Unregulated companies have horrible accidents that destroy the environment.
A low wage race to the bottom decimates the middle-class and ultimately eviscerates the consumer base that companies rely on.
When does the invisible hand come in to save us all?
More and more, I am convinced that completely unfettered capitalism will eventually destroy itself.
Update. John’s posted this one before to describe bank behavior. Sometimes I think it’s where our whole system is headed.
geg6
Let me start by saying I denounce Stalin and broccoli.
And then say, Marx was right.
Tim I
I think you may very well be right.
cleek
these things will pass. the world’s economy is plenty large enough to deal with them.
people have been predicting the end of everything since… forever. they haven’t been right once.
Proudhon
Capitalism may destroy itself, but it’s going to take a whole lot of us with it.
Napoleon
Time for a name change for you again. Either Doug Marx or Doug Engels (or maybe Doug Marx-Engels) would work since you are now channeling them.
BR
It will. It’s called the Limits to Growth, and we’re tracing out the projections perfectly:
http://www.energybulletin.net/image/uploads/40217/stateoftheworldlimitsgrowth.jpg
burnspbesq
Doug Hill:
“I am convinced that completely unfettered capitalism will eventually destroy itself.”
Oddly enough, one of the first people to make that observation was Adam Smith. Most Adam Smith worshippers conveniently forget that.
singfoom
I also denounce Stalin and Broccoli.
Here’s the thing. I thought Lassiez-Faire capitalism died in the 1920s and 30s, after the Great Depression.
That’s what all my history books told me as a kid. I believed it. Then I grew up in this country in the 80s and 90s.
Given the ideological aims and statements of the current Republicans, they really do want us to go back to Dickensian times.
I agree with you that it will destroy itself. I just wish it we didn’t have to go down with the ship.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@singfoom:
Trickle-down Economics should’ve died with Coolidge and Hoover.
The fact that it’s not only the dominant economic theory of our age but still ascendant to the point that ‘Tax’ is political death shows you how truly fucked we are.
BR
@singfoom:
Same here. It seems like other generations have left a big mess on our doorstep and now we need to fix a system that doesn’t want to be fixed before it implodes.
(Best evidence I’ve seen is that we’re going to be seeing more frequent cyclic recessions for the next few decades – on the order of every 3-5 years – and each “recovery” won’t match each downturn. That means we’re on a jagged downslope, and may be at 20% U3 unemployment by the early 2020s.)
KG
I keep trying to explain this to my more conservative friends, but they have drank too much koo aid… a completely unregulated “free” market will exist only as long as is necessary for a monopoly or oligarchy to form. My favorite response was “no, monopolies only exist because of government. Governments grant monopolies.” Strangely the “ever hear of Standard Oil?” retort did not receive a reply.
Bob
By “unfettered capitalism” I guess you mean tax breaks for oil companies and other government social programs for the rich. Right?
Suck It Up!
There was a successful recall of two Republicans in the Miami-Dade County.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2058770,00.html?xid=rss-mostpopular
More Info here: http://blog.reidreport.com/2011/03/see-ya-miami-dade-mayor-commissioner-ousted-in-recall-landslide/
gnomedad
Capitalism is an institution. The free market is an institution. Institutions have rules. The right is having a massive tantrum against having any rules at all.
@burnspbesq:
Any handy quotes?
singfoom
@Bob: Those would be included, but I think the larger picture is that of one where Corporations are given primacy over normal citizens.
The corporations are the real citizens of this country at this point and have all the rights. The rest of us proles are screwed if we have a problem due to something a corporation has done.
Our regulatory system is broken and doesn’t protect us against harmful products, whether it be power, financial instruments, chemicals, etc….
Davis X. Machina
It’s an internally consistent and artistically coherent narrative. It doesn’t have to be right.
If you really want to depress yourself, check out how long it took the world to catch up to Aristotelian ontology and metaphysics….
Sloegin
Money and capital naturally coalesce. Once you reach a certain tipping point in wealth, it’s impossible to *not* accumulate more, and in a closed system eventually it all ends up in the hands of a few.
This is why either you tax the rich very heavily, or have controlled (land reform, jubilee) or uncontrolled revolutions every so often.
Oh, did I denounce Stalin somewhere in there? Yeah, also too.
dmbeaster
I think history makes it abundantly clear that unregulated capitalism destroys free markets. Whether it will also destroy capitalism is a different question. Perverse forms of capitalism can survive in dictatorships, whether fascist or even Red China. Their markets are not free but they still can have economic systems built around private capital acting with a high degree of freedom.
By 1900 in this country, a large portion of the marketplace was rigged by cartels operating in combination as trusts. That is the ideal for a capitalist, in which market risk is eliminated and profits secured no matter what. Perversely, they seek to do the same thing with well intentioned regulation, either by regulatory capture or by a version of rigging regulatory rules that burden others more and provide competitive advantage.
Bottom line is that the capitalist ideal with free markets is basically sociopathic – profits are the ultimate value. To get the maximum social good requires an outside social force mandating the other values we want to realize. Otherwise everything is always subservient to the profit motive.
NickM
@ KG
Because the answer was “no”.
Sad_Dem
What are you, a Marxist? Free-market capitalism will make everyone richer and happier forever.
JAHILL10
Communism failed because it ignored the human cost of the system. Capitalism is failing because it ignores the environmental cost of the system. (Though there is plenty of human damage to go around under this system too) Quite simply capitalism assumes unlimited resources. Resources are in reality limited. Of course, it will eat itself. That’s what it is designed to do.
piratedan
@cleek: yeah…. that’s exactly what the dinosaurs said……
Alex S.
Socialism will save capitalism. Remember the financial meltdown. Capitalism was about to collapse, but suddenly, there was money there for everyone. Of course, a few months later we were back at the start and instead of finding the right balance between socialism and capitalism, unfettered capitalism reigned again. The next time capitalism collapses, socialism will have to save the world again. Capitalism will survive, the United States maybe not. After all, each time there is such a collapse lots of money enters the economy (as government debt) and then ‘market forces’ will try to concentrate this money in the hands of the few chosen. Rinse, and repeat. The United States will come out worse each time. However, other, more socialist countries are doing well (not the purely socialist countries, but the mixed economies).
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
The moment I figured out what capitalism really meant was the moment I realized that it would never work on its own.
Citizen_X
@cleek: the world’s economy is
plenty large enoughbased upon a growing population using an ever-increasing amount of resources, a system that is ultimately viable only if you have an infinite resource base.We do not.
danimal
I’m still hopeful that we are witnessing the end of Reaganite conservatism.
