Claims of unsustainability have been made since Malthus, but so far technological progress has outstripped worries about carrying capacity, energy and resource shortages. — Marchesk

Not really, peak oil may have already occurred, and economic growth is dependent on energy that is relatively cheap. Increased efficiency, substitution, and technological progress may not be able to compensate for a declining supply of cheap energy. Clearly there's still a lot of oil, minerals, and water in the world, but all the low lying fruit has been picked, so to speak, and it will become increasingly costly to extract more in the future, not to mention more hazardous to the environment.

How can money be based on future growth if it looks like the future will be more expensive?

In the long run, we have a giant ball of nuclear energy in our sky, and the rest of the solar system for resources. We just need to make it through this century. — Marchesk

There's no technology in existence today where this can compare with oil or minerals and clean water found on earth. This points to an inevitable downturn. I can't imagine what a society/economy would look like where economic growth was possible with the enormous cost of harvesting minerals off-world, if that's the sort of thing you're suggesting.

Here's a counter question. How do you know that tapping the brakes on economic growth doesn't halt progress in fields needed to address climate change, pollution or feeding 10 billion people by 2050? — Marchesk

We already possess the technology to address climate change, pollution, and feeding every mouth on earth today. So why don't we use it? In other words, technology won't save us, we have to somehow decide to save ourselves.

Suddenly I do not give a flying hoot about most burglary or "looting".

Wait til people crying over TVs stolen from Target hear about Capitalism

Those figures are just mind-boggling to me. I mean, culturally, burglary an larceny are seen as paradigmatic of crime in general - but this... wage theft counting as around 2/3s of theft? What in the actual fuck??

Thsoe figures are just mind-boggling to me. I mean, culturally, burglary an larceny are seen as paradigmatic of crime in general - but this... wage theft counting as around 2/3s of theft? What in the actual fuck?? — StreetlightX

My country sucks ass

I don't know where I can find comparative figures outside of the States, but I don't imagine this is confined to it. In Australia, our major retail and restaurant chains are regularly pinged for wage theft. This is madness.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/underpayment-as-business-model-what-is-wage-theft-20190509-p51lko.html

As they put it here, wage theft in Australia is a business model, not an accidental bit of economic fallout. This no doubt applies across the ocean too. And this is to say nothing of the social distribution of who this affects in the main - usually the poorest and most precariously perched workers. Fuck.

It's insane to think about how much money has been stolen from working class people

Yeah, and I mean, the lavish social and cultural attention given to larceny in total disproportion to real life - that's class warfare. You can't get more class warfare than that.

Suddenly I do not give a flying hoot about most burglary or "looting". — StreetlightX

Do you not care about local businesses? What about when the businesses (local or chain) relocate, leaving their area more destitute?

Capitalists will be back because they are worms.

Capitalists will be back because they are worms. — StreetlightX

God forbid people have a places to work and shop.

God forbid people not get murderded in the street regularly. You can go to Applebees another time.

Sure, what does white police officers kneeling on a black man's neck have to do with wage slavery? Police abusing their authority happens under any economic system.

The police exist to secure private property. They are agents of capitalism first and foremost. Look again at that distribution of theft types. It is no accident that the police almost excusively go after everything that is not wage theft, despite the latter making up the majority of all theft. There is plenty of literature about how policing entrenches and reinforces racial - and thus class - inequality.

You can look it up yourself. I'm not here to answer every shit objection you pose which you subsequently abandon after being shown wrong. Its bad faith and shit and you should stop being shit.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander, makes a strong argument for what I think StreetlightX is talking about. Government/law enforcement supporting capital interests, etc.

Do you not care about local businesses? What about when the businesses (local or chain) relocate, leaving their area more destitute?

Clearly they don’t. Why fret about flesh and blood human beings when you can making sweeping generalizations? That’s why human beings are often the brick and mortar of socialist schemes. Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

It's been stated in this thread that small businesses are part of the capitalist problem. And some of the violent protesters in Minny are rumored to be Antifa from out of town. If so, they're a distraction and what gets talked about on the news.

Why fret about flesh and blood human beings when you can making sweeping generalizations? That’s why human beings are often the brick and mortar of socialist schemes. Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. — NOS4A2

Do they dock your rubles for going off-script? I think you’re supposed to say that ‘blue lives matter’. Anyway, indeed, change isn’t always easy, especially when the deck is stacked against you.

From Natasha Lennard, whom I will quote until the breath leaves my body:

"A categorical error is made in any media narrative resting on the idea that protests “turn” violent, or counterprotesters instigate violence in these circumstances. The error exists in the tacit suggestion that there was a situation of nonviolence, or peace, from which to turn. Any circumstance in which cops take black life with impunity, any context in which it is still necessary to state that Black Lives Matter, any situation where neo-Nazis march and murder, is a background state of constant violence. Yet the media consistently attributes the act of turning to violence to people who literally cannot turn from it, whose lives and deaths are organized by it. In the book, I cite the late philosopher Bernard Williams who wrote, “To say peace where there is no peace is to say nothing.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/natasha-lennard-fascism-book/

In case who or what Antifa is confuses anybody.

It's OK, I already know it's the devil because some conservative dickwad on Fox told me so. :lol: :fire: