Climate change and environmental collapse-ultimate challenge to the capitalist "real"?

tatarsky

Well-known member
gek-opel said:
Yeah the three hours thing only works in staggeringly rich environments such as jungle... I have read theories posited as to the eventual "success" of Chinese, European, and Middle Eastern civilisations throughout history being dependant on this, the greater difficulty of achieving basic subsistence leading to a broader variety of solutions and increased innovation... (Davies in "Europe- A History" I believe)

This seems to make sense. Presumably the mechanism is that the struggle of daily life in difficult climates meant people were accustomed to working hard, and developing tools (and a coordinated economic structure) to make things easier, and then the process just continues. As opposed to just getting on with eating nice ripe fruit.



I find it slightly easier to imagine the effects of resource crisis than climate change.

Resource crisis will presumably imply escalating prices of those scarce resources. Undoubtely, that will mean that people will turn to creating their own products and services from readily available resource - and a much greater degree of recycling and looking after one's stuff and fixing things rather than just chucking it out when it's old and you're bored with it. The cost of the 'new' will go up. Also, travel will be much more expensive, which will mean that the benefits of Globalisation to business will be eroded by the increased costs of shipping. Which would imply that the specialisation that Globalisation has released will have to shrink back again.

The price of stuff is the key indicator here - the point at which transportation costs go beyond the benefits of increased specialisation and cheap foreign labour will be the point at which the hegemony of the Global Company will begin to collapse.

Doubtless, we're in for some inflation.
 

bruno

est malade
tatarsky said:
It is the reference to Capitalism that I have a beef with. Both sides are happy to accept that the current situation is a capitalist one (by which i mean, the political elite, and k-pesque Marxists), as it suits their world views. But I would question that as a fact. Throughout all of the developed world, tax rates sit somewhere around the 40% mark. In other words, 40% of all goods and services are provided for by the state. That doesn't really sound that laissez-faire to me. Furthermore, the economy scarcely resembles any of the theoretical contructs that proponents of free-market economics use to justify their arguments, which necessarily imply a large number of small firms in each market. The reality is a small number of large firms.

The current reality can scarcely be described as Capitalist.

It would be better described as Monopolist Real.

I think thinking about it in those terms might yield better insight in to how climate change and resource crisis might break down the current reality - since a capitalist structure might well remain in tact, even a free market one, and may even provide the solution. The problem is one of monopolists reinforcing their market power through control of consumers (via increasingly sophisticated and deceptive marketing) and governments (from the process of Globalisation), leaving us with an imposed monoculture designed for as little disruption to the hegemony of the banks and big business as possible.
a lucid argument. but i think you will agree that outside the developed world there are places with situations similar to those that gave rise to marxism originally, grossly iniquitive and with societal structures that perpetuate this state of things. it remains to be seen how effective these new economic frameworks will be in helping mutate these structures, if at all.
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Yeah, interesting point Re: the global company, utterly dependant on the current rich energy supplies to allow their networks of importing goods from the cheapest labour markets, and outsourcing for services. They must be pretty sensitive to any cost changes in energy...
 

tatarsky

Well-known member
bruno said:
a lucid argument. but i think you will agree that outside the developed world there are places with situations similar to those that gave rise to marxism originally, grossly iniquitive and with societal structures that perpetuate this state of things. it remains to be seen how effective these new economic frameworks will be in helping mutate these structures, if at all.

Could you elaborate on this, I'm not quite sure what you mean?
 

bruno

est malade
tatarsky: i meant mutate for the good.

in some parts of the world the gap between rich and poor is far more pronounced than in, say, the uk. labour laws are deficient, class divisions are strict and so on. in opening these markets to trade liberalisation, for example, would this produce a widening or bridging of that gap between rich and poor?

[of course there are no magical formulas. the same set of rules applied to different societies can lead to disaster or betterment. and i'm aware that a free trade agreement is only a mechanism, not a tool for societal change. but it comes with a set of rules by which you must abide, barring, for example, certain exploitative practises and so on. how strict these are depends on how much both parties are prepared to compromise.]
 

tatarsky

Well-known member
bruno said:
tatarsky: i meant mutate for the good.

in some parts of the world the gap between rich and poor is far more pronounced than in, say, the uk. labour laws are deficient, class divisions are strict and so on. in opening these markets to trade liberalisation, for example, would this produce a widening or bridging of that gap between rich and poor?

Well, actually, if you use the Gini coefficient (standard measure of income inequality), it's only really South America that has greater inequality that the US and UK:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

But anyway, there's not really much of a consensus as to how trade liberalisation effects inequality - some say it benefits the rich disproportionately and is to the detriment of the poor - others the say the opposite.

