Huh, some commenters raise a good question. What are the non-capitalist countries doing to fight climate change?
China is building out massive renewables and massive coal.
My list is short, please add to it.
“Massive coal” was twenty years ago. India is “massive coal” now.
They have an electric car that costs $10,000.
They are quickly switching from Li batteries to Na, which will not require Ni or Co either.
They have a mixture of capitalism and central planning, so it’s not entirely fair to call them “non-capitalist”.
Not far in the past.
In China, 47.4GW of coal power capacity came online in 2023, GEM says. This increase accounted for two-thirds of the global rise in operating coal power capacity, which climbed 2% to 2,130GW.
China’s 70.2GW of new construction getting underway in 2023 represents 19-times more than the rest of the world’s 3.7GW. As the figure below highlights, the country’s trajectory (red line) is diverging significantly from the rest of the world (orange line).
I was considerably happier before I knew this. Hopefully coal prices will continue to increase, and they won’t end up burning more coal even though their capacity has increased. From what I’ve read, it’s mainly provincial governments trying to boost their economic statistics that are responsible for this building spree.
We couldn’t have non capitalist state with imperialism However, if we consider countries without state, we shall consider EZLN and the Democnatic Confederation in Rojava. Both have very interesting approach of eco-socialism.
Like what?
China is a capitalism country as everyone else.
Run by communists with a majority public sector and control of private enterprise? Hmm. Doesn’t sound correct.
TFW Tencent isn’t considered capitalist
Tencent existing as a private enterprise is compatible with the statement you are responding to.
Lack of common sense could make life harder sometimes ;)
“Common sense”, aka you don’t know shit about how to define capitalism or about the political economy of China and insist that your poorly developed ideas are self evident.
Told person who do not know the difference between authoritarian capitalistic dictatorship and commuism state. Go swallow your copium pills. EDIT: I just lurked into your account, this explains a LOT xD
You might want to read the article China Has Billionaires. The economic case for China being Socialist is not unfounded. Nobody believes China has reached full Socialization of the economy, but it is largely Socialized, and appears to be increasingly Socialized as compared to the Dengist period.
It’s state capitalism with a veneer of communism.
All capitalism requires a state, the fact that you call an alternate system “state capitalism” just goes to show that you need to do more research on what capitalism is.
According to DuckDuckGo
State Capitalism: An economic system that is primarily capitalistic but there is some degree of government ownership of the means of production.
Basically capitalism managed and owned by the state. This is not communism, nor even socialism. China is communist in name only.
Oh my god I didn’t consider what the brilliant minds of a duck duck go- wait you didn’t even cite where the definition is from?
Lol
What are the non-capitalist countries doing to fight climate change?
Lots of solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear energy investment in the public sector. Huge investments in mass transit and electric engines. Conversion of old coal powered steel production to electric. Dense urban real estate department. Disposable waste reduction. Big efforts at tree planting along the Gobi Desert.
They’ve been very “all options on the table” about climate change. Some work. Some don’t. But the progress is undeniable.
It’s a capitalist country, but I think France is on the right track.
They were never really on the wrong track, primarily because of their huge investment in nuclear power back in the 70s.
What are the non-capitalist countries doing to fight climate change?
Hunting and gathering, mostly. When the superpowers are capitalists, everyone is capitalist. Anyone who thinks China isn’t capitalist hasn’t bought anything off Amazon in the last decade.
Huh, there are worker coops and 100% ESOPs as alternatives to capitalism that can exist within capitalism @memes
Literally every corporation is an alternative to capitalism existing writhing capitalism.
A corporation is a centralized command economy built in accordance with the credo “from each according to his capacity; to each according to his need”.
Capitalism exists at the scale of an economy. It does not exist within companies, except in the black market for office supplies in the places that don’t supply enough.
Buddy capitalism is a specific production system not when you do trade
Capitalism is basically when another private citizen or private company can take you on as a wage laborer.
If you can go get “a job” which is when you can put known work for known money consistently, and the one hiring you is someone other than the government, you’re in a capitalist place.
I would usually say this is going too far, but this winter didn’t seem nearly as cold as usual, and that was concerning. Feels like in the next two decades the planet might not have winter… And might have a deadly season that was formerly summer.
