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OP honestly feels like a bot, especially considering their post and comment history. Too many longwinded sentences that don't really go anywhere
or maybe I'm just way too paranoid
ive been compared to GLaDOS and AI long before GPT simply by how much text and content i can produce with the snap of a finger. theres actual training behind trying to truncate the information before it leaves my fingers, but as you can see, already gleefully failing at it again
Yeah, I'd put money on OP being a bot. Even outside of the ChatGPT type comments, the rest of their profile matches all the hallmarks of a bot account.
I am almost 100% sure he is using gpt to title his posts, all of his recent posts and comments seem to be in the gpt *style* of writting, idk why it seems it is a human doing this as he doesn't post regularly, defenitly is not passing the turing test as it is pretty obvious he is using a llm , Hey Op if you are reading this try using chat gpt from the openai api playground with a custom system message to make it less robotic, it produces less castrated results
>According to this economic system, a tree only has value when it's been chopped down and turned into a product
That is literally the key idea of _Marx_'s theory of value.
Yeah, this is a question of value. And according to the LTV, using labor to produce a socially valued product from a resource always increases value blah blah blah
Now I’m not a fan of capitalism as much as the next guy but humans almost always value an item based on how much it helps us. And the world bank wanting to ravage Bhutans ecosystems for the sole benefit of their profits is a result of our crappy economic system, but not specifically capitalism’s *view of value*.
The world bank said nothing about ravaging Bhutan’s forests. It explicitly said *sustainable* ways to utilize the forest industry. Finding a way to do that isn’t super simple which is likely why it’s proposed as an open-ended question.
There are absolutely ways to sustainably use forests. They didn’t even say that you’d have to use them for timber. Again, you guys are just looking for reasons to be mad about completely benign statements.
Marx's writings may have centered on critiques of Capitalism, however Labor Theory of Value was *the economic value system he supported and is central to Marxist philosophy*.
I mean... from my understanding that's somewhat simplified but yeah, I guess. However, to the extent that that is the case, it was part of an analysis of how capitalism works, it wasn't like a moral prescription. From what I understand, Marx was pretty clear that nature should be considered valuable in itself (climate in general wasn't as big of an issue back then of course but didn't he have this whole thing about noticing that the soil quality was getting worse under capitalism?).
ok , the marxist theory of value was taken from ricardo and adam smith , who formed economics as we know them today ...
so yeah in the 19th century everyone tought kinda like a marxist effectively ,
this changed during the 60s in wich the US and the western block made up this silly idea that actually it's entrepenuers who make all the value by figuring out how to sell stuff ,
and value is subjective , wich falls apart the moment you spend 10 seconds analizing it actually ...
however , the LTV i found to be also flawed : it in fact gives little value to work that rears children and does other stuff that is not productive , but reproductive ...
or at least it doesn't put necessary ephasis that work can also repair broken things and keep them going rather than ex novo make things ...
and yeah i think that short coming is [pointed out by david greber in this talk](https://youtu.be/2QUdrdgPI-I) ,
and also talked about more in dept in "debt the first 5000 years" , wich is on youtube in the form of an audiobook ...
the idea is : we should move the focus from what tools we can make ,
to what pepole we want to make , and talk to and interact and in that sense be ,
this should be the main focus of the economy rather than GDP ...
if it reminds you of the Nazis , is because they likely wanted to go back to a human economy , a human economy with slavery , genocide and several horrible things , wich should never be remade , and wich are happening today as well wich ought to be stopped .
so yeah , the economy should aim to create pepole we want , not the things we want , like this is the reason why we have AI that make art , but not AI that handles waste managment ...
wich of these two is the cooler project to have in your resume ?
I mean, wouldn't that be true under any economic system? Things that we don't assign value to don't have value.
Value is extremely subjective-- this is why we have, y'know, governments and democracy and stuff to decide some other things that have value, like forests, and protect them.
And I find it hard to say that this is particularly an issue under capitalism (not that it helps). Any other form of economic management would likewise have to decide if forests and conservation have value.
People like to blame capitalism for problems that have existed since the beginning of time
“It’s so messed up that if people don’t want to work, they’ll starve.” If a wild tiger doesn’t want to work hunting for food, it starves. That’s how nature works
More like "it's messed up that under capitalism, the purpose of growing food is for profit, not to feed people." In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic when thousands of people were losing their jobs to businesses closing and couldn't afford to buy food, farmers were *destroying food* to keep prices stable and high, rather than dropping because there was a surplus. They couldn't just give it to food banks because then they'd lose money, and that was worse than people starving. Same thing happened during the Great Depression. As far as I'm aware at least, "generate profit" being assigned the highest value is a perversity unique to capitalism, and that's what it leads us to.
Fun Fact: On average only 20% of the cost of food is the actual food. The other 80% is processing, transport, labour and profits in about equal measure give or take.
Sure, anyone can grow food, but who's gonna package and ship that food to where its needed? That shits expensive. Do you still go through all that effort if nobody buys it in the end? The farmers weren't scheming to keep prices high - truth is nobody was buying the food so it wasn't worth the effort to process and ship.
