No need to “force” them or persuade them. If we end up doing the mass rise up and demand all those good policies they will have no choice but to comply. We are way more people than they are.💪
@@VladBunea And how are you hoping to make the law to be changed to force this to happen ? I can only see this happen through violent means. And they have the money to buy the guns. And the media. And to change the algorithms to direct the people to what they want to be seen.
When I think about all the work that needs to be done to make our world abandon capitalism, I compare it to an analogy of trying to plug a spraying fire hose with toilet paper -- a seemingly impossible task. It will take a long time, and will be messy, dirty, leaky, and imperfect. It won't get fixed all at once, but with enough commitment and time, it will get done. Not all at once or nearly as pretty as we hoped, but it will get done.
Hi Vlad! Congratulations 🎉 on another excellent video! I have just finished a book that deals with many of these same issues, and proposes ways to move forwards. It is not published yet, would you like to read it? 230 pages, in English. Maybe we can collaborate..
Degrowth: "Hey lets have everybody in rich countries get 90% poorer!" Everybody living in rich countries: "Just try and take my stuff, I dare you." Seriously though Vlad, you seem a sincere and well-meaning person. But degrowth will never happen unless a horrifically totalitarian government forces people to do it. People living in rich countries will never voluntarily reduce their standard of living to such a degree (in sufficiently large numbers at least). And I'm saying that as a minimalist who makes a conscious effort to live more simply. It just ain't gonna fly. As it happens I live in a developing country (South Africa) and the greatest aspiration of every one of my fellow citizens is to have the same lifestyle as citizens living in places like America and Europe. Humans naturally aspire to have comfort and plenty, and no political or environmental argument will ever change that. EDIT: Thoughts on your list of seven ideas. 1. Reducing working hours is certainly possible, but it's definitely impossible to decrease the working week from 40 hours to 15 hours without also reducing pay. Over the long term the business/government cannot afford to pay a worker more than what they produce in economic value without collapsing the business/economy. In order to keep the pay the same the worker must therefore produce the same economic value in 15 hours as they used to produce in 40 hours. Very few workers would be able to do this. Unless the whole point is that people should be poorer? I disagree when you say that people should not have to "earn a living" because living is a human right. You are correct when you say that living is a human right, but that doesn't mean that you are somehow entitled to the resources that others produce. In reality you only have three options. Either you have to (1) earn a living, (2) live on the voluntary charity of others, or (3) live on resources involuntarily stolen from others. I have no problem with the first two options, but I do with the third. 2. The jobs guarantee. A job is an incidental outcome of having something economically useful to do, not an end in itself. If this was not the case we could just pay people to dig holes all day and then fill them up. Everybody would at least have a guaranteed job. The focus should always be on how useful the job actually is and NOT on just having a job, otherwise you're just wasting societies' resources. Besides, I don't want to have a job. I want to watch UA-cam videos all day and leave very long (but insightful) comments because I'm fundamentally lazy. Can I get paid to do that? 3. Love the idea of a UBI. Hate the idea of a maximum income because you'll end up discouraging your most economically productive citizens from working. If you cap income at $100K per year, and some hyper-productive person can hit that number in three months, then they will likely just take the rest of the year off. That's a bad idea if that person happens to be a brilliant brain surgeon, because society losses a brain surgeon for nine months of the year and also the high income taxes they would have paid on all the money they earned. 4. Public transport is great, but it's never "free". If the passengers aren't paying for it then the government is paying for it, which really means the taxpayers are paying for it. There is no free lunch, and to suggest otherwise is dishonest. Also keep in mind that almost all suburbs built since the World War 2 are built around private car ownership. If you do away with private car ownership then you'll need to rebuild huge swathes of the urban landscape with all the environmental consequences of that ... and using workers that only work 15 hours per week. 5. It bugs me that "right to repair" even needs to be a thing. If I paid for something then it's my property and I can do whatever I want with it, including repairing or modifying it. 6. Decreasing Material caps. Yeah ... good luck getting people to sign up for that. 7. Refreshed democracy. As you point out there's nothing stopping people from setting up worker-owned businesses if they want to. So why do you see so few of them compared to capitalist businesses? Because consumers vote with their money, and they choose to (mostly) support capitalist business because those are the businesses that better meet their perceived needs and wants. It looks like worker-owned businesses simply can't compete with capitalist businesses overall. That's a pity, but there you go. You've made an interesting video overall. I'm going to check out your videos on how governments are supposed to pay for all this generosity and your proposed government system. Cheers!
