And it also has the ability to decrease it's emissions, which it actually has. And likely can take the example from some states that have been more successful than others. The frightening aspect is WHEN China get more and more wealthier. There's a lot of more potential demand both in China and India than there is in the US, hence those countries are crucial here. — ssu

Again, the most important issue is to deal where the growth is. Not where positive reductions are taking place, even if continuing that trend is important. — ssu

Well yes absolute emissions matter for climate change, and so everybody will have to reduce its emissions.

India and China are crucial just because they have the largest populations by far. That's why growth there is such a big issue.

Reduction in emissions have been meager in the US and in Europe. This has been the result of some 'low-hanging-fruit' policies that didn't have to hurt. The question is will they continue to find democratic support for more drastic measures?

China may be more resolute and effective in implementing the energy-transition because of it's governance-structure, it doesn't need democratic support. And India, yeah, don't know about them.

Then there is the question of China. Again a non-democratic country where environmental issues aren't as important as in the West thanks to it's socialism (or fascism) — ssu

Comparing absolute emissions and relative rise in emissions isn't really telling us much, China has 3 times the population of the US and was a developing country. The US, the beacon of capitalism, still has double the emissions per capita of China.

What China does is really the crucial issue. — ssu

Yes, and while it certainly looks bad in absolute numbers (which does matter for the physics of climate change), I have more confidence in their ability to turn it around faster than Western countries. Apparently they tend to underpromise and overshoot on declared reduction-targets, unlike the west.

Here of course I agree with you. But think, what really does a human being (as animal) need to survive? On pure subsistence, we need a little water, some food, a little exercise etc. And yet most of the articles of consumption are not for pure bodily subsistence. Our mind needs diversion, conversation, love, pleasurable sensation, diverse diet, meaningful work etc. None of this is simple subsistence, in fact if any of us were to eat porridge oats every meal (like one of our cabinet ministers here in the UK suggested that those on welfare should do to save money), we would go crazy, feel completely undignified, spiritually destroyed and so on. — Jingo7

Sure there's of course other variables then mere survival to the evolution-equation, like procreation which has given life all kinds of exuberant stuff like the tails of peacocks... but I think all of this can ultimately still be tied back to the biological.

On your second point, of course I cannot answer that immortal question, 'why/when did human consciousness emerge?' But I can answer the implications you draw from it. Human thought is no longer 'tethered' to biological considerations. That is, those processes that were once regulated by the biological order, have come to be fully regulated by that wholly distinct and higher order of being, the social order. You can also call this the 'symbolic' order or in Marxian terms, the moment when human society must be actively (consciously) reproduced by man himself, as opposed to the 'just being' of animals. That means that the human mind is forever separated from nature. We can only know that we were once 'natural' because we became (for whatever reason) separated from this nature. We can only see this point of departure after it has already gone forever. We can only 'see' at all, because we took this point of departure from nature. Now that we have the social order, biology doesn't enter into it. Our brains are exacctly the same as the brains of the ancient Greeks, and yet conceptually we are leaps and bounds ahead of them. If human thought was even remotely regulated biologically, this would be an impossibility. How can biology act upon 'you' if you can already, in thought, abstract yourself as a self? That is, if you can abstract an element from the chaos of nature in thought, you are already unbound by that chaos, that undifferentiated 'thing-in-itself that is nature (which doesn't really exist). — Jingo7

I'm not sure I follow here... I think we are only ahead of the Greeks in scientific knowledge and technology. Because we can record that knowledge in writing and pass it on to next generations there's a progression to it, sure, but I'm not sure it follows that we have departed from nature or our biology. We use cellphones and the internet for instance to do what we essentially always did, communicate with each other, just faster and on a larger scale. This in particular I don't get:

How can biology act upon 'you' if you can already, in thought, abstract yourself as a self? That is, if you can abstract an element from the chaos of nature in thought, you are already unbound by that chaos, that undifferentiated 'thing-in-itself that is nature (which doesn't really exist). — Jingo7

You know, I really find technology boring to be honest, and I am not familiar with futurist writings. Do you have any good reccomendations? My thrust is always first and foremost philosophical, but I try to take things to the end, and I see uploading as a nescessary possibility in any future society who's drive will consist in the conflict between the world of man (society) and non-human nature. — Jingo7

It's not that I have read that many futurist per se, I mostly picked that up in the media I tend to follow... but Yuval Harari has a couple of books that you might call futurist, and he's generally a clear thinker. And then there's Nick Boström who deals with possible future scenario's, mostly from the point of view of existential risk, and those who work with him at the same institute.

