Capitalism = Extinction?

1. Their microphones have some kind of weird robotic sound to it

2. I've been saying for a while now that it's corporations that are the robots that will kill us all.
   Value is not only counted.

3. Why are not more people discussing RBE?
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDhSgCsD_x8&t=231s

   An economic system with Science and Systems Theory at its core, I surmise would be closest thing to the most successful economic system we could ever have. In the face of climate change, ANY of the -ism's would need to turn to Science to solve our climate problems anyways.

4. Science schmience says the fat capitalist! I'll just ride one of Musk's or Bezos' magic rockets to Mars and start my widget factory there! I'll be living the good life with one-third the gravity, pure plant producing carbon dioxide, and no takers, because only makers will get to Mars! Wheee! There's gold in those barren hills! See you suckers!

5. I'm not depressed because I've been studying and working in the environmental field for the past 25 years, so I've dedicated my life and career to making things better, despite living in the most polluting, anti-environmental country on earth

6. Adam Smith mentioned three contributors to the market system, capital, labor and natural resources. Natural resources have no voice! Capital with the help of the state basically killed labor. What is left? Capitalists won, the world and all its creators lost!

7. One of the things we haven’t quite understood yet is just what a time of dramatic transformation the 21st century is going to be. For us. And I don’t just mean climate change — but in an even wider frame still.

   The 21st century is going to the end of one chapter of humanity’s story — and the beginning, maybe, of another. It is going to be the end of the first chapter of humanity’s story — it’s roiling, joyous, painful birth and adolescence — and, if we are wise, its transition to becoming a mature species. Let me explain what I mean by that.

   The 21st century is going to be the first time — ever — that the human species stops increasing, expanding, and growing. The human population is — for the first time in history — projected to finally peak around 2050, for the first time ever, in a hundred thousand years. Let me put all that in perspective, if your response is — “so what?” — I think it is one of the most significant events of all time, and I don’t say that for hyperbole’s sake. So powerful and meaningful that we haven’t even begun to think about it. I think it explains everything from today’s wave of fascism, to climate change — to tomorrow’s urgent, desperate need for better paradigms of everything, from economics to politics to society.

   What does the end of the first chapter of human history really mean, say, tell us? It tells us that everything is going to change, and it is going to change radically, my friends.

   About 70,000 years ago, a small number of humans — a few clans, a tribe, maybe just a family — left Africa. They expanded across Asia, and upwards through Europe. They walked across Siberia, and reached the Americas. They traveled down the coast, until, at last, they found themselves at the tip of Patagonia. That brings us to about 15,000 years ago.

   After that, human beings expanded themselves into “civilizations”, and those civilizations began warring for land, power, for silver and gold, for slaves and servants — for resources, essentially. The winning “civilization” was the West, in the end. The West “explored” the “world”, and “discovered” the “new world” — so the story goes (it’s wrong, as you can see.) Then it proceeded to colonize it, which is to say, enslave it, control it, and dominate it — all in the name of control over its resources, whether Virginian tobacco, Indian cotton, or Jamaican sugar and rum. And that brings us to now.

   Up until now — this very moment in history — the human race has been characterized by one single act. The act above. The act of expansion — for more resources, since numbers were always growing, growing, growing. With expansion, came war, slavery, tyranny, hatred. With expansion came violence of every kind. As the Biblical story eerily alludes to: in the exile from the garden is born sin. Whether or not we take it seriously, the story of the human race thus far has been one of a triumphant species, ever expanding, thanks to the easy bounty, the plenitude before it. If my goal is to expand, which is to control more resources, so my people can grow — why shouldn’t I consider you a “resource”, too?

   So the human race came to be dominated by a certain attitude, a certain mindset, a certain way. The predatory-exploitative mindset. The idea, which was later formalized in the “racial” theories of Western supremacists, went like this: human beings are the apex predators, sitting atop the globe’s food chains and natural resources. As its apex predators, they had every right to simply plunder, pillage, and loot — to exploit. Without thinking twice — without thinking even once.

   The predatory-exploitative mindset, if we’re honest, has been with us for millennia now. Rome lionized it — and practiced it. The Western age of Empires was essentially one great contest for it — to rule the waves and the world, which meant having the most colonies to exploit, the most people and land to prey upon. America came to exemplify it — seizing land, exploiting natives, enslaving Africans, greedily, hungrily. The Nazis, admiring America, took it to grotesque and horrific extremes.

   But now this age is finally coming to an end. A bitter, difficult, inevitable end. The human race is at the end of this chapter in its history. The cycle of predatory expansion and exploitation has come to an end. There is nowhere left to colonize, and nothing left to exploit. Hence, the human population is going to peak, for the first time ever, in a hundred thousand years — in just a few decades.

