Because capitalism is eating the planet.

[RE]

Right on cue

https://www.newsweek.com/south-korea-youth-birth-rate-falling-1848201

South Korea's Population Collapse Is Set To Deepen

RE

[K-Dog]

If anybody watches this and wants to comment I will respond.  I had it playing while I made my last two posts.

The privileged class of the pissed met in the small English town of Glastonbury where (sometimes controversial) discussions about the environment and society. One conference explored how we might become more 'collapse ready' in emotional, practical, and political ways. This 'deep adaptation' event was organised by local residents and included an afternoon panel with the Green Party Mayor of Glastonbury, Indra Donfrancesco, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, Gail Bradbrook, the host of Planet Critical, Rachel Donald, the host of All That We Are, Amisha Ghadiali, and author of 'Breaking Together', Professor Jem Bendell.

   

My feeling is that an important ingredient is missing. 

[K-Dog]

How can we make it real for them, real enough to feel fear, real enough to fear for themselves and their children, real enough to change themselves and to demand change from everyone else?

[TDoS]

How can we make it real for them, real enough to feel fear, real enough to fear for themselves and their children, real enough to change themselves and to demand change from everyone else?

Make what they believe crucial to their well being, and that of their children....scarce. That is why resource scarcity has always been such a go-to scenario for those looking for scary scenarios. Diseases have been popular, super-volcanoes are great for effect, hard for predictability , we all know how peak oil went 5 years ago now, climate change doesn't work as well, no pizzaz.

I'm betting that when one thing or another finally gets going, it'll be reflected more in social unrest than anything else. Not the penny ante stuff that folks are always trying to claim is the beginning of the end, but the real deal. We won't be sitting around in a comfortable abode lounging with clean water in a glass that came out of the faucet as we go hyperbolic on the internet over the equivalent of a pimple, we will be too busy trying to stay alive. When we have electricity we won't be using it for complain we can't go our favorite website, as opposed to looking for where authorities are attempting to distribute food or fuel supplies.

[Knarf]

Right now I think the thing that bugs the "haves" is the future of their money/security/home/ food ...etc. That scarcity is palatable in our societies. My hope and work is to emphasize the futility of hopium for a standard of living that is "advertised" to us all. That is the trick. Now, with AI we can create narratives of what the stupidity of chasing after the "American dream", actually gets you. Now where. The values in life have to change from the materialist/capital driven meme, to a cooperative winning meme.

[K-Dog]

Changes will be coming. 
Roger makes it clear state control of the economy WILL HAPPEN.

So, what kind would you like to have?

[RE]

Changes will be coming. 
Roger makes it clear state control of the economy WILL HAPPEN.

So, what kind would you like to have?

Not one controlled by democrats or republicans.

Not one controlled by Billionaires.

Not one controlled by politicians elected by a population that has shit for brains.

RE

[K-Dog]

Climate change and resource depletion cannot be directly blamed on capitalism, but capitalism creates an environment where exploitation is the norm.  An environment where collective concerns are ignored.

It is a fatal flaw.  Capitalism enabled the century of the self.  The century which may have set up conditions that result in human.

Jason W Moore sees unfavorable shifts in the climate as bad for ruling classes.  Their grip on the existing order is exaggerated and when unfavorable climatic conditions happen the ruling class can't adapt and provide what average people need.

This should give us pause to reject both the climate doomism and, I think the climate resignation, this sense of powerlessness in the present conjuncture.

But Diner readers know resource depletion means doomism can't be rejected as cavalierly as Jason would like to.

I had a sense of where the argument might go and I guessed correctly.  Critics will say the arguments Jason presents are circular.  I am not a critic.  I agree with Jason says mostly.  Capitalism puts money in charge and profit exploits.

The exploitation of labor power is the cash machine that destroys the environment.  Cheap labor is the resource that capitalism cannot live without.  Cheap labor is used to cheapen everything else.  As environmental conditions become unfavorable  getting things done becomes harder and profit suffers.  Capitalism fails.

Without a new frontier to exploit capitalism fails.  Profit must extract from a surplus.  The cancer will die, but it likely takes us with it.

[jupiviv]

The exploitation of labor power is the cash machine that destroys the environment.  Cheap labor is the resource that capitalism cannot live without.  Cheap labor is used to cheapen everything else.  As environmental conditions become unfavorable  getting things done becomes harder and profit suffers.  Capitalism fails.

Without a new frontier to exploit capitalism fails.  Profit must extract from a surplus.  The cancer will die, but it likely takes us with it.

I'd say, 'dead labor' qua Marx i.e labor embedded in goods over which the laborer has no control, or literally dead laborers sacrificed in the process of producing goods. The cheapness of a specific group of laborers can always be partially mediated to keep the system stable/functional, hence why not all labor has the same value. But the net value of all labor is always already cheaper than the net value of all goods under any capital system, i.e any economic system based on hierarchical command over the labor process.

Getting rid of 'capitalism' alone won't change this beyond the aforementioned partial and temporary mediations. We (or rather the parasitic classes) may well decommodify labor and goods when capitalist waste risks the stability of the capital system. But without universal democratic control over what gets produced how why, you still have 'dead labor'. An undemocratic structure can allow for guaranteed work and min wage, vital resources being centrally managed etc, but none of those things can be universal or irreversible. The metabolic order of inequality will always seek wasteful expansion, will always be threatened by some combination of social antagonism and resource limits, and always adapt thereto by reversing its concessions until the crisis subsides.

A lot of the eco-socialist discourse is around trying to 'balance' ecology and socialism which assumes those things can ever be at odds to begin. If people genuinely control the labor (and life) processes they will actively want to do everything in their power to ensure they continue far beyond their lifetimes.

[K-Dog]

A quote from the video.

You'll notice that congresspeople, they're not millionaires when they go in, but they're millionaires when they come out.

Money makes mo'money, with slaves to money stuffed at a bean feed while everyone else goes hungry.  Everyone brainwashed into thinking that this is the way it is, and this is the way it must stay.  The more pathetic philanthropists of the useless eater are bribed by a bag of groceries.

[K-Dog]

Everything literally crumbles back at the ranch, while billions of American tax dollars are spent supporting a genocidal war and an apartheid state.  Our country is run by criminals who slaughters people for profit.  Follow the money.  See who our politicians serve.  It's not you.

Hundreds of millions have seen our politicians serve their money since the Gaza crisis began.  All of them.  The truth can't be ignored.  It is as clear as the difference between night and day.

Carlos is a very smart guy.