Right before death, a lot of patients seem to improve rapidly, showing signs of improvement that don’t last. I hope and believe we are seeing the same dynamic here.
The facade of conservative unity will be under tremendous strain in this coming year; I don’t believe they will be able to sustain a unified front and the conservative movement will finally splinter into economic, libertarian and militaristic factions.
TheMightyTrowel
@danimal: a dead cat bounce if you will… [/ capitalism snark]
BR
@Citizen_X:
Exactly. I wish The Limits to Growth were a better understood concept (and study). Seems like it should be required reading in every high school and MBA program and everything in between.
Zifnab
Perhaps. The current trajectory certainly isn’t sustainable. Destroy the education system, up-end the middle class, and reduce everyone to slave wages… then what?
Do we get a Soviet-style revolt and collapse? A Roosevelt-Era gentle reformation? Or do we just trundle along under a Saudi-style oligarchy until we’ve strip mined our country to the bone?
Capitalism, for all its flaws, isn’t the worst system we can live under. Just ask the Egyptians or the Libyans or the Bahrainians.
Southern Beale
I don’t see lack of regulations and low wages as inherently parts of Capitalism. Capitalism can and does exist with government regulations that are enforced and fair wages for the workforce. One does not preclude the other, unless you’re a brain-dead greedy Republican asshole.
danimal
Oh, and Stalin sucks. I like broccoli just fine, but I’m ok with leaving out the broccoli mandate if that means the working poor get a fair shake.
fasteddie9318
That’s a good question. I guess it will be sometime after it finishes cradling David Koch’s balls and working Charles Koch’s shaft.
BGinCHI
We’re just missing the Proletariat, then we’re ready to go.
As soon as “Join the Proletariat” is an option on Facebook, it should only take about a week.
Keep your barricades handy.
Linnaeus
@singfoom:
Hell, I’d argue that laissez-faire capitalism never died because it never lived in any functioning capitalist economy. There’s always been some form of state intervention or regulation. That’s because you really can’t have capitalism without a state, and once you introduce that factor, you create political space for strengthening the role of the state in the economy. The question then becomes in whose favor will that strengthening be?
birthmarker
@singfoom: I just deleted the post I was writing b/c you said it better.
In addition the companies can sell all over the world and don’t need the US consumer as much anymore.
jibeaux
So, this is kind of related.
I’m working on a manuscript for a young adult dystopian novel. My idea for the environment is that we are basically at a neo-feudalist economy, the kind of thing many countries today still have with a tiny very wealthy class of largely inherited wealth; a tiny “middle” class of educated workers; and a large working class. I’m not trying to go all Jonah Goldberg “please do my quote unquote research for me” on you, but I’d be interested in hearing what you guys think this might look like. You can safely assume that this will be an unpublished and very likely unfinished manuscript, but if a miracle happens I’ll happily cite you as a muse.
Jim C
@Napoleon: Or he could be sneaky and change it to Douggo Marx.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Unfettered capitalism is destroying itself as we speak, by helping through its egregious abuses and follies to re-create a political coalition which will impose new regulations to tame it. The last time this happened in the US it took about 60 years for that process to bear fruit, if you take 1873 thru 1933 as rough markers.
If the financial crisis of 2008 was the start of our new progressive era, then we only have about 57 years and at least a half-dozen panics/depressions left to go, give or take.
JAHILL10
@danimal: I hope you are right. I think we are starting to see the fissures forming in the House right now. The wingnuttiest nuts in the Republican Party don’t want to hear reason, not even from their own people. But if anyone thinks the moneyed Repubs are going to stand around and let the government default on its debt for the sake of killing NPR or Planned Parenthood, their nuts.
Alex S.
@Citizen_X:
Yep, there are only 2 choices in the long run (say, from 2050 on): an economy based on stability instead of growth, or space travel to ensure continued expansion.
BR
@jibeaux:
What year is the novel set in?
Southern Beale
Along those lines, just read this really interesting post.
Power Concedes Nothing Without A Demand
Lots of good stuff in there. This part really resonated:
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Southern Beale: Capitalism by definition requires regulations and enforcement in order to work, otherwise you could never trust a contract. We should all just be arguing over how much.
BR
@Alex S.:
Unfortunately, we don’t have until 2050 – we have about 3 years by the most recent studies until we hit the first of the many limits (peak oil production), followed by many other things in the following decades (peak natural gas production, peak coal net energy production) that will effectively do in modern industrialism.
fasteddie9318
At this point, is it not fair to say that, while the alternative system he proposed was naïve at best and downright malicious when “implemented” by totalitarian fools, Marx’ critique of capitalism and his predictions for its future were pretty much right on the money? Or have I renounced my ‘Murken citizenship by even thinking such a thing?
singfoom
@Linnaeus: Fair enough. Perhaps I should have used the phrase “unregulated capitalism”.
I see your point that it’s never truly Lassiez-Faire but I think the more salient point is that in the time period I was talking about, the US erected legal/procedural/regulatory barriers to prevent harm by the trusts against the public.
Those barriers have been torn down in the last 30 years. With that plus the complete utter capture of our political system by the very same corporate interests, we’re in for a fun time.
And by fun time I mean the destruction of the middle class and the viability of the American Dream.
Good times!
Steve M.
More and more, I am convinced that completely unfettered capitalism will eventually destroy itself.
Nahhh. A rising middle class in China and India saves capitalism. The U.S. just becomes one more Third World country (i.e., a really huge Dominican Republic). And life goes on.
fasteddie9318
@Steve M.: That rising middle class in China and India is going to strip the planet bare.
GregB
@Steve M.:
A huge Dominican Republica with an enormous army full of nuclear weapons and a populace armed to the teeth and bitter at no longer being able to chant “We’re number one!”
BR
@Steve M.:
China and India are about to hit the same resource limits we are, and as a result, they’re never going to become “developed nations”. Though you’re right that the U.S. is going to backslide.
singfoom
@fasteddie9318: You lose your “Real ‘Murkin” status as soon as you THINK the name Marx in a non hating context.
garage mahal
OT – Re: Picking up from a few threads ago on why liberals can’t speak their minds and let it rip. Check this vid from last Saturdays rally in Madison. Imagine if we had real populists like this as faces of our movement? Would be the awesome if one of the front pagers could give it some love. The last two minutes is pure barnstorming. It literally echoed of the walls of the square.
