Forbes: Unless It Changes, Capitalism Will Starve Humanity By 2050
forbes.com/sites/drewhansen/2016/02/09/unless...
forbes.comPosted Feb 27, 2017, 11:09 PM UTC
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forbes.comThe best part is that I know some muppet will come in here and swear up and down that this isn't real capitalism or whatever. Doing the same No True Scotsman shit that they accuse us of.
If Forbes is posting articles like this, then maybe your economic system is actually kind of shit? Just throwing that out there.
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We need to build a new system: one that will balance economic growth with sustainability and human flourishing.
I think I know where this is going.
A new generation of companies are showing the way forward. They're infusing capitalism with fresh ideas, specifically in regards to employee ownership and agile management.
And the penny drops. The response to capitalism is co-ops and the Silicon Valley management ethos: aka, more capitalism.
On the other hand, startups have been willing to distribute equity to employees. Sometimes such equity distribution is done to make up for less than competitive salaries, but more often it’s offered as a financial incentive to motivate employees toward building a successful company.
We should know by now that this is no more anti-capitalist than the kibbutzim were. These companies are still running for private profit and surrender to the market. Putting aside the obvious, many of these "employee-owned" businesses don't allow unions. Others are confined to mental-labor enterprises where the employees are more of a labor aristocracy than a class conscious proletariat. Google is a famous example of a firm which allows creative freedom for its prized techies while still relying on superexploited immigrant labor. Some of these SV startups have weird culty vibes and control how people live and spend their earnings from the "equity". Then of course the article ends by extolling Mondragon - the capitalists' favorite co-op, which trades in financial assets and exports industrial commodities to the Third World. Sorry to shit all over this article, but what kind of socialist would I be if I didn't criticize Forbes?
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Exactly - the author is not arguing that we do away with capitalism. He says that if we tweak our organisational structures a little bit, we can avoid the ongoing climate crisis. Seems more like a way to lure in and then appease would-be socialists than any kind of systematic critique.
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And silicon valley is in no way more socialistic. It's just a different organizational structure.
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The wealthy parasite scum just reside in chic apartments and wear loose-fitting expensive t-shirts, rather than remote wood-paneled mansions and tailored suits.
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Chic penthouse apartments or multi-thousand sq. foot apartments. I live in an apartment lol, and it looks nothing like theirs! (But it's quaint and I love it)
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The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow.
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.
And the smell of rot fills the country.
Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.
The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
80 years later, and it's still fucking happening.
(Credit for the quote, of course, to John Steinbeck)
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Never read grapes of wrath. But damn...
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So is this enough evidence to say the "communism = Starvation " meme is bullshit?
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The motto of the next revolution will be simple: a demand for Peace, Land, and Bread.
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Shit's getting bad when Forbes is saying capitalism isn't working, huh...?
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Unfortunately with automation the won't need us anymore so they wont care, unless we fight back.
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I can't read the article because I have adblocker installed :/
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Why is this in Forbes ????
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This is utter nonsense and many intellectuals have been making predictions that humanity would run out of food by this year. Every single one of them were wrong! The most famous of these being the Economist Malthus, who predicted the Earth would reach it's maximum sustained population by the mid 1800s. He was obviously dead wrong.
It is natural for humans to want to innovate, invent, and try new methods to make work more easy and productive. In the 1800s it was large increases in productivity in the agricultural sector that lead to a sustained population explosion.
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No, this is entirely a different prediction than Malthus'.
Malthus did not count on the discovery of new fuels, true. We escaped the biological limits of the old regime in the mid-late 1800s by discovering artificial fertilizers and beginning to use fossil fuels. By not having to use potential farmland to grow fuel, and by no longer being forced to leave fields to lie fallow between seasons, human societies beginning with Britain were able to dramatically increase the productivity of a smaller amount of farmland.
These 'innovations' however began a soon to be irreversible climate change. Yes, it is natural for humans to innovate and invent new solutions to their problems. Under capitalism, however, the drive to profit trumps all other human and ecological considerations, and there is no sufficient motivation for societies or individuals to curtail environmentally catastrophic, yet profitable processes. The problem is not a lack of innovation. It will not be solved by a technological 'hack', evidence of little more than the bourgeois faith in technology. The problem is capitalism.
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The drive to make a profit and the drive to be more eco-friendly are beginning to converge as more and more consumers place higher concerns on the environment. Businesses are responding. More and more companies are switching to recycled material, adding solar panels, and are pushing more initiatives to become more eco-friendly. Like it or not the drive to become a more eco-friendly planet is not coming from government policies, which are largely controlled by special interest like big oil, but from emerging companies like Tesla/Solar city that are actually making it convenient and affordable to have solar panels and electric cars.
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The problem with this argument - that conscientious consumers will force businesses to engage in sustainable production - is that it places power only with those who have money. The living conditions and environments of those without money remain at the mercy of those with it. Yes, consumers are becoming more ecologically conscious, but the consumer in a capitalist society cannot by their purchase choices hope to stop the ongoing problems of overfishing, pollution and depletion of freshwater resources, overfarming, deforestation, cyanide leaching from mining, and climate change. Mining companies, for instance, have a systemic habit of declaring bankruptcy after extracting a site's mineral wealth, and leaving the cost of cleanup to the public purse. Capitalism has no adequate mechanisms against this tendency, or similar thefts of the commons. And no, Elon Musk cannot save us single-handedly.
And you're absolutely right that the state at present props up many ecologically disastrous industries such as coal and oil. Socialists however differentiate between a capitalist state which serves capitalist interests and one which serves the interests of the common people. A bourgeois state, serving the interests of corporate property and capital, is very different from the workers' state we envision.
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Much of the reason for the disastrous environmental conditions of poorer regions of the world, is not the money power dynamic as much as it is general ignorance or indifference to the environment. I don't use the term ignorance in a highly negative fashion, but more as a simple fact that many simply don't understand the consequences of certain actions. I've lived in 3rd world developing countries before, and it is very common for workers to litter, poop in the street, and show a lack of concern for the environment in general.
However it is improving....but very slowly. Incomes and standards of living across most developing nations are improving and as incomes rise concern for the environment has as well. Unfortunately though many of government's policies are too focused on promoting big pollution causing industrial growth over that of more eco-friendly companies.
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Holy shit, you know it's hit the fan when a bourgeois magazine like Forbes is admitting it's bad.
Forbes' site is sort of like HuffPo, in that it's more of a blog host than anything. There's no real editorial requirements for publishing something there.
Still, with the name of Forbes on it, it leaves something of an impact. Also:
Does this mean that the revolution will have Super Saiyans?
nah, having people with superpowers is too hierarchical, the "anime" would be more like a futuristic slice-of-life show like Aria or something. giving everyone super powers would also cause trouble too, see Shinsekai Yori
Goku is a comrade and the spirit bomb is a unification of the common man against imperialistic forces. I will not stand for the slander of comrades.
...I don't know what either of those series are... but you seem to be insinuating that the revolution won't have cool beam attacks in it, comrade. :(
I remembered Shinsekai Yori
Really great take on the concept of humans with powers and it's dangers. Though if I remember correctly the reason there was trouble was the fact that only a tiny percent of humans received powers and then wiped out/genetically modified the rest. Would the situation be different if everyone had been given powers?
Nani sore? >_<
Marx-sempai, watashi was daisuki ~