Vultures Are Circling

submitted by EndlessSunflowers from i.imgtc.com

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]Tom_Bombadil 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I honestly think that the overwhelming majority of people don't care about mining industry corporate profits.

I know that the majority of people oppose the corporate rape of nature.

Are you claiming that it's important to discuss historical context and nuance of politics, so that we can better understand the display of shameless delight in raping nature; for increased corporate profit margins?

Crucially, profit margin. The mining industry has been making tremendous profits for decades. They could spend the money to prevent/reduce environmental damage.

This is the face of unrestrained avarice.

Why do you think it's important to explain the backstory on avarice and the rape of nature?
Why do feel it's important to stick up for corporate interests?

[–]worm 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I think it is important that we understand why people make political decisions. It's very easy to simply dismiss all decisions we don't like as "moneygrubbing" or "corporate evil" (whatever that might actually mean) but I think there's a lot more going on behind these decisions than "fuck nature, gibs monie" which latestagecapitalism is reluctant to acknowledge.

Anyone who fails to comprehend the arguments arrayed against his views will look ill-informed, and his arguments will become unconvincing simply due to the association with ignorance. If you wish to convince people that you are right, the easiest way to do it is to first convince people that you have first considered every other alternative before deciding that yours was the most correct of all the possible arguments.

Also, a minor nitpick: I just don't agree with the "rape of nature" narrative. Every single living creature on this planet, including us, is a part of nature. The idea that just because we've dominated the planet for a couple thousand years we can somehow consider ourselves above the fracas of survival is just wrong.

What humans do is fundamentally the same as what any animal species is doing - extracting resources from our surroundings. There only difference between human mining and ant foraging is that humans happen to do it at a larger scale. The profits which are made are an irrelevant consideration regarding the exploitation of nature - money, profits, and such are simply means by which a colony of humans divides resources within the colony, and constitutes interhuman relations rather than the relationship between mankind and the world.

[–]FormosaOolong 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

What humans do is fundamentally the same as what any animal species is doing - extracting resources from our surroundings. There only difference between human mining and ant foraging is that humans happen to do it at a larger scale.

I heartily disagree with this analogy. Ants are nature's cleaners, not polluters, and they don't extract more than they need. Really the only species that knowingly extracts in excess, pollutes and destroys its environment, wipes out sixty percent of the planet's species in 50 years, creates weapons and machines that could destroy the entire planet, and is actively planning on taking its scathing mindvirus into the greater galaxy, is humans. We are the only one that consistently and ongoingly acts crazily out of balance with its natural surrounds. This is the definition of a parasite of terrifying proportion.

Profits are not an "irrelevant consideration" as you say, because the ignorance that drives this whole disproportionate pillaging and poisoning is always money/power. Even the human endeavors that claim to be for the simple greater good (like health care or policing) have been grossly perverted by their respective monetization. Everything now is being twisted into a cancerous quarterly-profit endless growth model that is impossible and leads to decisions like this, and to products and services that have less and less value and less and less lifespan.

And as for the "simple means by which humans divide resources within the colony," this is a disingenuous representation of the current imbalance and crappy accounting that has led to a drastically widening divide between the haves and have-nots, and to devastation around the planet of which you may not be aware, or perhaps have no concern.

Devotion to the current version of capitalism looks to me like some kind of delusion, in that it refuses to look at the inherent flaws in its design and implementation, and focuses only on the enjoyments of short-term gain gleaned by parasitism, slavery, and destruction.

[–]worm 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'll begin with a nitpick that's not really important to the point you're making: I think most people tend to greatly overestimate the power that humans as a species exert on the planet. We may be a dominant species, but we are certainly (for now) incapable of "destroying the planet". Nuclear weapons are probably capable of wiping ourselves out, but our weapons are laughable in comparison to the forces of nature.

As to the fundamental point you are making: You're accusing capitalism of destroying the planet, by saying that the profit motive is the root cause for our excess consumption, which of course is in turn what drives us to extract resources beyond what we should be extracting. I hope this summarizes your argument - correct me if I was wrong. If this was the argument being made, I think it's one that I disagree with.

I'm of the opinion that this argument vastly overstates the importance of social organisation amongst human society. In my view, capitalism is a process tacked-on to the end of the equation, rather than the fundamental driving force of our consumption.

No matter what sort of socio-economic model humans adopt, consumption will always be a part of human life. Survival, even on an individual level, cannot be divorced from the consumption of limited resources which have to be extracted from our surroundings. This is a truism which extends from the largest of animals to the smallest of microorganisms.

It's possible that human consumption will be limited to our means under a planned economy rather than a capitalistic one, but that leads to more questions: what level of consumption would be considered "excess", and who is to decide on what level of consumption is permissible? Would a planned economy even manage to limit consumption, if it seeks to maintain certain living standards? Fundamentally, could there be any model of social organisation which would allow humans to live and consume without impacting the environment around them? It seems to me that no matter the social model you impose upon our civilization, the consumption of resources (and the continual increase in the consumption thereof) will inevitably increase as the human population increases. If anything, capitalism has perhaps limited the increase in consumption by making use of the monetary system to ration consumption and to encourage efficient extraction of limited resources.

But returning to the broader point: the fact that humans must consume regardless of what form of social organisation we adopt. This is what I mean when I say that capitalism is merely "the means by which humans divide resources". Models of social organisation such as capitalism, state planning, or even if you're really far out, anarcho-primitivism all simply change the way we divide scarce resources amongst ourselves. There is no model which fundamentally frees mankind from its physical needs. If we adopted a state-led economy, it would be the demands of the state rather than the demands of the market which then force us to extract resources from our surroundings.

From my perspective, it is the association of capitalism with (for the lack of a better word) evil which perplexes me. The evils you describe are fundamentally part of our world regardless of whether capitalism operates or not.