Wisconsin Protests:Tony Schultz, Speaks up for farmers, March 12, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKOvqXoWB7s
Linnaeus
@singfoom:
Oh, I understood your point perfectly well – and I don’t disagree. I was just going off in another direction, that’s all.
@fasteddie9318:
Silly me, I feel much the same way.
Zifnab
Stalin is a poop-head.
But I will make no apologizes for my support of the broccoli mandate. Extremism, in the defense of ruffage, is no vice.
Alex S.
@BR:
Well, there is a 3rd option, of course: Global war for dwindling resources. But I hope that we can delay that for a few decades. We can expand the use of alternative energy, become more efficient. But yes, some things cannot be replaced, for example, the use of oil as a chemical compound.
cleek
@piratedan:
i will concede that a massive asteroid strike that kills 90% of all life on land would damage the world economy.
gnomedad
@dmbeaster:
The retort will be that profits go to companies that serve consumers best. This might be true with perfect information, frictionless markets, no externalities, etc., etc.
@Zifnab:
That’s my take. The wingers will destroy it and replace it with feudalism.
fasteddie9318
@singfoom: Damnit, no! I hate Marx! He was a total dick!
FUCK YOU, STALIN, YOU FAT BEARDED BITCH!
I feel much better now.
cleek
@Citizen_X:
we would only need infinite resources if we expect an infinite population – ever-growing is a long ways from infinite. infinitely far away, in fact. we do not expect an infinite population.
KG
@NickM: the thing is, these are usually well educated people I’m talking to, lawyers and the like who should fucking know who/what Standard Oil was.
But this is the thing with a lot of them… it’s become black and white for them. Government bad, freedom! good. I’ve also tried explaining to them that it’s not a zero sum game when it comes to liberty and tyranny, that beyond liberty there’s this thing called anarchy/license and that’s not a good place to be… in fact, it’s probably worse than tyranny. They don’t seem to understand that it’s all a balancing act.
Bob
@Linnaeus:
Why is this so difficult to understand? Every time folks like E.D. use the term free markets I just want to scream. There never has been, nor will be, free markets!!!!
It’s a fucking joke.
Zifnab
@BR:
We squander a lot of our resource wealth. Recycling is a token effort and our landfills are ever-overflowing. We drive gas-guzzlers and cling to our incandescent light bulbs and live in our spacious suburban homes with backyard swimming pools and fertilized lawns. And that’s before you even get into the massive corporate waste – reams of office paper and disposable packaging materials and one-use everything.
If China and India hit the wall, it’ll be a soft wall they can plow right through by engaging in the kind of waste reduction that Americans just can’t bring themselves to approach. They’ll jet on past us, while we wallow in our graveyard of Styrofoam packing peanuts wondering why everything is so god damn expensive.
jurassicpork
As always, the feeding frenzy will start with us, the People. And if you happen to among the president’s top campaign contributors, expect a free pass every fucking time.
Ash Can
As a few other commenters have touched on, capitalism will be fine, and even thrive, as long as it’s treated as what it is — a tool for distributing wealth (and a relatively effective and efficient one at that), and not a value system, religion, belief system, or any other mumbo-jumbo that puts people in service of it, rather than (rightfully) the other way around. And as is the case with tools, it shouldn’t be the only one in the workshop. If it doesn’t happen to be the right one for the job at hand, then for fuck’s sake use another one. Or use another one in conjunction with it.
Capitalism may not exactly “eat itself,” but it’ll sure as hell break if it’s not used correctly.
BR
@garage mahal:
That guy is awesome. You’re right we need him and more like him representing us.
jibeaux
@BR:
Mm. Future. Vague as of yet. Maybe 150 years out. I have a lot of ideas about things that I think will be different, and I have a plot sketched out, but I have trouble envisioning all the different ripple effects.
BR
@Zifnab:
The main way resource constraints are going to affect things is through oil prices (at first, anyway). Prof. Hamilton’s studies show that high oil prices are a clear factor in causing recessions in the U.S., and with it China and India and other developing economies get hit hard too.
garage mahal
@BR:
No doubt. Smart guy too. Sometimes I think we get so bogged down making front of wingers that we forget to showcase the Tony Schultz on our side.
jibeaux
@cleek:
Did you know that this was a startlingly difficult concession for the Volokh Conspiracy to make?
Although I admire the self-awareness that goes into a statement like “a reductio ad absurdum doesn’t work against someone who’s willing to be absurd”.
Chris
@KG:
The response, if there ever is one, is that the monopolies of the Gilded Age formed and their abuses took place under the cover provided by the politicians they’d bought and paid for, therefore it’s all the government’s fault (even though they’ll also defend government intervention in the form of troops busting unions and the like on behalf of the trusts). Cue the Ayn Randian calls for “a complete separation of economy and state” which would of course prevent such things.
And never mind that such a separation is completely impossible, because corruption is as inevitable in human society as the urge to make money. Their solutions are as utopian and unattainable as anything Marx ever preached.
BR
@jibeaux:
To get a picture of where we might be headed, I’d read a couple of books by John Michael Greer: The Long Descent and The Ecotechnic Future. He’s among the wisest writers I’ve found after reading several dozen books on the subject of resource limits, etc. (He does delve a bit into spirituality in his books, and that was off-putting at first, but I’ve actually come to appreciate his deep historical knowledge.)
Southern Beale
@Zifnab:
Or manufacturing waste. Inefficiency is built into our system. Capitalism is a cancer that requires constant growth/consumption. As I said before (here? Elsewhere?), Capitalism thrives on inefficiency, waste, and things like “planned obsolescence” to keep everyone consuming at unsustainable and even unnatural rates. Because it is unsustainable it will, by default, have to change. It is changing.
But yeah, inefficiency more even than waste is our problem. And when costs get too high there will be a bigger payoff to increasing our efficiency and failed ideas like “planned obsolescence” will crumble. They have to because they only other option is to not survive and that is not an option.
RP
@jibeaux: Have you read The Windup Girl?
jibeaux
@BR:
Cool, I’ll check them out. I’m certainly not planning on plagiarizing anything, but I’m finding that to write this kind of story without creating gaping inconsistencies (because of repercussions that hadn’t occurred to me) requires some research.
Alex S.
@cleek:
Social safety nets expect a growing population though. Capitalism expects growth. Without growth investors will not be willing to invest. And a limited number of customers can only consume so much. For example, I think that Japan’s economic stagnation can be traced to their stagnant population.
srv
Capitalism ate itself and is now working on the dessert.
Chris
@fasteddie9318:
Oh, absolutely.
