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Comment by fmdud | Hacker News Reader

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For what it's worth, incinerating garbage is widely used in Switzerland/Germany. When done well (which is hard and expensive), it's a good way to generate energy without polluting the environment.

Basically, rather than burn petrol directly, you first turn it into plastic, so you can carry your yoghurt home, before you then use it as fuel.

What's not to like?? :-)

im talking specifically about waste that was supposed to be recycled. From the UK, the majority of it isn't. It's incinerated in China, or more and more, we send it to them and they send it back.

or just dumped in a river

During extreme times, when money becomes just another idol in the face of ruthless nature ready to annihilate our superstitions, let's talk about the Necessity Defense https://law.stanford.edu/publications/the-climate-necessity-... .

thanks - that was super interesting article.

>> wow even a 16 year old can see that capitalism won't resolve it's own contradictions

While this is basically true, I haven't heard of any other system of organizing a society that has.

We don't need a completly new system. Just stronger welfare policies (universal health care, higher education etc.) and don't let the very rich avoid the laws we already have in place (monopolies, not paying taxes etc.).

Honestly, if the Illuminati (I'm joking) could set up this world government, I've heard so much about, so that tax havens and outsourcing production to slavery can be actually stopped, that would be great.

Yeah, smartphones will be more expensive, so will flying. We might not get any produce we want right now in the supermarket and our fashion choice will get more limited. That's a small price to pay.

Gotta add something. Our democratic system is shit. Most people are to stupid to vote for the things they actually want, instead everything is a popularity contest, propaganda and a bunch of lies. Or it's a straight autocracy where only a small handful of people benefit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy

Please, thank you.

I think the point is to not put one's hopes on the natural tendencies of any system, but to apply "judicious foresight," to borrow the phrase from J.S. Mill's Principles of Political Economy.

" Mechanical inventions... have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish. Only when, in addition to just institutions, the increase of mankind shall be under the deliberate guidance of judicious foresight, can the conquests made from the powers of nature by the intellect and energy of scientific discoverers become the common property of the species, and the means of improving and elevating the universal lot..."

looking at the world today, the disintegration of liberal capitalism, the prevalence of the newer Chinese authoritarian model, populist leaders being elected across the globe, I see no tendency towards leaders of judicious foresight coming together to make much happen here.

i can think of no current leader who has judicious foresight about anything other than their own election prospects

I read the context of that whole quote in the past, and iirc judicious foresight did not mean the judicious foresight of leaders in positions of government authority. In the most basic interpretation it can just mean that most people are well-informed. The current system is somewhat hypocritically established upon this idea. If that were the case, PR would not exist at the scale it does.

well i guess that's it then. no problem solving to be done here, let's just continue on with a system that produces mountains of unnecessary waste, and keep our best minds working on the next big Graze Box App But For Dogs

> let's just continue on with a system that produces mountains of unnecessary waste

If you want event more pollution and not even toilet paper available on consistent basis, then socialism is indeed a good alternative.

This is not an emotional exaggeration, but the cold hard reality of my childhood in the USSR. The trendy "post-capitalist" kids have no idea what the alternative looks like and how much worse their lives could be. So much is taken for granted.

For a entrepreneur's forum, HN is pretty averse to the idea you can learn lessons from failure when it comes to political systems (especially if it would come at the cost of your own material wealth and comforts).

If you think the USSR is bad, take lessons from the best case (I'll throw up a mix of the Scando countries with no citation) and let's not be ideologues.

> I'll throw up a mix of the Scando countries with no citation

There's a widespread, but very misguided belief that Northern Europe is a socialist utopia.

Denmark and Norway rank higher than the USA in ease of doing business, Sweden closely behind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index#R...

As to government programs, yes there are many, but to finance them, half of your wage is taxed away upon payout and then you have to pay additional 25% of VAT on almost everything you buy. Everyone gets taxed like that, not only "the rich" or Amazon. This gets rarely mentioned when bringing up Scandinavia as an example.

There's no socialism, but capitalism with very high taxation on everyone, even the poor. I'd be very surprised if American climate activists would voluntarily subject themselves to such taxation to finance similar environmental programs like in Scandinavia.

That doesn't excuse the contradictions. One can't expect a new system to be planned out and solve every problem. Anarchism seems to offer a methodology for moving towards a fairer and just society which removes the contradictions inherent in a system of concentrated power.

Anarchism has its very own sloth of contradictions. If a society without power is established, someone will take power by force and/or guile and establish a new system of power that will not be anarchist in nature. Anarchism as a system is very instable -- read about the fate of the CNT during the spanish civil war for example.

Every system that is complex enough (societies are) will inevitable lead to contradiction. People do not act as in a model of society -- they will always find ways to break out of the model and subvert the ideal. This I think is the main reason left wing ideologies have lead to tyranny: If the citizen does not conform to the ideal of a model state, the state will need a secret-police apparatus to enforce this model.

Anarchism doesn't aim to establish a system without power. The example that a group would seek to rule through force and guile is very much true. In fact that group is already well established and indeed does use a militarised arm to enforce the model. Anarchism seeks to dismantle this, not enable it.

Proto-capitalism (mercantilism and the like) is underrated imo and it seemed to do a decent job.

Good old feudalism, we need to bring it back.

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