Yesterday 21th of July was the hottest day in recorded global history. This year’s February, April and June were the hottest respective months in recorded history. Just putting this out there
I remember when it was so cold out that my car overheated in the winter because all of the coolant (rated to below zero Fahrenheit), froze. Now, I’m damn near blasting the AC in winter because it’s so damn warm.
Come change is happening. IDK how much more proof people really need… The argument of winter still being cold isn’t applicable anymore.
- Climate is changing
- CO2 levels are rising
The more reasonable people against many climate change response policies are skeptical of:
- CO2 is the cause of the rise
- Climate response policies will slow or reverse the warming
- The dangers to humanity of increased temperature outweigh the dangers to humanity of the climate response policies
I get what you’re saying here and bluntly, those people are not scientists. If you neither want to go and earn the knowledge necessary to be an authority on the subject, nor listen to those that are, then maybe you should shut the fuck up.
I’ll be fair in saying that CO2 is not the only contributor to global climate change. The environment is a complex intermingling of a lot of different influences. With that said, this is something we know for a fact, at the very least, does not help. Alternatives exist for almost every case. Why stick with the “clearly not helping” method, than going with the “at least we’re trying” alternative?
Disclaimer, I haven’t earned the title of expert in the subject, I just try to listen to those who have earned that title. I am not nearly as up to date on the subject as some others, so I invite someone to expand and/or correct any of my statements who knows the material better than me. Such is the scientific method. Lively discussion and debate culminating in studies and tests to determine who is wrong… (Spoiler, sometimes everyone is wrong)
Regardless, IMO, anyone denying a change based on the stated reasons, is trying to serve their own interests. Whether that’s enabling them to contribute to make poor decisions, or maybe they have something to gain by trying to block any progress away from fossil fuels. Maybe they own stock in a petrol company. Who knows?
To me, it’s just a bad faith argument.
Yeah, it was crazy how warm last winter was. I live in Edmonton which is the most northern city with 1 million people in North America, and even through December we would have no snow on the ground when regularly there would be a couple inches to a foot everywhere.
The weather is also much more sporadic than I ever remember it being which is fun. It’s either unusually warm or stupidly cold. We had only about a week of really cold weather and heavy snow last winter
Our government was corrupted the moment the courts accepted the “Corporations are people/ Money is speech” arguments. At that moment, the government stopped representing the needs of ordinary people and only represented the needs of billionaires and their lobbyists.
It’s taking a long time to play out but it’s going to end badly.
Our government was corrupted long before that. Harlow Vs Fitzgerald in 1982 comes to mind as the SCOTUS unintentionally legislated from the bench due to some southern revisionist in 1874.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/qualified-immunity-supreme-court.html
Woodrow “literally wrote Southern Revisionism” Wilson is where I would point my finger at where the corruption actually took root.
It was corrupted as soon as the country was founded, it was meant to service white slave owning men.
Everything is corrupt and always has been!
Ha! One upped both of you!
All
capitalistcountries…Fixed it for you
Yep, just slapping a “communist party” sticker on the property owning class doesn’t make a difference
Sure, but that hasn’t happened, historically.
Why do you want to break Lemmy
Tbf it’s not that anybody saw that coming. Maybe Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta and all the other anarchists but aside from them, nobody could have known it.
What are you talking about?
I’m talking about bolshevik parties and their bureaucracy becoming the new capitalist or ruling class as Bakunin told Marx would happen
Why do democratically elected government officials constitute a “class?” How would Socialism be Capitalism?
The above commenter is wrong about it being capitalist, but they’re right about there being a ruling class in the USSR. The ruling class was the communist party, the “intelligentsia.” Communist party members pre-selected candidates for all political appointments, and becoming a member of the communist party involved passing through multiple stages of party-administered education and then having your past scrutinized and approved by committees of existing communist party members.
At its’ highest level of membership it never surpassed roughly 3% of the population. That is a politically privileged class that enjoyed better wages, benefits, general living conditions, and political influence than the general population.
The above commenter is wrong about it being capitalist, but they’re right about there being a ruling class in the USSR. The ruling class was the communist party, the “intelligentsia.”