I finally read the Manifesto towards the end of college and thought basically the same thing as you. The diagnosis was completely spot-on, even if the medecine was bad.
BR
@jibeaux:
Yup. Anyway, both of those books are non-fiction, so it’d be hard to steal from anyway. But he nicely lays out in the two books both the myths of our current time, how those myths have applied in past societies and how they might apply in future ones, and the various stages we’re likely to go through, beginning with a resource-constrained decline, to an era of “salvage societies”, and so on. I think it fits nicely in the timeline you’re looking at.
Alex S.
@jibeaux:
Unbelievable…
“I think there’s a good case to be made that taxing people to protect the Earth from an asteroid, while within Congress’s powers, is an illegitimate function of government from a moral perspective”
cleek
@jibeaux:
gack
libertarianism = the poorly socialized desperately trying to find a logical way to opt out of humanity
Zifnab
@BR:
Renewable power is booming in China. I have no doubt that we’ll be seeing near-self-sufficient cities cropping up in the next decade or so. The Chinese bureaucrats are just as aware of oil limitations as you are. And China isn’t invested in the big oil companies like the US is. Chinese growth isn’t going to be impeded by the American oil-fixation.
Simp
Of course it will. Business exists soley to make money. Period. Any charitable decisions or business choices that benefit the community at large are always made in the context of buiness image. Business plans look 5 sometimes 10 years in the future. Sustainable growth is for pussies.
Worst part is, is that a lot of the business community knows all this but they don’t give a rats ass. They are I. It for the short term to rape the system while the can so as to insulate themselves when collapses happen.
Nothing will change (as we’ve seen) until a complete collapse. The. All of us at the bottom will simply be laughed at from on high.
They are all assholes, through and through. Obama has the charisma and power to stop this shit, but he willfully chooses to be yet another corporatist. What I can’t tell is if it is just for reelection or if he really is just another power loving wanker.
I laugh when people call him a Marxist. The stunningly willful ignorance of these folks being herded like sheep by the masters at Fox is mind boggling.
Facts, history, observed phenomena are mute. All that matters is what they can sell. Fear, and anger makes those fucks rich and there is nothing and nobody to stop it.
Fuck NPR won’t even stand up and say this is Bullshit.
I’ve given up hope. Seriously.
The Republic of Stupidity
@gnomedad:
So was Bedlam…
BR
@Zifnab:
It’s booming, yes. But the industrial capacity required is so far beyond imaginable, most people don’t actually crunch the numbers. Saul Griffith has crunched the numbers, and here’s what he says (talk is on climate change nominally, but gets into renewables):
http://fora.tv/2009/01/16/Saul_Griffith_Climate_Change_Recalculated
Basically we need industrial capacity that’s on the order of tens or hundreds of times what we have now for rewnewables, and we need to get that capacity to that level in less than five years. I’m not saying it’s not going to happen, but it’s very very unlikely.
BR
@cleek:
The best definition I’ve seen of libertarianism is this:
(It’s also from John Michael Greer.)
singfoom
@BR: I’ll say it’s not going to happen. I’m pretty certain of that.
Now if we ended ALL subsidies on fossil fuels and upped gas taxes to help our transition, we could totally do it.
But there are too many entrenched interests pouring campaign contributions into both political parties to actually accomplish rational energy policy.
In the end, we’re constrained by the insane and the idiotic. The free market ideology + our political system awash in cash has put us in an impossible position.
You Don't Say
Anybody watch the Flintstone’s Goodfella’s clip? Awesome.
DBrown
Sorry Alex, but BR is correct and three years is a very good guess for peak oil – there is no time to create alternatives, time has run out thanks to raygun and his brain dead supporters and so, we are F’ed.
Montysano
@Southern Beale:
Amen. Any rightwinger in my 50-something age group should be able to remember the ’60s. When my dad hit $20K income in the late ’60s, we were in high cotton. Mom didn’t work outside the home, we took 3 week vacations. Life was good. The reforms put in place by FDR were still working. Then, a few years later, the assault began.
The fact that wingnuts can’t make this connection is gobsmacking.
BR
@singfoom:
Yup. The worst part about it is that if we had followed Jimmy Carter’s plan, we’d actually be okay now.
(In the 30-year update of the limits to growth in 2004, they did an analysis that asked “what if we started mitigation approaches in 1982?”, and they found that it ended up as one of the very few scenarios where industrial society achieved a steady-state rather than collapsing.)
kdaug
@Simp:
Remember Roosevelt had 3 terms, and if he hadn’t died, likely would have gone on to several more.
It’s why we have 2 4-year term limits for Presidents now.
Obama needs to keep his powder dry to get to #2. If he doesn’t unleash holy hell in the second, then I’ll write him off as a sellout. But he’s going to need the money guys to get there.
gnomedad
@jibeaux:
From the link:
The mind reels.
Chris
@KG:
I have a conservative acquitance who graduated with a degree in national security studies, and pretty damn good grades. Until a couple summers ago (after her graduation), she was blissfully unaware that we hadn’t found WMDs in Iraq. And when I finally informed her of that fact, she immediately hopped onto the “well he must have moved them to Syria” bandwagon.
Educated people can be as mind-bendingly blind and stupid as anyone else, even on topics where they’re really supposed to know better. What makes that attractive these days is that the system is politically distorted enough that you can be wrong again and again and again without ever incurring a price. The people who supported idiocies like the Iraq war are often still Very Serious People, and those who were right from the start are still dismissed as “reflexively anti-Bush.”
Culture of Truth
CNN reports the Republican National Committee is considering packaging the party’s presidential debates and then selling the broadcast rights.
jibeaux
@RP:
Nope, but I enjoyed Ship Breaker, so I will happily check it out.
The Republic of Stupidity
@You Don’t Say:
If I’m not mistaken…
Joe Pesci’s “How am I funny?” monologue was ad libbed…
Sentient Puddle
@jibeaux: I still want to know if that whole discussion they had was directly inspired by The Onion article.
Rick Taylor
I had the same thought in the wank of the banking crises. Capitalists are undermining the rules and systems that made capitalism possible.
Southern Beale
@Culture of Truth:
Yes and I’m sure no one in the MSM will bother to question why this is wrong. Capitalism may not eat itself but it sure is lunching on the GOP and the corporate media.
Fuck ’em.
singfoom
@jibeaux: I’ll second the recommendation of the Windup Girl. Great book.
My favorite part was about how the oil crash changed software development. In order to power computers in the book, people have to run them with something akin to the panels underneath old sewing machines.
