Oh no, they're not just going to let it happen. They'll actively stop us from solving it.
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...and oligarchy, and fascism, and income inequality, and decreasing life expectancy, and increasing infant mortality, and more wars, and huge amounts of debt, and job loss, and...
Short version: unchecked capitalism.
But I was told that capitalism checks itself using something called βmarket forcesβ.
Hey now, those βmarket forcesβ are actually the work of the wonderful βInvisible Handβ! Which is of course the work of God and is definitely not being manipulated by all those billionaires behind the curtain over thereβ¦
Imagine a war against an enemy with known lead poisoning.
That would probably be an easy win
Yeah. Those problems totally didn't exist before capitalism.
Not all at once, no. Fascism didn't even exist until the 1920s.
Fascism is a modern iteration of an old problem. Not even the worst version of it. Plenty of theocracies and empires in history promoted similar strong group/national identity paired with subjugation of individuals to an authoritarian state.
And fascism is not even compatible with capitalism as it requires state control over industry. It would be more compatible with socialism except that it's not nationalizing industry for the benefit of the working class explicitly, just the benefit of the nation/state.
Capitalism is also a modern interpretation of an old problem. The idea of material wealth determining worth and power. That's largely how "might makes right" works with a more economic flavor.
If you think you can't have state control in capitalism you haven't been paying attention. China is capitalist country with tons of government controls. They can throw a "communist" label on it, but that have little to no actual communist/socialist ideology.
When the state fully controls your property, it's not private property and thus not capitalistism. It's not socialism either, because they still give deference to the original "private" owner.
China is a perfect example of how a fascist country would operate, honestly. It's frankly annoying that people don't routinely call it a fascist state and instead call it communist.
The decreasing life expectancy is largely related to obesity though. There are a lot of obese people who find reasons to blame other than their own self determination. If corporations have made it easy to eat yourself to death, people shouldn't just let them get away with it by eating themselves to an early death.
Iβm glad you brought up personal responsibility, however if youβre buying something from the grocery store, unless itβs raw ingredients, it has shit in it. Even then, in the US the only way to completely avoid nasty shit in food is to produce it yourself or purchase from a local farmers market. Unfortunately many people donβt have the resources to do that. But to your credit, we do seem to be developing some sort of allergy to personal responsibility, especially in regards to personal health and fitness.
If people willingly choose to shorten their life, I don't consider it a problem.
Now, lying and manipulating people into choosing it, similar to what the cigarette industry did, is obviously a problem.
But at this point, everyone knows cigarettes and processed foods are unhealthy. People just don't care.
People dont have the energy to care. They're spending all of it trying to keep their families fed, clothed, and under a roof.
I'm so fucking tired of people pushing personal responsibility for systematic problems. People are kept intentionally under educated and do not have the resources to learn. No not everyone "knows" ultra processed foods are bad. Most people can't even properly defined ultra processed foods and default to calling them processed foods which covers basically everything you find in a store besides produce.
A teacher showed us the documentary An Inconvenient Truth and the real truth I learned from that, is that the majority of adults are irresponsible crybabies.
Everyone is just faking it. And those that don't, don't have the attention of those that listen.
Our safety manuals are written one disaster at a time, never before.
Its because most people only care about their comfort and convenience right now and in the very near future.
This comic is TERRORISM according to Trump's Republican Party!
This comment is anticapitalist and therefore terrorist...
I remember a similar comment made by one my highschool teachers. Because I was such a try-hard cringe edge lord I said something like "if my generation got rid of your generation, then we've solved that problem".
And simply blaming older people also hides the problem of global inequality and exploitation of the third world. Most elderly in my country only faced food insecurity and hyperinflation when younger, and their environmental impact for all the time they're alive is smaller than the environmental impact of a current teenager in the usa.
The problem is Capitalism.
They said that to me when I was a kid... and I was born in the 80s.
Those ones were right. We are solving it now, and we either finish solving it or our children will have to deal with resource depletion when their time to shine comes.
Either way, it's not Global Warming that they will be solving.
And now they're in retirement.
Fuck them. They should have been in prison thirty years ago.
Boomer: "Climate change will be your burden to suffer through".
Gen Z: "It's not fair. You got a full life of profligacy before the effects were even noticeable. I get none of the material wealth and I'm going to have to live my whole long life suffering increasing effects of it."
Boomer: "Not so long."
Also boomers: "When are you having kids? I want grandchildren."
Told my mom I didn't want kids and she said, "Oh you'll change your mind"
I came out to my mom as gay and she said "well you can always adopt"
Then I started intense birth control treatments for my fucked up reproductive system and she was like, "you can still adopt"
Yeeted my uterus, cervix, and fallopian tubes just before my bday this summer and threw a fuckin party afterwards because now there is absolutely no way I can ever be a parent AND my reproductive system can't do whatever the fuck it wants cause it doesn't exist!
My mom finally accepted that this part of the family tree has ended after that. This while process happened over 18 years. I started telling her I didn't wanna be a parent when I was TEN.
Edit: I should prolly say that my mom isn't a boomer, but Gen X. She's surrounded constantly by boomers and other members of Gen X who act like boomers so she has picked up a lot of the traits. Practically demanding grandchildren was the worst boomer thing she's done so far, and I hope it stays that way.
Meanwhile. Most Boomers post adoption
They're not my real grandchildren.
How my grandmother was when my sister was adopted. Never treated her the same as the rest of the grandkids. Even when my sister helped care for the bitch 24/7 while she was living in our home dying of self-inflicted lung cancer.
I was not sad when my grandmother died, if you can tell.
