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Comment by chii | Hacker News Reader

If "the problem" you refer to is "climate change", i don't see how it is capitalism's fault. Under any communism economics, the same climate change "problem" would occur, if the lifestyle of today is kept the same.

Of course, if you argue that there wouldn't be as much development and energy use under communism, then i agree - but that means the "problem" is not the economic system, but lifestyle and energy use. If people were willing to sacrifice their energy use - aka, no cars, no transport, no plastic products etc.

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The same problem would not occur. The reason the climate issue has been allowed to go on so far under capitalism is broken feedback loops: the people who are worst affected by climate change and the people who make the decision to emit more greenhouse gases are different people.

Under a non-capitalist system (at least from an anarchists perspective), the people affected would also be the ones to decide how much to emit -- and it's unlikely they would be as crazy about climate change.

(Not to mention that assuming "the lifestyle of today" where a small fraction of a percentage of the population does most of the consumption would be sustainable under anything other than capitalism seems like a mistake.)

Sorry, but how could an anarchy possibly address this problem?

The emissions from a coal plant somewhere across the ocean affects my weather here in California. In an anarchy, are you saying I would get a voice in the operation of that remote coal plant? How would that work, exactly?

You would not have the mandate to open a coal plant without the consent of those affected.

The logistics of how to reach world-wide consensus, or at least something close to it, is an interesting question I don't have an answer to! Maybe coal plants would be practically impossible under anarchy, due to the consensus difficulties -- which one might argue is as it should be.

How would this be enforced? You wouldn't get any coal miners or other material providers to help you unless you can show your coal plant is truly something humanity at large either wants, or at least does not care about.

I think the poster didn't mean anarchy, but that in a communist centrally planned economy, they would recognize the climate change problem, and prevent the coal plant from being constructed or would decommission it, even if it hurts the energy consumption of the populous. But under capitalism, that doesn't happen as long as the buyer of the energy continue to buy.

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