songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
...
capitalism does not require infinite resources,
i dunno where you get that idea from.

You sell one, and buy materials to make 2. You sell 2, and buy
materials to make 4. You sell 4, and buy materials to make 8, ect.
Pretty soon you are looking at very big numbers. Capitalism is
founded on growth. Even with planned obsolescence, an infinite
amount of widgets requires an infinite amount of resources.

you're confusing capitalism with some imaginary
construct.


songbird

No he isn't. The way capitalism works in Western economies requires
constant growth in the economy, not only that but it has to be at the
correct rate. Our (Oz) federal bank manipulates money with the stated
intent of maintaining growth within a narrow range - about 3% PA IIRC. I
think yours does too. Politicians of most colours cannot keep from crowing
when growth is 'good' and trying to blame somebody else when it is 'bad'.
They have accepted that the people want higher standards of living (or at
least as high as they have now) and that living standards are inextricably
linked to growth. There are plenty of examples to support this where very
fast growth or economic shrinking has produced horrid outcomes for the wider
population. Very few publicly question the system that requires this but
question it we must.

Capitalism is the product of the era of unrestricted human expansion across
the globe. To maintain economic growth one simply increased population and
found new resources and markets in foreign lands. Of course technology
fuelled this expansion by enabling faster extraction, transport and
utilisation of resources.

Economic growth requires goods, production of goods require materials. Thus
as it currently works the system must continue to extract fuel, metals,
fibre, timber etc from the earth at an ever increasing rate. Many of these
resources are limited and will be consumed sooner or later. Thus, the
present system embodies the seeds of its own destruction. The issue even
has a name "decoupling". The aim is to find a system where maintaining a
standard of living does not require constant growth, ie the two are
decoupled. So far nobody has done it. What is worse very few seem to be
concerned. We are generally restricted to peripheral arguments that climate
change isn't real or that science and technology will save us. The fact
that the core system was developed and succeeded in an environment that no
longer exists, and can only continue to succeed when those conditions exist
is widely ignored.

David