[Pops]

What is bad about capitalism?

[americandream]

What is bad about capitalism?

The exponential function

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013- ... to-the-end

[onlooker]

Rothschilds can go to hell !

[evilgenius]

Or, since we are all in hell anyway, they can simply stay put. If they went away we would need to invent them all over again in order to deal with our neurosis.

[Ibon]

but we do give it a competitor which also has an easily understood value at any given point in time which can be found in the context of that time, not at length.

How de we call these new shares?

Happiness shares
Sustainability shares
Wellbeing shares

[Pops]

What is bad about capitalism?

The exponential function

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013- ... to-the-end

So stop growing.
Stop reproducing, consuming, earning, destroying.
Shrink.

Sitting around carping about growth while one is participating and perpetuating it is about the height of hypocrisy.

LoL, all you rich folks bitching with your mouths full of cake crack me up.

[Ibon]

LoL, all you rich folks bitching with your mouths full of cake crack me up.

The rich folks have their own forums, none of us here are invited.

[evilgenius]

but we do give it a competitor which also has an easily understood value at any given point in time which can be found in the context of that time, not at length.

How de we call these new shares?

Happiness shares
Sustainability shares
Wellbeing shares

I know it's a terrible marketing opportunity lost, but God let Adam name the animals for a reason...

[americandream]

What is bad about capitalism?

The exponential function

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013- ... to-the-end

So stop growing.
Stop reproducing, consuming, earning, destroying.
Shrink.

Sitting around carping about growth while one is participating and perpetuating it is about the height of hypocrisy.

LoL, all you rich folks bitching with your mouths full of cake crack me up.

Thats simplistic. Change does not come free. Labour value funds change just as it funds non change. To contemplate change without some form of organisation is just plain old daft I have to say.

[onlooker]

These shares idea Evil I do not see how that would in the broader world and in a broader sense take out the inherent greed, opportunism and corruption that exist. Besides we are now looking at a total change in course from business as usual and a power down whether voluntarily or involuntarily so I am not sure in that context we would have anything resembling a stock market.

[Pops]

Not simplistic at all, just simple.
If the evil of capitalism is growing consumption, the only conscientious choice is to quit consuming.

pretty well free I'd say.

[Timo]

Timo

The mind and its systemic relationship. A great deal of effort goes into perpetuating the consciousness necessary for capitalism. Yet even in the midst of America, indigenous primitive socialism is sufficiently grounded in that community to cause them to function unevenly within the broader capitalist system. When an indigenous American walks in modern America, he walks in the shadow of his culture. Thus when he functions in American commerce, he functions in hybrid fashion, working in accumulation as a primitive socialist, using instead of corporate structures, communal structures such as trusts and co ops. If we can breaks the Western minds ties with corporatism and restore socialist forms which predate capitalism we will have embarked back to recovery.

All i hear you suggesting is that "if" we do things differently, then things will be different.

That is quite the profound, but most useless and meaningless concept i can imagine. If....... If........If........If.........

That is not a functional or practical plan or alternative to the status quo. If we do things differently then things will be different. However, i remind you that "we" are 7 billion people. Good luck getting all of us to join a communal form of socialist living, especially those who hold the capitalist control of the global economy.

[Pops]

contemplate change

I'm pretty sure that is about as far as anyone here is gonna go.

[evilgenius]

These shares idea Evil I do not see how that would in the broader world and in a broader sense take out the inherent greed, opportunism and corruption that exist. Besides we are now looking at a total change in course from business as usual and a power down whether voluntarily or involuntarily so I am not sure in that context we would have anything resembling a stock market.

Yeah, but I bet you still see money in one form or another.

I was taken aback a few years ago when I read an account of Napolean's forces fleeing Russia. Food was scarce, but you could still buy it, even from the starving, for a price.

The point is to develop something that contributes in arriving at the equilibrium point, but has another agenda other than simply the ask and bid prices that money has to choose from. In order to get started the easiest way is to introduce a longer time frame counter holding that, while still basically money, has inherent to it the concept of human interests. In fact, it must be money in order to communicate on the immediate level that money does today. By forgoing interest in the price of the shares, as the main component, and grasping after percentage based, or other depending upon the mind set, return, you begin the division.

