversation.

Politically motivated people have become completely detached from reality, irrational, and delusional.

Well goverments depend on consumer capitalism for tax money = financibg their debts. So the narrative we get is that we could continue consuming with some adjustments to current model (electric cars in pleace of combustion engines, no plastic bags or cotton buds).

Saddly it seems this won't be enough. If we want to save the planet we should alter the model drastically. But imagine: - bikes in place of cars - no more long distance travel - no more cotton clothes that travel half the world, are purchased of of boredom and land in a trash next season. Spin your own thread, make clothes yourself, repair not throw away - no more fancy food from all over the world, growing your own in the garden - no more new apartments and concrete - dark cities after 10pm

Just a few examples. But who will choose living like this? Let us enjoy musin on Titanic.

Except that urban multi-unit dwelling (apartments, concrete) is far better for the environment than suburban or rural single-unit homes with gardens.

I'm not sure concrete is better than gardens. Is density better than sprawl? Absolutely. But it would be better to integrate nature with density.

Gardens are fine, integrating nature is fine, and not incompatible with high density / concrete.

The issue is the wastefulness and carbon emissions of sprawl, fuel, etc. that are common in less-dense areas. A return to the old-days isn't necessarily good, is all I'm saying... Burning wood for example is worse for the environment than coal or gas. We got away with it in olden times because there were so few people.

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