Ignore the headlines - the world is getting better |BEME News]

[Geikkamir]

For one, capitalism is not the only model for a market economy. Market socialism, for example, is a thing that exists.

Expand a bit on what you mean by inefficiencies here, because that could mean a few things.

[Swilly]

I swear, this fucking optimism about the immediate future completely ignores the long term hell of global flooding, daily mass forest fires, poisoned ground, acid rain, megatornados being the norm alongside category 5 hurricanes and above being the standard and happening farm more often.

I'm kinda done with this mincing words that somehow our projected status is good while every other metric is generally going to collide and obliterate that progress made. Because that's all it is, is projections while we have very real data pointing to an ecological collapse that we might not even survive and will take centuries of work now to fix if we do.

[AxeI]

Then you don't have a leg to stand on when you accuse us of having no alternative, do you? Other past systems may have had shitty living conditions associated with them, but at least they didn't lead us to a point where the destruction of the human race was a legitimate threat.

And that says nothing of other alternatives we can come up with. But those won't happen if everyone acts this way and don't bother trying to design them, preferring to hold onto a broken toy instead.
If you don't want me to put words into your mouth, don't put words into mine. I'm not saying that we need to abolish trade or private property. But capitalism isn't simply that, it's a system where mere ownership can yield increasingly high income, and due to the fact it equates money to power, you end up with the people who subscribe to indefinite growth the most at the helm. Corporations are nothing more than authoritarian, supranational structures and that's the source of most of our issues.
And inexorably moving towards the end of civilization as we know it doesn't make you want to do the same, as long as you enjoy your Western comfort in the meantime? You've got to get your priorities in order.
Okay then. Give me examples of capitalistic nations that voluntarily went on a recession or maintained their growth at 0 and remained stable.
You can't? Then unless you can come up with an alternative capitalist structure that can break this trend, there's no reason to believe that this system can be part of the solution.
One where collective and individual interests are intertwined in a way that makes sense regarding their environmental impact. Public transportation being the norm and individual vehicles the exception. No more planned obsolescence, products being designed with sturdiness and longevity in mind, even if it means slightly less convenience. Items being shared by a community when their use is irregular, rather than having one per person. Highly polluting products being more of a luxury. Maintaining the right balance between local production and economy of scale.

Injecting more democratic control into corporations. Strong unions, international ones if possible. No more creating artificial demand with manipulative ads, advertising would be descriptive and fact-based.

[HumanAbyss]

I did not know that in order to have a discussion, or dissent from someones opinion you had to have every aspect, element, and problem solved to even have the discussion.

Oh. No, wait, you don't have to have that to be part of a discussion at all. You're a poster on a forum, you aren't fixing the fucking world dude.

I do not know how you can say "I don't try and piss anyone off" and then say shit like the second line there. All you're doing is accusing me of wanting to hold on to my toys, rather than ANYTHING else. That's you trying to piss me off, if it isn't, it's you just being a rude dick because you can be. But if I said something, you'd come back with "What happened to you? Why'd you change into a dick?" type crap like always. Maybe practice some self awareness on the "i don't try and be a dick" front.

What am I acting like? That straight up calls for the complete re-organization of our societies is risky? Oh, sorry, it is, even if the alternative is riskier, that doesn't mean a person questioning the path you want to take is "Just holding onto broken toys".

It seemed that way and if that isn't your argument, then okay. Capitalism exists in a market socialism economy. When someone says we can't have capitalism, it seems to me they're arguing for a system free of it.

I agree that massive corporations are exactly that. But they're also highly efficient structures in many situations. They're able to take huge supply chains and simplify them down quite often, make international trade possible and worthwhile. Are we going to lose that? I think so, you'd claim that's a good thing, but my question has been how do you replace that and keep progress going?

We can all live in a medieval life style, the planet will be okay, but is that a worthwhile way to have humanity continue?
See this kind of hollow, assumptive bullshit doesn't even warrant a response. If you said this to me in real life, I'd eye roll so hard.
Oh shit sorry sir I don't have that at this very second. I'm sure because my failure to present you with that option right this second means that you're invariably correct with no possible chance of being mistaken.

