this is why the world is ending...[1] because people like you have swallowed the propaganda line that it's about “mentality” and not the economic system itself.
I do think one of the major components is the economic system, I never said it wasn't. I believe a reform of the economic system will still be better than nothing, never said it wouldn't. I would like nothing more for the mechanisms to be eliminated that have made the powerful people, because they are certainly drivers in this disaster. I still believe in doing everything possible to mitigate it and changing everything we can...but let's not kid ourselves, our general mentality that makes us think short-term has also given us those powerful people...it's not like "little people" aren't to blame either.
The sooner everyone acknowledges their responsibility, the better. Of course, I still think we will suffer due to what we have done but I believe in doing everyhing we can to change it. Of course, you were snarky because I was snarky at your other comment first. Tit for tat.
Blaming “powerful people” is just a shorthand for the system itself.
One can do what anyone who is serious about things like politics does: research power. Who has it, how is it wielded. Who influences the discourses? Or who dictates it? Who plans societies? Who decides that America shall be dominated by four-line highways? That it shall have terrible mass transportation? That the megalopolis from Philadelphia to Boston shall have a terrible and slow railway? That its urban/suburban planning shall be such that people will have to commute to work by way of cars?
Why are consumer products produced and imported from across the Pacific Ocean (in the case of the US)?
One could research who planned the consumer capitalist economy. Who invented modern marketing. Why the economy needs “consumers”.
... one could research whether the “little people” actually have power. The Princeton study that concluded that 90% of the population have no influence on policy (no correlation between policy preference and actual policy) would say no.
Alternatively one could stuff all that. Say that it's about an all-encompassing "mentality". That we're all equally to blame. That it's about Game Theory.
I think your mentality is exactly what the system needs to perpetuate itself. You should feel good about that.
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Really I should know better than to vent my frustration by simply saying that I think about the world ending every day... How selfish of me.
Other side of the problem is, we just haven’t been able to come up with a better economic system. Sure it might be sucky for us, but millions of people were lifted from extreme poverty over the last 10 years. Those people would probably support the system since the benefit they see is larger than what we see.
Maybe it’s younger millennial talk, but most of my peers have given up on everyone else except their direct contacts.
>Other side of the problem is, we just haven’t been able to come up with a better economic system
We just haven't applied one. And we've dismantled (or witness the dismantling) of dozens of better attributes the current one used to have (from unions to Glass–Steagall).
There's nothing special that needs some novel invention.
>we just haven’t been able to come up with a better economic system
If we did, the levers in every country that runs on capitalism would feel threatened and undermine it. See plenty of socialist/communist regimes as examples. This is not to say that those are better systems, but they are demonstration by precedent of what the reaction to their presence will be.
No. There is absolutely no evidence that switching economic systems will magically solve global warming. Out of all economic systems capable of industrialization, capitalist mix economies are the only ones that expressed any interest in caring about the environment at all. Communist China was willing to destroy forests to make charcoal to make little bits of low-quality steel and decimate its bird population because they were eating a little bit of grain. The Soviet Union nearly drained the entire Aral Sea to grow cotton. The fact that Communism didn't pollute more was only because they were very bad at industrializing.
And before you motte and bailey your way into saying you're not promoting communism, any proposed economic system is going to have the same problem. Even if you distribute Jeff Bezos wealth in a way that he has to give up his megayacht, then you're going to give 10,000 people a means to buy F-150 Raptors.
> No. There is absolutely no evidence that switching economic systems will magically solve global warming.
The thing about being the most successful at something is that you both get all the praise for the results and all the criticism for the “externalities“. Welcome to the real world.
I mean you could inject any other real-world-existing thing instead of the economic system, like industrialization. It doesn't change what I said by one iota.
What are you on about? Both of the Communist superpowers are/were state capitalists.
I don't know what the fuck LessWrong lingo “motte and bailey” really means but it's not like I have stated my pro-ideology. For all you know I could be an anarcho-primitivist.
> What are you on about? Both of the Communist superpowers are/were state capitalists.
"Capitalist" has a definition that does not mean "something I don't like." Capitalism specifically refers to where trade is controlled by private owners for profit. This does not match either the Soviet Union or Communist China at all, where profits were distributed to the state, which was nominally for the benefit of the people.
> I don't know what the fuck LessWrong lingo “motte and bailey” really means but it's not like I have stated my pro-ideology. For all you know I could be an anarcho-primitivist.
But you aren't, are you? I don't expect people to completely detatch themselves from society, but you at least need to commit yourself to that lifestyle of a certain extent if you want me to consider you a real anarcho-primitivist as opposed to simply a contrarian. At the very least, you should be able to survive with minimal support for a year before you make the conclusion that this is the way you want all of humanity to live forever.
> "Capitalist" has a definition that does not mean "something I don't like."
“Something I don't like”? Don't be a child. Capitalism is a mode of production. According to Marxism it could be state-lead, which the Soviet Union pursued because they wanted to move through capitalism into socialism (and then communism).
Of course one can disagree with Marxism.
Go grind your axe somewhere else. The topic is climate change.
