Newfie wrote:Tiresome arguments. Capitalism ONLY works in an environment of expanding resources. And we have manipulated things to release some otherwise pent up resources. Had we been forward looking and limited Earths population to say 500 millions we could have raised all those souls out of poverty and devised methods to feed them without depleting the souls and oceans. We didn’t; we used the extra resources to create more souls.
Cows, in our common parlance, are domesticated heard animals almost entirely existent upon humanities ability to feed and house them. Cows have no vision of the future. All that is true of humanity.
That is demonstrably false. People on this thread constantly conflate Conspicuous Consumerism with Capitalism. They are not and never have been the same thing.
Capitalism is at its root simple and basic commerce. You do not need growth to exchange goods and services with your fellow humans, you just need to want to exchange and be willing to negotiate the means of exchange. Cash makes it easier than barter, but either system is simple Capitalism. What most of the hateful rhetoric is directed at is conspicuous consumerism, trying to keep up with the Jonse's instead of stopping when you have enough. If your iPhone 7 works well why do you need an 8 or 9 or 10? Just because Billy down at work got one? What kind of a messed up belief system is that, based solely on envy what your fellow man has instead of what you actually need?
Even conspicuous consumerism can work in a world of stable resources instead of growth, but to do that requires that someone else has less for you to have more. People tend to frown on that unless they are in the getting more at others expense portion, and the more they get the more people have to be on the losing end to balance things.
So in a growing economy everyone can get more at the same time and in a stable resource economy some can get more at the expense of those who lose. Unfortunately Marx and Engles did not understand the distinction and for 150 years their readers have been convinced that even in a growing economy the poor have to get poorer for the middle and upper class to grow wealthier.
The great boon of fossil fuels was that everything could grow at once, the poor in North America are vastly wealthier than the wealthiest Monarchy of the last thousand years before fossil fuels.
Growth on a finite world has finite limits. Once those limits are reached if conspicuous consumerism continues than the equation will once again balance by taking from the powerless to give to the powerful. That was reality before fossil fuel powered growth and will be the reality in the future, but it is not the reality today while energy remains abundant.