As I mentioned, I put a lot of emphasis on democracy. We will not "force" the rich in the North to give up lifestyles, BUT they will "have to", through a new culture that will emerge. So, in the end it will be a democratic process. Also, it is impossible for everyone on Earth to have the same affluence as the rich nations. It cannot happen. It will not happen. It's physics. The only path forward is for the Global North to drastically reduce their production and consumption (on average up to 90%) and for the South to increase it but just enough that it is sustainable, so nobody will have the current affluence of the North.
@@VladBunea Sorry, but I don't see it happening democratically. People are all keen when demanding that rich people make sacrifices, but as soon as you ask regular people to massively reduce their standard of living your not going to get anywhere. Look at how few people voluntarily adopt extreme minimalism (which is basically what you're asking them to do). And I disagree when you say all people cannot have the same standard of living as rich nations. Sure, not everybody on Earth can have a car and a three bedroom house in the suburbs. But the idea that rich nations have to make massive sacrifices just so that poor nations can have a reasonable standard of living is false. Modern cities can be amazingly efficient in terms of energy and resource usage. And there would be more than enough energy and raw materials to go around for everybody if we just produced and used them efficiently. Remember that we're only using a few percent of the potential solar energy we could be getting, and nuclear energy is very viable (if we could just get people to look at it rationally). And raw materials don't just disappear when we use them. Most can be recycled almost indefinitely and there are still huge untapped reserves that we haven't even touched yet. Once you have enough energy and raw materials you can make whatever you need, so there is no need for the extreme measures you're advocating.
Green growth doesn't work. It's a delusion. All humans from all countries would need to have emissions of about 0.5 tonnes/human/year. Income should also be capped well under 1 million per year for all humans. That's the start...
I am also saying there aren't enough resources to do high lifestyle for all humans so it's only fair that the rich decrease their consumption and production so the rest of the world can increase their quality of life but definitely not to the current levels in the rich countries.
Author Samuel Alexander estimates that already in the North there are 200 million people already practicing voluntary simplicity. The demographic basis is there to expand this number within a demographic framework not imposed by anyone…
Under degrowth, i may be more free to travel and go where i like, but i feel getting a flight would be harder without having millions of service workers service flights, maintain runways and planes, control logistics etc. I'd be freer purely in the abstract, but in fact, getting to sya, Japan, would become much harder and much less likely with overall less production.
Think different. You may discover destinations (by train or electric transport) where travellers won’t have to burn fossil fuels to get there. Airplanes are burning lots of fossil fuels.
You understand that you will have a lot less freedom if the carrying capacity if the earth falls because of climate change and you are drafted into the water wars?
You are completely correct but if the truth is that flights use an unethical amount of labour and an unsustainable amount of fuel why do you feel you should have access to them?
What you show is the top of the mountain. And from the top of the mountain you are saying how beautiful the landscape is. This is all too obvious. And what you mention we should do at a personal level demands a minimum of income: grow your own food? In a sustainable way? Good luck doing that inside a studio apartment. Or from a shelter under the bridge. The part of organizing a cohesive community that shares all these principles, I daresay religiously, in the large numbers that must happen for this to be ever effective, even at a minimal level, is to say the least a daunting task.
Less daunting than a climate disaster and the continuing oppression of a majority of the world. What have we got to lose? The standard of living is not that good for the vast majority.
You're arguing yourself into the ground. If degrowth isn't the way, why does it promise a better life for all? At its heart it wants to stop you from dying in agony somewhere in some random country, flooded, swamped in dire winds, lacking food etc etc. you have unfounded skepticism towards it. Perhaps you should learn more about philosophy and science, and the philosophical method; argumentation; logic, and scientific skepticism
@@tobywindgassen8427 Oh yes, the Bible promises eternal life, gurus promises happiness, and a lot of people promises easy money. It is easy to say that everything you need to levitate is to first place one feet off the ground and then the other one. And what you say is the way all I can say is that it *may* be a goal. But I don't see any way to get into it except for wishful thinking. You can strive to do it on a personal level, for sure. Do your part as much as possible. But for it to work there is need for global commitment. And I don't see anywhere how to force that global commitment.