As for the link with what we have been saying and climate change, I hope it is evident that it is relevant. The way we ideologically conceive of climate change is most often by attributing to nature this 'humbling' power, as something that punishes the hubris of man. I hope I demonstrate here that I find this view revolting. I will write more on it later. — Jingo7

Yes I do kind of agree with this, especially if this comes from some kind of dogmatic religious inspired point of view. But at the same there is a kernel of truth to this accusation of hubris I think. I've said something earlier along those lines. The way our cognition works is by abstracting away from the world, by cutting things up into little bits via language... which is essentially simplifying things so we can get our head around it. If we are dealing with complex systems like the biosphere this kind of simplified thinking can cause all kinds of trouble, especially if we have to much faith in our ideas... And there's some 'intelligence' to nature too, because it has been a process of trial and error that has been running for billions of years, evolving and adapting too 'itself'. Compared to that our trials and errors are still relatively shallow, so you know, maybe there is reason to not be too confident that we can do it better.

As far as concerens 'whats the point of thinking if you don't have a body?' I know what you mean but isn't it the case that in all ways that matter, you really do think without a body. Think about thinking, when you are thinking, are you really concerened/aware that you have a body? Is not the act of thinking itself it's own proof that we are not our bodies? When you are deep in thought, you are working on some ideas or whatever, it doesn't matter to you, you lose awareness even that you have a body. — Jingo7

Also why would this be an issue? Surely inter-subjectivity (in whatever form) would survive this 'upload'? I cannot imagine that we would all become totally insular self-referential computers, not at all. Surely human society would continue, simply that human beings become physically what they were spiritually all along, pure subjectivity. This is not about 'computation for computation's sake', I am not suggesting that we degrade the idea by associating this with meagre computing power (whatever that means). This would be society, but in a higher form. — Jingo7

I think human motivations (bodily) are behind the intellectual problems we work out. The process of thinking itself maybe isn't influence by it, but the initial motivation for it seems to be.

My reasoning here is that the physical, biological forms came first, and then we evolved thinking brains because it increased survival chances of some biological forms. So to me that is the reason d'etre of thinking... i'm not sure what to do with the idea of just taking that away, what would be the point of any of it?

Doesn't sound appealing? Well it doesn't sound appealing to me either! I am not suggesting this as an action taken tomorrow, but as one of the possible points a socially self-conscious (let me cut the BS here, I mean a communist) society would approach, long into the future, as contingent impediments to humanities' conquering of the galaxy and mortality are overcome. This is deep future, don't worry I will not now force you to climb into a USB stick or whatever. — Jingo7

Sure, I just wanted to voice some concerns with the idea of uploading digitally, which many futurist seem to take for granted.

As for the heat death of the universe, I don't see this as likely. More likely to me is that the universe is infinite. But even if entropy is real, I have faith (ok I know I sound insane) that man can conquer this entropy as well. — Jingo7

Yeah betting against entropy is insane ;-). But you know, all of this is far from settled, just the best guess we have based on current understanding.

The human body, that fragile meat sack which gets cancer and so on, let's get rid of it. Why not upload our subjectivities into an artificial technological infrastructure? I claim this would be the result of a self-conscious societies' drive toward immortality, the end of ageing, disease etc. — Jingo7

Of course we do not know if this is even a possibility, maybe subjectivity and meaning is inseparably linked with that fragile meat-sack. I mean, what's the point of thinking, a subjectivity, if you don't have some needy mortal body to keep alive... just computation for more computation sake until the heat dead of the universe? That doesn't sound very appealing to me.

Pierre Hadot criticizes modern philosophy for becoming an abstract, theoretical enterprise, an ivory tower pursuit, unlike a living public forum like it was in ancient — Ross Campbell

Bit of a strange remark, considering on could say it's precisely Socrates and Plato that set philosophy on this path towards to much abstraction, i.e. Ideal Forms.

I tend to think material circumstances are not the most important thing for us, as long as we can get by.

In a lot of ways there's a feeling of general decline, societal unraveling and defeatism/apathy today... as if we are nearing the end of an age. Obviously it depends on how bad climate catastrophe will be and if societies manage to turn it around... but maybe the 'cultural climate' could be a lot better in say 20 years then it is now.

We have to develop a better educational system and teach how bad the violence is. I feel we are living in an Era where people literally do not care about harm others. For this reason, it is time to focus on Ethics and provide more empathy along our relationships — javi2541997

I feel like education can only get you so far... how effective would that be if after the relatively short period of education, you have to participate in a system that essentially incentivises you to get ahead at any cost? Kids are not that dumb, a lot of them intuitively sniff out ethical teachings that don't match up with the world.

I guess what I'm saying is that if the rest doesn't change with it, ethics education will allways be an uphill battle, at best. Then again, you have to start somewhere so...

https://grist.org/cities/tampa-wanted-renewable-energy-resolution-florida-lawmakers-made-sure-it-couldnt-gas-ban-preemption/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=beacon

Always great to see the Republican Party trying their best to not only destroy the planet, but preventing even minor efforts to save it. That’s commitment— they take death pacts seriously. — Xtrix

Can't have the state restricting free competition for energy now can we? 19 states apparently have passed such legislation... insane.