So the best software engineers are also high level athletes so they can have the endurance required to run their hardware.
Interesting idea…
Chris
@Simp:
As do I, or a Socialist. The mis-application of those words is almost as ludicrous as if you called Hitler a liberal.
Which, of course, they’ve done too.
Southern Beale
I find it extraordinarily ironic that a political party whose adherents largely profess to not believe in evolution nevertheless believe in a form of economic Darwinisim known as the “Free Hand Of The Market” in which only the fittest survive.
Odd, that.
fasteddie9318
@Culture of Truth:
Other than Foxravda and maybe Comedy Central, who the fuck would want to pay for that?
Admittedly, it could be a smart idea in terms of making sure that the high crazy doesn’t get out to the general public and only gets seen by the true believers. I hope somebody, Current maybe, buys the rights for the purpose of shining a little light on that cesspool.
Culture of Truth
@Southern Beale: Perhaps because what they really believe is “god will reward the chosen with riches,” or with foreign policy, “kill em all and lot God sort it out.”
Citizen_X
@Rick Taylor:
Awesome typo.
Francis
Let’s get a few things clear here:
1. People suck. We are at best tribal, short-sighted, innumerate and illogical. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t need government, lawyers, the advertising industry, the fashion industry, etc.
2. Despite our shortcomings, as a species we have done something pretty remarkable in the last 150 years or so. We grow enough food to feed everyone on the planet, and can even move it around to feed areas in drought. In the industrialized countries, we even have a surplus of meat! We’ve largely defeated bacterial diseases, eliminated smallpox and have vaccines for some of history’s greatest killers.
3. In order to feed everyone and live our meat-rich and energy-rich lifestyles, we’re mining non-renewable resources, including fuel (coal and oil), soil and water. We’re also discharging pollutants to the air and ocean at unprecedented rates.
4. As the demand for energy rises and prices rise, the extraction of more hard-to-reach resources becomes profitable. The supply of energy with oil at $100 per barrel is much larger than the supply of energy with oil at $30 per barrel. But those resources are ever more polluting.
5. Ultimately, unsustainable trends end. The question for industrialized countries is how hard the crash will be. It appears unlikely that any large country will seriously commit to decarbonizing its economy. So what does the future hold, say at 2050?
A. No more wild fish. We will have destroyed the last wild fisheries. Everything you eat from the sea will be farmed one way or another.
B. On a global basis, persistent drought. Whether it hits China, Russia, Brazil or the US, drought will hit major crop-growing regions on a regular basis.
C. High food prices and political instability. Even in 2050 the US is likely to be still quite rich and able to grow enough food for domestic consumption. But a lot of the planet imports a fair bit of food. As food prices rise, people will riot, and will return to farming in their own country. We might actually see cities lose people to the countryside.
D. Significant impacts on biodiversity, massive forest fires and the loss of coral reefs.
E. The beginning of significant migration due to sea level rise, especially due to its impacts on groundwater resources and on farmland inundated during storms.
Further out, who knows? What happens if China decides to start climate modification projects and those projects hurt the US, or vice versa? War?
No, I don’t see any alternative. Never before in human history has the species as a whole been told to use less energy — have a lower quality of life — even if it’s for the sake of their grandchildren. Too many people will reject the idea, no matter how clear the evidence. We will burn all our cheap energy before looking for alternative resources, and there’s still a lot of oil, gas and coal out there.
lllphd
it’s always amazed me that capitalists never mention adam smith’s acknowledgment (albeit begrudging) that the markets needed to be regulated.
the best part of competitive markets: it’s all about who’s king of the mountain. all that competition is all about destroying all your competitors.
then what?
Culture of Truth
The History Channel could slide it into a day long series on 2012 and the end of the world.
lllphd
@cleek:
mother nature laughs: it only takes that ‘once’.
then, it’s all over.
sorta the definition of ‘the end.’
jake the snake
@jibeaux:
Read Frederick Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth’s “The Space Merchants” and update it.
Kirk Spencer
@JAHILL10:
I disagree. I think capitalism is failing because it, too, ignores the human cost of the system.
Put simply and paraphrasing Adam Smith, pure capitalism puts profits above people.
singfoom
@Francis: I don’t disagree with most of your points, but I have a minor quibble.
I don’t think being asked to use energy more efficiently is necessarily a lower quality of life.
I would argue that we can sustain our current quality of life using renewable resources.
All I know is if I can ever afford to buy my own house in this country, the first thing I will do is to add a robust solar system to it with a backflow meter so the energy company will pay me for the energy we don’t use.
Energy generated at the point of use is where we need to get. Why not a huge program to retrofit as many buildings as possible to make them energy independent or even energy positive so the grid becomes distributed?
The technology is already here for that, the political will doesn’t exist.
Citizen_X
@cleek:
Whaa? The point is that infinite resources are not available. We have, instead, finite resources, which means at some point we hit the wall of availability of resources. When that wall is a thousand years distant, based on your present rate of growth, you have plenty of time to readjust. When we’re gonna hit it in the next decade? Not so much.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I haven’t denounced Stalin or the broccoli mandate this week; I’m behind schedule.
Sentient Puddle
@Citizen_X: And what, you think we can readjust in the short term if need be?
ppcli
@fasteddie9318: Perhaps the point is not the value of the advertising space as such: rather, it may be seen as way to funnel contributions to the party while avoiding limits on campaign contributions, getting better tax writeoffs, or whatever.
Citizen_X
@Sentient Puddle: Given the politics (national and global) of the last decade? Doesn’t look too likely, I’m afraid.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Zifnab: Sometimes I wish we had facebook style option to “like” a post.
Svensker
@Southern Beale:
This is the problem with where we are right now. It will be very difficult to change. Absent a revolution, I don’t see that change happening any time soon.
The problem with revolutions is that they don’t often go the way you yourself want them to.
jibeaux
@Sentient Puddle:
It was. It is all some sort of variant on Poe’s Law. There is no absurdist comic satire of wingnuttery that cannot be bested by actual stated unironic wingnuttery.
Brachiator
But here’s the question: Which will die first in America, democracy or capitalism?
Ebon
Yes, and we will call it “the Last Supper.”
Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta)
@BR:
If anything lures us en masse into space, it’ll be the energy resources: Solar gives roughly 100 Watts per square foot for the earth and moon, and it’s available 24/7.
