Sustaining Capitalism in a Finite World

we have more people than ever and more oil and gas than ever so it is opposite of finite. Where exactly did you get these lies??

 

Few thoughts:

I'm not sure who get's to decide what capitalism is and what it isn't but, if it has a foundation, that surely isn't it.

Capitalism surely is based an idea of production and consumption and that producing beyond one's needs allows people to store their productivity in things of real value or in some kind of mutually accepted credit.

If accumulation is increasing it's because the population is increasing, but like any other organism, there is a finite limit to the number of people this planet will support. Beyond that, the population growth is starting to slow and some estimates show that it will continue to slow long term.


It is technology that made our current rate of growth possible and it is technology that will ensure that humans, as a species will be able to continually adapt to changes too our world. I can imagine a time when we begin to harvest minerals from near space.

Accumulation of what? Perhaps you don't realize just how insignificant people are.....

Here is a graphic for reference:


Now, if the question is, can our consumption destroy our eco system such that the earth can no longer support 7+ billion people? Of course, but that's no certainty.

Saying that we live in a finite world is a statement with very little value IMO. It's not capitalism that makes choices, people make choices, those choices have value with respect to the values that people hold. There's nothing wrong with capitalism as a concept. The problem is the things we choose to value.

 

What is it you think we're going to run out of?

 

It's funny how you leave out the part about us finding more efficient ways of extracting resources. Companies have expanded not only across the nation but across the globe. We have much more efficient ways of extracting resources now than before. That actually helps my point. We always need more, so we develop quicker ways to extract resources. As we develop these quicker methods of harvesting resources, we run out of them quicker.

So now Bernie is a Nazi? Make up your mind!

 

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You do know not all resources are renewable right?

Are you denying that capitalism is based on increasing accumulation?

I said we have the whole world's resources at our disposal. I never said those other countries didn't

What I'm saying is that across the globe, businesses have grown. You can't deny that as information spreads globally and more efficiently we get new products.

But you do know not all resources are renewable right?

 

we have 250 years supply which is more than ever in our history. If we were running out quicker the price would be rising not falling . Who told you theses lies??

 

Bernie is an open socialist and so was Hitler. Both loved big govt scams to solve all our problems while our founders opposed big govt

 

Yes, accumulation is increasing because of population is increasing, and population will continue to do so. But outside of population, a goal of a business is to make as much money as possible, and in order to do that you must grow. That's a fact. If you don't your competition eats you up. Business are always looking to grow, and to do that they accumulate wealth and resources.

Non renewable resources.

 

In order for businesses to grow they have to accumulate.

 

Do you think Bernie is comparable to Hitler?

 

How much do you think Bernie Sanders and Adolf Hiter have in common? Do you really believe that comparing these two men is useful for any reason other than the fact that it attempts to link Hitler's deeds to Bernie's ideas.

It's just bogus false equivalency.

 

Wrong, we have more oil due to innovation, a cornerstone of capitalism.

 

1) The world's resources do not become any less finite under a system other than capitalism.

2) The foundation of capitalism isn't increasing accumulation. It is private ownership.

3) There is no necessary component to capitalism that requires wasteful production or even economic growth.

4) Capitalism inevitably solves most of the problems it creates.

 

Growth happens primarily because of population growth.

Example:


And GDP:


The point is that GDP is by logical necessity a function of productivity per unit of population. When the population levels out or decreases, GDP levels off. So it's not really fair to say that capitalism promotes infinite growth. Obviously, as long as there are people there will be sustained consumption, but it's not infinite....The more people there is the more consumption there will be. My only point is that growth isn't infinite, it's limited by the number of people there are to produce and the number of people there is to consume. Even if we make an army of automated robots to increase our production, the problem there is, even if automation could increase productivity 100 fold, the demand for that production is still limited by the number of people there are and their capacity and desire to consume.

Look, I'm not really arguing the underlying point I think you're trying to make, I'm just challenging your thinking on the matter.

The reality is it's not really the non-renewable resources we want, what we want is something those resources provide. In the case of oil, it's not oil we want. Yuk...oil is gross, mostly it's the energy we can derive from it. Lubrication is also something we use oil for.

IMO we will never run out of oil. Long before we run out, the supply will begin to fall, prices will rise beyond other energy and lubrication technologies and we will simply look to other methods. The viable all electric car is here and as oil increases in price cars that use it will decline. By comparison, electric cars use very little oil (mostly for lubrication) and since used grease and oil used for lubrication in non-conventional engines can be recaptured, oil of lubrication will be around for a very, very long time. Personally, I'd be elated if oil were to begin to decrease in supply. The price would rise and the world's companies would adapt and innovate. We'd stop using so much oil and move to alternatives.

