Thank you very much for the welcome! :blush:

Yes, it was my first day, I might have gotten caught up in trying to cram my whole world view in there. :sweat:
I must say, from what I've seen, this forum seems like a very healthy place to expose your ideas to others and have enlightening discussions. I guess, I'll get around to the customs, adequate lengths and such eventually.
So, I guess, till our next encounter. Hihi

laws prohibit burning the rainforest — counterpunch

creating overall conditions that align rational self interest and sustainability. It's not capitalism per se, that's the problem, but rather the context within which capitalism occurs. — counterpunch

I can fully agree with that notion: The self interest lies always within the context of the worlds response to it.
It becomes your self interest to not burn down the rainforest, because doing so would give you the legal and financial problem of breaking the law.

I honestly think though, that skipping over the pragmatic details leaves us missing the exact points which doom our utopias to fail:
Who is passing the law, who is imposing the law?

And I think this kind of brings it back to your initial question.
Why did the church prevail, while critics could be silenced (even though they were more truthful)?

It is always those with (political) power, who make these decisions.
Whichever means of power this may be,

• be it visibly holding leadership qualities within a small tribe of humans,
• having the justification of a god (believed in by most) on your side,
• or having the financial means (in money everyone accepts)
  etc.

In the very end, it will boil down to plain physical force, i.e. man-power, which can be bought with all of the above.

Don't get me wrong:
I don't think power in itself is the problem. Some institution has to be in power to make a decision, this is inherent to making such large-scale decisions.

My problem is:
I see no inherent connection between the process by which an entity gains power over and the interest of humanity. The appearence of such a connection is forced upon the world through democracy, when in actuality there is just a link between the two, initialised through a medium (public perception of parties and people leads the public to cast their vote).

But precisely because it is not inherent, but dependent on a human-developed system, it allows for exploitable failings (invisible corruption; the politicians focus on boosting public image instead of being authentically the best choice).

Now here's my pessimism applied to your comment:

laws prohibit burning the rainforest — counterpunch

This comment suggests, you seem to have a quite robust trust in our democracy.
My argument is: If it initially lies within my rational self interest, that I should burn down the rainforest for financial gain, seeing that the law is about to get passed, it must also be my rational self interest to stop the law from being passed.
Now obviously, if I have no power to do so, there is nothing to be done and I must except, that it is no longer profitable to burn it down.

Unfortunately, and this is what we are witnessing on all levels of industry and government, I am NOT powerless in that situation, if I have the means of power, to pursuade lawmakers.

Virtuous lawmakers will not give in to corruption, but already 2 mechanisms of my democracy failed, even before I start bribing:

• Lawmakers are in that position, not because they ARE virtuous, but because they SEEM virtuous or at least appealing to the public. (Obviously, actually virtuous people seem virtuous most of the time as well, but it is precisely not a requirement for being perceived as such.)
• We are blind to what goes on in back-door meetings, we could not pay attention about to whom we are giving power, if we wanted to, hence, we can not easily replace people who WOULD take bribes.

This leaves me, the briber, with enough bribable delegates to stop anything from passing, which would lessen my rational self interest.

If the bribe costs me more than the loss through the law, I will let the law pass, that is simple economics.

But you see, there is no inherent connection between rational self interest and truth or good.
(though, no inherent connection to evil either)

And even in the artificial connection you propose,

creating overall conditions that align rational self interest and sustainability. — counterpunch

the entity tasked with creating those conditions is itself only a tool to anything with the most power. And if power can be bought because of current self interests, then self interests become self sustaining, in that they will never allow to be regulated away unless even greater power replaces them.

This is also my explaination for your OP question.
Events in human history happen, not BECAUSE something is truthful or good,

Clerk: "Because Galilei spoke truth, we shall now all change our focus."

but because they are necessitated by the biggest current power

Clerk: "Whatever this guy says undermines my intellectual influence, so I will work to suppress it."

.
In a case, where truth is the strongest power in convincing, as with an obvious lie, it will prevail.

Clerk: "Whoever listens to Galileis words will be struck by lightning!"
Me: "I heard what Galilei said. Eventhough I trusted the clerk, he must be wrong here."

But it is precisely not BECAUSE it is true, that it prevailed, but because it had the POWER to convince.
But there simply is nothing to take power away from a heavily convincing or even unfalsifyable falsehood.


To come back to your formulations of a better world.
I understand, you might see from the outside looking in, new, even stronger interests could be found in other fields. If the oil or tech or coal mogul invested in irrigating the desert, he could become wealthier, such that his bribs against environmental laws financially wouldn't pay.
For one, I'm not qualified to check the reality of that.
My take: When a huge investment in land and technology has already been made, we see coorporations rather invest as much as necessary (which seems to be little enough) in fighting legislation than in rebuilding their entire industry/ building a new one (which from my completely unprofessional idea seems to have to be a lot).

That is to say: Outdated entities stay with us, because they have lived and are fighting to stay alive.
If you really want them gone, you'd have to kill them.

I don't yet know what that last sentence means, but it seems to be correct for the metaphor.

continued rational self interest — counterpunch

What is your understanding of rational self interest?
I would argue, if you can make money from turning rainforest into farmland, while you can't make money from the rainforest reducing CO2 (which has value to us humans, even though it is not represented monetarily), it is the only rational self interest of anyone in the position to make the decision, to indeed do the shortsided thing and destroy the rainforest.

You could argue, that it is in the rational self interest of the person making the decision, to save the rainforest, because they themselves (or at least their grandchildren) will be affected negatively by the destruction.

But look at the world! These decisions ARE being made for the worse. Corruption is a norm.
Either actual people are not your model person pursuing rational self interest and instead cling to irrational self interest.
Or indeed capitalist self interest has no connection to "the good of humanity" and continued rational self interest, as you put it, works towards some equilibrium, which has absolutely no connection to a flurishing society, and therefore can neither guarantee, nor even stop itself from attacking this ideal of humanity.

So I will be the pessimist I am:
Let's say you do convince people in power to agree to your magma project, through showing them, that it has monetary value as well and investments are made, to pay for the technology.
There will be competition between countries, possibly between corporations, to get the most out of the operation. One entity has to invest tremendously to develop the knowledge and technology and all others will try to benefit from the investment.

Even without bad intentions, high economic pressures lead to hastily decisions.
I heard somewhere that Tschernobyl happend due to lack of financial interest in paying for good securities of the system.
Imagine systems operating on magma. Security would take tremendous costs, which are factors, most people in charge will try to cut, by downplaying. And I sencerely can not imagine, what a catastrophe in this field would look like.

If a capitalist system manages to almost destroy the world, just by producing CO2, with the implications only recognized decades later, innovative science might well be the only saviour.
But it will also always be the next tool the capitalist system is ready to abuse.