Not likely for a culture like ours, that finds itself “managed” by folks unable to see further than the next fiscal quarter or the next election… but History isn’t quite over, yet.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@gnomedad: Oddly, I thought “life” was one of the first things our Constitution said we had a right to. Founders must have been DFHs.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Culture of Truth:
It is pure economic Calvinism. Just substitute The Free Market for God and you’ve got all the necessary doctrines in place: Predestination, the Elect, the unredeemably dammed, etc.
toujoursdan
@JAHILL10:
Perfectly said!
fasteddie9318
@Brachiator:
I’m thinking it will be a murder-suicide.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@lllphd: Like the executives at our major corporations, they aren’t incentivized for the long term. If you can make your bucket loads before capitalism implodes, hopefully you can assure yourself a place in the wealthy aristocracy.
fasteddie9318
@ppcli:
I guess, but now that any company can spend whatever it wants to get Republicans elected without fear of disclosure, why would they need to go through the mechanics of something like this?
scav
@Barb (formerly Gex): Nah, it’s the secret invisible ink the founders used. Life is to consist of the span between conception and parturition.
Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta)
@BR:
China and India are about to hit the same resource limits we are, and as a result, they’re never going to become “developed nations”.
Back in the early 1990s, I used to think “Hey, China and India are lucky in a way to be starting from scratch!” I sort of expected them to be smarter (ie more future-proof) in their development, perhaps even ‘leapfrogging’ us as they built up their infrastructure.
One of the great disappointments of the 1990s for me (and there were many) was that this is not at all what happened. Dirty tech is cheap tech. And the Chinese/Indian managerial classes don’t seem much more farsighted than ours.
cs
@Brachiator:
As corporations and the state become increasingly indistinguishable, Democracy will die first and capitalism, in it’s truest form, will be on life support.
How the United States could decay into such a bleak dystopia, so quickly after decades of unprecedented prosperity and power, will keep legions of historians employed in the future and they will be very thankful to our current generation for helping them gain tenure. They will be the only ones thankful.
Sentient Puddle
@Citizen_X: Then I really don’t know what you’re trying to get at. What you’re saying here is wrong almost by definition. People will figure out some way to allocate finite resources. That will still be true if there is a dramatic increase in the number of people in a short period of time. It doesn’t mean the allocation will be pleasant, but it will still happen.
@jibeaux: Agaghh. You’d think that when you start out at “Does this idea from The Onion sound reasonable?”, there’d be some sort of alarm going off in your head indicating that you’re already deep within the rabbit hole. How do these morons not realize this?
cleek
@Citizen_X:
and my point is that we don’t need “infinite” resources. we need a finite amount. that may exceed what we can produce/acquire, but it’s not “infinite”.
and, we are now producing more calories per person than we did in 1960. even though the world population has more than doubled since then.
people have been saying the exact same thing for at least 50 years. they haven’t been right yet.
Citizen_X
@Sentient Puddle: Huh? I don’t know what you’re getting at.
Well, yes, “unpleasant” can include catastrophic. It’s called population crash, and happens when populations (of any species) overtop their available resources.
How is any of that “wrong by definition?”
Shalimar
@fasteddie9318: The invisible hands are ambidextrous?
toujoursdan
We’re already facing peak oil, industrial resource and commodity shortages, fresh water shortages; declining soil fertility due to the overuse of petroleum based fertilizers, collapse of the fisheries; the extinction of 30,000 species a year, deforestation, coral bleaching, climate change, ocean and groundwater pollution and the draining of ancient aquifers. All of this can be directly or indirectly traced to the explosion of consumption due to our capitalist, consumerist economy. The rate of these declines is only accelerating.
Birthrates are dropping as people become more affluent. But as people become more affluent they consume more. A middle class American family of 4 living in a detached home with two cars, and a 30 mile commute uses far more food, energy, water and resources than a rural Sénégalese family of 18.
That American lifestyle is what the entire world seems to be aspiring towards probably because it is glamourized by TV and in movies. The largest car market in the world is now in China. As soon as the Chinese hit the middle class they want to become “American” in lifestyle: buying a detached home, car, commuting, western diet, HDTV and all the rest. That puts a far greater strain on the planet’s finite resources than before. I can’t fault 3rd world people for wanting to climb out of poverty, but I think what is presented as their goal is very flawed.
One has to stop looking at it from the number-of-bodies-on-the-planet perspective, and start looking at it from how-much-those-bodies-consume perspective. And in that regard we are going backwards at an increasingly faster rate and are on the edge of an ecological collapse. That will bring down capitalism and civilization as we know it. Just because it hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
scav
@cleek:
That’s a crap argument, right up there with “America will never elect a black president.”, “There’s never been a 9.0 earthquake.” and “They’ve been predicting my death since I was born. Hasn’t happened yet and never will.” Doesn’t prove the contrary but it doesn’t help your case.
BR
@cleek:
This is the poorest sort of counterargument that I’ve seen repeatedly made on this issue. It’s similar to the (throughly debunked claim) that “most scientists in the 1970s thought we were going into an ice age, so they’re probably wrong about global warming too.”
The most prominent study from the 1970s was The Limits to Growth, which did not say that we were running out back then – they forecasted that we’d hit the limits to growth sometime in the first half of the 21st century. Their updated studies in the 1990s and early 2000s came to the same conclusion. (I linked to their baseline graph at #6.)
What people have said for 50 years is that if we don’t take action we’ll be screwed – and lo and behold, we haven’t taken action and we’re now most likely screwed.
Citizen_X
@cleek: Actually, the Club of Rome people said it about 40 years ago, and they were talking about the first half of the 21st century. You know, now.
Your argument has been wielded against the Peak Oil people for a while. Although the “wall” may be further off then some may have originally imagined, at some point you do reach the limit of production. For oil, we’ve pretty much done that: we’ve drilled the sedimentary section of the world on land, then in shallow water, and now we’re drilling the deep water sediments. That’s it. There’s no more sedimentary rocks to drill. When the decline comes (and it looks like we’re plateauing now), there’s no where else to go to look.
toujoursdan
Civilizations have hit limits of growth before, so there are many historical examples of over exploitation of resources and collapse: Easter Island, Maya, etc.
This is the first time humanity has achieved a global civilization and this will be the first time the world will hit a limit.
Sentient Puddle
@Citizen_X: Y’know, going back through the quote chain, I’m noticing that I accidentally left out a negation I intended. Meant to say:
Apologies.
Carol from CO
Will capitalism eat itself? Not before it eats the rest of us.
Jennifer
@Shalimar:
No, there’s only one Hand, but it sure does love Koch.