The Bolsheviks and the Communist Party were not the Intelligentsia. The Intelligentsia predated the USSR, and was a cultural term for engineers, mental leaders, and other “educated” classes. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was made up of various members, not exclusively Intelligentsia. In fact, the close-link to the bourgeoisie that pre-Revolution Intelligentsia had caused distrust towards the Intelligentsia.
Communist party members pre-selected candidates for all political appointments, and becoming a member of the communist party involved passing through multiple stages of party-administered education and then having your past scrutinized and approved by committees of existing communist party members.
This does not make the CPSU a class, nor does iy mean it was not democratic. The US functions in much the same way, outside of fringe areas where third parties win.
At its’ highest level of membership it never surpassed roughly 3% of the population. That is a politically privileged class that enjoyed better wages, benefits, general living conditions, and political influence than the general population.
Yes, Marxism has never stated that people cannot have it better or worse. Anarchists seek full-horizontalism, while Marxists seek Central Planning.
Even at the peak of disparity in the USSR, the top wages were far, far closer than under the Tsars or under the current Russian Federation, and the Workers enjoyed higher democratic participation with more generous social safety nets, like totally free healthcare and education.
The USSR was by no means perfect, but it was absolutely progressive for its time, and would even be considered progressive today, despite the issues they faced internally and externally.
The soviets were democratic but the bolsheviks smashed the soviets as soon as they realized they wouldn’t infiltrate them and stayed a Soviet Union in name only. Why wouldn’t they keep the soviets as a decision making body if the were interested in a democratic government?
No, the Bolsheviks did not smash the soviets. The Factory Committees were replaced with the Union system, because the Factory Committees were acting in their own interests irrespective of the needs of the whole. The Union system added the interconnected element to the Soviet Planning system. The Soviet system retained until the collapse of the USSR.
The wikipedia article on Soviet Democracy makes this clear, the Soviets were the main operating organ of the USSR throughout its lifetime. If you believe the Soviets to be democratic, then you believe the USSR to be democratic, or misunderstood the history of the Soviets within the USSR. This is on top of you referencing a wild anti-semite who considered the state itself to be a Jewish conspiracy as reasoning for complete anarchism alone.
I think you need to hit the books for a bit and come back later. Blackshirts and Reds goes over what did work, and what did not work in the USSR. There were definitely issues with it, but it was democratic.
communist party
private property owning class
If there’s no exploitation, and if everyone can voluntarily join the communist party and the unions (and is encouraged to do so), how can you say there was an owning class?
Because there’s always one. Name one county where there isn’t a owning class
Ok, so in the USSR, the country with no exploitation of labor and which promoted membership of party and unions, the owning class was the working class, right? Or are you gonna do some mental gymnastics to say it was the politician class?
I’m looking forward to your mental gymnastics on how the Kronstadt rebellion were the bad guys
Id rather wait for you to answer my comment instead of deflecting
I love how tankies (and in varying degrees most Marxists) have no analysis of (vertical) power structures. As Bakunin so perfectly predicted:
So the result is: guidance of the great majority of the people by a privileged minority. But this minority, say the Marxists will consist of workers. Certainly, with your permission, of former workers, who however, as soon as they have become representatives or governors of the people, cease to be workers and look down on the whole common workers’ world from the height of the state. They will no longer represent the people, but themselves and their pretensions to people’s government. Anyone who can doubt this knows nothing of the nature of men.
But don’t take it from someone who saw it coming, but from Bookchin who was very sympathetic to the USSR:
That the Russian Soviets were incapable of providing the anatomy for a truly popular democracy is to be ascribed not only to their hierarchical structure, but also to their limited social roots.
Nobody in their sane minds argues that there wasn’t overbureaucratisation in the USSR. That’s a well established truth. The question is, if people aren’t only allowed but encouraged to join the party, and if there’s no exploitation of the working class, what’s the argument to suggest that the “bureaucrats were the new owning class”
But we agree that they were the ruling class? Once everything belongs to the state, it really belongs to those who rule the state.
And there is power structure within parties. Being member of the party doesn’t make you an equal to every other member. Many people were not only encouraged but coerced to join the party and do as the higher ups say. Centralism is never democratic.
Once everything belongs to the state, it really belongs to those who rule the state.