I do wonder as a non-american, what is their thinking? Is it just only short-sighted protection of their interests, without much consideration for anything else? Do they realize what is at stake, or have they actually managed to convince themselves that the whole climate change thing is a hoax propagated by their political adversaries? I mean, how do you justify something like that to yourself?

Aah man, I'm just not interested in dick-measuring games... If you have nothing substantive to say, I'm done with this conversation

I have read more about paleontology, pre-history, evolution etc... than you think.

You came in here mis-interpreting what I said as some 'human nature'-type justification for defeatism concerning climate change and immediately went in the offence. That was never my intention, which should be clear from my other posts in this thread.

What I said in defense of my posts also wasn't meant as some scientifically accurate or nuanced description, just some broad strokes that I think would suffice in support of my claims.

I'm not even sure what you disagree with, as it's almost a truism what I said.

Our moral intuitions aren't developed to take into account far off risks or other people in the abstract. We pursue impartiality and abstraction by expressing everything in terms of money, which becomes a self perpetuating beast mostly out of our control (the Market) so that we don't have to feel anything about a decision, further divorcing it from morality.

What you're left with is a society that rumbles along with barely a chance to steer it in another direction simply because of its size and complexity and people incapable of making moral decisions most of the time and it's not even their fault. — Benkei

Expanding on this point, I think it's not only our moral intuitions that fails us at this point, but also our cognition in general. The way we abstract the world, via language, cutting it in small bits, is ill-suited to deal with complex problems that would be better served with a more holistic approach. Measuring everything against something like money is an example of this, but any criterium or set of criteria small enough so that an average human being can deal with is, probably leaves out a lot of complexity.

Yes it's not only wrong, it's hopelessly wrong, you just had to get that adjective in there didn't you... just in case it's wasn't abundantly clear how ignorant i am.

Why don't you take a less adversarial approach to debates on this forum? Surely you don't expect us to all be scientific scholars on every subject and post on a science journal level or shut up? If you think it's wrong, just say why and leave out this demeaning BS please.

If I may interject, I think we are a victim of the slow development of human nature that cannot keep up with the rapid changes resulting from technological inventions and our ability to easily transfer knowledge and cooperate. Our moral intuitions aren't developed to take into account far off risks or other people in the abstract. We pursue impartiality and abstraction by expressing everything in terms of money, which becomes a self perpetuating beast mostly out of our control (the Market) so that we don't have to feel anything about a decision, further divorcing it from morality.

What you're left with is a society that rumbles along with barely a chance to steer it in another direction simply because of its size and complexity and people incapable of making moral decisions most of the time and it's not even their fault. — Benkei

While I agree with all of this, we do find ourselves in a situation we are not especially equipped to deal with, we wouldn't find ourselves in this situation if we weren't with this many people to begin with. It all starts there, we have made major advances in medicine, food production, have no real predatory species left in nature that concern us etc etc... all of which made it possible for our population to grow as it has. However one wants to slice it, this is a major part of the problem.

Aah right, you are generally distrustful of people making an argument about human nature, promoting a defeatist attitude, put me in that box and thought I deserved a good beat-down.

There's some always something arbitrary about where we draw the boundaries around a species or not, and it's not as if we know exactly what subtle evolutionary changes in behavior or the brain may have happened between say 600.000 and 60.000 years ago... we have some semi-informed guesses.

But this is all a bit besides the point, as soon as the ice-age came to pass and conditions were such that we could have enough population and density, cultural evolution took off all across the world in multiply isolated locations, and the rest is history.

We want to survive and reproduce like any form of life, and because of the particular abilities we have we are very successful at it... which is part of the reason why we are where we are now. If you want to call this complete nonsense, fine.

I wanna say part of the problem is inherent in human beings... it's evolutions fault that we will destroy us.
— ChatteringMonkey

And yet we lived for 192,000 years with virtually no measurable impact on the climate or global ecosystem, and in the last few thousand are in a position to make the earth uninhabitable.

If your computer worked without fault for 192 years and then in the last year started to go wrong are you seriously telling me your first port of call for blame would be that there's something fundamentally wrong with the way the computer was made and not "oh no, I must have picked up a virus, or dropped it, or something"? — Isaac

192.000 years is a very precise number.... when human culture evolution really started is a bit in contention I'd say. Either way the point at which we started spreading across the globe, a lot of megafauna did become extinct, and we did reshape whole ecosystems as we progressed into agriculture, domesticated species etc etc...

