Things like apps, media, or art can be more valuable without taking any more resources. Plus through greater efficiency, the same resources go much further. But it's often easier to grow by just consuming more, so companies to that since they don't really care. The sad thing is, I think we can have limitless growth if it's slow and deliberate and conscious of it's impact to the planet. But the current system doesn't incentive that, instead everyone is flooring the growth pedal to catastrophic effect.
This is a popular take that is just completely wrong. Capitalism as a system does not require growth. Capitalism is a system in which the factors of production are owned by private parties and can be freely traded. The capitalists believe is that markets will allocate those factors of production to the owners that can best exploit them. This can result in growth, but it isn’t necessary for the system to function.
There are literally a thousand issues with the system ranging from inequality to environmental concerns to market concentration (all of which capitalists tend to ignore). I really do not understand why people pick this one to quibble over.
I wouldn't say capitalism is based on the notion of infinite growth, but it is an inevitability of there being no limits on capital accumulation. The notion that humans have endless desire for more, always needing a stronger hit to maintain personal satisfaction, is more psychological than something inherent to private ownership itself. Capitalism feeds the natural animal reward system to disastrous effect, but it isn't required for capitalism to work. In fact, insatiable desires are the reason capitalism doesn't work, because if people could be satisfied with a reasonable amount of resources, never trying to acquire more than they need, capitalism would be a fairly decent system.
All organizations fail eventually. Companies lose focus at the top (management), become like a cancer, over extend, and then die off. The remaining assets are picked off. Same thing with governments. Same with unions. Hell, the same happened with boy scouts. Same thing with churches.
What is described is a human condition, not a problem specific to capitalism. Greed cannot be organized out, legislated against, nor fought with fists.
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.
Wow, such a… deep comparison
Threads like this make me miss the sort by controversial. Oh well. If you have chores, or something else to do, maybe go do that instead of reading this thread. It's mostly shit slinging and people straw manning one another.
If anyone else came here to just talk about stuff, I'm willing to talk about how great cats and dogs are. Also open to hearing you out if you don't like cats or dogs, but I want you to know that I strongly disagree with your opinion.
Capitalism is a cancer
It is centralization that is killing the planet as the bigger the organization, the more power it has to control and become corrupt. Capitalism would work fine if it actually broke down organizations that got too big and also completely insulated themselves from bribes and influence. For some reason we have allowed corporations to run the show more and more which ironically is not only bad for the planet, but ultimately bad even for them in the long run. We have simply lost control and need to reign it in, but because humans are in the mix and can be bought or often coerced, there is little hope other than war resetting or AI taking over. My money is on AI taking over and while that scares many, humanity’s track record scares me more.
Reminds me of this article: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist
Let me tell you my experience with communism centralized economy as the alternative.
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Planned economy = produce as much as possible, more you produce more you are rewarded. It doesn't matter if you make 100x more then it's needed than trow it away. Inefficiency doesn't matter.
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Ecology ? Foreign westerner propaganda. That there are no fish, animals, half of the plants spiecies disappeared is westerners fault. Emissions ? Nothing can stand in our plan.
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We produce more than anyone yet people's wellbeing is still behind west? That's not true, there are fascist to the west and it's just western propaganda. BTW if you mention it, you won't see outside for quite while.
Now let me tell you what happened after end of communism.
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Nature almost recovered because crazy amount of efforts put into it's protection despite it being expensive.
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If anyone produces more than people need, they ususally go bankrupt or at least are not rewarded for loss. Thus everyone tries to go as efficient as possible.
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Wellbeing went up 10fold.
I don't know about OP but capitalism seems kinda best option to me ATM
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I have never really understood this meme at all, it just seems like a cynical nothing-burger cry. No substance.
Capitalism isn't really based on theoretically infinite growth. Maybe the idea is that monopoly is assumed, in capitalist ideology, to not exist, in the same way that people talk with ancaps, and they (ancaps) wish away monopolization with dogmatism to an unenforceable liberal brainrot NAP? I don't think any serious capitalist ideology discards monopoly. Not any worth engaging with, anyways. Oil barons know that the resource they peddle is finite, and everyone generally knows that every resource is theoretically a finite thing, and so is every market, and thus, all markets in sum. That's like, your basic supply and demand curve. It doesn't just go up and down linearly like the ones they use to explain to brainlets, actual supply and demand curves look fucked up because the market is weird, and they all totally plateau at either extreme end. If you charge a billion dollars for a single orange, you maybe will only get a buyer if you name the orange "X" and the buyer is [redacted]. Maybe the idea is that if you market a product enough, even if it's bullshit, then you could just charge a gazillion dollars for it and have it be over the natural or necessary amount, and I'd agree with that being capitalism but I don't really think that's like. limitless growth, that's just marketing, that's just bullshit.
Capitalists often use this assumed finity to price gouge, maximize profit, that's why you dump oranges in the desert to keep up the prices of oranges or whatever. Maybe that's like, oh, they're assuming the oranges to be infinite, but that's because oranges are recyclable. You can grow more oranges, and if we scaled back orange production massively, making it more efficient, we'd still have enough oranges for everyone (Degrowth, I guess? It can be even more efficient if you grow local flora instead of oranges but ech). Maybe you can't have infinite oranges if some other sector of the economy is dumping massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, but for like, 10,000 years of human history, you can grow more oranges, and you can grow more oranges until the sun expands and burns the earth in like 2 billion years.
If I read this meme in a different way, the fucked up thing about this meme is that it's not real. We're not like, at the end of civilization just by some natural factor of luck, or something, or you know, suddenly all the human creativity has petered out. That would almost be better, in a way. The human creativity is actively being suppressed, underfunded, bought out and scraped for parts, because it's easier to sell people actual bullshit year over year, in a cartel that you basically control all of, than introduce something new.
At my least graceful reading of this post, it kind of almost becomes malthusian, or something. Limitless growth! Grow the market limitlessly! Of course that means we must have a limitless population! And if someone's getting mad at that fake bullshit, then what they probably really believe is that there will be/there is too many people. But then that's all instance number 700 of getting mad at a spook.
But it's also like, how are you tracking growth? Cause if growth is just entropy, I think it probably is limitless.
Spot on analogy.
Grayox with the communist propoganda 8.5/10
Btw, capitalism doesnt mean infinite expansion any more than a socialist or marxist state could. Except if I point to anything, you guys scream "its not real socialism!" Until you are blue in the face.
Or a planetary infestation.
A classic deepity
thats why we have space companies and a moon covered in mineable minerals ngl if humanity can figure out some way of sending everyone to space, we totally should might be better for the climate if done right