Degrowth sounds like a bad solution to a broken system. Sure the system is broken, but this ain't it. It doesn't feel like it hits the pain points of capitalism, it doesn't hit where the capitalism fails. Instead you seem to put plaster on top of a few symptoms and call it a day.
The cause is overconsumption and capitalism. By reducing consumption and limiting consumerism and a capital driven economy, could you please explain how does this feel like putting plaster on top of a few symptoms? To me it seems the right beginning in the right direction. Please articulate what else would be required to fix and what do you see it needs fixing?
@@spring9603 I think consumerism isn't particularly bad, and free market economy is the most amazing thing ever to use humanitys collective power to achieve anything we want. Including things we want to consume, as efficiently and cheaply as possible, and with any other qualities we want to optimize. The problem is that we're currently playing free market capitalism with the added setting of "maximize suffering", as free market valuation of things tends to be "the maximum unhappiness for non-owners". Basically, we are maximizing negative externalities. You could fix this by adding so called Pigovian taxes to negative externalities, specifically, wealth tax, and capital gains(rent, interest, licensing fees etc) tax. With these taxes, you'd have free markets work to provide us all we want, again, efficiently, cheaply, but also, non-destructively as anyones opinion of "this is destructive and I don't like it" adds costs to production, either because they end up having to pay unnecessary rent(or license fee, or somesuch), or they dislike how the world around them is being used. Resulting in them wanting to buy, or rent, these resources, increasing tax burden on the owner, or allowing them to fix the problems they see. You'd get fully functioning free market capitalism except, you know, without the suffering maximization. What matters instead of providing empty consumerism and destructive competition, is providing actual things people want. This fixes the imbalance of power in ownership, people not having a say in what gets done by resources around them. Like, boycotting doesn't work, we know it, but that's in this broken world our best attempt at trying to force companies to do things differently. But we don't have a real way to impact things. No way to band together. With proper taxes fixing incentives, you could simply offer to buy the offending company. The more people band together to buy it, the higher the taxes, the higher the operational costs of this business. You use market forces for your benefit.
@@spring9603bc the problem w capitalism is it can’t solve the problem of abundance. abundance isn’t the core issue. abundance is actually a good byproduct of capitalism but capitalism cannot efficiently and sustainably continue said abundance. that’s why degrowth is a lunacy of the privileged 1st world. you people refuse to invest in renewables so you throw a fit and say “NO MORE PRODUCTION”. we can fully support our industry w renewables right now it’s just yall refuse to. You’re weak.
I found the discourse a bit cliché @@gJonii ... "the most amazing thing ever to use humanitys collective power to achieve anything we want", sadly, what 70% of the population of the world (myself included) want to achieve, is decent life style for everyone with a decent standard of living, no extravaganza, no luxury, just the means to get the resource required for a family and the free time to spend time with your loved one, with your friends, with your community, with your hobbies. But, for 60-70% of the population this is what capitalism is rubbing them from. Why am I saying 60-70%? Because "More than 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck" and many of them have two-three jobs to get the means of surviving. Those 60-70% of the population have no free time for their own, they only have time to survive in the capitalistic market. In order for 20% of the population to live the American dream and for capitalism to be possible, you need the 60-70% of the population to sacrifice themselves. "Basically, we are maximizing negative externalities." this is what I'm speaking of, "free market economy" feeds off of overworking the vast majority of the population. It's a pyramidal scheme. You may want to tweak it through state interventionism and regulations if you want to maximize happiness but then we're no longer talking abut Capitalism and free market. In that case we're talking about social policies mixed up with privately owned economy (and socialism is a good thing, economy should not be the End, but the Means; the End should be people happiness through economical tweaking and controlling which is not free market anymore). Then again, Pigovian taxes and consumerism are antithetical. You can't have a pro-consumerism discourse and on the other hand promote Pigovian taxes which stifles free market and capitalism. CEO's and Capitalism would hate you for saying such things. "efficiently, cheaply" there is no such thing in Capitalism. Name me please one country or place in the world where this is happening, without this translating into cheap labor somewhere else on the planet, with people being abused for that cheap product which you consume. Maybe you want to do good, which I appreciate, but you don't understand the overall inner-workings of capitalism. Capitalism to evolve means abuse of the many so the few, with power in their hands, can enjoy. And never forget, Capitalism is built on marketing and selling. It has an entire empire of strategies (with sociologists and psychologists employed) meant to convince people that consumerism is good, because it benefits itself (the capitalism). You and everyone else (simple people, the 60-70%) supporting capitalism are merely echoing what Capitalism is saying in its advantage.