And obviously this is not a linear process, it had to get some traction first. The rate of cultural Innovation is a function of population size and density... and innovations in turn have a positive reinforcing effect on those. In the video Boethius linked to, Dr Suzuki compares economic growth with bacteria in a test tube that grow exponentially every minute. If at minute 60 the tube would be saturated with bacteria, at minute 59 it would only be half that, and at minute 58 only a quarter etc etc... At minute 50 or so you would hardly notice them, yet the fact that they are an entity that doubles every minute is the cause of the tube being saturated. This just to say that the larger part of our history being relatively non-impactfull doesn't necessarily tell the whole story.

I wanna say part of the problem is inherent in human beings... it's evolutions fault that we will destroy us.

Like all life on earth we want to survive and reproduce, and we need energy for that. Normally a species only fills certain evolutionary niches, and is kept in check by the niche getting saturated or other species adapting to it.

But evolution has given us a combination of traits that enable us to transmit complex information almost instantly, making us very adaptable and overpowered. In the game of genetic evolution, cultural evolution is broken. If it takes a species millennia to evolve a new trait like a claw or a tooth, we can develop a gun in a couple of generations...

Our fatal flaw is that we are to successful, ultimately leaving us in the predicament that we have to devise a culture that goes against some of our nature.

The problem is capitalists setting societies goals, yes, but democracy let that happen or made that possible even. The idea of democracy rests on the assumption that the people are knowledgeable, responsible and independent enough to recognize what is in their and societies best interest.... a kind of free will if you will. But Google, Youtube and Facebook know people can be manipulated, and so did the church and rulers in the past.

Isn't it telling that after all these years people still can't be moved to vote for parties that want to solve the problem, given that this one of the most important challenges we face in the 21th century, and perhaps ever?

There will always be factions like business vying for control of the institutions that make the decisions. If a system can't deal with that, that would be a (fatal?) flaw in said system it seems to me.

If you weaken the church, the void gets filled up by corporations
— ChatteringMonkey

An important point. The void gets filled with varying sects of the church of nihilism: capitalism, scientism, etc. Nietzsche is good on this.

Put another way: what do the corporations fill the void with? What is their underlying belief system? — Xtrix

Money, or maybe you could say power/status ultimately, but profit is their way of getting that. They fill the void with whatever stories that make people want to buy their stuff.

Dogma comes from somewhere, that used to be predominately the church, and to some extend the state. Now in secularized societies it's corporations, via advertising, pop-culture etc... Contra 180proof I would say the masses don't need grooming for compliance with ideologies, that tendency is already there. If you weaken the church, the void gets filled up by corporations, unless you try to fill it up first with something ala Sovjet or CCP propaganda (or US nationalism)... or maybe your can curb that tendency with enough education (Scandinavian countries).

Given the above, I'd say corporations.

Capitalism is the cause, agreed, I'm just trying to figure where to go from here. One way or another we will need to change, the question is how, to what extent and when? If we believe climate scientists, which I do, there's not much time, which kind of restrains our options at this point.

As their population has boomed it's hard to see how one would return to small scale sustainability.
— ChatteringMonkey

And yet the more people, the less of a share of the Earth's resources they should have. But yeah I understand your point about poorer countries levelling up, and this only reinforces the need for richer countries to recede. The growing emissions of the third world are principally a problem while the first world is already unsustainably over-emitting. If we drop back, there's wiggle room to approach equilibrium. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, we certainly bear a historic and moral responsibility, though there isn't much wiggle room even if we'd cut emissions entirely, if we want to reach emission targets that is. The best hope for getting there is that we develop green alternatives and that developing countries can 'leapfrog' to those technology by learning from us and directly implementing them. But this brings me back to the point of why we may need at least some of the production capacity capitalism has provided us, to be able to build these green alternatives on a large enough, and therefor cheap enough, scale.

part of the point that we still would need a system that could provide "prosperity/flourishing" stands I think.
— ChatteringMonkey

I dunno. Maybe because now we're anchored to the myth of sustainable growth, it might be difficult to sell real sustainability. But again I feel that this is something that's been indoctrinated rather than meeting some demand. There is a very powerful (I can't say "good") capitalist reason to compel earners to exchange their salaries for luxuries, so if you live in a capitalist democracy, no one's going to allow the electorate to labour under the belief that keeping more of their earnings for the future is a good idea. But we used to do just that. Saving and thrift were virtues once. — Kenosha Kid

I'm not talking about luxuries, but about needs. Part of it is indoctrination yes, or just plain advertising I guess. And so I agree with you as far as western countries go, in principle we have more than enough to fulfill our needs. This is not the case in developing countries I don't think... real sustainability would probably require some increase in "general wealth". As their population has boomed it's hard to see how one would return to small scale sustainability. Those countries also happen to be the real problem for reducing carbon emissions going forward.

