rajanaccros
> Sounds like a good thing! More people getting their needs met.
And less of everything else getting their needs met. It seems like you have a very dualistic view that humans are somehow outside the realm of ecology. Infinite growth is literally impossible in a finite system. And is a core tenet of capitalism. I really don't know what else to tell you at this point.
You are basing all of your arguments on capitalism being the solution to itself, which is the problem.
> As it turns out, people do value nature etc but only after their basic needs are fulfilled.
The problem with capitalism is that once basic needs are met, companies need won't be met - the growth imperative. Profit means taking more than what you give. It is the sole idea of what capitalism is built on. And it has appropriated nature as a means to this end. So what happens then? Artificial scarcity, more manipulation, more marketing all to sell people what they don't need.
It seems to me that you have latched onto an idea, and you will argue anything to fit that narrative. I have no idea where these arguments are coming from that degrowth means that people are not getting their needs met. Do you have sources to back up any of what you are saying? It just seems so synthetic to me.
Degrowth is removing the profit motive for the sole benefit of reinvestment and accumulation to continue growing. It does not mean that the market economy goes away. It does not mean that people do not have their needs met. It means that capitalism as a religion is finally put to an end. That we are able to subsist on finite resources instead of eliminating everything that we depend on for survival. And to use your beloved's terminology, a (positive) market externality would allow species to thrive without the material extraction of their habitat that you have placed a positive value on for some reason (eg. "Sounds like a good thing!").
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalism#Enclosur...
So I am confused by the meaning of degrowth you are referencing because the definition I am using is the antithesis of murder. We want to save the planet, and hence all life that exists within it. So I hope that comes across, because degrowth does not mean collapse of materials needed to sustain life, but it does re-imagigening the profit above all mindset that is de facto in our economies.
Your line of questioning is disingenuous and utterly lowbrow. Do better.
Nothing else is working. Alarmism is supposed to get people to actually act, because otherwise they take your (ignorant) positions on sitting back and keep growing. The next idea you have for a great startup, a way to make money, something for your individual advancement, please go back to imperative #1 -- nothing is going to matter as we kill everything on this planet.
People become really defensive when they hear they have to change due to climate catastrophe. I get it. It's not fair. But it is necessary. If people read the alarmist language (not just from posters like me, but alarmist language from scientists who tend to use neutral language in their reports), then they will have to deal with the fact that the have a direct causal link to our children's and the next generation's death due to their inaction. At that point, the person is not just ignorant, but sociopathic. If we continue on this path, it will be humanity's ruin.
My alarmist talking points it to actually engage people like you and who have similar thoughts that think they can't do anything. You absolutely can. And it is time to be alarmist. Not being so is not working.
My point is to work to restructure society at any level you can, to educate, and to stop this myth of perpetual growth GDP as the only indicator of success. It is killing everything.
> E.g. Siberia becoming fertile. Maybe even Sahara becoming green again!
We have a perfectly good world as is, and you want to gamble everything on this?
I have transitioned to veganism, raise the AC of my house to a very high level to where I am spending $7 per week, bought a bike to commute around the city, have stopped buying clothes and am now buying only through thrift stores, reading (and trying to educate) everyone I can on this subject.
If we do not take action on climate _now_ then _nothing_ is going to matter.
We will enter into an irreversible feedback loop that causes human extinction, yet it won't be apparent until it is literally on the doorstep for people to realize.
If you are not quitting your job and working to advance the existential threat of climate change and the main driver of the catastrophe (capitalism and perpetual growth) then you are wasting your (and your children's) time.
An excellent book on what needs to be done is Less is More by Jason Hickel [2]. This is the only problem that matters since literally existence depends on solving it. The time for deep concern is over. Action is needed and it is needed now. Education, degrowth, reuse, technology. So put everything else aside or you are laboring (and living) for nothing.
[0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01157-x
Says one with the hubris to decide what is right for me.
This is what largely I am arguing against. I think the benefits of capitalism have been proven, but the negatives are largely brushed aside. I think this form of capitalism is dangerous (and I should have been more explicit about that in my original comment). My original comment was to get rid of publicly traded companies and remove wall street altogether. Private companies can continue to exist and compete but the profit motive to solely deliver growth and profit to public shareholders has distorted the whole system into pro-forma income sheets at the best and to outright devastation and exploitation at the worst. Private companies would be largely in check because they wouldn't grow unchecked by raising capital they don't have by going public. In so doing, they wouldn't be "in debt" (overloaded non-technical sense of debt) to shareholders. This would lead to more sustainability and less growth over everything mindset. The knock on effects I mentioned would contribute to a more just and fair system.