βwell you can always adoptβ
As if adoption wasn't an extremely intensive process that goes on for who knows how many years and even then it's not guaranteed you'll actually get the kid. Let alone how much it differs from DIY.
Thank you for your service.
What action in my timeline are you referring to as my service lol
Lol. Not having kids is one of the most ethical choices we can make.
Ah. See, I don't want children because I'm what you call a selfish person and want to live my life completely unbound. Kids would just kill my dreams and the vibe.
The ethical part is just a bonus to make me feel even better about my decision.
This guy's an anti-natalist, I wouldn't take seriously anything he fucking says.
I fucking despise the whole natalism divide. We should just treat procreation like alcohol:
BREED RESPONSIBLY.
Sure, but what IS responsibly? If part of being responsible about it is limiting it, how do we decide to go about limiting it? Every answer does touch on eugenics. I agree with the proposition that we need overall less humans in addition to every other step to reduce our carbon/ecological impact, but doing it ethically is pretty hard.
how do we decide to go about limiting it?
The problem with that is that always leads to two things:
- Eugenics
- Killing off minorities who "reproduce too much"
Anyone who talks about limiting people from having children will inevitably lead to that conversation. It's a literal non-starter for anyone who thinks even a fucking bit.
Just listen to Michael Jackson's words.
If you can't feed the baby; Then don't have a baby,,,
You are a very simple person. Does being unburdened by understanding anything feel liberating? Do you do it by choice, or are you just incapable?
No, as a literal fucking minority, I know that ANY TALK about reducing the human population or restricting people from having children inevitably needs to eugenics or people LITERALLY ADVOCATING FOR GENOCIDING MINORITIES THAT "BREED TOO MUCH".
I've seen this song and dance too many times to not fucking notice it. It's a non-starter for me and it should be too for anyone else.
Your fears are real and frankly warranted. There is a litteral shit ton of that bullshit going around. Degrowth isn't one of them.
Don't cripple yourself intellectually because bad people ruin good things. They do that to all ideas.
Think of the alternatives to degrowth. If you can't take something within our control, humans and their consumption, and bring them within the bounds of what earth's natural systems can renew you are comitting us to some real distopian shit.
They all demand magical thinking of some techno-utopian solution that if it doesn't materialize for any reason you have committed earth to an unsustainable future. Countless deaths of suffering and deprivation because you adhered to the ideology of endless growth, like cancer. Gigadeaths from deprivation, then conflict as our resource base depletes.
All we have to do is dial things back willingly and purposefully. Fully embracing diversity. No eugenics. No death squads. Every life not born (birth rates are already plumeting) means someone, somewhere won't have to die of deprivation or conflict. We can encourage this, and consumption is included. Lead simpler lifes of sufficiency. Life is sacred. If you are born you deserve a life of sufficiency regardless of who you are of where you are born.
It's a large sprawling topic. Simple in concept, enormous in execution. But the gist is easy. If we don't get humanity into balance with ecological carrying capacity, we're going to lose everything.
When you say "no" to degrowth, regardless of your motivations, you are condeming humanity to a hail-mary of techno-magical thinking. Degrowth requires no new as of yet uninvented technology. We have everything we need. The math is simple. Let not humanity be a locust plague on the earth. Let's end the sixth great mass extinction with as much of the richness of this world we love as possible.
Bro's really talking like MCU Thanos right now π
What part of no one dies and all life is respected do you not understand? Ecological overshoot will kill billions, and possibly add humans to the 6th great mass extinction. I'm trying to save life dummy.
Your tombstone will read
Sal - couldn't reach the brake pedal, crashed into a wall, by his choice.
Fuck off. Anti-natalism is eugenics and anyone who advocates for it is a Nazi in my eyes. Not to mention 90% of you all just project your major depression and misery into literal 8 year olds. Please just go to therapy.
Every conversation people have about "degrowth" and "the earth has too many people" always leads to someone advocating for eugenics OR LITERAL GENOCIDE. The Earth, right at this moment, can hold ten billion people. The problem is capitalism, consumerism and food waste.
Everything you don't like or understand is Nazi?
Degrowth. It's not antinatalism, nor eugenics. But simple people need simple answers. It's ethically shrinking humanity's population and consumption to within what the earth can sustain. That's it.
You know what hole to shove your Nazi bullshit up.
The earth can comfortably hold 10-12 billion people or even more. The only thing people think when people say "we must reduce the human population" is KILLING MINORITIES or KEEPING THEM FROM REPRODUCING. There is more than enough space and food for TEN BILLION PEOPLE RIGHT NOW. The problem is capitalism. Not the fact people are having children.
Literally every time this conversation is started the only thing people think about is commiting genocide against a population that reproduces a lot. Take your bullshit elsewhere.
Have you spoken to many ecologists about your beliefs? I recommend trying it. You'll be surprised.
The study I'm quoting basically said that when we had SEVEN BILLION people in the planet.
I once saw it described as the Boomers being the βfuck aroundβ generation and Gen Z being the βfind outβ generation.
Looking at this more benevolently, the teacher might be wishing that this kid's generation will end up being more conscious and willing to act than his own.
I remember a time that even a teacher saying this to a student would be considered inappropriate activism about a controversial topic.
...Like right now?
From my perspective (millenial) raised in a conservative area, climate change discussion went from 'kinda iffy in the past' to approved to expected, then suddenly lurched to more taboo than I've ever seen.
I can't even discuss it with my college-educated older relatives without them ranting about it. It's a total taboo; they think I'm nuts for even bringing it up as an existential problem.
I can only imagine what parents would say if teachers said that now.

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