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this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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The real clowns are the ones thinking the everyman is making more impact than the massive corporations. People making personal sacrifices won't fix this.
And what would it take to stop those corporations? Individual actions. Be it voting in an election or with your wallet, it's our society that continues to not only allows those corporations to exist but to grant them every right to do so. The only alternative to a social rethinking would be the violent overthrow of capitalism and an authoritan installation of some alternative. And nobody could seriously want that.
You cannot overthrow capitalism without social rethinking. I mean, you could force people at gunpoint if that sounds like a good plan to you, only then we'd have a capitalisic people that has been told to have every right to overconsume (by people like you, in this thread) for decades.
When you absolve people of their individual responsibility the only way out of capitalism will be by force. Not against corporations, but against the people.
The way I see it, capitalism is defined by free markets and so if you aren’t willing to use guns to force people, you’re a capitalist.
I refer to it as “the economic system where economic arrangements require consent of both parties”
Great insight. An ideological system cannot simply be declared dead nor overthrown. This explains incredibly well why communism has typically led to an enriched and "more equal" ruling class. The economy and its laws may have changed, but people and their desires did not.
To truly have a change, the people have to change their thinking and wants. Marx either naively assumed this would be easier than it is, or his work is meant to describe a very large timespan.
And I do think we're moving in the right direction. I know this article is very pessimistic, but trends are going the right way. And to quote Mr. Rogers, "look to the helpers" -- there's people working on green energy. There's people trying to foster more communal thinking.
I’m not a fan of Marx, but I think it’s correct he’s talking about longer timespans. It’s sort of an evolutionary approach. He assumes the core motivations are there, but he (correctly IMO) models people as having different personalities based on their circumstances. A person fighting a bear is a rage and fear filled war machine. A person who’s well fed and comfortable is pretty generous overall and could maybe be trusted with making decisions for others’ best interests.
His idea communist society is a feedback loop: economic abundance (oxymoron if defined technically I know) makes people less selfish, and less selfish people use resources in a way more optimized for global value rather than local value.
I don’t like the way Marxism over-idealizes, over-simplifies things, and I think it’s very dangerous how things are left out, but at least he’s mostly right about the aspects he doesn’t ignore.
Yeah I think it makes a lot of sense viewing it as how our society will evolve.
I vaguely recall that Marx himself didn't like Marxists. I remember my world history teachers mentioning something about how the actual person behind the -ism is often not a proponent of it.
But how do we get those regulations if not, in last consequence, by individual action? Personal responsibility specifically includes the need to vote and get socially and politically involved. We can't just sit around and tell people to wait if and when the right regulations come along. We together are the people who have to fight for them.
Right. In terms of personal sacrifice, turning down the heat is ineffective compared to sacrificing the fun activities of a Saturday to decide late four hours to reading papers and writing to your congresspeople.
IMO the only way to effectively manage atmospheric content is through financial incentives and the simpler the better. Any activity that puts greenhouse gases into the atmosphere needs to be taxed, any activity that pulls them out needs to be subsidized.
Then the rates of those incentives need to be calibrated via measurement and feedback to the point where it eliminates existential threat.
But I can’t do that directly, so if I’m gonna do my part for climate change it needs to be something around (a) find out whether I’m right about my theory of what would work and (b) selling the idea to others.
Shivering in the cold to avoid using natural gas isn’t doing shit for me or anyone else.
It would take all-out global war with billions of deaths to shut them down.
Corporations are just the sum of their customers. One customer doesn't have much influence, that's true, but collectively they have a ton.