Chris
@BR:
Never heard that one before. Did scientists not, in fact, believe that we were going into an ice age in the 1970s (as I take it from your “thoroughly debunked” comment?) And is it a popular claim on the right to say otherwise.
Elia
When I finally got around to reading Marx, I was struck by–understanding Doug Hill’s point above–how obviously Democrats are simply trying to save right-wing hyper-capitalists like the Kochs and Murdoch from themselves when they propose the mildest of regulations.
if it wasn’t going to result in so many innocent people suffering, i’d say: let ’em have their galtian paradise and we’ll how much they like it in a generation’s time when the mob’s at the barricades.
lou
@Southern Beale: Yeppers. The people who keep citing the “invisible hand” clearly haven’t read Adam Smith. He had choice words to say about the necessity of the state providing an education, among other duties of the state. Of course he thought education was necessary to keep workers in line and happy with their lot.
Suffern ACE
@garage mahal: Yes, Imagine what would happen if modern liberalism wasn’t run through the same northeast establishment that gave you modern conservatism. Perhaps, for instance, if those liberal leaders weren’t drawn from the same class as the corporate leaders, we might not have lost so much ground.
lou
@cleek:
And if you read some experts, as well as novelist Barbara Kingsolver, who happens to be a biologist, we could be in deep doo-doo with our current agricultural practices. If a blight hits corn country, that will wreak havoc because our corn all has the same genes. So just because it hasn’t happened, or just because Malthus was wrong, doesn’t mean it can’t.
poatman
the goal of progress (ala “free market capitalism”) is extinction.
at which point, the human race will receive the “darwin award” for removing itself from the gene pool.
Citizen_X
@Chris:
No, they did not believe that.
Suffern ACE
@BR:
Bah. We’re not screwed so to say. We could have proceeded in an orderly and peaceful fashion, but chose not to. In the end, we will have an economy that uses less energy and resources because we will look like those economies around the world that use less because 98% of the people are poor. Optimitically (if you survive the turmoil), look at your standing on the economic and social ladder. Everyone in the top 5% take three steps up. Everyone below that take three steps down. Since no one wants to be told that they need to take a step down (or will vote for someone who says so out loud), we’ll let the “invisible hand” push them down.
Brachiator
@cs:
In my dystopian future, there are no historians because education has been outlawed for hundreds of years. There are only monks who worship The Murdoch and prattle the prophecies of Glenn Beck. They Blame some mysterious figure, Billbama Hillary for placing a curse on America and destroying it.
Suffern ACE
@Citizen_X: I saw it in a video in school about the extinction of the Dinosaurs because of an ice age (the metor crater had not yet been discovered. Heck, plate techtonics was still controversial explanation when I was in school. I’m old). So to scare us, they had a scientist in the video warn us that it could happen again. EERIE.
So, yeah. I could see how kids going to school in the 1970s might think that scientists were concerned with global cooling. Stupid school films aimed at 8 years olds.
Citizen_X
@Sentient Puddle: Ah. Now it makes more sense. Thanks.
To answer your question, I think there’s time to swerve before we hit the wall, but the longer we put it off, the less likely it becomes. I had more hope (for change!) a couple of years ago, but given the intransigence of the Right and the corporate world, the ineffectiveness and cowardice of the Dems, all the tactical and strategic questions we’ve argued and insulted each other over here for the last few years, all make me less hopeful.
On the plus side, life is getting ever more exciting, isn’t it?
cleek
scav, BR, Citizen_X:
sure, i get that saying “the alarmists haven’t been right yet” doesn’t logically prove that the alarmists aren’t right, this time. but, the alarmists’ record shows how difficult a task predicting the future is – i’m sure the alarmists in 1970 thought were as certain about their predictions as people are today about theirs. but, they have been consistently wrong.
and even if we assume we know more today than we did then, the only way to really know if today’s alarmists are right is to wait five to ten years and see.
so your certainty today seems unfounded. we can’t actually see the future. especially with things as complex as the world economy and food production, and yes, even oil discoveries.
you’re just going to have to wait another ten or twenty Friedman units and see what happens.
Chris
@Citizen_X:
I see.
Well, thank you for both making me aware of an urban legend I hadn’t heard before and making me aware that it is, in fact, a legend.
BR
@cleek:
Here’s what I don’t get in what you’re saying. Which alarmists are you referring to?
In the 1970s, the most prominent “alarmists” didn’t get anything wrong, as we’ve outlined above. Those prominent “alarmists” were the Club of Rome and the Limits to Growth authors, and others like Jimmy Carter. They didn’t say that there would be a resource limit in the 1970s, so they weren’t wrong – they actually said we’d be hitting resources limits around now, and by all indications (take a look at the numerous recent oil production studies) they were right.
Also, just thought I’d add another thing:
Just because something is complex doesn’t mean it can’t be understood by those whose job it is to understand it. Prominent geologists (Deffeyes, Campbell, Laherre, etc. take your pick) who understand oil production are saying we’re at or very very near peak oil. Sure it’s complex, but they’ve used their knowledge to study this, and this is where it came out. Geology isn’t like economics, where “experts” concoct stuff to arrive at politically predetermined conclusions.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
From your lips to Karl’s ears, comrade Hill.
KXB
Raghuram Rajan, an economist with the World Bank and a former professor at the University of Chicago, coined the term, “Saving capitalism from the capitalists.” Everyone seems to understand the need for rules in school, traffic, sports, even standing in line at the deli. Yet, for a certain group of Americans, there is this idea that “no-rules” is a cure-all for America’s economic problems.
cleek
i’ll just copy/paste some Earth Day 1970 quotes from a wingnut site (which doesn’t mean i’m endorsing the wingnut’s point, so let’s not play that game):
“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
Kenneth Watt, ecologist
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
George Wald, Harvard Biologist
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
also
“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University
“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
Life Magazine, January 1970
“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
Sen. Gaylord Nelson
“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
alarmists, being alarmed. medium-term predictions, all wrong. and a lot of those are the same kinds of things people here are predicting (or citing others’ prediction of).
well, the alarmists you chose were right. and those that i chose were wrong. at the time they made their predictions, could you tell who was going to be right ? probably not.
right. but that doesn’t mean that everything can be predicted. we understand fair coin tosses pretty well, but they are pretty much impossible to predict. and the history of predictions about the global economy, or food production, or the effects of pollution, etc., is littered with failed predictions by people whose job it was to understand these things.
birthmarker
@BR: As discussed in Kevin Phillips’ book American Theocracy, England ran out of coal and went through 20 years of a painful readjustment.
