The Oil Drum | UK's Guardian: Are Capitalism and a Habitable Planet Mutually Exclusive?

119 comments on UK's Guardian: Are Capitalism and a Habitable Planet Mutually Exclusive?

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Whitehall on February 3, 2006 - 7:58pm

Thank you - I'll take Door #1 - let people find a new resource.

Calls for central control are really a thinly disguised excuse for dictatorship, usually by those calling for the control.

History shows that once you give up control to a central group, they expand that control and abuse it for their own betterment. Were you asleep during the 20th Century?

Capitalism is really the ecology of economics - a lot of individual experiments and adjustments. Some work and prosper and some fail and die off. Economic biology, if you will.

This is one major problem with both global warming and peak oil - leftists seize on valid topics of concern to push their own authoritarianship. Some of the commenters here are more interested in their ideology than in human welfare. Most of the public is deeply suspicious and is on to the leftists' hidden agenda.

Seeking power through fear is demagoguery.

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Magnus Redin on February 3, 2006 - 8:09pm

I am scared, should I then refrain from using that feling?
Which choise makes me a better demagouge?

Which one gives the least risk that some one else with worse implementation ideas takes my ideas and run with them? Ok, scaring people might be a very bad idea.

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Leanan on February 3, 2006 - 8:12pm

The main problem with capitalism is that corporations have little responsibility. That is the whole point of incorporating, really. You have all the rights of an individual, but few of the responsibilities. So you dump your toxic waste in people's drinking water, and when the courts order you to clean it up, you declare bankruptcy. Launder, rinse, repeat.

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BioDiesel on February 4, 2006 - 3:04am

Corporations are products of the Government.
Corporations would not exist in a true "free market" society.

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vtpeaknik on February 3, 2006 - 8:29pm

This is one major problem with both global warming and peak oil - leftists seize on valid topics of concern to push their own authoritarianship.

I'd say that rightists are doing that to a much larger extent these days...

Most of the public is deeply suspicious and is on to the lftists' hidden agenda

I am very disappointed that the public (in the USA) has not become more suspicious as yet of the rightists' not-so-hidden agenda: destroying the middle class and bankrupting the government, leaving only a military police state to protect the privileges of the rich from the poor.

Some of the commenters here are more interested in their ideology than in human welfare.

I think that happens on all sides, and is how "normative" issues enter the debate here. After all we here on TOD are pretty much in agreement on the "empirical" side, that oil will peak, and fairly soon.

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Cherenkov on February 3, 2006 - 9:34pm

Whitehall's misunderstanding of the argument and his or her kneejerk reaction is why I believe that capitalism will be the primary driver in the quest to destroy the planet. People who believe that what political team they are on is more important than creating a workable economy in a solar driven world are the people who will do everything they can to thwart reasoned argument and the development of a sensible plan.

I, for one, am hopeful that we will recognize that letting the greedheads who are currently ruining the country and the planet develop our Plan B is precisely the wrong path. We need to recognize the inherently flawed system that infinite growth through free market capitalism represents. It should be obvious to anyone who believes that we live on a sphere that there is a limit to growth -- gee, where have we heard that before?
Club of Rome, maybe?

All of my arguments to this point have been formulated around the simple premise that we live on a planet that has limits. Our economy is based on growth. If we continue to grow, or hell even stay steady, we are dooming the species to a painful crash.

Please look to Cuba for examples of what we can do to survive. Please consider alternative governments based on local production and FULL democracy as advocated on many post carbon sites. Do not let your ideological blinders prevent you from saving the planet.

Continuing the business as usual paradigm that relies on the latest new tech to drive our economy, to fix what tech broke in the first place, and to give false hope that we can somehow keep growing if the tech is cool enough, is the exact wrong path. It is the path to our species' destruction.

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Whitehall on February 6, 2006 - 2:51pm

Competition is a fundamental biological concern. Competition will occur whether you wish it or not.

Let's pit your "workable economy in a solar driven world" against one based on petroleum, natural gas, coal, or nuclear. Your solar economy, really just substantance agriculture at best, will be overrun by those with more disposable energy. How many people would chose to live in Castro's Cuba?

Cuba will change rapidly with the death of Castro.

I certainly agree with the notion that the planet has limits. People will adjust without your dubious commands.

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isaiah on May 29, 2006 - 8:30pm

cooperation is just as fundamental a biological concern. especially within a species, cooperation is often more key to survival than competition. the British Darwinists would never admit this, but you can find the other side of aisle in Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid.

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Super G on February 4, 2006 - 12:39am

Most of the public is deeply suspicious and is on to the leftists' hidden agenda.

Do you have any evidence for this statement? Can you point to any poll data on the public's perception of the "leftists" and their "hidden agenda".

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BioDiesel on February 4, 2006 - 3:11am

Whitehall is just trying to get a rise out of folks.

Neither agenda is hidden, they both want their peons to be dumb, so they can just worry about "ruling us". And the media plays right along. Keeping people as un-informed as possible. Just think how clueless we would be without the internet?

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LeGorfou on February 4, 2006 - 3:43am

Most of the public is deeply suspicious of any agenda - be it right left or centre. And rightly so.

With the mess the Neo-cons have made of Iraq and the Middle East generally, and with the Enron top dogs on trial, the rightist agenda doesn't look too flash either.

The problem of any control mechanism to preserve the environment, or anything else, in that it leads inevitably to corruption. QUIS CUSTODIET IPSES CUSTODIES?

Maybe we have to acceot it as an inevitable price.

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