It would be easier to just remove / ban money and land ownership than to introduce all the regulation necessary to implement your degrowth plan. Also, money is a man-made thing and has a negative value when it comes to nature; because people have to work harder in order for it to exist.
@@michah321 I am lol I find it a much simpler and better solution than anything else I've ever seen or heard of. In history, every society that has used a monetary system has failed; especially those that have used it to gain power.
Banning money may essentially be an evolution to degrowth. Don't know, could happen. Happend in many socialist economies and they were better off for sure. Degrowth is the system. Banning money is just something like a policy. Capitalism would still rein supreme, and that's a problem. But if we instill degrowth, the system then becomes about coming in balance with nature as well as expanding our freedoms and wellbeing
My first question is how you force the millionaires and the powerful to comply
You gave the answer yourself. You FORCE them.
No need to “force” them or persuade them. If we end up doing the mass rise up and demand all those good policies they will have no choice but to comply. We are way more people than they are.💪
@@walterlippmann4361 So, if by law we make a maximum income, they will have to comply with the law.
@@VladBunea And how are you hoping to make the law to be changed to force this to happen ? I can only see this happen through violent means. And they have the money to buy the guns. And the media. And to change the algorithms to direct the people to what they want to be seen.
My question is how do you get regular people to comply.
When I think about all the work that needs to be done to make our world abandon capitalism, I compare it to an analogy of trying to plug a spraying fire hose with toilet paper -- a seemingly impossible task. It will take a long time, and will be messy, dirty, leaky, and imperfect. It won't get fixed all at once, but with enough commitment and time, it will get done. Not all at once or nearly as pretty as we hoped, but it will get done.
This is like an ad for China. We're not going to go in this direction at all. this sounds like HELL
Hi Vlad!
Congratulations 🎉 on another excellent video!
I have just finished a book that deals with many of these same issues, and proposes ways to move forwards. It is not published yet, would you like to read it?
230 pages, in English.
Maybe we can collaborate..
Subscribed!
Great channel, thanks.
Welcome aboard!
It seems that everything could go wrong during the transition, unfortunately
Well.. the world is literally ending right now. Evertthing can go wrong all the time
Degrowth: "Hey lets have everybody in rich countries get 90% poorer!"
Everybody living in rich countries: "Just try and take my stuff, I dare you."
Seriously though Vlad, you seem a sincere and well-meaning person. But degrowth will never happen unless a horrifically totalitarian government forces people to do it. People living in rich countries will never voluntarily reduce their standard of living to such a degree (in sufficiently large numbers at least). And I'm saying that as a minimalist who makes a conscious effort to live more simply. It just ain't gonna fly.
As it happens I live in a developing country (South Africa) and the greatest aspiration of every one of my fellow citizens is to have the same lifestyle as citizens living in places like America and Europe. Humans naturally aspire to have comfort and plenty, and no political or environmental argument will ever change that.
EDIT: Thoughts on your list of seven ideas.
1. Reducing working hours is certainly possible, but it's definitely impossible to decrease the working week from 40 hours to 15 hours without also reducing pay. Over the long term the business/government cannot afford to pay a worker more than what they produce in economic value without collapsing the business/economy. In order to keep the pay the same the worker must therefore produce the same economic value in 15 hours as they used to produce in 40 hours. Very few workers would be able to do this. Unless the whole point is that people should be poorer?
