The notion that we can take and take and take and take, waste and waste, without consequences, is driving the biosphere

[applegrove]

https://c.im/@boksy/116874457364642829

"The corporation a present-day instrument of destruction because of its compulsion to externalize any cost that an unwary or uncaring public will allow it to externalize.
The notion that we can take and take and take and take, waste and waste, without consequences, is driving the biosphere to destruction.”

— Ray Anderson

[orthoclad]

1. Externalized costs!

Oh Woe! Where would capitalism's profits be if they had to actually pay the true cost of their takings! Why won't the rest of the world absorb those costs and leave the rich alone?

Who will think of the investors' children?

in this world, /s is needed

[orthoclad]

2. Seriously, ALL of our modern problems

can be traced to capitalism.

Slavery? Stolen labor for the cotton mills of England and the sugar plantations down south.

Climate change? The steam engine was developed to pump out the coal mines which provided the mills with the extravagant energy needed to churn out those profits. Leads to boilers, coal-fired ships, and internal combustion engines.

Pollution? Toxics all over, many from petrochemicals

Plastic? Petrochemicals

Gunboat diplomacy.

Genocide of the Indigenous and rape of imperial colonies.

Mass extinction. Cancer. Industrial warfare. Etc.

Exploitation only becomes profitable when others pay the external costs.

Stalin and Mao tried to out-capital capital, but the USSR and China backed away from the edge. Trotskyists call the Lenin/Stalin flavor "state capitalism", iirc.

But whatever model we choose, we HAVE to understand external costs - and pay the piper.