Another point worth mentioning on the pro-capitalism side is that the promise capitalism makes of luxury is a just another way of framing a basic human desire for prosperity, flourishing, and not really something unique to capitalism.
— ChatteringMonkey

If you have to manipulate your customers to want the luxury in the first place, and the means by which organisations do this are varied, sly and grim, then this doesn't really hold up. — Kenosha Kid

Yes I agree for the most part. Human flourishing, or even simply prosperity, is something else than what we have been sold in capitalism. But so while this is true, part of the point that we still would need a system that could provide "prosperity/flourishing" stands I think.

Here's a podcast on the difficulties in communicating the science of climate change to the public:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdjLK4Qm86I

Basically to much and to little has been made of the 2030 'deadline' in the IPCC report on climate change.

To much in the sense that it is not supposed to be a hard "dead"-line... the world is not going to end in 2030. It was meant more as a deadline for societal change, i.e. if we want to get to carbon-neutrality in 2050, we should be well on our way in 2030 otherwise it's only going to get progressively difficult. Transition takes time...

And to little in the sense that despite the promises no a whole lot has happened in the meanwhile. Essentially the problem is that politicians aren't willing to move unless there is enough public support, so the question ends up being how do you get public support? There's some interesting discussion and different viewpoints on how to get that public support and best ways to communicate about the issue.

Also some info on the uncertain science behind tipping-points...

There are further episodes in this series which is on the whole excellent I think.

Here's a podcast that deals with some of the issues we have touched on in this thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk1pIKI72jg

It's basically a debate around the question "Is the end of capitalism the answer to climate change?" One of the speakers argues for and the another against... Both present arguments worth looking into IMO.

The speaker on the side of 'capitalism is the problem' sets the stage by claiming there are inherent tendencies in capitalism that make a solution to the problem difficult and yes that capitalism has in part been the cause of the problem :

- Growth is inherent in capitalism. And so more of everything is needed, not in the least energy, so to reduce carbon emissions we have to swim upstream if our economy relies on growth.
- Money can buy anything in the natural world.
- The promise that everybody will have more luxuries. A world wherein everybody lives in luxury is not feasible and incompatible with avoiding climate change.

On the side of 'climate change can be solved within capitalism' the speaker makes a reasonable argument I think that we have dealt with some environmental and pollution issues in the past in capitalist countries, and so solving a similar problem is in principle feasible in a capitalist system... by passing legislation that takes into account environmental costs or legislation that just forbids certain things. The counter being given to this argument is that we have known about climate change for a long time now and still haven't really made any progress... part of the problem in capitalism is that money translates into political power (lobbying) and that this has prevented adequate legislation that might address the issue.

Another point worth mentioning on the pro-capitalism side is that the promise capitalism makes of luxury is a just another way of framing a basic human desire for prosperity, flourishing, and not really something unique to capitalism. And so doing away with capitalism won't actually do away with this desire, and would in any case be hard to sell to the public. Interesting points are being made that GDP is not the same as human flourishing etc..

Asked for an alternative to capitalism, the speaker on the side of 'capitalism is the problem' points to a system of commons which he think can fulfill the desire for prosperity by better and more shared commons, in stead of it being fulfilled by private property. Counter to this is that we don't have any idea how and if this would work on the larger scales that we would need it to work on given current world population.

My own assessment of the debate is that while there is more than grain of truth in the statement that capitalism has caused climate change and makes it more difficult to solve it because of perpetual growth, I don't really see a clear alternative. Maybe it's possible to eventually radically change our system, I just don't see it happening fast enough. It's not like we have a another couple of decades to sort this out first. The political will doesn't seem to be there for this kind of change, at this moment anyway, and even if the will would be there these kind of changes typically don't come without massive societal upheaval. How are we going to find the persistent agency to rapidly change our energy system into renewals in this kind of turmoil?

In principle growth doesn't seems necessarily tied to increase in emissions. You need energy yes, but that need not be based on carbon emissions. Long term growth and therefor capitalism is not sustainable I think because of other reasons, but that's another discussion. Also the argument that capitalism skews political decision-making and makes a solution more difficult is not lost on me either, but I think it's more likely that we find ways to deal with that, than it is to change the whole system and hope that we can do that fast enough and end up with a system that can deal with the issue adequately (which is not a given either).

Limiting liability was indeed necessary to incentivize investment in undertakings that wouldn't yield profit. Adding the possibility to corporations to make profit could've been incentive enough (partnerships don't have limited liability either) but politics resulted in profit and limited liability. I think that was a mistake. Limited liability externalises the costs of damages caused by the corporation to wider society, which is a reasonable exchange if the corporate activity is performed for a goal benefiting wider society but not if it's only for private gain. In that case, if you have all the profits, you should also bear all the responsibility.

