Baltimorei

[jp1]

The thrust of my argument has been that the first function of any political system has to be survival, and that if it fails there nothing else much matters.

I think we're both on the same page on this point. Where we differ is that you don't seem to think that Iran's behavior is reasonable since their behavior is an attempt to survive against the US political system.

[LDAHL]

I think we're both on the same page on this point. Where we differ is that you don't seem to think that Iran's behavior is reasonable since their behavior is an attempt to survive against the US political system.

To the contrary. I think Iran's behavior is entirely reasonable given their political and cosmological beliefs. If you feel you're doing God's will by forcing the infidels or heretics to accept your theology, or failing that kill them (even at the cost of your own survival), then Iran has a winning game plan.

[catherine]

The thrust of my argument has been that the first function of any political system has to be survival, and that if it fails there nothing else much matters.

I still don't get it…

There have been many tribes that lasted for well beyond 200 years! 200 years is a blip. It is not a marker for cultural superiority.

If we kill off all the bees because we poison them with pesticides, is that a good thing? We conquered the bees, so we're the superior beings?

And to that analogy: if we keep up acidifying, deforesting, eroding, polluting (the intended and unintended consequence of capitalism), we will be the culture that is extinguished and therefore inferior, and Mother Nature will have had the last laugh and will have reigned supreme. And we can etch our allegiance to capitalism on our tombstones.

[LDAHL]

I still don't get it…

There have been many tribes that lasted for well beyond 200 years! 200 years is a blip. It is not a marker for cultural superiority.

If we kill off all the bees because we poison them with pesticides, is that a good thing? We conquered the bees, so we're the superior beings?

And to that analogy: if we keep up acidifying, deforesting, eroding, polluting (the intended and unintended consequence of capitalism), we will be the culture that is extinguished and therefore inferior, and Mother Nature will have had the last laugh and will have reigned supreme. And we can etch our allegiance to capitalism on our tombstones.

Once again, I'm not making judgments about "superiority", except perhaps in the sense that existence is preferable to extinction.

Also, I don't necessarily agree with your conflation of "capitalism" with "environmental irresponsibility". You can have one without the other. One has only to consider the records of the former Soviet Union or contemporary China to see that.

[kib]

Everything is connected. The bottom line is, you can't take everything and also leave enough for a functioning planet, and whether it's a totalitarian system or a capitalistic one, if it has no brakes or checks, which seem at bottom to be about connecting the conscience of individual human beings to the actions of entities (whether corporations or political leaders) that act "on their behalf", then that system will seek to take everything.

[ApatheticNoMore]

It's hard to say what could be constructed as much has not been tried. Although of course tribal society was successful for a far longer period of time, I mean humanity has been tribal for a longer period of time (than it has existed otherwise at present, and than it may continue to exist without nuclear weapons and environmental destruction ending the whole thing perhaps). To say whatever is currently is, is successful, well of course it's a "might makes right" argument, but you could argue the same thing about any period of time, the Middle Ages, the Roman empire (lasted far longer than the U.S. is likely to), the centuries this piece of land was home to native Americans. Until they weren't. And they all seem to have lasted longer than this is going to, but that's a prediction that can only be known with certainty in hindsight (if there's anything left alive with the consciousness to know), but the trends aren't good, and this period of time is short yet compared to most others.

I'm not that keen on the capitalist label. My preferred term is "the existing economic system". Although I mostly prefer that because what someone has in their head when you say capitalism depends on who you talk to and I don't want a concrete point I'm making about this economic system, diverted into endless theoretical alleys.

The current system is unchecked, increasingly unchecked as far as protecting anything but profit, as far as protecting human (or animal) life, health etc.. But it's not without state support of course. In fact it absolutely depends on it. What the economic system would look like if no bailouts had happened I can't say. But it wouldn't be smoothly the same exact thing. Without trillions of dollar in bailouts it would be different, I don't comment on whether that would be a better or worse difference (except when your economic system seems to aim only for the extinction of life on earth, everything starts to seem a chance at something better), and it may have sparked revolutions or evolution or mere collapse. What it would look like without the U.S. empire I can't say but it wouldn't be this, some forms of capitalism may or may not exist without the U.S. empire. And some argue capitalism could exist with protectionism, in fact more protectionist periods have been called capitalist, but that would be a less out of control form if it did, since national governments could regulate national common welfare if they wanted (that's not the world of the TPP). It strikes me as a more workable form in terms of being democratically accountable. But the existing and unfolding economic system (some call it neoliberalism), is an out of control unmitigated disaster.

But unchecked-capitalist-consumerist-free-market-imperialist-democratic (as opposed to socialist) society seems a bit unwieldy.

Democracy what's that? Ok I'm not just going to argue the U.S. isn't democratic, that may very well be, but I want to argue there are forms of political democracy. There is direct democracy and there is representative democracy, the results might be different. There is democracy where politicians are chosen out of the population by lottery (lots) rather than being the same old representatives (if we have a jury of our peers why not a government of our peers?). That too is a form of representative democracy. Within even the existing form of having designated representatives there are voting schemes. Consider a voting scheme like this at the most simple:
http://scorevoting.net/Approval.html

Is it any less democratic than what we call democracy? (and it's representative democracy as well). I don't see it. Would it lead to very different results? Would Nader have been President? Ha, now I doubt we know that, but overall such a system would likely lead to some different results. There is also representative democracy where we actually had some immediate power to hold our representatives accountable (democracy with recall power like some states have where we could immediately push recalls of these TPP signers - not sit around and twiddle our thumbs until the next election).