To be honest I like the sounds of that in some aspects, but I don't believe it'll be enough. Climate change is real, it's coming, and it's not preventable now. We can barely even slow it down from here.

You can think I "worship" the invisible hand all you want. I don't. If not yielding to your positions instantly is all it takes to be considered "worshiping" the invisible hand then I guess we really do need a truly authoritarian government to control us. And that's all I want to avoid. That's all. In order to destroy our modern version of capitalism and implent yours, we'll need those companies to be controlled and made to do so, our will as a democracy won't be enough I fear. You'll need an authority type to actually pull that off. That worries me. It should worry anyone.

[Geikkamir]

But that's literally what you're requiring him to do????

I guess in a weird roundabout way you could argue that some Capitalist ideas exist in a market socialism economy but not the one that is most relevant ie. private vs cooperative/public ownership of the means of production.

They're highly efficient at funneling wealth to the people at the top, sure. Being more efficient at producing wealth doesn't really mean much if it's horribly inefficient at actually using that wealth, which capitalism pretty much universally is.

I'm again going to have to ask for some clarification here on what kind of "progress" you're referring to, because that's another one of those abstract words that can mean a lot of things in this context.
No one is saying we have to live a "medieval" lifestyle. We can mitigate the damage of climate change to manageable (albeit still extremely destructive) levels without having to destroy all modern technology or whatever.
We can still do an enormous amount to mitigate the damage of climate change. It's gonna happen and it's gonna suck bad, but we still have the power to make it suck a lot less than it will if we just keep going the way we have been.

[AxeI]

If, when presented with two alternatives, you choose to keep the riskier one, how is it not holding onto a broken system? That's not me being a dick, it's me pointing out that you seem to prefer what is, by your own admission, the most flawed path. If you see no issue with that then I can't really argue with that, I guess. I'm not arguing that you should subscribe to my alternative, just that you should consider looking for alternatives, even if you come up with different ones.
Do you mean from a hierarchical or from an incentive standpoint? From an organizational standpoint centralization of power may be efficient but beyond a certain size it becomes counter-productive due to an information bottleneck forming near the top, preventing decision makers from making proper informed choices. I think there's a point to be made that interconnected semi-autonomous medium-sized cells would be a better compromise.

When it comes to incentives, sure it makes sense that the shareholders want everything to be streamlined and costs be reduced. I don't think we need power to be the privilege of a select few for a company to have that incentive, though. Even if we take the extreme opposite and share the means of production evenly among workers, those workers still have a motive to reduce costs to individually benefit from it.

And when it comes to technical know-how, it exists outside of any economic system. We can still take supply chain management techniques that were developed during a capitalistic era and apply it elsewhere.
Even if we had to resort to such extremes, it would only be temporary. By reducing emissions and environmental havoc to reasonable levels we buy ourselves extra time to develop scientific and societal means of improving quality of life in a sustainable manner. So it's not like humanity would be doomed to live in such squalor indefinitely.
You think your appeal to emotion through evoking suicide wasn't cringe-worthy?
It doesn't prove that I'm correct. But unless you can provide evidence to the contrary I don't see why I should consider the system that brought us there to be a viable option.
Whether it's enough isn't a useful question to ask ourselves. What matters is doing our maximum. Worst case scenario we minimize the consequences, even if they're still disastrous.

I'm not sure why we'd need to go authoritarian for that to happen though? Why can't a democratically elected government break down corporations?

[HumanAbyss]

Assuming I'm not because I question the alternatives is silly. Doom saying and cynicsm is great but it's ineffective at doing much beyond creating fear, and paralysis.

I don't know what the answer is. Having individuals weilding the power can lead to vast systemic issues as we've seen over the last decade. However, I don't believe in doing things "By committee". I've been involved in a variety of community projects, work projects, and creative projects that took on a "by committee" approach. They fail. They're inefficient. They're little more than groups of high school mentality adults who when push comes to shove, fail to do much beyond being slavenly adhereant to their personal ideals. What comes from that is projects fall apart, are abandonded, are done in poor work quality and done with poor time management. That is my experience with "by committee" projects. It is not a unique experience.

If you don't reward people, they don't work as hard. Our current system doesn't reward the average hard worker as much as they should be. Any system that seeks to replace our current one will both have to compensate these people better, as well as creating more efficient supply chains to deal with the fact that we're going to be reducing our production under a "market socialism" approach.
As I see it, you and I would suffer a life of early 1800's esque squalor while the current rich would not suffer at all, and would continue to be well off in that situation. If that did occur, the power vaccum would be so vast and massive and swift no return from that would be possible.
I've tried killing myself 7 times in my life up to this point. That's my life, that's my story. Cringe worthy or not, living under an authoritarian regime is something I wouldn't tolerate on a personal level.
You know the funny thing is I never said keep this exact system as it is or the other variations of this that you have kept insisting I have said. A dispute over how we move forward doesn't mean I am clinging to this system. I do appreciate elements of capitalism more than you do it would seem. Acting like it hasn't given us devices not possible under a government mandated economy is silly. The information age we enjoy would not have occurred at all without it, and yes that has had it's pitfalls and problems as I full well have admitted. I don't want those to continue, as I have repeatedly said. That doesn't mean though, that I think the current system is flawless. I just don't want to toss the baby our with the bath water, and frankly enough people in the last few months have essentially started saying we should.
Do you think that's going to happen in our day and age of misinformation and propaganda? You literally said it yourself earlier in this argument that the vast amount of misinformation being pumped out has harmed our society, and in my opinion, our ability to be viable democracies. People need to be informed properly, That is difficult in our current system and one of my biggest issues with our current system. For a democratically elected government to do that, they would need an overwhelming(and relatively impossible) amount of support from the electorate who would have to be pushing a public mandate to dismantle these companies.

That isn't going to happen in a democratic environment. This isn't me being a cynic, or me doubting you. It's acknowledging reality.

[AxeI]

Managing through autonomous cells have nothing to do with a "committee" approach. Look up agile organisations. Operating under a non-hierarchical structure isn't the same as operating under no structure at all.
Well, shifting the balance of power and rewards from the shareholders to the workers would kill two birds with one stone in that regard, wouldn't it?

You both compensate them better and give them more of an incentive to optimize the production line than the threat of being fired or treated like shit.
By "medieval lifestyle" I assumed you were talking solely about quality of life, not saying we were going to return to feudalism.

Why would tearing down our current system lead to currently privileged people remaining so? They're there because they benefit from it.
They have because it's become increasingly clear that our current trend of growth and excess isn't sustainable and we need to change it fast. Capitalism is a system that both fosters and relies on indefinite growth, and so far history has shown that you can't voluntarily organise and maintain a recession under it. Unless proven otherwise, it is thus required for us to turn our back to it, despite the benefits it has otherwise brought us.
So what I've gathered from this is that you have lost faith in democracy period, regardless of the environmental issues we face. If we're bound to slide into dictatorships I'm not sure what relevance whether we can achieve our goals through democracy has. It's still better to have an ecological autocracy than a fascist one.

[Swilly]

If your personal freedoms somehow outweigh billions, you need to grow up.

[WhyNott]

Or it could be that you need one. You wont find out until you watch the video and break down its points, which you clearly have time and agency for since youre arguing in this thread.

[Loth]

Or don't post in a video thread if you didnt watch the video and don't even know what it's about. God I wish that was still bannable, don't ever tell me the rules changes didnt make the post quality worse on this forum.

[milk47]

It's the people who have nothing better to do than gorge themselves on news headlines every waking moment instead of going out and experiencing the world for themselves that are complaining "there is no hope, we should all kill ourselves"