KaiserJeep wrote:You seem to have made a grand assumption here, without a shred of evidence supporting it. That would be that somehow, magicly, we can think our way out of the conundrum of overpopulation and the attendant problems of resource shortages, climate change, pollution, species extinctions, etc.etc.
I have made no such assumption and am not known for magical thinking. Indeed, more than perhaps any other member of this forum, I have conducted my affairs under the opposite assumption; that our capitalist system under its current form and trajectory is doomed to fail. That doesn't mean that discussing what happens after, or whether we can affect the current system in positive ways isn't important. Defending the current system, as some here do, or attempting to shut those discussions down, is idiotic, IMO.
Only if you are an optimist at heart. In any case, "Capitalism" is just a label for how evolution shaped us to behave on a planet. Any other economic "system" you can imagine isn't "natural", and therefore won't work.
Just plain wrong there, KJ. Sharing economies, trade/barter, syndicate/guild systems, even hunter-gatherer societies existed for thousands of years before what is now accepted as "capitalism" came to be. Most of our history. And the predominance of the imaginary (fiat) wealth pseudo-capitalist world we now enjoy is a very recent artifact of a world full of humans quickly outrunning their resource base, bearing little resemblance to the circular economies of several thousand years ago.
You are about to understand this all too well. When the manure splatters off the rotating ventilator, some of us will be ready while others will still be debating economic "systems". You are welcome to have that conversation with a starving Bangladeshi or Sub-Saharan African, but I warn you that they - and all other disadvantaged everywhere, are ardent Capitalists, because evolution shaped them to be.
Now you are being patronizing. Better check your ego at the door, KJ. Have you ever been to sub-Sahara Africa? I have. I've traded and bartered for goods there, and watched how things work. It could loosely be described as "anarcho-capitalism" , not very different from the black market I experienced in the USSR. That is likely where we are headed, but has little to do with highly developed, hyper-complex, over-leveraged, very-long-supply-chain-for-for-just-about-everything western/global economies doomed to fail.
I, for one, am in the process of adapting to whatever comes next. I don't see you doing much of that.