this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Where did this meme of "capitalism requires infinite growth, therefore it's impossible and bad" come from? Capitalism doesn't require infinite growth, the universe has basically infinite resources, modernity which is largely but not exclusively caused by capitalism has allowed us to do so much more with fewer resources than generations previous, and as societies get richer in material wealth they produce fewer children and have the luxury to pay attention to things like the environment and their impact on it.
Sci-fi is fictional, Clyde - not prophecy.
Riiight... that's why we're the most destructive agent on the planet since the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs - because we "do more with less." Wtf?
Which societies, Clyde? The ones that capitalism has impoverished so that a small minority can pretend their privileged lives are (somehow) "normal?"
And that's a good thing, is it? You know we could just achieve that easily by giving women reproductive rights, don't you? As in... no capitalism required at all?
Is their name Clyde or is this a joke I'm not getting
It's what I call people whose brains don't match up to their egos.
Why Clyde?
It seemed better than Kevin. Or Nigel.
They're just referring to the fact that the universe we live in is no "finite system" per the meme
Yes exactly! They're not saying that's a good thing but that's exactly why!
Regardless if the distribution of that wealth is acceptable, growth has made the overall society richer in material wealth. The distribution of that wealth is an entirely different question.
You have any proof for that statement?
Other person here.
I'd say destructiveness of humans is kind of a Bell curve shape where the X axis is wealth. Cavemen don't affect the environment that much mostly because there can't be that many of them. Their production methods can't sustain large or dense populations. Then people in 1900 are quite destructive because they can sustain billions of people while spewing pollutants, etc. Then people today are less destructive because we have the wealth to care about such things. Wealthy countries are doing pretty well.
They are free to show us the oxygen they harvested from Pluto any time they feel like it.
Your proof for this?
For crying out loud, Clyde... you need a bunch of science nerds to tell you something this obvious? Fine.
Lol, very first sentence in that source:
Three mechanisms influence the fertility decision of educated women: (1) the relatively higher incomes and thus higher income forgone due to childbearing leads them to want fewer children. [...]
I swear... it's moments like these that it really seems like liberal brain-rot is even more debilitating than the fascist variety.
Which part of...
...didin't you understand the first time around?
Because you were replying to this statement by OP:
In short your source doesn't support your claim, but it does story OP's claim
How deep does one's head have to be up one's own arrse to believe that this...
...requires capitalism?
90% of the stuff you encounter day to day would have been considered science fiction only a few decades ago. That doesn't answer whether capitalism actually requires growth, which it doesn't, or where the meme came from.
Our production efficiency, production per inputs, is larger now than in the past. That's doing more with less.
These countries tend to be the most capitalist, meaning private ownership of the means and subsequent free exchange of goods and services, and they also tend to be the most wealthy with low poverty. That distribution matches fertility fairly closely. Link
It is if the thing you're worried about is the impact of the human species on the rest of the planet. Fewer people means less impact with the same per person impact.
The capitalist west is the most abortion permitting part of the world. Legal rights are a luxury good, unfortunately. Kinda seems like capitalism is in fact required.
Feel free to show us the "infinite" resources you have access to any time you feel like, Clyde.
No. We are doing more with more. The rate at which our industries are churning through resources would have been unimaginable to anyone a century ago... and so would the wastage it creates.
Try not to get entangled in logical contradictions in the very same sentence, Clyde. When everything is privately owned, it's only the private owners that gets to engage in a "free exchange of goods."
And the fact that these countries are all beneficiaries of hundreds of years of hyper-violent colonialism has nothing to do with any of this, of course.
No, I'm actually not worried about it. The "overpopulation" myth is right-wing propaganda and nothing else - it's the ravenous and utterly parasitic profiteering of capitalists themselves that are driving over-consumption. Not the world's poor.
So you are fine with your modern-day feudalism... as long as your capitalist overlords throws slightly more crumbs your way than they do everybody else.
It's not a meme, its both the theory and practice to require constant unending increase in profit. That is the central point that eliminates all of your points except for the one about the universe having infinite resources - my dude we do not have access to the UNIVERSE, all we have is this one planet, and due to the distances involved, space opera is bunk and every stellar system is going to have just that stellar system. Do you think that a trade route that takes 400 years to travel is going to be of practical use over a lifetime?
I think that's somewhat debated now, with the original numbers being revised way up
I do believe productivity has increased quite a bit more than wages, but that makes sense if you think about it. Productivity gains in the last few decades are not due to workers getting more skilled or working harder (which may still be a factor), they're because of technology, automation, information science, and global trade networks. If my boss upgrades my computer such that I can produce things twice as fast, why should I get paid more?
then why are humans only living on this planet and not mars?
yes, there are other planets, but we don't know of a single one that can support life other than earth right now
billionaires are fucking over the environment and overworking and underpaying their workers for a bit of extra cash