I wouldn't say inequality was necessarily the biggest issue for these nations though. If income goes up, and people are brought out of poverty, these would definitely represent an improvement, even if inequality increases a bit.

So, what are we saying here, in the context of this discussion: that the absorption of developing world states will disrupt the global order?

Undoubtedly, China will do so (especially since they're underpinning the $). Not sure about the others though. Unless we go far enough so that there is no cheap labour to be found, but i'm pretty sure that's a long way away.
 

bruno

est malade
tatarsky said:
So, what are we saying here, in the context of this discussion: that the absorption of developing world states will disrupt the global order?
i think the model of rich nations syphoning off goods from poorer ones today is a caricature, things aren't black and white. things have changed. in any case it is even less beneficial than before to act in such a way precisely because of interdependence or globalisation, whatever you want to call it. injustice breeds discontent, which breeds instability, and this is ultimately bad for commerce. so you need to make sure your parters diversify, develop in their capacity to deliver what you need, are a happy healthy lot, but never completely to your standards. you always have to have the upper hand. and i suppose one could argue the other way around, that protectionism - massive subsidies for key areas of the economy, keeping a tight fist around, say, technological advances, is bad because it limits propagation, competition, etc. but then you have the case of china in which they have taken apart things patiently, made their own version of whatever they need (media formats, etc) and moved on, not trampling over developed countries but ignoring them altogether. this is a massive shift from the classic competition scenario. so there is no formula, and one would have to do a case by case study to draw any conclusion, if one is to be had at all. but with the free market system i think along the same lines as with democracy: it isn't perfect, but it's what has worked best up to now.
 

bruno

est malade
gek-opel said:
that instead of the dreamed of technological solutions to these grave dangers (needed so we can continue exactly as before) there might be imaginative solutions, requiring radical shifts in lifestyle, political organisation,
this has been done in the past: cambodia - to catastrophic effect. under the khmer rouge technology, medicines, expertise of any kind was destroyed. all the things one takes for granted. all the comforts that to you are 'little more than existential slavery'.

if any restructuring of society is to be done it can't go against the basic tenets that guide it. if, for example, to postpone some impending disaster some form of slavery is proposed, this is not an acceptable solution. sending the whole population back to the stone age is not a solution either. if the cure is worse than the sickness, let the patient die in peace.
 

tryptych

waiting for a time
bassnation said:
the ends justify the means? if life is rosy for people "on the other side", the price of all those lives is worth it?

i'm always wary when someone says other peoples lives are worth spending on a cause - whether its misplaced foreign adventures, communism or a return to pre-industrialised society - the latter being massively overrated in my eyes.

there was certainly misery back then and peoples lifespans were shorter. why is this necessarily a good thing to return to? because there'll be no advertising and kapital won't exist? and whos to say we won't go and invent capitalism all over again?

I don't pretend to understand much about Primitivism, but at least some threads of it don't simply advocate a return to pre-civilisation, hunter-gatherers nad staying there - rather developing "technology" and "medicine" etc along different lines, not those based in and around the various structures of power/agriculture/heirarchy that founded civilisation as we know it. Obviously, comprehending what a non-civilised, non-technological "technology" would be like is near impossible - that's part of the "stranglehold on the imagination", the determining of what is possible by capital/whatever you want to call it, that Gek and Mark K-Punk have talked about.

WRT Bassnation's point about spending people's lives on this cause, I see it less as a desirable position to work to, more as a likely natural turn of events - as John Gray (definately not a primitivist) claims in "Straw Dogs", 6 billion plus people is more than the earth can sustain. And just like populations of all other animals, bacteria etc, when the numbers reach intolerable levels, something's going to cull th population - disease, environmental catastrophy, war.

So it's not a question of is it "worth" it, or means being justified... I don't see that more people = a good thing, in any absolute terms.

Oh - the wikipedia entry on primitivism has lots of info on Zerzan et al, and plenty of links to various studies which claim different things about exactly how much leisure time hunter gatherers had:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Bruno: Hate to say it but your responses only demonstrate the shackles imposed at present on the imagination--- that its either Cambodian year zero or what we have now! You are correct that a "year zero" style approach will lead only to the throwing of various beneficial babies out with the rancid bathwater they are currently bathed in-- but realistically the solutions are going to be relatively simple, and probably not as extreme as reverting to a primitive society. Somewhere in between that extreme and where we are now lies the solution, and it is perfectly possible to negotiate that within the bounds of the principles of our society (although these are rather less fundamental and more fluid over time than you might imagine). A question: Will America be able to cope with this shift from endless exploitable horizons? Or to put it another way, are its own basic tenets so antithetical to the reforms necessary as to render them impossible without the collapse of its society?