Again, not that easy. Khruschev didn’t decide that the iron in the factory #3 would be used in the steel beam factory #7. The planning of the productive forces was an incredibly complex process in which thousands of bureaucrats union members were involved. Calling that amalgam of workers an “owning class”, especially when they’re not extracting surplus value at all from the workers seems a big stretch to me.
Centralism is never democratic.
The fact that the USSR wasn’t as democratic as ideal, doesn’t mean that the existence of a state can’t be democratic. “Centralism” is an umbrella term covering many different possibilities of governance, and a single party ruled by elected leaders of worker councils is a recipe of some sort of centralism that can provide a very reasonable degree of democracy. I’m not arguing this was the case for the USSR. If you want to read on a practical case of the existence of democracy within a Marxist-Leninist single-party regime, I recommend you have a look at a book called “How the worker’s parliaments saved the Cuban revolution”, from Pedro Ross, which describes this exact form of functioning of back and forth between the central government and the worker councils in which millions of Cubans participated to overcome the worst consequences of the “periodo especial” after the illegal and antidemocratic dissolution of the USSR.
I myself am from a country with a rich history of anarchism in the 20th century: Spain. By the 1930s, the CNT, a union of workers which proposed some sort of anarcho-syndicalism (which I bet you’d be happy to agree is a good method of governance), had more than a million members, which for the population of the country at the time was absolutely huge. The lack of centralization of sorts initially among the leftists, and their consequent weakness to respond to threats, is actually the very reason why fascism could trump the democratic government in many places of the country and destroy this anarchist movement and all social progress for the following 40 years. Funnily enough, the dictatorial USSR was the only country which assisted the republicans in their civil war against fascism, other than the admittedly heroic volunteer corps from the brigadas internacionales.
Except you oversimplified and it matters. The entire point of capitalism is to centralize money in the hands of a few at the expense of the rest. Capitalism itself demands continued growth, which is unsustainable.
All forms of government are subject to corruption, but only some forms of government are broken by design.
If you think capitalistic greed stops at national borders out of some sort of respect you are denser than I thought you were.
China has almost 700 billionaires.
Liberal clown-state, but with a red/yellow flag. Same shitty story, despite what you may have us think.
Capitalism itself demands continued growth, which is unsustainable.
Green energy is a growth industry. No reason why capitalists can’t make money building and renting new green infrastructure.
If anything, we could use a huge injection of new capital spending. We’re just not getting it into energy projects. We’re getting it into fantasies and scams, like Crypto and AI
The funny thing is that you’ll have a hard time defending that the North Europe ones are governed by the property owning class… So this one is actually false. But it does apply to all countries that call themselves communist.
Anyway, it’s a very rare oddity for a country to have such a strong middle class that rich people can not reign free. Good for those few ones that managed it.
(And yeah, talk about non-sequitur on the 4rt one. It’s ridiculous. Yeah, the best way to fight climate change is by supporting a revolution lead by the OP’s favorite fascists. No explanation needed.)
The funny thing is that you’ll have a hard time defending that the North Europe ones are governed by the property owning class… So this one is actually false. But it does apply to all countries that call themselves communist.
All of the Nordic Countries are Dictatorships of the Bourgeoisie, they have seen sliding worker protections over time and increased disparity. Occasionally, Capitalists will make concessions to keep their power for longer, that’s what happened in the Nordics.
You are correct about Communist countries, they are directed by the Proletariat, who now owns the property. I doubt that’s what you were meaning, though.
Anyway, it’s a very rare oddity for a country to have such a strong middle class that rich people can not reign free. Good for those few ones that managed it.
It’s not really rare, it happened in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Social Democracy is not fascism, but the idea of the Middle and Upper classes collaborating, ie the petite bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie against the proletariat, is something Social Democracy shares with fascism.
(And yeah, talk about non-sequitur on the 4rt one. It’s ridiculous. Yeah, the best way to fight climate change is by supporting a revolution lead by the OP’s favorite fascists. No explanation needed.)
Can you explain how OP is supporting fascism? Is Marxism “fascist” to you? Why?
Why? Capitalism cannot solve Climate Change, as it depends on the highest possible profit margins and rampant consumerism. Transitioning from a profit-focused system to fulfilling uses and needs in Socialism, where the Proletariat is in charge and can collectively agree to tackle Climate Change, is the only path forward.