In my ideal world, we would see non-profit pharmaceutical companies developing the "riskiest" treatments with limited liability and for-profit pharmaceutical companies but with normal liability that would automatically go for simpler products. — Benkei

I don't think profit alone would be enough, as the upside of profit for someone who already has enough money (which are typically the ones to invest), isn't worth the risk of being in debt for the rest of your life. Maybe it works for smaller business where the stakes are not that high, but otherwise it seems that removing limited liability would lead to less investment and less incentive to grow into larger corporations. And you know, there may be something to that, one of the problems is that we have these mega multi-national corporations that float somewhere over and between countries in a globalised world... they do have to much power.

Maybe one should pay a tax or something like that, for limiting liability, to pay for the externalised costs of potential damages caused by the corporation... like an insurance-fee where the fee is calculated based on the risks and the amount that is insured. Come to think about it, that's what it is now essentially, a free insurance against the averse consequences of failing that is paid by society, or by the creditors more specifically.

So maybe that's how it would go if you'd remove the limited liability granted by law, they would look for an insurance-type deal in the market to mitigate the risk. Then they have to pay a fee that covers the costs. And where the risks and fee-costs would be to high, government could always intervene for essential goods and services...

That's how it was defined. It could also have been structured as a piece of a loan and related interest, pretty much like a variable interest rate bond, possibly collateralised but not necessarily involving ownership in property of the corporation directly. I do think that now that it is considered "property" there's a lot more resistance to making changes to how corporations are set up. — Benkei

Sure you could set up shares in another way for the purpose of attracting investment, but then you still have the issue of the owner raking in all the profit indefinitely no? Someone has to set-up the corporation initially and owns it, or how would that work otherwise?

I think an important way for societies to minimise the consequences is to move from shareholding to stakeholding. In my view that starts at reacquainting ourselves with the role of corporations and stock as it was understood originally. Original corporations received a charter and were gifted limited liability for activities that required a large upfront capital investment. This was considered fair in order to protect investors from liability since they did not receive a direct benefit from this investment (no interest could be calculated, no profit could be made). The goal of the corporation was limited in scope and upon reaching it the corporation would be dissolved. Why would people invest? Because the indirect benefits outweighed the capital investment. Roads, bridges, important buildings etc. were typically the subject of a corporation's charter. — Benkei

Ok maybe that's how it was originally intended, I don't know the history of it, but that doesn't mean that it has to stay that way. Things morph and get used in other ways/get other functions over time, and in principle that perfectly fine.

Limiting liability seems necessary to incentivise any type of investment in larger companies. Typically the amount of money any one person has is insignificant in relation to the amounts of money circulating in the books of any decent sized company. If you wouldn't limit liability, a company of any decent size failing, would typically mean the investors would be in debt for the rest of their lives. So even if there were only a small chance of failing, nobody would want to take that chance because very few things are worth the risk of being financially crippled for the rest of your life.

The system of stock market has been about bringing borrowers and lenders together and easing the transfer of rights related to such loans.

Where the combination went off kilter is mostly the possibility for a corporation to exist in perpetuity.

A typical bond has a maturity (there are exceptions, perpetual bonds but these were still intended to be paid off put the moment of repayment wasn't enforceable). A loan has a maturity. A mortgage has a maturity. But stock doesn't. But it doesn't fulfill an essential different role than other loan instruments but it does give a right to profit in perpetuity. And this is weird, why should a shareholder who invested 100 guilders in 1910 in Shell stock still receive dividends for Shell's activities today? — Benkei

Isn't the issue just ownership, property here? A share is a piece of ownership right? Suppose there were no shares, everything would stay with the founder/owner of the company and you'd have essentially the same problem of a person getting a return on his initial investment in perpetuity.

The other point is that goodwill and market value increases due to the added value of labour and nothing else (ignoring financial industry for a moment which can passively generate profit). If I put 1 million into a company it's not going to magically increase in worth, if I buy capital goods (buildings, machinery, tools) it's not going to increase in worth. If I hire people to utilise capital goods for a specific purpose, there's a likelihood something will happen with the market value of the company. — Benkei

This seems a bit oversimplified, and may in the future even not be the case anymore as labour could presumably be a thing for automation... but ok I'll follow along.

And it's clear that companies like Shell, Google, Amazon etc. are worth a multitude of the paid up capital but we insist only those that originally provided capital and any persons subsequently buying the rights related to that initial capital investment (e.g. stock) are owners of the total worth of the company and the only ones with a right to profit. Whereas if I had funded this with a loan, after say, 5 years the loan was paid off, the interest received, everything else would be owned by other people.

My point is, that at some point capital investment is not responsible for the value of a company and the relationship between profit and initial capital investment is negligible. If this is the case, I don't see an ethical reason why a shareholder should continue to receive benefits from that initial investment.