Oh and Re: China and other developing nations--- they aren't ignoring them, they are MASSIVELY investing in certain parts of Africa at least, and are welcomed as they don't ask too many ethical questions apparently...
 
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noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
In "The Human Zoo" Desmond Morris makes the point that our societies have developed far in advance of our evolution. So, whereas for the vast majority of our existence, and therefore the conditions under which we evolved into what we are today, we existed in small tribal groups. Under these circumstances we knew most of the people we would come into contact with and our leaders (respected tribal elders?) were very accessible and immediately accountable. We also knew exactly why they were to be considered wise and worthy of our respect.

Under these circumstances our individual impact on the lives of our fellow's and our environment was also plain to see.

Now vast numbers of humans live in large population centers surrounded by 'strangers' - this can lead to wide-scale feelings of anxiety / mistrust / alienation and lack of social responsibility. Our 'leaders' are now utterly remote. The difficulty being that we are really not every well equipped to deal with the situation we have made for ourselves.

Sorry if this sounds simplistic, i think it is relevant.
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Which leads to a need for reduction in scale of individual reality- for both psychological and environmental benefit.
 

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
Is it that the social or environmental reality is too large in scale, or that the nature of the reality is so dense and complex as to overwhelm us?
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Evo - Devo - Revo

Continues to be a good thread Gek and everyone ...
Noel I think you (& Desmond Morris 'Zoo') are ROTM ...
Bleep - interesting way to ask the question , most problems can hopefully be broken down into solveable size
depends on the brains and how desperate we become / how much time we have ...
Tartarsky - great account of how freakin hard it is to make a fire with friction ! from someone who was actually out there in the woods
Good on ya man for the stretch
 

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
"In small schools, students participated more, it meant more to them, they were more tolerant of others, they formed closers, more lasting relationships, were more effective in group processes, could communicate better, performed six times more in responsible positions, they were absent less often, were more dependable, tended to volunteer more often, were more productive, were more articulate, and found their work more meaningful. In other words, the small schools produced better citizens, who tended to be more satisfied with their lives and were more competent in every way.

What is easily missed in all this is that consolidations is not restricted to schools but found on all sides — particularly in business and government. Everything is getting bigger: automobiles, airplanes, buildings, and cities. We are living in an age of giants. Yet everything that is known about man’s needs points in the other directions. It is like a disease: since everyone has it, we think nothing of it. The problem, of course, is that vulnerability increases with size and it therefore becomes necessary…to “manage” the environment, which makes for great rigidity and suppression of the individual as well."

Beyond Culture, by Edward T. Hall
 

bruno

est malade
gek:

true, the cambodian example is a bit over the top. but i can't think of many good precedents for radical change, perhaps you could mention a few that have worked (that didn't involve trampling over human rights). i'm all for change, though. but gradual.

imagination: i'm pleased to report mine is intact. the problem is that imagination comes up against the wall of how humans actually think and behave. and that hasn't changed much over time, probably never will.
 
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doll steak

damn that icepick
Bruno - How about the English Revolution of the late 1600s? I'm not saying nobody died (they did), but unlike the dynastic wars which preceded it (accompanying 'gradual change') it put a new, dynamic class in charge that improved life for millions of people. This seems the crucial thing to me - not the pace of change but in what direction its going. We have gradual change in the welfare system in the UK at the moment, but its movign towards the end of support for the disadvanted - mentally ill people being forced into the 'labour market'.
 

John Doe

Well-known member
How about the foundation of the Welfare State in the UK in 1945 by Atlee's post-war Labour government? A 'paradigm shift' which occured practically overnight, in the teeth of oppostion from vested interests, and which overturned many of the hiterto 'common sense' analysis of captial and the social that had underpinned the economic system in the UK since the 19th Century?
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Bleep: I think yr quote answered your question there! I think sustainable semi-autonomous living areas on a much smaller scale are what is necessary, but this doesn't mean that technology can't play a vital role in allowing them to be just as functional in terms of medical care and IT as before.
 

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
Yeah, I'm not convinced though. Communications technology would ensure that such smaller communities didn't become totally insular, but theres interesting frictions that come from having larger communities that aren't culturally homogenous where our differences rub up against each other. If things slowed down a bit and we weren't so crushed under the weight of our own media I like to imagine that maybe we'd get to know each other a bit better.

Is it necessary to retreat to the smaller community model or can we attempt to change the existing model, perhaps better mediate the communities within large cities?

What are the aspects of the megalopolis that actually appeal to people?
 
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