I disagree when you say that people should not have to "earn a living" because living is a human right. You are correct when you say that living is a human right, but that doesn't mean that you are somehow entitled to the resources that others produce. In reality you only have three options. Either you have to (1) earn a living, (2) live on the voluntary charity of others, or (3) live on resources involuntarily stolen from others. I have no problem with the first two options, but I do with the third.
2. The jobs guarantee. A job is an incidental outcome of having something economically useful to do, not an end in itself. If this was not the case we could just pay people to dig holes all day and then fill them up. Everybody would at least have a guaranteed job. The focus should always be on how useful the job actually is and NOT on just having a job, otherwise you're just wasting societies' resources. Besides, I don't want to have a job. I want to watch UA-cam videos all day and leave very long (but insightful) comments because I'm fundamentally lazy. Can I get paid to do that?
3. Love the idea of a UBI. Hate the idea of a maximum income because you'll end up discouraging your most economically productive citizens from working. If you cap income at $100K per year, and some hyper-productive person can hit that number in three months, then they will likely just take the rest of the year off. That's a bad idea if that person happens to be a brilliant brain surgeon, because society losses a brain surgeon for nine months of the year and also the high income taxes they would have paid on all the money they earned.
4. Public transport is great, but it's never "free". If the passengers aren't paying for it then the government is paying for it, which really means the taxpayers are paying for it. There is no free lunch, and to suggest otherwise is dishonest. Also keep in mind that almost all suburbs built since the World War 2 are built around private car ownership. If you do away with private car ownership then you'll need to rebuild huge swathes of the urban landscape with all the environmental consequences of that ... and using workers that only work 15 hours per week.
5. It bugs me that "right to repair" even needs to be a thing. If I paid for something then it's my property and I can do whatever I want with it, including repairing or modifying it.
6. Decreasing Material caps. Yeah ... good luck getting people to sign up for that.
7. Refreshed democracy. As you point out there's nothing stopping people from setting up worker-owned businesses if they want to. So why do you see so few of them compared to capitalist businesses? Because consumers vote with their money, and they choose to (mostly) support capitalist business because those are the businesses that better meet their perceived needs and wants. It looks like worker-owned businesses simply can't compete with capitalist businesses overall. That's a pity, but there you go.
You've made an interesting video overall. I'm going to check out your videos on how governments are supposed to pay for all this generosity and your proposed government system. Cheers!
As I mentioned, I put a lot of emphasis on democracy. We will not "force" the rich in the North to give up lifestyles, BUT they will "have to", through a new culture that will emerge. So, in the end it will be a democratic process. Also, it is impossible for everyone on Earth to have the same affluence as the rich nations. It cannot happen. It will not happen. It's physics. The only path forward is for the Global North to drastically reduce their production and consumption (on average up to 90%) and for the South to increase it but just enough that it is sustainable, so nobody will have the current affluence of the North.
@@VladBunea Sorry, but I don't see it happening democratically. People are all keen when demanding that rich people make sacrifices, but as soon as you ask regular people to massively reduce their standard of living your not going to get anywhere. Look at how few people voluntarily adopt extreme minimalism (which is basically what you're asking them to do).
And I disagree when you say all people cannot have the same standard of living as rich nations. Sure, not everybody on Earth can have a car and a three bedroom house in the suburbs. But the idea that rich nations have to make massive sacrifices just so that poor nations can have a reasonable standard of living is false.
Modern cities can be amazingly efficient in terms of energy and resource usage. And there would be more than enough energy and raw materials to go around for everybody if we just produced and used them efficiently.
Remember that we're only using a few percent of the potential solar energy we could be getting, and nuclear energy is very viable (if we could just get people to look at it rationally). And raw materials don't just disappear when we use them. Most can be recycled almost indefinitely and there are still huge untapped reserves that we haven't even touched yet.
Once you have enough energy and raw materials you can make whatever you need, so there is no need for the extreme measures you're advocating.
Green growth doesn't work. It's a delusion. All humans from all countries would need to have emissions of about 0.5 tonnes/human/year. Income should also be capped well under 1 million per year for all humans. That's the start...