My proposed solution would involve a dynamic equity system where the initial capital investor starts out with a 100% right to the profit but as the company grows in value and this added value is the result of labour activity, additional shares are issued diluting the share value of the company. These shares will go to employees and as long as they continue to work there, they receive more shares. If they move to another company, they too will see their shares dilute over time but will build up capital in another company.

What would have to be worked out is at what rate initial capital investments should dilute. We do have a lot of bond pricing that we can use as a benchmark.

I'd also get rid of all intellectual property rights except the obligation of attribution. But different story. — Benkei

You want to distribute added value to everybody that has contributed to it, and not only to the owners. I can get behind that goal certainly. And the idea of giving out shares which dilute over time seems like a clever way to do that. No sure how it would work out in practice, but at least it's a concrete idea to try to solve the issue, got to give you props for that!

There seems to be a myriad of reasons why the Japanese economy isn't doing so well:

https://www.thebalance.com/japan-s-economy-recession-effect-on-u-s-and-world-3306007

But ok, you do make a good case for why decline in population, wouldn't only effect absolute growth, but also growth in terms of per capita, which I'd think is the more important number.

Then we are in a bid of a bind if we think population decline is necessary to solve a lot of our long term problems, climate change chief among them.

If we don't solve them, this will eventually have an negative impact on economy as well.

If we do want to try to solve them by lowering population among other things, we - if we assume it necessarily leads to less economic growth - will have to do with less. The total pie that can be distributed will be smaller... Best case scenario then is that we manage to spend those funds smarter and allocate them to the things that are more important. Worst case scenario, and probably more likely given how things usually go, is that the bill will have to be paid by the less affluent in the fist place... and that inequality only gets bigger.

Yeah I'm not sure I get it either.
— ChatteringMonkey
That's the alarming issue here. There are enough smart people on the PF that at least someone ought to have understood it and be a firm believer in it...if it was an economic school of thought with genuinely valid ideas. Once there is nobody defending a position, then that position might not be so strong in the first place. — ssu

Well maybe there aren't that many that have a firm grip on economy, I know I don't... it's no surprise I don't understand it.

And I take it that monetary theory is a different beast altogether, so maybe only the real specialists get it?

I don't think that the MMT disagrees with the thought that printing too much money will create inflation and finally a total loss of trust in the currency (which basically is what hyperinflation is). There argument is basically that the US is different.

And I can understand this...partly: The global monetary system is based on the US dollar so much that other countries and market agents have let the US to take as much as debt it wants (which has basically been the reason why it has had the ability to be the sole Superpower in the world). Besides, their first worry would be if the dollar collapsed (would devaluate to other currencies) what will happen to their exports. — ssu

Yes the US dollar is the reserve currency, the standard.

We haven't seen much inflation for a long time though, save for some South-American countries that did their very best to hyperinflate... so maybe it's not that big of a problem?

From what I've gathered it's not only that other countries have to let the US take debt, it's also that the world economy needs some countries to take debt, and import, to let other countries like Germany and China run an export-economy. It functions as a whole, not in isolation...

That's the name of the game now.

But somehow it doesn't feel like a sustainable answer. So when would you be worried about the value of the currency? When the debt-to-GDP ratio is 10 000%? When the central bank has to double it's balance sheet in six months? Or every month? Or in a week? Inflation rates in the US are creeping up now...

All this comes to mind as yesterday the richest man in the World mimicked Alan Shepard's first space flight (but not Yuri's). When the internet billionaires can do things like that, some clever things towards replacing fossil fuels can be and are done also. But what happens when those financial cornucopias suddenly dry out? Suddenly the belief in tech saving us gets a whack by an anvil in the back. — ssu

Maybe, don't know enough to comment with much insight here unfortunately.

Basically the thing is that the so-called "smart money" uses the low interest rates in Japan and then uses the debt to invest in some other country (usually in China and in Asian countries). — ssu

Yeah but isn't this more a function of high living standards and costs in Japan, rather than a decline in population. You see this race to the bottom everywhere.... That's another way globalization needs to be corrected I think, by taking into account social costs or lack thereof in cross-country trade-prices.

Think about the debt based monetary system of ours. Basically there has to be economic growth for the interest to be paid. Then think about the "pay-as-you-go" system of pensions (and basically health care system, as old people use it far more than the young).

Both are designed for a World were there are more younger generations than older. As I said, Japan is the case example of what is going to happen. It may not be a dramatic collapse, but Japan has serious problems. It is already in a situation where it cannot raise interest rates (as then too much of the government income would go to pay the interest). If you in this situation take more debt (as Japan has done year after year), what will you think the outcome will be? — ssu

You print money? ;-)

But, sure I get that a top-heavy demographic pyramid would cause problems for systems that were not designed with that in mind, but then you change the way you finance them?

The only "fundamental" problem it seems to me, is keeping your productivity up. You can try to increase economically active population by say increasing the pension age... or you can increase productivity by innovating production-processes. It think it would need to be a mix of both, but the latter seems promising with AI and robotization.

