K. A. Pital wrote: 2019-03-14 05:28pmSustainability under optimal organization could theoretically ensure survival of this number of people, but certainly with no exuberant consumption excesses like now.
I disagree. 8 billion people are too many people for the long-term health of the planet and the fact we're currently in the midst of Great Extinction event is proof of that. An event that started several centuries ago at least.
Ergo, under capitalism we are heading for disaster.
We're headed for disaster at this point regardless, the only question is how hard the landing is going to be.
Communism has no success to show off. The USSR collapsed. East Germany had to build a wall and a no man's zone to keep people IN. China might still have a centralized government but has moved towards capitalism in its economy. The capitalistic countries over-consume and the communist ones slaughter their own with famine. Unless we come up with an alternative to
both of those we're pretty fucked.
Under a planned system exuberant overconsumption would be put an end to, and quite possibly let us pass through the needle of peak population. Population controls may be implemented by the government based on recognized necessity.
Yep, slaughter and sterilization, the abolishment of free will and self determinations - as I said, there is no
moral and ethical way to fix this current problem. Mao's Great Leap Forward certainly helped ease China's overpopulation problem by killing off 45 million people but mass slaughter whether by directly by guns or indirectly by famine is not a morally acceptable solution.
Here's the problem: centrally planned economies, in practice, have a bad habit of NOT being able to provide the necessities of life and killing off their own by the millions, in between episodes of being able to provide a certain consistent low-level subsistence to everyone, with a cadre of elites on top who are always well-fed and warm. Capitalism has a track record of being more resistant to mass-death by famine, but at the cost of a permanent existence of a truly desperate underclass and exportation of the worst jobs and garbage/debris, and the upside that most people do manage to get what they need even if they have to struggle for it and a cadre of elites on top who are always well-fed and warm.
Neither of these are warm and fuzzy civilizations.
Oddly enough - things seem to go better when there is some attempt at a middle road. Central-planning countries that allow for some capitalism seem to do better. Capitalistic systems that incorporate "socialist" things like universal health care and housing for the destitute are a lot nicer place to live than somewhere like the US.
The New Deal scared the living fuck out of the oligarchs at the time because it sounded communist instead of "rugged individualist". At that point, the USSR was a new player on the world scene and China hadn't gone socialist yet, there wasn't the track record to show the flaws in their system and they seemed to be enjoying success at conversion by the sword and the oligarchs were well aware their necks would be first under the sword. Or, more accurately, they'd be first against the wall if the revolution came. And here came Roosevelt feeding the poor instead of insisting they find jobs, making jobs by way of government instead of relying on private industry, and all those other frightening things that, to an oligarch, looked like communism getting a toehold in the US.
In reality, for all its flaws, the New Deal kept the lid on the masses - by instituting even a tattered and threadbare safety net for the bottom of the social hierarchy it forestalled revolution. Some of the oligarchs understood that, and that's why something as repulsive to them as "
social security" (what passes for a public pension system in the US) still exists and is not going away. That's why the US still has the "food stamp" program (although renamed now, that's what it's called) - hungry people are dangerous, keep the poor fed and you make them less likely to get stabby. Forget religion being the opiate of the masses, keeping them housed and fed, even in crappy housing with crappy food, is what keeps the revolutionary mob at bay. Ancient Rome with its breads and circuses understood that, it's not really a new concept.
Please - the contaminated sites in the former USSR had nothing to do with "the West", it was the result of decisions made by a centrally planned communist regime, some of those decisions and actions taken as far back as the 1940's. Take responsibility for your own goddamned messes, just like you expect the "the West" to do.
Contaminated sites are inevitable if competition with, or likewise trading with, the capitalist world is the goal. And such a goal is very much related to the existence of capitalism as such. First it was a matter of competition with capitalism, later it was a matter of selling oil & gas to capitalists, to feed their industries.
Yeah yeah - officer, I had to hit my girlfriend, the bitch made me do it to - all the poor communist countries are pitiful victims, helpless against the demonic capitalistic forces.
Bullshit. The central planning governments
chose to do things the way they did them, to engage in projects that laid waste to the environment, to dump radioactive shit into rivers and lakes, turn the Aral Sea into a desert, contaminate vast swathes of land with heavy metals and chemicals. Your system was supposed to be better, superior - why wasn't it? Don't blame "The West" - The West wasn't making the decisions for you, YOU were. There's no reason there couldn't have been better environmental controls on known risks like lead smelters other than callous indifference to human life and suffering.
Planning is the only road that is not catastrophic. If you do not constrain yourselves, the world will deal with that through catastrophe anyway.
Right. How many dead under Stalin? 20 million? How many under Mao? 45 million? Well, sure that does help the overpopulation problem a tiny bit, but the track record for central planning is nothing to brag about. Again, don't blame The West or The Capitalists for that. Your system doesn't work.
The problem is, again, people are their own worst enemy. We don't need a devil, we ARE the devil.
But back to topic - the New Deal was effective in halting the economic plunge. It got a bunch of people back to work, fed some hungry folks, and forestalled revolution by restoring confidence in the national social and economic structure. It ameliorated the worst excesses of pure capitalism (just as a dose of capitalism can ameliorate the worst excesses of communism). It wasn't perfect, but it didn't have to be, it just had to be good enough. I don't think, by itself, it was going to result in a truly healthy economy long term but the primary goal was not that but to support society long enough for circumstances to change for the better. Instead, we got WWII which, in human terms, was NOT for the better although it sure benefited the economy in the US (it sort of fucked up Europe and Asia because that's where most of the physical destruction occurred). Which is also a point - what's best for the economy is not necessarily the best in human terms. Regardless of how history actually played out, the New Deal was successful, even if far from perfect.
