What a vague and silly comment, half the world's top contributors to greenhouse gasses aren't even capitalist countries. I get the fediverse isn't a fan of capitalism, but you can't just blanketly blame everything on it.
What makes me think that two countries that have never identified as capitalist and have never been identified as capitalist anywhere except for this crazy ass community where you just go ahead and label anything you don't like simply as "capitalism"? Oh I don't know, just a hunch I guess!
Well if you think 'because they say so' is reason enough there's not really any further to go here I don't think. I was hoping you'd have a more interesting answer about how the economy is structured or how resources are distributed. It looks more like an authoritarian flavour of capitalism to me but I'm no politics expert so I only have a layman's view, more than happy to be corrected.
Dude, the reason you think they're capitalist is because someone on Lemmy said so, I'm not going to put effort into correcting something that didn't have evidence behind it to begin with. I'm not going to sit here and try to prove a negative to correct your layman's view, that's not how conversation works.
If you think those 2 are communist countries, you're stuck in the last century. Let me give you some news. The Soviet Union collapsed and gave way to a capitalist oligarchy. China realized that capitalism is profitable and brings them tons of money from the west. I have no idea why tankies still simp those countries as communist (wait, I do actually - because tankies never had any principles of their own, they just wanted to be anti-west).
There is one country that needs to kickstart change for it to have any effect, it's the US. Not only does it pollute the most per capita, it's a huge market. My tiny ass country with fuel prices already being twice as much in the US, can raise fuel prices even more, but that won't affect global demand. Americans no longer getting fuel for essentially free, would actually affect global demand.
There's plenty of systems that mix both, but Russia and China aren't actually good examples. They're pretty capitalist.
If you want a better example of mixing capitalism with socialism, you can take a look at something like the Nordic countries, where there are tons of social services and safety nets, but there's still a very strong (just regulated) free market.
Because capitalism with state protection is not capitalism I guess.
In each, we're talking about capitalism with the caveat that the owners of the country want a kickback too, and in return local capitalists are protected from foreign capitalists. Vladimir Putin owns Russia, the CCP owns China. In neither case does capital belong to "the people" as a whole.
Yes, it's not. I mean, for Marxists it is, because Marx describes something similar specifically to XIX century Germany with state-supported enormous trusts, influential aristocracy, and so on. Which is for obvious reason of living there, just not very relevant, because real economists use the term differently.
In neither case does capital belong to “the people” as a whole.
Well, CCP is not different from CPSU in this case.
Seems a bit silly to decide that "capitalism" is the majority contributor to climate change when the country that produces the most greenhouse gases is only "pretty capitalist" doesn't it? If capitalism is the major contributor, why don't more capitalist country produce more greenhouse gases?
I never set out to argue that capitalism doesn't exist in countries that aren't primarily capitalist.
Seems a bit silly to decide that “capitalism” is the majority contributor to climate change when the country that produces the most greenhouse gases is only “pretty capitalist” doesn’t it? If capitalism is the major contributor, why don’t more capitalist country produce more greenhouse gases?
That's not necessarily the case. The pollution comes from where manufacturing is, not necessarily where consumption is. The demand is coming from capitalist countries.
The country that produces the most greenhouse gases is doing so to satisfy the demands of private industry that's producing goods for private profit. What part of that is not capitalism?
Also the country that produces the most per capita, is arguably the most capitalist country, the USA.
While I agree that per capita emissions is a useful metric, perhaps even more useful than raw emissions numbers, where are you getting that the USA has the highest production per capita?
This table shows data from 2018 so things change, but the per capita emissions would have had to double in five years to put the USA on top.
If you look at the non-per capita numbers, the USA is the second largest emitter behind China (using data from 2018).
Users are attributing climate change to "capitalism" with no evidence or reasoning to back it up. You've made assertions that countries that political experts don't consider primarily capitalist countries are actually capitalist countries with no evidence to back them up. I don't have to waste my time disproving your flaky nonsense, calling it out is good enough for me.
And what part of this conversation makes you feel like the intelligent subject matter expert here? The part where you said liberals shouldn't use certain words? Keep it up bud, appreciate you helping me decide which communities to filter out here.
Users are attributing climate change to “capitalism”
Lol! It's aliens, right? Climate change is caused by aliens? Is that your angle here?
I don’t have to waste my time
I agree... you don't have to flail blindly and ignorantly because you don't have a clue what you are talking about. You can get a clue any time you feel like.
Do you think a tankie would say China is a capitalist nation? Liberalism really is worse than brain cancer. They are either an anarchist or some other shit, you just see the names of the enemies of the empire and scream, you poor ignorant Gringo.
Yeah, think of it like a corporation. Instead of shares, you have votes and taxes.
Everyone in the military can vote on the actions of that military. Although, so can everyone not in the military. And the number of votes don't correspond to how many shares you can buy, because it's more equal than capitalism.
Americans vote for representatives who determine when and where the military gets involved. But even if it had been subject to a direct vote, the outcome would be the same.
Just as there are hordes of idiots on the right who call anything they don't like "socialism", there are a few idiots - primarily teenagers - on the left who call anything they don't like "capitalism".
After the supreme court invalidated Roe v Wade, I attended a rally. I walked away when one of the speakers started shouting "We know what the real problem is...capitalism!" and all the university kids started cheering.
I love the enthusiasm and your heart's in the right place but y'all are dumber than a bag of bowling balls.
You can have industrialized production and consumerism without capitalism. Not that I'm defending capitalism, I just think our problem is deeper than what you make it, and human nature combined with unchecked technological ability to remodel out planet would yield the same outcome, no matter the dominant flavor of our economical structure.
It's not a full solution, but I'd love to see more use of compostable single-use plastics coupled with municipal biochar facilities.
It's an excellent cycle that harnesses capitalism and materialism. People buy single use plastics, then throw them away. Municipal garbage (a utility company paid for by ratepayers), picks it up, and brings it to a biochar facility. The facility pyrolizes it, making syngas (which they burn for energy which is then purchased by consumers) and biochar, which is sold as a soil amendment and happens to be carbon-negative. Excess biochar can be buried.
It's a typical capitalist create-consume economy except it's carbon-negative (when paired with decarbonized transportation like electric trains and delivery vans, and hydrogen powered garbage trucks). The more you consume, the more carbon you actually suck out of the air.
There's a few proposed loops like this which instead of fighting consumerism actually harness it to make carbon negative actions. Another one that I'm very interested in is making HVAC filters that also passively absorb carbon from the atmosphere. With electric heat pumps we already have an HVAC technology that is minimally emitting. Pair that with carbon negative filters and you're golden.
Or concrete using injected co2. It's a real thing that exists, it just doesn't have price parity with traditional carbon-intensive concrete. Imagine if just by building a building you could be carbon negative.
Again, it's not a total solution but I wish I could see more use cases like this instead of the "consume less" narrative. People are not going to consume less, that's not how people work. The only way to get people to consume less is by raising prices (which is a necessary part of the solution of course).