Anyone else see that huge changes are happening right now and we’re still sleep walking?

[RudsyFarmer]

its Interesting to me that life is just carrying on while there are huge, seismic shifts occurring globally that will impact us. It’s like the start of the pandemic actually. When I read the paper and Covid had been found in China and I thought, ah China, that’s along way away and within a couple of weeks we were at the beginning of lockdowns and my joke about hoarding pasta became a reality.

We’re about to have a heatwave in October. We now have wildfires as standard in Europe every summer and mass migration of people from continents that are starting to become inhabitable are overrunning areas of Italy and Greece. More and more people will start moving away from devastated land in search of more temperate weather, food, housing and employment.

This isn’t something that will be happening in a decade. It’s happening right now. The places that used to grow our food are going to start conserving the food for their own people. I want to feel positive but I can’t see how times are going to get better from here. I read the news and it feels really, really fucking bleak.

I have a feeling it might just get into numbers in the end.

The Neanderthals were wiped out through inbreeding in the end. They just didn’t have enough genetically diverse options and so became weaker until they died out. We already know that medical intervention has made our species weaker overall. If we add in depopulation it won’t take that long for us to evolve into genetically sick beings with a raft of health problems and lower and lower life expectancy.

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I think that's a bit fanciful to think AI will do everything. But it may come up with solutions that we haven't through about.

Essentially we are on track for the West to implode. That's not good. Yes Western capitalism is flawed and has created huge problems. But it's also the thing that will solve the problems - and it is also responsible for pulling more people out of poverty globally than anyone would have ever thought possible.

Before the industrial revolution life was miserable for 99% of people. Regardless of where they lived.

It may seem unfair, but it's the only thing that has ever worked. Capitalism is the reason we have 6 billion people on the earth - most of which have food to eat, clean water and housing.

Pull that system to pieces and we've had it.

We need some sort of meritocratic system where there are enough capable, educated and skilled people at the top of the heirarchy. However, the way it's going, the world will be filled with anything other than that. There won't be anough of these people to keep the show on the road and billions of people will suffer as a result.

Africa, South America and India are not in a position to come up with an alternative system to replace Western capitalism. But they are the countries that populations wise will keep growing whilst the West will take a nose dive.

You would think we could devise a system based on merit rather than inheritance though which is what capitalism is in practice

Current capitalism relies on continuous growth where growth is measured in terms of resource usage not the improvement of the human condition

Current capitalism therefore has implosion built into it

That's not true. It's almost conspiratorial what you're saying.

How about capitalism relies on continuous PROGRESS - progress that improves the human condition? How has the human condition deteriorated since before the industrial revolution? It hasn't. It's exporentially improved so much so that we're not dying of anything and we're all living longer. Even in third world and developing countries. They all benefit from capitalism. Without it a great deal more people would never have been born, let alone fed and kept alive with medicine.

You have to reward individual effort otherwise why would anyone take on the risk of becoming a surgeon or a policeman? Take away the prospect of changing your lineage's future prosperity, security and comfort by taking away inheritance and suddenly the risk of accidentally killing someone through a professional mishap looks like too much of a big one to take. Why would anyone bother to become a lawyer or doctor or midwife?

Everyone sees capitalism as greed. But that's the cynical view. Capitalism is reward for personal sacrifice and risk. It's the reward for SUFFERING - otherwise why go to work? Why help that person? Why empty the bins?

Consumerim is measured in terms of resource usage. Perhaps it's that that we should be focusing on.

How about creating a society where excessive material wealth and consumption is frowned upon?

I don't know what that future might look like, but it's the only solution I think is worth investigating.

What we have today is destroying the planet we live on - it's like saying we are making progress by being fastest to push ourselves to extinction.

It is not working at the global level and it really isn't working for most people in this country either - has COL has passed you by? Has the degradation of health and education?

We have made some improvements especially in medicine but life expectancy is now going backwards
( and note that the Industrial Revolution also had a huge negative impact on life expectancy )

It’s not all bad as pp says

We have better medicine, greater comfort, and we will invent new things which help

Sure there’s the downside of consumption too

I don't really get what your saying. There is no 'but whataboutery' when it comes to the benefits of capitalism. It's all been a journey with winners and losers. But the point being that without it we would not be here. There is no alternative to capitalism.

There was no health and education before capitalism came along. Only on a local level. It's not capitalism that's to blame, it's how people are using it that's the problem. If we have gone backwards it's because the people who are benfiting the most from it are corrupt and are misusing it.

That's not capitalism that's human beings.

What it comes down to is that we are consuming too much in the wrong way as a consequence of capitalism and this is harming the planet.

How do we share but still keep people motivated enough to work and invent?

The question is how do we make democratic capitalism work better on a global scale whilst reducing consumption and championing sustainability.

Which brings us right back around to the hot topics of the day.

In other words, capitalism has evolved to such giddy heights that it is consuming the planet and humankind to a point of collapse.

When that happens, the critical mass of humankind collapses too. There is then no modern human solution because evolution never follows the same path.

I’m not aware of any non-capitalist societies’ deep concern for global warming or the environment generally.

I suppose the world’s few isolated indigenous tribes might have a claim, but they’re a bit irrelevant to the bigger picture.

I guess when I mean sleep walking I mean that people have this idea that a change of government is going to change things and I hear that being discussed so much on here

What's the point in criticising people for sleepwalking then? What is it you think individual people should be doing instead which would have more effect than voting for a change of government?

I guess it doesn't help that here in the UK people are told to recycle, do less, use less, pay more and so on and so on. But then you see something like China built a million flats because they over estimated their population by a billion and now they are demolishing them because they can't sell them because there is literally no one to buy them and you think 'what is the fucking point'. If we just all recycle our Coke cans we can save the world. No we can't. Because China and Russia don't give a shite and next it will be India....

BlueYonder57 · 04/10/2023 19:25

HongKongGarden · 04/10/2023 10:23

You’re suggesting that politicians don’t know about gravity?

That seems unlikely.

Can't really comment on the rest, but this lot of politicians are so thick, and think we are so thick, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if gravity was not understood. They seem to struggle with everything else....”

Indeed. Which was it, who hadn’t realised that Dover was a rather crucial port? Raab?

Pretty much par for the course with that poster. The latest gem was to ban cars and reinstate all the railway lines that have been closed since Beeching and IIRC connect every town and village (something even the Victorians didn't manage). No answer to my question of how much, how long's it going to take, what's it going to cost and how's HS project (ONE railway line) coming long in terms of keeping to completion date and budget?

No, not in other words. That’s not what I’ve said at all.

capitalism could be conscientious if that’s what human kind wants it to be.

capitalism based on a service economy where the product is effort and not material is sustainable. It is entirely plausible that manufacturing could be regulated to curb consumption. Something that is already being chucked around among the global elites I think in the Great Reset idea.

even The radical left in the UK are not contemplating chucking out capitalism. It’s how to apply it and share the spoils and how far to regulate the market economy that is up for debate.