Theoretically, the division doesn't end there. I was earlier referring to rats in a cage. The speaker of the Ted talk said, when all was said and done, that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, but connection. He equated connection with the 'rat heaven' of his example. The way toward that connection lies, I think, upon the modern path. It is what cries out for us to evolve into. Collapse will not bring it. Neither will 'sustainability' that doesn't begin to make war upon the position of money. This is, therefore, fighting fire with fire.

[Pops]

I think hunkering down as prep is one thing, voluntarily dropping out of the "earn as much as possible" group because one thinks the system is bad is a different thing. What sets capitalism apart from other isms, is the ability (or at least possibility) that a person (theoretically from any class) can make a lot of money, that is the whole point isn't it?

Private ownership for private profit and as much profit as possible?

I don't see anyone arguing against that in this thread, lots of highfalutin ideals and opaque phraseology but no one saying, "Me first, I'm gonna stop growing, stop accumulating, get rid of my stuff."

Of course a lot of old farts here, easy for me to say I'm not all that interested in more kids, bigger house, higher income. I wasn't real old when I sorta cashed out, I'd already done some damage, but I can't really brag about not being in the race now.

[Timo]

The alternative to capitalism will appear when a living environment becomes a limited, and therefore very valuable commodity.

When life becomes threatened by the limited availability of habitat for humans, THEN consumers will have an incentive to pursue an alternate system of finance: continuance of BAU resulting in death, OR pay the commodity price of the livable environment before it's all gone.

That's the key: the monitization of a habitable planet in terms of a commodity, instead of the monitization of the planet as a resource for the extraction of other commodities that result in a non-habitable planet. Life v. copper. Or, life v oil. Or, life v plutonium. Or life v death.

The health of the planet must become a commodity. Wall Street can then trade that commodity like a can of beans, only the value of that can of beans will be comparable to the value of a habitable planet. More beans = less habitable planet. (Methane!) This puts AGW in a quantifiable perspective that investors would be able to comprehend. This also would put corporations at the disposal of their shareholders who would not stand for the destruction of an even more valuable commodity (earth) than that can of beans (10 cents).

Actually, that's still capitalism, but structured in a way that provides a valid incentive to save the planet.

Never mind.

[Pops]

I'm pretty sure capitalism only has a passing connection to global warming, the totalitarian whatsit that was the USSR or the centrally controlled whatsit of China both seems to be doing just as bad as the capitalism of the US at polluting the environment. I guess the difference is we were just more successful at making bank and blowing it on stuff.

The other difference in the US is people do have a choice of what they will do to earn, how much the want to earn, how much they will spend, what kind of company they will spend it with, etc.

My opinion is people are acquisitive. We just want. It is part of our DNA to be unsatisfied, it is what makes us restless, inventive, it drives us to acquire stuff.

At least some of us, the others are slackers.

[Ibon]

My opinion is people are acquisitive. We just want. It is part of our DNA to be unsatisfied, it is what makes us restless, inventive, it drives us to acquire stuff.

Nature or nurture. I agree there is a nature component in this primate brain of ours. Seeking status through acquisitions and security. But there is a strong nurture component from our culture that influences the objects we choose for status.

I have mentioned in the past that when a shopper goes into the grocery store and ponders over the diversity of 50 brands of deodorant this accesses a part of his primate brain that evolved in ecosystems with rich biodiversity. The same could be said for surfing the internet..... I make the claim that these are all artificial ersatz choices that never quite satiate and satisfy like what you find in nature.... of course this is my bias and it is easy to refute my claim because why has every culture on the planet submitted so willingly to these ersatz objects if spending time in nature is the origin and more authentic?

I have no answer to that other than to say we are perhaps a flawed species. Then again, I know how much we treasure something that is about to disappear, like the last chocolate in the box.......will we return to cherishing what we have destroyed when the chocolate box is almost depleted?

I have no answer any longer to this question and truly find myself retreating into my private world. Maybe because I have been back in the US a couple of weeks and the primate collective around me is just so much more fxxking neurotic than the howler monkeys I am surrounded by in Panama.