Billy wrote:
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.

In that case, it is a mass hallucination ;O)

it sure is, because proving some point in an
argument using really shoddy research sources is
not going to convince anyone who's paying attention...


http://endofcapitalism.com/about/1-is-this-the-end-of-capitalism/
Capitalism requires growth.

wrong. the production of goods/services requires
nothing other than having the means of production,
which in the modern case means materials and labor.
there is nothing in the system which required
profitability (but it is included in the definition
i have in the dictionary, but i think that is a
minor quibble compared to the greater flaw in assuming
there must be growth).

A system that requires growth cannot last
forever on a planet that is defined by ecological and social limits.
Capitalism is therefore fundamentally unsustainable sooner or later it
will run up against those limits and the system will stop functioning.

capitalism won't cease functioning. that's like
saying people will stop breathing of their own
free will. not many can do it for long...


The current economic crisis which began in 2007 is unlike any previous
crisis faced by global capitalism. In earlier downturns there remained a
way to grow out of it by expanding production there were new resources
and energy supplies, new markets, and new pools of labor to exploit. The
system just needed to expand its reach, because there was plenty of
money to make outside its existing grasp.

gah! utter crap. the crud just works as it does.
if we want it to work differently then we need to
convince a large enough number of participants to
change their values. because values are what wealth
measures and what people consider wealth will change.
by definition in an enclosed system the rare resources
will cost more as they become harder to attain. in
a closed system where food becomes scarce then the
costs of food increases enough to where more people
will find it well worth their time to turn lawns into
gardens (this is already happening) and to put some
previously damaged lands back into production via
cleaning them up and restoring the soil. this too
is happening. rooftops in cities are well worth
redoing if the structure is sound enough to carry
the load. this too is happening.


http://www.greens.org/s-r/47/47-03.html
From an ecological point of view there is something crazy about
capitalism. An ecological worldview emphasizes harmony, sustainability,
moderation - rather like that of the ancient Greeks,

ROFL! holy crap, that is so blazingly funny and
not at all close to what history shows. the Greeks
destroyed their topsoil and killed/plundered about as
much as any civilization before them.


for whom a constant
striving for more was regarded as a mark of an unbalanced, deranged
soul. Yet every capitalist enterprise is motivated to grow, and to grow
without limit.

The root problem with capitalism is not that individual firms are
incentivized to grow, but that the economy as a whole must grow, not to

how can you quote a source that uses a word like
"incentivized" without grimacing?


survive, but to remain healthy. Why should it be the case that a
capitalist economy must grow to be healthy? The answer to this question
is rather peculiar - and very important. A capitalist economy must grow
to be healthy because capitalism relies on private investors for its
investment funds. These investors are free to invest or not as they see
fit. (It is, after all, their money.)

right. as values change (and they will and must in
the face of more limited resources) they will find
investments in sustainable and recycling materials to
be more and more valuable. the shift will happen.


But this makes economic health dependent on "investor confidence," on,
as John Maynard Keynes put it, "the animal spirits" of the investors. If
investors do not foresee a healthy return on their investments,
commensurate with the risks they are taking, then they won't invest - at
least not domestically. But if they don't invest, their pessimism
becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. The lack of investment translates
into layoffs - first in the construction industry and those industries
dependent on orders for capital goods, and then, since layoffs lead to a
decline in consumer-goods consumption, in other sectors as well.
Aggregate demand drops further; the economy slides toward recession.

As we all know, a slumping economy is not just bad for capitalist
investors. It is bad for almost everyone. Unemployment rises. Government
revenues fall. Indeed, public funds for environmental programs are
jeopardized - as mainstream economists are quick to point out, impatient
as they are with "anti-growth" ecologists.