I am also saying there aren't enough resources to do high lifestyle for all humans so it's only fair that the rich decrease their consumption and production so the rest of the world can increase their quality of life but definitely not to the current levels in the rich countries.
Author Samuel Alexander estimates that already in the North there are 200 million people already practicing voluntary simplicity. The demographic basis is there to expand this number within a demographic framework not imposed by anyone…
Great explained
good stuff :)
De growth is the only way
Want to sit around and nothing to save the planet? Well, now you can.
Starve the human labour farm!
Under degrowth, i may be more free to travel and go where i like, but i feel getting a flight would be harder without having millions of service workers service flights, maintain runways and planes, control logistics etc.
I'd be freer purely in the abstract, but in fact, getting to sya, Japan, would become much harder and much less likely with overall less production.
Think different. You may discover destinations (by train or electric transport) where travellers won’t have to burn fossil fuels to get there. Airplanes are burning lots of fossil fuels.
You understand that you will have a lot less freedom if the carrying capacity if the earth falls because of climate change and you are drafted into the water wars?
You are completely correct but if the truth is that flights use an unethical amount of labour and an unsustainable amount of fuel why do you feel you should have access to them?
What you show is the top of the mountain. And from the top of the mountain you are saying how beautiful the landscape is. This is all too obvious. And what you mention we should do at a personal level demands a minimum of income: grow your own food? In a sustainable way? Good luck doing that inside a studio apartment. Or from a shelter under the bridge.
The part of organizing a cohesive community that shares all these principles, I daresay religiously, in the large numbers that must happen for this to be ever effective, even at a minimal level, is to say the least a daunting task.
Less daunting than a climate disaster and the continuing oppression of a majority of the world. What have we got to lose? The standard of living is not that good for the vast majority.
You're arguing yourself into the ground. If degrowth isn't the way, why does it promise a better life for all? At its heart it wants to stop you from dying in agony somewhere in some random country, flooded, swamped in dire winds, lacking food etc etc. you have unfounded skepticism towards it. Perhaps you should learn more about philosophy and science, and the philosophical method; argumentation; logic, and scientific skepticism
@@tobywindgassen8427 yes now if only the whole population would do the same
@@tobywindgassen8427 Oh yes, the Bible promises eternal life, gurus promises happiness, and a lot of people promises easy money.
It is easy to say that everything you need to levitate is to first place one feet off the ground and then the other one. And what you say is the way all I can say is that it *may* be a goal. But I don't see any way to get into it except for wishful thinking. You can strive to do it on a personal level, for sure. Do your part as much as possible. But for it to work there is need for global commitment. And I don't see anywhere how to force that global commitment.
Degrowth sounds like a bad solution to a broken system. Sure the system is broken, but this ain't it. It doesn't feel like it hits the pain points of capitalism, it doesn't hit where the capitalism fails. Instead you seem to put plaster on top of a few symptoms and call it a day.
The cause is overconsumption and capitalism. By reducing consumption and limiting consumerism and a capital driven economy, could you please explain how does this feel like putting plaster on top of a few symptoms?
To me it seems the right beginning in the right direction.
Please articulate what else would be required to fix and what do you see it needs fixing?
@@spring9603 I think consumerism isn't particularly bad, and free market economy is the most amazing thing ever to use humanitys collective power to achieve anything we want. Including things we want to consume, as efficiently and cheaply as possible, and with any other qualities we want to optimize.
The problem is that we're currently playing free market capitalism with the added setting of "maximize suffering", as free market valuation of things tends to be "the maximum unhappiness for non-owners". Basically, we are maximizing negative externalities.
You could fix this by adding so called Pigovian taxes to negative externalities, specifically, wealth tax, and capital gains(rent, interest, licensing fees etc) tax. With these taxes, you'd have free markets work to provide us all we want, again, efficiently, cheaply, but also, non-destructively as anyones opinion of "this is destructive and I don't like it" adds costs to production, either because they end up having to pay unnecessary rent(or license fee, or somesuch), or they dislike how the world around them is being used. Resulting in them wanting to buy, or rent, these resources, increasing tax burden on the owner, or allowing them to fix the problems they see.