> But you aren't, are you? I don't expect people to completely detatch themselves from society, but you at least need to commit yourself to that lifestyle of a certain extent if you want me to consider you a real anarcho-primitivist as opposed to simply a contrarian. At the very least, you should be able to survive with minimal support for a year before you make the conclusion that this is the way you want all of humanity to live forever.
Have you heard of the phrase “e.g.“?
And also, not really. I could be an anarcho-primitivist who claims that industrial society has made such opt-in lifestyles impossible. For one, someone who happened to be born into industrial society might not have the skills to live in the wilds since they weren't embedded in that kind of environment from birth. Second of all, maybe industrial society has already forced former hunter-gatherers into society as wage workers and whatnot. Then what chance does an “Internet Contrarian” stand?
Third of all: the goal for someone of that ideological bent might not be to convince some Internet Contrarian of some opposite persuasion. In fact, it is mind-boggling how arrogant it is to claim that such a person would first have to prove something to you, who—considering how most Internet Contrarians are like—is likely to be so ideologically possessed that any evidence contrary to your own beliefs is likely to make you dig in your heels further (backfire effect or something...?).
If you're using a nonstandard Marxist definition of capitalism, then you should point that out because that is not the definition that people typically use. You know full on well that you're calling them capitalist to make capitalism sound worse and communism better.
This reminds me of another Marxist motte and bailey where when you call out their use of "exploit" they retreat and claim that "exploit" is a neutral word, knowing full well they used that word to illicit negative emotions.
Also, no. The Soviet Union never considered themselves state capitalists. That was a label that certain leftist critics used.
> Go grind your axe somewhere else. The topic is climate change.
Says the person who brought up their personal economic grievances to this discussion in the first place. I'm not making an attack on communism. I used it as an example of how economic system has zero correlation to climate change.
> Have you heard of the phrase “e.g.“?
Yes. Have you heard of giving a counterexample to an example?
> And also, not really. I could be an anarcho-primitivist who claims that industrial society has made such opt-in lifestyles impossible. For one, someone who happened to be born into industrial society might not have the skills to live in the wilds since they weren't embedded in that kind of environment from birth. Second of all, maybe industrial society has already forced former hunter-gatherers into society as wage workers and whatnot. Then what chance does an “Internet Contrarian” stand?
That's why I said "minimal assistance." The important part is making a good faith attempt to imagine how you would fare in such a lifestyle. If you were to do so, I'd expect that you at least be as committed as the Youtube channel Primitive Technology in learning this primitive skills. If you don't make such an attempt, I'll think that you're an contrarian.
> Third of all: the goal for someone of that ideological bent might not be to convince some Internet Contrarian of some opposite persuasion. In fact, it is mind-boggling how arrogant it is to claim that such a person would first have to prove something to you
A contrarian also isn't just "thing you don't like." I believe in mixed market capitalism, and my actions are consistent with that of a mixed market capitalist. If you attack my brand of mixed market capitalism, I'll give you a defense of such beliefs. I won't make up a hypothetical of something that I may or may not believe in and defend that instead.
> Also, no. The Soviet Union never considered themselves state capitalists.
They did not describe themselves as ideological state capitalists, they did recognize the existence of state capitalism, and advocate it, in the hands of a “revolutionary-democratic” state as a step from the pre-revolutionary status-quo toward socialism.
Lenin wrote fairly extensively on the topic.
E.g., for one example, in The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It (1917)
> That was a label that certain leftist critics used.
Leftist—largely Marxist—critics of the USSR, and vanguardist-authoritarian systems more generally, point out that there is both a theoretical reason to see a vanguardist regime as not “revolutionary-democratic” and an empirical case to be made based in experience in the USSR and other countries employing similar approaches that vanguardist state capitalism gets stuck in elite-serving extractive capitalism and does not transition to socialism.
But the label “state capitalism” does not originate with that critique.
> If you're using a nonstandard Marxist definition of capitalism, then you should point that out because that is not the definition that people typically use.
You bring up two Marxist governments and then get upset when I talk about capitalism as defined by Marxists.
Like I said: you can disagree with Marxism (or its perspective on what capitalism) but to call it akin to "something I don't like" is childish.
> Says the person who brought up their personal economic grievances to this discussion in the first place. I'm not making an attack on communism. I used it as an example of how economic system has zero correlation to climate change.
Yeah, sure. The problem with making any comments on this contrarian stronghold is that some ideologue will take offense to the specific words unless they are surrounded by three paragraphs of expository context.
But in the service of offending your sensibilities slightly less in the future I will reflect on what I could have replaced this part with:
> > and not the economic system itself.
I really should have said:
> > and not the system itself.
There. Still no less true.
> That's why I said "minimal assistance." The important part is making a good faith attempt to imagine how you would fare in such a lifestyle. I
That's not how ideological critique works. We're all armchair opiners here.
You're gonna be disappointed if you think your naysayers are going to live out this perverse performative exhibition. And it's even less likely for an ideology that lives in the pre-agricultural revolution past.
> A contrarian also isn't just "thing you don't like." I believe in mixed market capitalism, and my actions are consistent with that of a mixed market capitalist. If you attack my brand of mixed market capitalism, I'll give you a defense of such beliefs. I won't make up a hypothetical of something that I may or may not believe in and defend that instead.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220504-why-the-wrong-pe...
[1] No, not really. Powerful people are the ones to blame.