   Now do you see how momentous the times are that we are living through? Let me try to explain now why they’re so turbulent. If you understand by now that the first chapter of humanity’s story was about expansion, violence, over the resources an expanding species needs to grow — then it should be easy to understand why this age is so difficult and troubled.

   This age is the climax of humanity’s first chapter. We often imagine growth as an “S” shaped curve, a sigmoid curve. But that isn’t true for human beings. Growth is something more like an exponential curve, a curve forever rising into infinity, until it goes parallel to the ground. Now imagine two such curves meeting — forming not an arch, but the shape of a minaret. That’s now. What does that curve say? It says that more people are competing for dwindling resources — than ever before, by a very, very long way. A thousand years ago, maybe it was seven million people competing for the plentiful resources of seven continents. Today, it’s seven billion, competing for the burned-out husks of the very same. Do you see the problem now?

   Because this century is the culmination of the expansionist chapter of human history, it’s exploding into fascism. Into violence. Into stagnation, into poverty amidst plenty, into rage and despair. That’s a natural consequence of the central paradigm — the predatory-exploitative mindset. This mindset was always going to reach its limits — and when it did, the only thing human beings would have left to prey on would be themselves — their very own societies, democracies, cities, towns, rivers, lakes, children, lives.

   That, my friends, is where we are now. At the end of the first chapter of human history. And we are bewildered, baffled, paralyzed — or lashing out in rage and fear — because while our paradigm has hit its limits, we know no other way. Because while we’ve reached the end of the first chapter — we don’t know how to write the second. We don’t even know how to pick up the pen. Turn the page. I’d feel afraid, anxious, and angry, too.

8. No More War

9. Monopolies in the form of capitalistic competition will lead to extinction. Not honest competition. If you are not ultimately paying the same corporation for “different,” things, then true monetary voting can ensue to support companies on the cutting edge of efficiency and sustainability and therefore true progress may ensue. The industry of war is taxing beyond words and must be stopped. They use war as an excuse for advancement, but imagine if we had the time and resources to not worry about killing eachother, but to focus on how to compete for a better, more comfortable, sustainable planet. This is why transparency for business is vital as well. We the consumers must know what we are supporting. The true essence of capitalism has been tainted with corruption of greed. We as a species need to clean our souls if anything is to change. The establishment does what they can to make sure that doesn’t happen as well. Keeping us blind, under thumb.

10. Capitalism is the problem as far as wet lands in America all those rich foreigners coming here building corporations. funny thing is once socialism strikes they can pack up and basically go back home. No one wants to pay the toll and no one would want profits to go to hell, 70% especially. department stores do make money but profits can get fucked when you think about 11,000 buildings of workers, taxes on there checks, taxes on everything sold, electric bill heating bill, rent, or building taxes if owned, also pays for insurance on goods, wages as little as they are. Keeping a company alive takes more than what we really like to think about.after every thing is paid for each year the final number is what im most curious about when it comes to profit. even take out what the cost it took to stock the shelves because that is irrelevant only profit matters.

11. I'm so glad when someone speaks of this vs just global warming because the ridiculous response to global warming is "what manufactured good can I buy to help the environment." Which is essentially saying extinction full speed ahead. Don't they think of the giant diesel bulldozers digging away for ore. Or the ships airplanes and trucks moving parts and raw materials about between suppliers factories and your home. The heat used to melt and refine the steel. The giant forging presses and casting machines. Toxic Lithium and Oil for even the for plastic. Our economy is built around manufacturing low quality stuff forever and it wont last forever. Even when people talk of meat it really much fault to how it is manufactured. The economy must be controlled carefully by experts to prevent more damage or we will all die due to environmental toxicity.

12. No it doesn't, what is missing in the whole system is honesty, humility, transpancey to a point and empathy.
    Lets have a scenario, where the employer created the best working conditions, full health and dental care for its employees, well paid (with good disposable income) and valued his/her employees highly above profit. Do you think you would get great productivity, loyalty and they would probably buy the products they produce as well. Imagine if all the businesses did that and ask yourself what would Capitalism look like?

13. Its not the bus its the driver thats the problem.

14. Thank you to the Real News and Dharna Noor!!!

15. THERE IS AN UNPRECEDENTED CLIMATE CRISIS!! Here is a list of a few facts not covered in this video to ponder. There has been no significant warming for 20 years all while CO2 levels steadily climb. There has been global cooling since 2016. Tide gauges (by which satellite data is calibrated) show an averaged sea level rate of rise stubbornly flat at 2mm/yr for 100+ years. Arctic sea ice is growing, not gone as predicted. Someone should also tell The Real News that polar bears, the OLD icon of the AGW scare, are actually thriving. The new icon is similarly trumped up man made walrus peril. So they need to change their backdrop image to a dead walrus to keep in step.

    Its a crisis alright. People will soon figure out there is no climate problem. SO WE HAVE TO ACT NOW!