That said, anything you can think of that cannot be renewed can probably be substituted and the world will go on. We will adapt.

Even in the case of the eco-system itself. Worst case scenario, something that will happen long after I am gone, is that the climate will change and be unable to support the number of people that live here. My guess in that farmable land will become less productive. Advanced nations like the US will move to vertical farming and will survive, but those that like in poorer nations will pay a heavy toll.

Having said all of that, is there anything you can think of that isn't renewable that we cannot live without or substitute?

 

its an honor to walk you through your ABC's. Hitler wasn't comparable to Hitler in 1925.

Those who seek to concentrate power in Washington are the enemies of America and its Constitution which strictly prohibits it. Do you understand we are about freedom from liberal govt regardless of what idiotic rationale an idiot liberal uses to justify it? Nazis communists fascists monarchs were all the same to our genius founders

Thomas Jefferson:
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

 

they are both libsocialists with big time socialist scams to trick people into treasonously giving up their freedom but Hitler got to power and so far Bernie has not. Bernie is the would be Hitler of our era who wants to create democratic tyranny by offering everyone crippling welfare.

Norman Thomas ( socialist presidential candidate)
The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.

 

a business will grow when it has superior products. Often that means products that use less energy or are cheaper to make because they use fewer costly resources. Cars for example use less energy today than they did 30 years ago. What you say is gibberish.

 

Life and nature aren't finite. They're miraculous. They constantly reproduce and increase. Starting from scratch, one tomato plant can feed and propagate the entire earth with tomatoes, if you do it right. Similar with chickens, goats, pine trees.....you name it. You can have as much of any of it as you are willing to put into it. Yes/no?

 

its beyond idiotic but perfectly liberal . Human's left Africa 50,000 years ago because it seemed there were not enough resources for 50,000 people. Today the earth sustains 7 billion people at a higher standard of living than ever considered possible and this guy has a philosophy based on a finite resources?

 

I don't know about the opening poster. But some of the greediest people are socialists because they always want what other people have. So I don't know why capitalists and capitalism get a bad rep.

 

capitalism is far harder to understand than welfare socialism and a magical govt that solves all problems. Capitalism is for intellectuals while socialism is for idiots and welfare lovers.

 

Capitalism has a very simple definition, that is not ambiguous.

Capitalism is the process of gathering resources and money in order to use the resources and money to gather still more resources and money, gaining progressively more and more each day.

In even more simple terms, capitalism is accumulating stuff, in order to accumulate more stuff.

Capitalism can operate with or without markets, within communist, socialist, or capitalist governments, and can be done by individuals, businesses or large corporations.

Capitalism, illustrated:

1) A miner pans for gold

2) uses the gold to buy machines to sift an entire river bed, getting even more gold

3) uses the new gold to fund a mining operation near the river where gold is in the ground, getting a *lot* more gold

4) uses the new trove of gold to buy enough machinery and labor to start a mining company that explores and mines for gold all over the country, and gains a huge amount of gold

5) uses the huge new store of gold to buy a global mining company immediately getting far more gold and other minerals

6) uses the wealth of the mining company to do hostile takeovers of other mining companies to establish the largest mining corporation in the world

7) invests the profit from the corporation into thousands of other companies and speculative real estate investments through financial instruments like stocks, bonds and derivatives and makes massive profits that increase more and more every day (while devouring more and more resources every day to produce all of the products and services that all of those corporations and real estate developers produce)

continues investing those continuously increasing profits in more and more financial instruments until the entire multinational conglomerate, and the hundreds of others like it on Earth, are gathering so much money and resources, increasing so vastly in amount every day, that the planetary biosphere and human civilization are driven further and further into complete collapse every day because these multinationals will *never* stop devouring the world and money, and growing bigger and bigger.

That is capitalism.

 

Is inflation a myth?

No. Not at all. Ever hear that the middle class is shrinking as many slip into poverty? Ever hear that home ownership is in decline and consumer debt is back up as high and higher than it was prior to the 2008 crash? Ever hear of increasing wealth disparity? Ever hear that fewer and fewer people can afford to retire and those who do retire later and later?

 

You have been the happy recipient of right wing brainwashing. You meme about socialists is total unequivocal BS.

 

That's not a foundation of capitalism. Capitalism is simply an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.