That said, I am not an economist, but I would like to see this world exist for future generations. And this economic system isn't it.
The age-old adage that if it is not capitalism, it must be communism.
> The age-old adage that anyone opposed to your viewpoint is either stupid or evil.
Which one are you? Sure my take was reductionist, but you are using my critique to distract is disingenuous. You are trying to defend capitalism by saying that you are not stupid or evil. If I have missed an adjective to describe people who have not discovered this ruthless system of destruction what would it be? Ignorant? Willfully Ignorant?
I am really glad I am starting to see a lot more posts here on HN with regard to this fact. Capitalism is literally destroying everything and has proven itself not to be a viable system for long term sustainability and a healthy society and ecosystem.
Some of the smartest people on the internet aggregate on HN and some have still not figured this out. Either because 1) They haven't taken the time to look into the n-order knock on effects that are produced by capitalism in it's current form, or 2) they are too interested in self-enrichment to make any changes to behavior for their own comfort and convenience.
We should get of publicly traded corporations and Wall Street should disappear in my opinion. It is that publicly traded shareholder value that drives all the crimes against society/environment in this late stage. However, we are up against a severely selfish and entrenched minority with a ton of power who won't let that happen ... at the cost of everything.
The only (ONLY) motive is profit. Growth, growth, growth above all costs at the expense of people and the environment. Jeff jumped into this thread to try to color it with verbiage such as:
> we came to the conclusion that the world doesn't need more communications, it needs better communications. More relevant. More effective.
This is another way to habituate and legitimate the exploitation of users for those few who profit. An example, is the A2P 10DLC registration that is being forced on users of the product that will charge a registration fee, a vetting fee, and a recurring monthly cost. From what I can tell, there is no legal basis forcing this. The Telco cartel got together and came up with a way to make more money off of you. Sure they will talk about it in terms of "improving your experience" and "stopping spam texts". While there may be a kernel of truth in there, that is not the main reason. Go back to rule number 1: profit, profit, profit.
It is a shame that the Telcos are strong arming the CSP middlemen to make them abide by these rules or not deliver their messages. And of course that rolls down to the end users.
But I think the bigger issue here is that they need to know exactly who you are in terms of registration. Blocking VOIP numbers for OTP verification, etc etc. Why do you think this is? Because they will take all of the data you provide, the metadata you produce and sell it to third parties for profit at your expense and without your consent (or otherwise wrapped up in a "privacy policy" that is too long that no one reads).
None of what I am saying is new, it is the same old playbook that most people are ignorant of. I suggest reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff for a deeper study of this topic.
If you would like to refute any of this @jeffiel I would welcome it. I find the forced registration of A2P 10DLC absolutely horrifying. The trend for everybody is to put them into a "pre-crime" bucket. In doing so, we lose all privacy on the web, and with it the web itself.
Edit: I don't know Jeff and I am not making my comment about a personal attack or a character (mis)representation. My point is to look at trends in general, at the decline of privacy for the growth of profit, and how language is used to characterize it as something else selling it as you are getting a better experience through personalization, relevancy, effective, etc. Zuboff touches on this in her book and it is recently in my mind so my comments are coming through the lens of this recent discovery. However, the larger anti-privacy trend and centralization across the web is not new, and I stand that we are all losers if we allow this trend to continue.
There are other ways to make this work through some heuristic that auto identifies a comment and starts it below a visible threshold. What spammers are not good at, is spending time to go edit comments and content to evade these filters.
My point is that moderation is extremely limited. Review illegal content flagged comments, check appeals for false positives of a spam filter. All other content should it make it in the thread can be moderated by the community.
This would inevitably reward first commenters, but that is the situation anyway with current thread voting. I think later commenters as long as not downvoted past a threshold would stay visible with an even(ish) vote count to give those comments the visibility to rise.
What about comments that people disagree with that are still on topic but controversial? Well, we are running out of directions so they should get a side vote. Downvotes to explicitly send to hidden as not relevant (spam, off topic, etc), upvotes for agreeable comments base on popularity, side votes for relevant but disagreeable.
The problem with moderation is the same as the problem with representative democracy. Moderators become entrenched and yield power unilaterally eventually not representing the community. I can't tell you how many times I have been banned, shadow banned, comments removed, not allowed to participate, etc due to the fact that a moderator decides what is best.
Edited: to remove ambiguity