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Scientists Warn the UN of Capitalism's Imminent Demise (vice.com)
Capitalism as we know it is over, an anonymous reader writes. So suggests a new report commissioned by a group of scientists appointed by the UN Secretary-General. From a report: The main reason? We're transitioning rapidly to a radically different global economy, due to our increasingly unsustainable exploitation of the planet's environmental resources. Climate change and species extinctions are accelerating even as societies are experiencing rising inequality, unemployment, slow economic growth, rising debt levels, and impotent governments. Contrary to the way policymakers usually think about these problems, the new report says that these are not really separate crises at all. Rather, these crises are part of the same fundamental transition to a new era characterized by inefficient fossil fuel production and the escalating costs of climate change. Conventional capitalist economic thinking can no longer explain, predict, or solve the workings of the global economy in this new age, the paper says [PDF].
Shit's falling down, brah
Get out of the way. You can thank me later.
- CL
I love how people use the word "scientists". It is a completely meaningless term which is supposed to engender feelings of respect. Are these people applying the scientific method to any of their research, or are they just a bunch of lifelong academics looking to avoid real work.
This time socialism will totally work for the whole world, because the *right* people will be in charge and won't be greedy, or self-interested, or power hungry like those awful capitalists. Because they're *scientists.*
TANSTAAFL
Are you telling me that struggles with climate change, scarcity of natural resources and so on will just vanish into thin air by embracing Socialism or perhaps a Fascist dictatorship, or Communist rule? These issues somehow ONLY cause problems for people living in Capitalist systems?
I've got some news for the Capitalist haters out there .... The majority of innovations in technology that will help the whole planet transition to cleaner forms of energy, and possibly even mitigate some of the climate change issues are being developed in Capitalist America.
If the American Capitalist system fails, it won't be for any of these reasons. It'll simply be due to our leaders constantly increasing the levels of our national debt, in efforts to extend and expand the role of central government into all sorts of areas it was never originally intended to get that involved with. The nation only generates so much wealth each year, and it's a recipe for disaster to keep spending more than what's sustainable.
Nothing the U.N. produces is worth anything outside of political agendas.
...except for all the rest. Or, at least, that's how the saying goes.
Given that capitalism is fundamentally based on an assumption of greed, which seems to be a fairly consistent trait among humans, it has functioned remarkably well up to this point. But given enough time and not enough regulation, it's inevitable that the greed of some will outpace that of others, resulting in the system approaching a state where wealth has accumulated in the hands of a few, as well as that those who (or that which) are less capable of defending themselves will inevitably be exploited by those who are more capable. For us, that means the exploitation of the middle-class, the lower-class, and the things we share with the wealthy, such as our shared natural resources. Unsurprisingly, this sort of exploitation is exactly what we're seeing happen on a more and more frequent basis.
I think parts of the US are slowly waking up to that fact, but a cultural awakening of this sort usually takes decades or generations to complete. We're just starting to recognize the problem. It'll be decades more before we're willing to fix it. And, at least in the case of the US, the necessary changes will almost certainly require changes to the Constitution, but we won't be able to make those changes until the people are demanding those changes en masse, and we're nowhere close to that point yet.
What kind of scientists are experts on social and government construct, and associated economics? Political scientists?
I hope they wore their white lab coats.
Now we just need to start educating people on what a social democracy actually is, since we've let thinktank dipshits say everything but rampant laissez faire capitalism means the government just take's everyone's stuff.
You're already living in a relatively fascist society thanks to the right and centrist liberals. You're spied on, can be disappeared with no trial for any reason someone can just make up, the cops can just shoot you dead for any reason they feel like any get away with it about 90% of the time, capital is working on basically owning the IDEA of ideas, and if you're not the top 0.0001% every system is made to deny you any sort of help and funnel your money to said 0.0001%.
I think maybe kicking these people out for people who maybe, possibly think you deserve an ounce of dignity if you're not ultra-rich isn't really that crazy. Yeah- they're all wholly corruptible as any of us but that's not really an excuse for inaction.
Venezuela has effectively been wiped clean. Perhaps they could start there.
Can someone tell me which hypothesis they tested and what data set they used to draw these conclusions.
The paper presents the hypothesis that private sector activity alone or even a carbon emission tax will suffice to transform human society to sustain itself. Then it cites previously published articles to refute this hypothesis.
Actually, your headline is about as accurate as the summary's in that calling them chickens is about as accurate as calling them scientists. The lead author, Paavo Järvensivu, is a independent researcher of economic culture which is not science, the next author is a PhD student in the Department of Political and Economic Studies at Helsinki (again not science), and the next two authors appear to be philosophers only the last author claims to be a scientist.
at least some of them are likely applying the scientific method to their research.
Which "method" would that be?
Is it the one where they conduct repeatable experiments?
How about the method where they take quantitative readings of known, agreed, observations and then extrapolate the results?
Maybe it is the method where a group of people have a few beers and bemoan the propspects for the world. Then (after a few more beers) arrive at the conclusion that we're all doomed.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
From 0 to 18000 kronor you have 0 tax. Sure 18000 kronor is not much (2000 dollar yearly!) but then up to 460K kronor, that is 50K dollar yearly the tax rate is only about 30%. So far off your 76%. In fact only the top marginal tax have 76% and ONLY if you count the VAT (the top tax is 57% not 76% and if you count 25% from VAT then only then you come near 70% at most and that is assuming you think all tax goes to the same entity the state, which is untrue as about 20% of that is municipality). So I would qualify your claim as not only untrue, but if the people having less than 70K$ per year have any brain they will vote to continue the system.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
2 to write and 1 to make the docs pretty. What's the problem? You do understand that pol science is hard, right? It's essentially statistics. Same with being an Economic cultural researcher. Again, math.
.com boom? The housing bubble? Regular people made money because there was just plain so much of it. But a lot of that money was real and was due to massive increases in productivity. Manufacturing's doubled in 50 years. Farm yields are through the roof. Did you know those farm yields require oil, and not just to run tractors? We use oil by products to replenish soil so we can grow without waiting for the land to recover.
And it's not even hard to imagine why they're saying all this. Capitalism as we practice it today makes people's lives better by growing faster than the ruling class can monopolize the wealth. Remember the
Their point is we can't keep that up. Climate Change won't let us. We can't "grow ourselves out of a recession" anymore. At some point we're going to need social solutions. That means reigning in what we let the ruling class have/do. It means that the scraps the working class has traditionally been left with, which have been mighty tasty scraps of late, are about to go back to what they used to be; scraps. We either fix that with socialism or we go back to feudalism with kings, queens and knights being the crap out of us peasants.
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