Imagine a World the machines are as old as B-52s are now, which the youngest bombers are 58 years old. One hundred or two hundred year old power plants. A World where your fathers computer from two or three decades ago are as fast and capable of running the current programs as a new computer you can buy from the store. — ssu

I can imagine it, but I don't see why the has to follow from population decline. Has innovation slowed down in Japan? I wouldn't know exactly, but they seem relatively up to par with the rest of the world technologically.

EDIT: You think this has to follow because less growth means less money you have to invest in innovation, right?

I've been hoping that someone would explain and basically defend modern monetary theory, because it goes over my head even with having had university-level studies in economics and economic history. — ssu

Yeah I'm not sure I get it either. But the basic idea seems to be that countries don't seem to get financed by tax-money, as economists thought, but rather countries can just print money which only is a problem if it would create to much inflation (and we seemed to have had very little of that from the seventies onwards). The mistake was in thinking that they are regular economic entities that need to balance their books, as they can't default and print money as needed... they aren't subject to standard economic theories, but rather subject to monetary theory which comes with it's own particular set of regularities.

If true, it essentially flips things on it's head. Deficit spending is not the problem, it in fact stimulates the economy. Even moderate amounts of inflation is good because it reduces debt over time. One just has to avoid snowball inflation.

The natural reason for more (energy) production is population growth. Yet population growth is decreasing globally and likely will in the future make the global population hit a peak and from there on the population will get smaller. With advances in technology that would sound at first an environment where we can tackle our present problems.

Yet the problem is that our society is built on growth. Our system to finance those technological innovations and advances are built on a growth model. The debt-based monetary system needs economic growth. The social welfare models we use need growth to pay for them. With decreasing populations you might have a perpetual economic bust where not much improvements and advances will happen. The technology might be there, but it wouldn't be implemented. Fossil fuels might be used, because there's no money to build new alternatives because of the economic slump. Decreasing populations might sound like a good thing, but it might wreck havoc with our great plans to change the society from a carbon based to renewable energy based society.

Has any thought been given how to tackle this issue? What do people think here? — ssu

I don't understand why decrease in economic growth would be a problem if it is caused by population decrease. Doesn't population decrease also imply that we need less goods and services because there are less people?

In fact, in looking for a definition it seems that economic growth is often defined in terms of per capita:

A definition that can be found in so many publications that I don’t know which one to quote is that economic growth is “an increase in the amount of goods and services produced per head of the population over a period of time.”

This would make sense because it seems to me that per capita goods and services is ultimately what we would be interested in. Increase only in GDP doesn't mean much if the population would grow quicker then GDP for instance...

I could see decline in population being a problem for goods and services per capita because you typically get an aging population in the short term, which means less economically active and so less production relatively. Or maybe you get less benefit from economies of scale, as your population is smaller... But other then that, i don't see the necessary connection?

I have no obligation to provide you with sources on demand — counterpunch

No that's right, and I have no obligation to take your word on it.

We need sources that back up these claims Counterpunch... just stating it won't do.

↪ChatteringMonkey

:up: And where one technology (especially an unknown and unproven one) is given the grace of time to develop and improve, I would think the same courtesy should be extended to others; and those which are extant would be favored, I would think. It's my understanding windmills just keep getting better. Compare what they started with to where they are today. Solar panels, likewise. I've even heard you could make roads out of and drive on them. — James Riley

Yeah, energy-efficiency is getting better and better. And there are enough ways to get around the irregular supply of energy, if you have enough of it. Most of it could also be recycled eventually...

The idea seems to be that, solar and wind, and sure if present other renewables, could get us there. No idea why he's so hung up on geothermal energy specifically.

Oh, sorry! You mean like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_Dunes_Solar_Energy_Project — counterpunch

"The first three months of 2019 (January, February and March) showed good progression, topping all previous monthly data, but in April the plant was shut down because the project's sole buyer, NV Energy, terminated the Power Purchase Agreement for failure to produce the contracted power production. The power generated also cost NV Energy about $135 per megawatt-hour, compared with less than $30 per MWh available from a new Nevada photovoltaic solar farm."

They shut it down because other solar technology was cheaper? Anyway, it's not representative for all solar energy, it's a specific technology being tested because it is more effective at storing energy.

Gwent Levels: 'Wales' Amazon in danger from energy developments'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-57174252 — counterpunch

This is not about the viability of solar, but about specific placement of it.

None of this supports your claim that solar wouldn't be viable

I was talking about solar energy.

Wind and solar cannot possibly solve climate change. These technologies will never ever even meet current energy demand, less yet provide surplus energy to capture carbon, desalinate, irrigate and recycle. — counterpunch

If you have a sources for these claims, I'm willing to look at it... if not, I disagree.