16. Volume for goodness sake. VOLUME!!!

17. maybe interesting/beguiling criticism of.. "vanguardism"? the true face of the jacobin magazine? "..Assessing Che..": https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/cuba-che-guevara-fidel-raul-castro-communism

18. Ecofascism!!!! Jk

19. capitalism socialism democrats Republican sustainability civilisations it all requires a mass consumption of resources.your all looking for blame .there is only one word to describe all of the above and it is. ecstinctionlism

20. I've been saying this sort of thing for years. Rampant consumerism is rapidly destroying the planet. Socialism is the only way to ensure a decent existence for everyone while reversing the environmental devastation that results from decadence.

21. SPEAK UP //// Audio is pathetic as usual.

22. The word capitalism should be changed to the term ceiling-conveyance ‘

23. Yes

24. Some of the worst industrial pollution and ecosystem damage in the world has been done in Socialist planned economies: DPRK, Communist China, and the Soviet Union.

25. Yes my dad knew this 40 years ago and tried to tell me but I really didn't believe him until like 5 years ago now it's become quite obvious and he got so depressed I killed himself. Life is tough the alternative is way more boring though

26. I remember classroom dialogue like this about 40 years ago in a community college in California. The instructor (in a bio science class) predicted that all the natural gas would be gone by 1995 and that most of us would be dead by the year 2000.

27. Ugh… World is affected by two things: 1) What we do and 2) How many of us do it. I'll wait until these conversations start including addressing point 2 along with 1… Cheers.

28. Don't be incremental on your socialist ideals.

29. Capitalism is a runaway train that will kill us all unless we kill it first

30. Thank you for seriously addressing this. We need to have this conversation with neighbors and anyone that will listen.

31. <3 Dharna, keep waking up the older section of TRNN. Marc Steiner certainly needs to wake up…

32. On humanity's tombstone it will read … "They Died for Capitalism"

33. capitalism its not a problem! humans are!

34. Dharna is right our species is in a grieving process; we're grieving the death of a logic that has driven our species for thousand of years. I try not to judge individuals that are in the grieving process but for me I've entered the acceptance phase. This is a great time for me; all my life I've been saying our species is suffering from a terminal illness and and all my life I've been told "this is as good as it gets." This is not about Socialism verses Capitalism; this is about a species unwilling to accept the dialectic nature of the natural world. Socialism is the antithesis of Capitalism; its critique; the natural world dictates you create a synthesis and this becomes the new thesis. Marx gave us the laws that govern classical Capitalism but they don't include the residual laws of Feudalism and Slavery that influence modern Capitalism. The intersection of Marx's historical materialism and Hegel's conceptual idealism is the production of value. Value comes about when living labour metabolizes the laws of the natural world. The Geist of nature and the Geist of labour creating value. I've gone through this grieving process an infinite number of times in this lifetime and it always ends with acceptance. An acceptance that we are part of the natural world not its master and alienation ends only through an acceptance of the natural world's Geist.

35. Reforming capitalism will never work. Are you going to go the Department of Capitalist Affairs and petition them to dial the profit motive back a bit so we can feed more people? Lol Even milquetoasty “socialists” like Sanders and Corbyn are too radical for the establishment. They’ll take a Trump before even the mildest capitalist reformer. Wake up! The left has become too middle class, academic and polite. The powers that be will play hardball all the way to the bitter end and lie to your face in the most sincere, friendly and relatable way…and stab you cheerfully in the back when you’re no longer useful to them. The only way we have a chance of getting out of this mess alive is if a benign eco dictatorship of climate scientists and radical economists takes power and stops the capitalists in their tracks and does what has to be done.

36. Give me all your money to save you from "global warming" before global cooling hits. Grand solar minimum. Does it ring a bell?

37. Terrific reporting! Paul Hawken's excellent book "Drawdown" and programs like this are helpful in getting the message out at a time when many major networks are turning a blind eye. Thank you!

38. Keep FAIR capitalism by enforcing antitrust laws, while nationalizing wealth of the world's wealthiest families for the benefit of ALL.

39. Everyone is to blame, but the biggest is government. Capitalists can only sell what the government allows them to.

40. Capitalism = Cancer cells running your body. They'll tell you that it's ok to grow forever with unlimited growth (sound familiar? just visit Silicon Valley or Wall Street for a refresher), then the body experiences multi system organ failure and dies.

    The Earth has cancer right now, psychopathic capitalistic cancer. It's in it's late stages.

41. Whereas parasites take only enough from it's host to survive , leaving the Host enough nutrition to continue it's existence , Capitalism breaks from tradition . It's an bloated , corpulent Gargoyle , feasting voraciously on it's emaciated victim , until all that is left is an empty husk , of the fallen prey . Where to now Capitalism ? I'm sure the select few have already implemented Contingency arrangements . God help the next Planet that has the misfortune to play host to it .

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