Gas prices reach above $5 in California

technocrat · Joined: 04 Dec 2007 Posts: 216

Capitalism works, but only under the assumption that resources are virtually unlimited and that growth AND maintenance are forever sustainable. Where Capitalism shines is in its system of relatively efficient distribution of wants and the use of markets for faster, more accurate consumer responsiveness. Market/Capitalist efficiency only applies to distribution of wants. It makes no judgment to the sustainability or rationality of wants. What people want is often a function of mass advertisement a they mind-colonize you to want shit you don't really want or need. They manufacture your consumption patterns so they can sustain themselves. It will supply wants up until society implodes when the bubble pops, letting reality rush in, meanwhile, it will make sure you buy shit products that work just enough, but not long enough, so you will continue to buy (but must anyway) new products. We have landfills with mountain-sized piles of discarded, perfectly useful cell-phones because companies convinced people they required new ones with slight changes and new catchy advertisement. You might as well have taken all those resources and hurled them into the ocean. Wasteful.

The same principle for why capitalism works, but is so bad for us, is the choice between plastic and paper. We could stop significant pollution if we used neither and kept burlap bags for reusability, but capitalism cannot have that. IF we had that, paper and plastic bag makers would go out of business, people would lose jobs. Meanwhile, rational conservation methods are ignored and we pile the Earth up with non-biodegradable waste until we have mountains of trash that can't go anywhere and have entirely pissed away millions + kwhrs of energy.

Another retarded product of Capitalism is bottled water. Yes, people spend billions per year buying WATER that comes from a tap, yet people often believe it's spring water due to clever advertisement wording. Notwithstanding, you can't fathom how much petroleum is wasted on these throwaway bottles. But people want them, and they partly want them because capitalist advertisement makes them want them. And now they must buy them, or there cannot be growth, people will lose jobs, etc. In the mean time, we are hemorrhaging oil due to this. Wasteful! But unavoidable under capitalism. Because the market has no standards. It simply gives people want they want, regardless of whether or not it's good.

In the former Soviet Union, there are hundreds of thousands of people slowly dying of starvation, not because they lack food, but because the "free market" in the West demands sacrificial corn to feed the Automobile God. Yes, we are burning food to put into cars so people can drive hummers while the people in the countries that grow that corn starve to death because they have to ship the corn to us, but cannot afford to buy the corn themselves to survive. It's hilarious how the market works, and no one bats an eye.

The solution is a technocratic one, but it's undesirable to many and authoritarian. It also requires a decreased standard of living in the short term to account for long-term benefit and a more collective ethic. It requires regulations on what products can be created, advertisement techniques, and redistribution. It requires an energy-credit/energy-accounting economy instead of the capitalist monetary economy we have now. It's also never going to happen until society implodes, which it will soon. Then people will try it. And it will work.

technocrat · Joined: 04 Dec 2007 Posts: 216

Edit: eventually, we will need to go back to a more collectivist economy of redistribution that serviced human populations for thousands of years, supporting some of the greatest ancient civilizations, because the rampant individualism, market-provision of useless products that people "want" (e.g. pet rocks!?) won't be sustainable and will literally destroy civilization if not stopped. We need to reverse-engineer the individual focus that overtakes the group.

Kizzume · Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 12:15 pm Post subject: