We can change our technology to be more sustainable or we can regress to a pre-industrial society with 90% of the population dying in the process. Which do you prefer?
Comment on The Sodium-Ion Battery Revolution Has Started
Telemachus93@slrpnk.net 5 months ago
Nothing factually wrong with the article, but it has this sound of “this technology will solve all our problems” to it that I find highly problematic. Seven out of nine planetary boundaries are exceeded, climate change just being one of them. And all of them are exceeded because of our wasteful and growth-oriented way of life.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 5 months ago
devfuuu@lemmy.world [bot] 5 months ago
Yes.
FlyingCircus@lemmy.world 5 months ago
How tf does this dumb shit get 15 upvotes?
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
The world isnt binary. There are plenty of options in between those two. We could reduce our global emissions drastically without any noticeable difference in quality of life for most people. There is so much junk and single use stuff being produced that we could replace or simply stop producing. Banning all forms of commercial AI would hurt literally nobody except the idiots that decided to make it their career. If governments were serious about fighting climate change they would just take control of large parts of the industry and force them to stop making pointless shit that nobody actually needs.
Telemachus93@slrpnk.net 5 months ago
That’s a false dichotomy. We can also improve our technology while ditching capitalism.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 5 months ago
That’s reductive. Seeing capitalism as the root cause of all problems is disingenuous. The particular ideology oligarchies are using to justify their rule is incidental.
Telemachus93@slrpnk.net 5 months ago
No, it’s not. Not seeing that it’s capitalism is the reductive view. Instead of trying to type down a huge text while I’m tired, I’d like to introduce a 112 year-old text that still seems extremely relevant today:
Moreover, capitalist production, by its very nature, cannot be restricted to such means of production as are produced by capitalist methods. Cheap elements of constant capital are essential to the individual capitalist who strives to increase his rate of profit. In addition, the very condition of continuous improvements in labour productivity as the most important method of increasing the rate of surplus value, is unrestricted utilisation of all substances and facilities afforded by nature and soil. To tolerate any restriction in this respect would be contrary to the very essence of capital, its whole mode of existence. After many centuries of development, the capitalist mode of production still constitutes only a fragment of total world production. Even in the small Continent of Europe, where it now chiefly prevails, it has not yet succeeded in dominating entire branches of production, such as peasant agriculture and the independent handicrafts; the same holds true, further, for large parts of North America and for a number of regions in the other continents. In general, capitalist production has hitherto been confined mainly to the countries in the temperate zone, whilst it made comparatively little progress in the East, for instance, and the South. Thus, if it were dependent exclusively, on elements of production obtainable within such narrow limits, its present level and indeed, its development in general would have been impossible. From the very beginning, the forms and laws of capitalist production aim to comprise the entire globe as a store of productive forces. Capital, impelled to appropriate productive forces for purposes of exploitation, ransacks the whole world, it procures its means of production from all corners of the earth, seizing them, if necessary by force, from all levels of civilisation and from all forms of society. The problem of the material elements of capitalist accumulation, far from being solved by the material form of the surplus value that has been produced, takes on quite a different aspect. It becomes necessary for capital progressively to dispose ever more fully of the whole globe, to acquire an unlimited choice of means of production, with regard to both quality and quantity, so as to find productive employment for the surplus value it has realised. From Rosa Luxemburg: The Accumulation of Capital, Chapter 26 - The Reproduction of Capital and Its Social Setting
This passage is kind of an introduction to Rosa Luxemburg’s definition of imperialism. Back then, capitalism was not yet developed in the whole world and she argued that simply because it’s a question of survival for companies, these companies will push for the right to exploit the whole world. And now, 112 years later, I’m pretty sure we can agree that happened. And in the past few decades, when they can’t expand spacially, now it’s all about squeezing every last bit of profit from nature, the workers and the consumers.
The particular ideology oligarchies are using to justify their rule is incidental.
Here, we have a point of agreement. The USSR developed into something that was no better than capitalist states. In my opinion, that’s because it’s bureaucracy developed into something very similar to the burgeoisie in capitalism, resource hoarders led by self-interest.
But I believe your answer built on another false dichotomy here. The alternative to capitalism I have in mind isn’t a one-party state with central planning and communist aesthetics. I’m more of a proponent of decentralized power, dismantling the state and people governing their surroundings cooperatively.
save_the_humans@leminal.space 5 months ago
Personally when I say I want to ditch capitalism, the first thing I think of, among many, is simply about democratizing the workplace. Cooperatives have proven themselves to be superior than the current private model in a variety of metrics. If we reduce the defining characteristic of capitalism as needing capital to produce more capital, the current issue is that cooperative enterprises struggle to obtain the initial capital necessary to get started. Even though they have much greater success rates, banks have historically refused to give loans to these endeavers. There exists non profits to try and fill this void but its not enough.
melfie@lemy.lol 5 months ago
Capitalism may be workable with strict regulation and proper social safety nets. The problem is that we have crony capitalism, which allows billionaires to essentially control the laws, which concentrates power into too few hands, similar to other oppressive forms of government. A key piece we are missing to make capitalism more workable is right in the word itself: “cap”. There should be a cap on how much wealth any one individual can accumulate.
TheJesusaurus@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
But… It is the root of a lot of problems and it helps the oligarchs… And it just sucks and makes no sense in general?
thinkercharmercoderfarmer@slrpnk.net 5 months ago
Question: would I have to give up my exploitative companies that fuel my bid to become the first King of Internet? Because that’s kind of a dealbreaker for me.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 5 months ago
What are you talking about, you filthy usurper? I’m the only legitimate king of the internet!
thinkercharmercoderfarmer@slrpnk.net 5 months ago
Are you inviting me to a money fight? I do love those. Let’s both put in ludicrous bids on some AI company and fight over ownership to pump it’s value in the market, I haven’t done one of those in months. Winner buys the next yacht we sink in the Bermuda Triangle to appease the Elder Ones, Respect upon their Unknowable Names. If only the poor knew how hard we worked to prevent this puny planet from being eaten by elder demons, they would be grateful.
FlyingCircus@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Because of
our wasteful and growth-oriented way of lifecapitalism.FTFY.
Enkrod@feddit.org 5 months ago
I don’t doubt for a moment that humanity can be extremely wasteful in any economic system. But capitalism sure embraces and enhances our worst tendencies.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Partially. It’s more that people don’t click unless the headline is sensational.