This seems like you just want to be edgy and doomerist with nothing to back yourself up.
Capitalism cannot solve Climate Change, as it depends on the highest possible profit margins and rampant consumerism.
It’s definitely possible to do “Green Capitalism”, so long as the profit margins of green capital exceed dirty capital.
But Americans have huge investments in old dirty infrastructure that they want to use until it falls apart. That’s the real difficulty. How do you convince people with a $1B pipeline through the West Texas gas fields to scrape that project and build lower-profit windmills/solar farms and HVDC cable lines instead?
Our current leadership could subsidize green energy to move the market. But this would force existing businesses to build new capital rather than rent seeking on existing capital.
Compare the US to France, which has a huge legacy investment in nuclear power. They’re capitalist, too, but they aren’t in a rush to burn more fossil fuels.
Capitalism can’t do green. If you were to make an accounting of all of the environmental damage that capitalist industry has done to the ecosystem, the cost to clean it all up would dwarf the revenue. Capitalist economists are incapable of calculating such “negative externalities” because they don’t understand basic thermodynamics. I used to work in environmental remediation and am happy to talk more about this if there is interest.
Capitalism can’t do green.
Goldman Sachs would argue otherwise. There are enormous rents to extract from an energy source that’s functionally boundless. And as the capital costs plunge, investment soars.
the cost to clean it all up would dwarf the revenue.
Oh sure. Repairing the harm that the fossil fuel industry has done would require an incalculable amount of capital and labor. And there’s some stuff we’re never getting back. Millions of species driven to extinction, for instance. How do you even put a price tag on that?
Capitalist economists are incapable of calculating such “negative externalities” because they don’t understand basic thermodynamics.
Capitalist participants don’t need to calculate long term tail risks and external costs precisely because they’re external. Even the most environmentally conscious investor is only really interested in the 40 years between when they start making serious investments and they retire. C-levels who only plan to stick around for 5 years, maybe 10 years at the longest, have even less concern for the long term consequences of their decisions.
But that problem isn’t unique to capitalism. Soviet economies were also incredibly short-sighted during their early iterations. The Russians were notoriously sloppy in their industrial development. China’s only refocused on ecology in the last fifteen years (hat tip to President Xi Jinping). Cuba’s ecology is more a consequence of the embargo than their eco-socialist philosophy. Vietnam’s industrialization has carried a huge cost to the native wilderness and ocean space.
Still, a real five / twenty / fifty / one-hundred year economic plan gets you a lot farther than “How much money can we print inside the next fiscal quarter?” hyper-capitalist mentality. Government bureaucracies that seek to reproduce themselves indefinitely need to crunch the numbers on this in a way that fly-by-night businesses do not.
But if you’re just looking to industrialize green at a rapid pace, capitalist economics does the job as well as any other system.
All nation states
I’m 13 and this is deep.
Never been a democracy
#suddenyarvinposts
I keep clicking this thumbnail because bright colorful fluffy animals.
I keep reading the text and not comprehending anything.
That’s not a bad thing, we all come to new things not understanding them at first, especially topics that we don’t get a good grasp on until we’re into adulthood and no longer have a structured education system to guide us. Subjects like politics, economics, sociology etc.
We all come to these daunting subjects with various levels of knowledge and ability, all we can do is try to dip our toes in to a subject that feels important to understand, get reading, watching videos, whatever works best for you, and go from there :-)
- We’re fucked
- We’ve always been fucked
- Everyone’s always been fucked
- Everyone is close to being really fucked
- rich people paying powerful people to get what they want is bad
- even without bribes/payoffs, powerful people in the USA have always only been rich people
- did I say USA? I meant the whole world
- we’re all gonna die if we don’t make sure people without money have a voice too, and convince powerful people not to keep polluting
we’re all gonna die if we don’t make sure people without money have a voice too, and convince powerful people not to keep polluting
You cannot convince Capitalists to “do the right thing.” That was the common through-line of Utopian Socialist failures. I recommend reading Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
I don’t know how to get everyone I know to really understand this. Every time I bring it up in conversation, the other person just puts their hands up and explains that they’re powerless to address it, so it’s not even worth talking about. I don’t know how to respond to the apathy.
Try recommending Marxist texts, or inserting them (tastefully) into conversation.