I don’t see total armageddon, I see a painful readjustment. I think we may already have been in that readjustment since 2000.
James E Powell
@toujoursdan:
But none of those earlier civilizations had Jesus!
toujoursdan
Long before that happens, the American/Western middle class is all but toast.
Guardian UK: The awful truth: education won’t stop the West getting poorer
toujoursdan
@birthmarker:
You can’t really make that equivalent. We use oil in a way that England never used coal (transportation and jet fuel, fertilizers for food, plastics, medical equipment, medicines, industrial production, etc. etc. etc.) and there aren’t alternatives that have the same chemical properties or, more importantly, energy returned on energy invested ratio (EROEI) that oil has coming along the pipeline.
Maude
The thing about Marx is that he was way behing the curve about what was going on with capitalism. There already restraints being put on it.
The other small matter is that Marx was wrong.
What Marks or Engles wroted led to Lenin and wholesale murder.
It isn’t so much captitalism that is at fault, but the corruption that twists the economy and causes people to suffer.
The Republicans are trying to prevent the funding of the finreg bill. The SEC is having a hard time without enough money to istaff and investigate finacial wrong doing.
While we are at it, look to Bill Clinton for making the Credit Default Swaps free of regulation and free of any capital requirement. AIG is an example.
Without Bill Clinton, there would not have been a Citigroup and too big to fail.
The Republican Congress of the 1990’s. along with Bill Clinton corrupted the ability for laws and regulations to reign in greed.
G.W.Bush and the Republican Congress underfunded the financial regulatory agencies so they couldn’t do their jobs. Bush also made sure he put people in place at agencies like the SEC, that would turn a blind eye to the machinations of the greedy.
HyperIon
@Alex S. wrote:
God, is this snark or stupidity?
I’ve noticed you have said some really silly things here recently so I’m going with stoopid.
fasteddie9318
@Maude:
So you’re saying that a capitalist system would be fine assuming that it wasn’t being run by human beings. That sounds about right.
HyperIon
@KG wrote:
Dana Perino did not know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was.
And she was press secretary to the POTUS.
My advice: Assume nothing.
HyperIon
@birthmarker wrote:
but this time with lots more (and very powerful) guns!
HyperIon
@BR wrote:
If it’s complex enough, yes, it DOES mean it can’t be understood…by anyone. I’m getting a whiff of: “don’t worry. humans are so clever. they can figure anything out if they really want to.”
Maude
@fasteddie9318:
What an ignorant comment.
If we don’t how the meltdown happened, how could we ever see the signs of laws being loosened again in the future?
HyperIon
@Citizen_X wrote:
Ya know, the Japanese that I have seen on TV the last several days do NOT look excited. They look seriously depressed and worried.
The Moar You Know
@Maude: Damn. First: “wroted”? Who the fuck taught you how to write? Or talk? Because they’ve got some explaining to do.
Second: Blaming Marx for Lenin is like blaming Jesus for Hitler. While it is true that Lenin read Marx, and Hitler read the Bible, the actions of Lenin and Hitler had nothing to do with the teachings of a German philosopher and a Jewish carpenter, respectively.
BR
@birthmarker:
Agreed. I never have believed in Armageddon and survivalism. That’s the other end of the spectrum. (John Michael Greer makes the great argument that the cleek-style utopianism and the other extreme doomerism just follow the well trod myths of our culture, which can be traced to the stories of many religions including the three Abrahamic religions and others that have similar stories. Without questioning these stories of our culture, we end up getting trapped into thinking along one or the other.)
@cleek:
I figured you’d post those. At any time period you can find alarmists saying almost anything – the question is whether their analysis is rigorous and well accepted by the scientific community. Ehrlich is the only among those you posted who you could plausibly claim as “prominent”, and it’s not clear that his theories were at all rigorous. And Malthusian catastrophe is a very different thing from running out of industrial resources that are geologically limited.
Oh, and I should add – worldwide grain per capita peaked in 1984, and energy per capita peaked in 1979. So even the guys who were wrong on outcomes that you posted weren’t really wrong about the underlying issues.
BR
@HyperIon:
No, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s just world oil production has been successfully studied in the past (e.g. Hubbert) and it’s not some mysterious thing. There are things we can understand and things we can’t. This is one geologists understand but economists don’t.
Maude
@The Moar You Know:
I’m getting over pneumonia and I can’t spell. My mommy taught me to write and she’s coming right over there and get you.
Elia
Lotta trolls ’round these parts as of late.
birthmarker
@toujoursdan: My comment was more along the line that we are in for a painful readjustment, and that I think it has already started. I understand the unique characteristics of petroleum molecules, and that we are going to sorely miss them when they are gone. And that there isn’t an equivalent replacement.
Phillips makes the point in the book that Great Britain survived and in fact still provides a comfortable life. They just don’t dominate the world like they did in the 19th century. And it’s likely that we won’t dominate the 21st century as we did the 20th. As @BR: upthread makes reference to Carter. We should have stayed on the course that Carter set as to alternative sources. Now 30 years are down the tube.(Another thing to thank Reagan for).
I believe new technologies will emerge, as they have in the past, but they are not necessarily going to be easy, cheap or pleasant, or as efficient.
Human intellect can be pretty awesome, though. I mean we did pull out of the caves at some point. And coped with cold and wet and manual labor.
Didn’t kerosene replace whale oil for lighting, then was itself superseded by electric light?
I just don’t think mankind will suddenly die off. I do think that world population may settle at a lower level in the future than what it is now.
alwhite
Nikita Khrushchev is reported to have said, “When the last capitalist is hung he will sell us the rope to do it.”
While he may have missed on the executioner I think he had a firm grasp of the end for the masters of the universe.
cleek
@BR:
that’s not my question.
my issue is that people (lefties, primarily. wingnuts have their own doomsday shibboleths) can’t get enough of this stuff. even though the track record of these kinds of predictions is pretty weak.
not really relevant. i’m more interested in the “END OF THE WORLD!!” screaming. because that’s the part that they keep getting wrong.
BR
@cleek:
Nobody’s saying it’s the end of the world. I guess that’s a standard strawman, though.
DPirate
12/22/12?
Sometimes I think that the rise of man must be meant for destruction, as though we were one of the horsemen of apocalypse. Maybe the planet doesn’t like all of us parasites living and growing on it, and it is our job to get rid of it all. In this theme, man would be “the good lice”, ridding Gaia of it’s vermin. Isn’t that a comforting thought?