You'd get fully functioning free market capitalism except, you know, without the suffering maximization. What matters instead of providing empty consumerism and destructive competition, is providing actual things people want.
This fixes the imbalance of power in ownership, people not having a say in what gets done by resources around them. Like, boycotting doesn't work, we know it, but that's in this broken world our best attempt at trying to force companies to do things differently. But we don't have a real way to impact things. No way to band together.
With proper taxes fixing incentives, you could simply offer to buy the offending company. The more people band together to buy it, the higher the taxes, the higher the operational costs of this business. You use market forces for your benefit.
@@spring9603bc the problem w capitalism is it can’t solve the problem of abundance. abundance isn’t the core issue. abundance is actually a good byproduct of capitalism but capitalism cannot efficiently and sustainably continue said abundance. that’s why degrowth is a lunacy of the privileged 1st world. you people refuse to invest in renewables so you throw a fit and say “NO MORE PRODUCTION”. we can fully support our industry w renewables right now it’s just yall refuse to. You’re weak.
I found the discourse a bit cliché @@gJonii ...
"the most amazing thing ever to use humanitys collective power to achieve anything we want", sadly, what 70% of the population of the world (myself included) want to achieve, is decent life style for everyone with a decent standard of living, no extravaganza, no luxury, just the means to get the resource required for a family and the free time to spend time with your loved one, with your friends, with your community, with your hobbies. But, for 60-70% of the population this is what capitalism is rubbing them from. Why am I saying 60-70%? Because "More than 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck" and many of them have two-three jobs to get the means of surviving.
Those 60-70% of the population have no free time for their own, they only have time to survive in the capitalistic market. In order for 20% of the population to live the American dream and for capitalism to be possible, you need the 60-70% of the population to sacrifice themselves.
"Basically, we are maximizing negative externalities." this is what I'm speaking of, "free market economy" feeds off of overworking the vast majority of the population. It's a pyramidal scheme. You may want to tweak it through state interventionism and regulations if you want to maximize happiness but then we're no longer talking abut Capitalism and free market. In that case we're talking about social policies mixed up with privately owned economy (and socialism is a good thing, economy should not be the End, but the Means; the End should be people happiness through economical tweaking and controlling which is not free market anymore).
Then again, Pigovian taxes and consumerism are antithetical. You can't have a pro-consumerism discourse and on the other hand promote Pigovian taxes which stifles free market and capitalism. CEO's and Capitalism would hate you for saying such things.
"efficiently, cheaply" there is no such thing in Capitalism. Name me please one country or place in the world where this is happening, without this translating into cheap labor somewhere else on the planet, with people being abused for that cheap product which you consume.
Maybe you want to do good, which I appreciate, but you don't understand the overall inner-workings of capitalism. Capitalism to evolve means abuse of the many so the few, with power in their hands, can enjoy.
And never forget, Capitalism is built on marketing and selling. It has an entire empire of strategies (with sociologists and psychologists employed) meant to convince people that consumerism is good, because it benefits itself (the capitalism). You and everyone else (simple people, the 60-70%) supporting capitalism are merely echoing what Capitalism is saying in its advantage.
It would be easier to just remove / ban money and land ownership than to introduce all the regulation necessary to implement your degrowth plan. Also, money is a man-made thing and has a negative value when it comes to nature; because people have to work harder in order for it to exist.
no one is voting for that
@@michah321 I am lol I find it a much simpler and better solution than anything else I've ever seen or heard of. In history, every society that has used a monetary system has failed; especially those that have used it to gain power.
@@ShawnRitch well good luck, this plan isn't getting voted for in the US, that's for SURE.
@@michah321 Thanks, I agree.
Banning money may essentially be an evolution to degrowth. Don't know, could happen. Happend in many socialist economies and they were better off for sure. Degrowth is the system. Banning money is just something like a policy. Capitalism would still rein supreme, and that's a problem. But if we instill degrowth, the system then becomes about coming in balance with nature as well as expanding our freedoms and wellbeing
lame
No, not lame. Llama. 🦙
SUPER LAME
😂😂😂😂😂