And, since we’ve shifted so far to the right, the “Marxist” texts can be written by John Maynard Keynes.
John Maynard Keynes isn’t Marxist though
Yeah that’s my point. The average democrat would consider him to be a dangerous radical leftist.
I wouldn’t say that an American mainstream economist from the mid 20th century is part of the pipeline to radicalization, but sure
I agree with the sentiment, but I do think Marxism itself should be spread, haha.
Maybe focus on a smaller scale.
Include, in your politics, actionable steps. The most important step is to create worker coops and supporting institutions, so you aren’t giving the fruits of your labor to capitalists with what you do everyday @memes
To be honest i offen feel the same, just helpless and too insignificant to change it in my own. But thats the point, we are not allone! I just try to show them undenieble facts, the already very present effect of climate crisis or just statistics of how the money is distributed in our country. The thing I struggle most with them is their bad feith in people. For example many welfare programs or in the extreme the concept of unconditional income by the state gets always used to argue that people are lazy and it would not work because no one would get a job anymore, which i disagree with
The best way to counter this is to point out the laziness at the top. Corporate welfare is way more damaging to society than the few million lazy people at the bottom. It would cost a lot less to write them off than to pay CEOs 2000 times as much as the average worker.
With reasonable, actionable steps. If you don’t have those, then they kind of have a point, don’t they? It’s like the Newton’s flaming laser sword of politics.
All first world governments have some degree of corruption from money in politics, but don’t kid yourselves: USA is much worse than most
Corruption in politics was described to me once as the grease that keeps the cogs of government turning. The importance difference is what type of grease is used. A government with low corruption uses a small amount of very clean grease, just enough, and only in the right places, to make the sticky gears turn. A government with high corruption will just drench every gear with very dirty crude oil, and if the gears seizes up they won’t even notice.
In an ideal world the machine of government wouldn’t need any corrupt grease or oil to keep turning but no one truely lives in that world, yet.
The third one is dumb, not everyone is USA
The third one is true regardless of country, as long as it is Capitalist.
go find your euro trash server then. i’m sick of you brats bitching about it. we’re here to talk about america.
Lemmy.ml is not an America-centric instance.
correct. i see UK references all the time and i don’t complain about it
I’m brazilian dumbass, being a first world country is not needed to have a better democracy than US
the meme format doesn’t make any sense
Aka “getting radicalised by bad faith actors on the internet”
Everybody is getting radicalized because moderation is killing us. It’s a Hail Mary situation.
The climate doesn’t care that you think it’s a conspiracy.
What conspiracy?
Apologies I replied to the wrong person.
Ahh the blind activism of the the intellectually challenged…
I mean, yeah. Half of us are below average intelligence. I’m not even going to pretend to know all the answers. As it gets hotter, people will panic and be willing to accept more and more drastic changes.
It’s great that you have such wise focused activism though. Link please? I’m open to your ideas too!
20 years? more like 5
Depends in how much you dont want to die
Right? That’s what I was coming to comment
Hey if a bunch of scientists say otherwise then, yah, they know better. But I thought we were basically beyond preventing catastrophic climate disaster?
Also this is the first I’m seeing the big Gritty brain meme format and I love it!
Climate change is not an existential threat. The existential threat is added by science journalism.
Climate change is gonna make life harder, but not kill humanity.
I um, I’m not arguing or anything. Just curious if my comment had something that made you bring up existential threats?
Catastrophic =/= “we all die”.
I meant more of the dictionary version of catastrophic. Sorry if it normally has or implies different meaning when talking about climate change.
The dictionary definition doesn’t imply we all die either.
O, then what does the equal equal thing mean? Yea I thought major climate catastrophe was unavoidable even with a complete and immediate change by the entire world. Not that everyone would die in a climate apocalypse.
It’s how people commonly type “does not equal” when they don’t have quick access to the not equal symbol. Your top level comment seemed to be contesting the meme, which claimed we still have 20 years to change before we all die. I was saying that 20 years before we all die is not the same as 20 years before a climate catastrophe.
Less than 5 probably
Negative 20 is in fact less than five and twenty, so I think you are both technically correct.
The crooked third caption may cause mental distress
They are all crooked mate.
But that one is a special kind of crooked
They’re not even all at the same angle… 😫