Most things are untried. I fundamentally don't believe in an ideal society constructed in a test tube, but most stuff is only minimally tried in the real world. Most forms of democracy are untried. Most socialist projects are untried. I'm not talking about the USSR, it may have been a corruption of the original intent, but that corruption was tried. I'm talking: the U.S. government has crushed most attempts at leftist government (even anarchists movements) since then worldwide, with straight out coups at times, with mass murder when necessary, even putting in brutal right wing dictators (you could argue the left wing dictators are no better, but you can't argue the coups didn't happen and abort what would otherwise have happened). If "might makes right" this hardly matters but .... it matters if you are arguing what is and is not successful when not crushed by outside force.

What's the point of thinking about something like approval voting in the link above, when it will never happen anyway? It's just some kind of esoteric math exercise for geeks right? Well it's a thought experiment. To show that there's no such thing as one form of political democracy. But also why won't it or countless other things ever happen? Why do we continue to pursue an obviously failed system to extinction? Just sheer stupidity and thick-headedness, a failure of imagination? Because it never was accountable to most people anyway, and we have no power to change it short of revolution anyway and we'll be shot in the streets for trying, the iron fist behind the invisible hand, while the elite are completely out of touch with reality and morality? Because we personally have divine favor that we as individuals and a species will be ok no mater what happens? I think we have no such thing! Because there are no easy fixes? Yes, but I don't think it really explains the lack of even trying.

[catherine]

But also why won't it or countless other things ever happen? Why do we continue to pursue an obviously failed system to extinction? Just sheer stupidity and thick-headedness, a failure of imagination? ...Because we personally have divine favor that we as individuals and a species will be ok no mater what happens? I think we have no such thing! Because there are no easy fixes? Yes, but I don't think it really explains the lack of even trying.

Wow.. awesome, ANM. Love the whole post.

I agree: What we have here is a failure to imagine-ate.

Also, I don't necessarily agree with your conflation of "capitalism" with "environmental irresponsibility".

Yeah, I agree, that was sloppy. You can be a socialist and pollute, or a communist and pollute. But with the current "unchecked-capitalist-consumerist-free-market-imperialist-democratic society" it's hard to build capital and care about the consequences of unmitigated production at the same time. You're Monsanto with a billion dollar global empire: do you really care about topsoil? Just go find another country to clear-cut. God forbid you should tell your shareholders that your profits could have been larger, but you chose to invest in smaller production, biodynamic farming, so corn and soybeans are going up x amount as a result.

If you are a commercial fisherman, are you going to spare the last salmon, because you know the other guy will get it anyway? And the more you pillage the oceans, the more money you will make, and that's what being a good capitalist is all about.

I said in an earlier post that if there are models of capitalism, like Hawken's Natural Capitalism, that take the environmental impact into the equation, OK. But that's not where we are.

[catherine]

P.S.

[JaneV2.0]

I was appalled to learn recently that (quasi-legal) tax evasion amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars offshored by our patriotic flag-waving capitalist overlords. The infrastructure is dissolving before our eyes; think what those tax dollars could accomplish.

Senator Sanders recently published the following list of corporate tax avoiders:
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/top-10...e-tax-avoiders

[ApatheticNoMore]

What about frameworks to think about sustainability? Here's one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Natural_Step

I'm not an "advocate" of it, I don't know enough to be such an advocate! I don't know how it compares to others that may exist etc.. The corporations that claim to be sustainable according to it may be dubious. It may seem an idealistic framework (sustainable so no more is taken than is replenished from the earth, really? isn't that a tad utopian?). But then the question is only how much non-sustainability until the whole thing crashes? What constitutes failure? Human extinction? The death of 6 billion humans out of the 7 billion on earth? What about if it "only" kills 3 billion? Etc.

"To explain the challenge the metaphor of a funnel is used. The walls closing in represent the many (systematic and often exponentially increasing) trends of e.g.; decreasing number and quality of natural resources and ecosystems, the stricter laws and regulations, degrading interpersonal and person-to-person trust, increasing toxicity levels, growing human population, increase in demands for resources, etc. The walls of the funnel are getting closer and closer over time limiting the room to maneuver. Individuals, organizations and society are hitting the walls of the funnel over time e.g.: victims of climate change related weather events, depleting fish stocks, increased number of cancer occurrences, air/water/soil pollution, decreasing trust, bankruptcies due to price increases, fines, stricter regulations, etc." - from the wikipedia article

But anyway back to the idea of frameworks such as that for thinking about things. Maybe it helps with the flailing around, attempts to ground it. The flailing around like: can we have an economy the doesn't destroy the biosphere? Which is better the US or the USSR or China? If we had no growth how would we have an economy? Does anyone know how to think about sustainable economics in a systematic way, I've merely heard nice things about it?

An economy based on such a framework almost certainly wouldn't be the existing economic system. It might be "socialist" or what is called such, but it's not flailing around discussing theoretical ideals alone. The thing is people support more socialist systems (of all varieties) for a lot of really good reasons that are orthogonal to sustainability, but that framework presupposes the goals are sustainability and human needs (max neefs model of human needs).