So we see: a healthy capitalism requires a steady expansion of
consumption. If sales decline, investors lose confidence - as well they
should. So, sales must be kept up. Which means that a healthy capitalism
requires what would doubtless strike a visitor from another planet (or
from a pre-capitalist society) as exceedingly strange - a massive,
privately-financed effort to persuade people to consume what they might
otherwise find unnecessary.

there are many companies which get along just fine
on a steady product line. growth in some areas is
offset by declines in other areas. in a closed system
that is how it goes. we cannot escape physics or
limited resources no matter how much money we print,
but we can let the market function which will reflect
a shift from consumption and destruction without
proper compensation to one that does. that shift is
going on and will continue to go on for many years.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/igorgree...pitalism-dying
/2/
Capitalism assumes an infinite supply of resources, which is absolutely
absurd. Infinite growth within a finite system is impossible. Real
scientists understand this. However, many economists would have us
believe that it¹s alright if we run out of something because there will
always be a substitute. And when we run out of that, another substitute.
Unfortunately, the planet we live on doesn¹t work like that.

There are natural constraints at play that are completely missing from
our economic models. We are all living with our heads in the sand. It
will be impossible for future generations to experience the growth and
material wealth that we have now because we are using up our natural
capital as quickly as we can with no regard for what will be left in the
future.

quite false. what we are throwing away now in
landfills will in the future become a source of
valueable materials. as the concentrated metals/ores
are depleted then it becomes high enough priced to
make concentrating it from recycling and reclaiming
it from existing marginal structures more valuable.
when the price point gets right the market then works
to shift the focus and it does happen. it isn't a
question of anything other than energy and the will
to do it.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/feb/02/energy.comment
It's capitalism or a habitable planet - you can't have both

Our economic system is unsustainable by its very nature. The only
response to climate chaos and peak oil is major social change

Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature. It is predicated on
infinitely expanding markets, faster consumption and bigger production
in a finite planet. And yet this ideological model remains the central
organising principle of our lives, and as long as it continues to be so
it will automatically undo (with its invisible hand) every single green
initiative anybody cares to come up with.

our economic system is influenced by each of us
making choices about where to spend our time and
money. when the prices for food get high enough,
when land and water destruction start feeding
back into much higher prices for clear air and
decent food then people will make choices to find
different ways of treating the water and land.
when it gets hard to breath and people start
kicking off from poor air quality in large
numbers then the system will self-regulate that
ways too.

in a closed system there isn't a free lunch any
more than in an active ecology there isn't much room
for an unused energy source. dead bodies are
decomposed, and from that life goes on. in our
system, the abuse of the soil, water and air will
eventually be corrected. all the other materials can
be concentrated with the use of energy (paying the
dues through entropy according to some physicists).

i'm not quite sure what i believe about that,
because there is stuff going on in physics we
don't understand yet. black-holes, plasma physics,
dark matter, etc. still a lot to be learned...
maybe we'll find a genie in a bottle...


=======

In any event, it's not idiopathic behavior.

capitalism as defined in the dictionary has the
element of profit built in. an on-going business
can get by without profit above enough to cover
the overhead (call it the entropy tax because
that is really what it is). most companies in
business for very long of a big enough size have
understand that they can increase their chances
of going forwards are based upon making operations
more efficient. i.e. reducing their overhead (or
how much energy they use or how much materials or
water or air or ...).

nowadays companies also reflect the values of
their patrons and the people who run them. some
make changes to use clean energy sources and reduce
waste or improve the water quality. those are the
ones any person would want to invest in because
they understand that it is important to value
these things. already, capitalism apart from
governmental regulations will shift faster than
the government itself will, because the government
is weighed down by PACS and political contributions
and embedded infrastructure costs. a new company
can do a complete endrun around all that embedded
overhead. existing companies can make that same
rapid shift (how else could you explain a company
buying hundreds of millions of watts of clean
energy within a few years time?). there's no
law requiring them to do it. there's no one
investor of a large enough chunk to force it or
even any large block combined. they just decided
it was the right thing to do and they are doing it.

if more people elected to purchase clean energy
through their utility it would force the utility to
put more production into clean energy sources.
already this has shifted things somewhat, but more
people making the change would send a clearer signal
and the companies will respond.


songbird