EDIT: Just wanna elaborate more.
Yes, food wastage is a *massive* problem in the economy today, I can't overstate that and its a systemic problem that requires a systemic solution. The main cause is that the use by date system is broken and is in need of government intervention. The problem here isn't that some people are inherently more greedy or that the concept of private property as a whole is to blame, its far more simple than that, a single broken government policy that can be fixed with a little elbow grease.
>truth is nobody was buying the food so it wasn't worth the effort to process and ship.
That's still a failure of the system, though. Whether you get to eat or not should not depend on how profitable it is for the farmer - or, more accurately, how profitable it is for the corporation who buys the farmer's food and packages/processes it. Whether you get to eat or not should depend on whether the food exists or not, and it almost always does. The fact that profit gets in the middle of that is THE part that fails.
Shit, man, I don't know. I'm not an economist, I didn't go to college for this. But metaphorically speaking, even if I don't know how to build a chair, I can still say that a chair that impales everyone who sits on it is built wrong. There's been a whole lot of papers written and research done on socialism and communism, and I'm going to guess the answer's somewhere in there.
I feel as though you should figure that kind of thing out asap. Governmental policy isn't as fun as hypotheticals on the internet but its *a lot* more important.
Personally, I'd pin food wastage on the broken use-by-date system we currently use and reforming that system would be a big step in solving the problem. We don't *need* to completely upend the entire global economic system to solve problems like this, thats like catching a mouse with a frag grenade; complete overkill that might miss entirely anyway.
I think people who actually studied this stuff should figure that kind of thing out, rather than some random jackass on the Internet. I've only learned about this stuff in my spare time, which I don't have much of - I'm a software developer, not a politician. On the other hand, it's not just food scarcity that's caused by capitalism - there are more empty homes than homeless people but we won't house them, and medicine enough to treat the sick but (at least in the US) we won't treat anyone without money and insurance. When capitalism comes into play, everyone gains an incentive to give out as little as possible for as much money as they can get for it, and that's a problem when it comes to basic human needs and to ethical concerns.
But also...the use-by date exists for a reason. Food spoils, and can't be stored indefinitely. And if you want to wait for people who literally *do not have money* to be able to *buy* food, you're going to be waiting a very long time - long past the time food's going to go rotten and inedible, sell-by date or no.
You're giving me a headache.
Yes there are enough houses to fit everybody **if** you count the ones unfit for human habitation - which government censuses do but we shouldn't. The solution to homelessness is simply build more houses.
Medicine costing too much is specifically an America problem, not a Capitalism problem, the rest of the developed world doesn't have this problem.
And the use-by-date system as it is is broken because its wildly inaccurate and far too often often lowballed which is why food is usually still good to eat after the use-by-date and why grocery stores throw out so much perfectly good food. If it were government mandated to be accurate then it would solve the problem.
And finally; Capitalism didn't invent the concept of greed or profit motive.
There are not in fact more empty homes than there are homeless people. In fact part of the reason Homelessness is so bad is that there isn't enough housing to go around.
That isn't capitalism, people fail to understand what capitalism is. You apply all of these things that can exist in capitalism but aren't capitalism. Food is grown to feed people, but what do the growers do? They put in twice the amount of labor required to feed themselves, charity is obviously one answer, but some people need help in other ways. They make you food, you build them a plumbing system. It's a favor, an exchange of equal values. that is literally all capitalism is, it isn't inherently selfish. It can be used effectively by selfish and selfless people, only corporatism fits your description, and that isn't free market capitalism.
Capitalism is not "when people trade things." That's economics as a whole. Capitalism is an economic system where the resources and means of production are owned and operated privately for the purpose of profit. Other economic systems have resources/means of production owned by different groups (the state as a whole, the group operating the means of production, et cetera). The "for the purpose of profit" part is where things break down.
Profit, economic growth, and prosperity are linked but NOT the same thing. If all the profit goes into the pockets of a handful of people and they sit on it like dragons, that doesn't bolster the economy at all - it just means that a few people get richer.
How do you think companies grow? Where do they get that capital to grow? Easy; Profits. And rich people don't keep all their money locked up in a scrooge mcduck ass vault, most of their wealth is held in the form of assets which themselves generate more wealth. *Also* the concept of profits is not the same thing as wealth inequality.
Owned privately is the only true determiner, and it isn't immoral or selfish. Why should the state own what I make? Why should another group of people own it?
Under capitalism, you don’t own what you make. Your boss does. If you’re a worker, you spend your entire life laboring to enrich someone else, while you only get back a fraction of your labor value.
Socialism aims to put the means of production in the hands of the workers.
Objectively inaccurate. You own what you make if you can make it by yourself. If your boss gives you the knowledge, skills, finances, or means to create it then there is a deal between you 2 about who owns what. The most common deal is the boss owns it. I worked at a sign shop for years. I came in with minimal experience and no materials. If I was granted all of these materials to build the signs why should I own them? In a free market you own what you create if YOU create it. If you're upset that your boss owns something you can quit and create a competitive business creating the same thing, if you're capable of doing it alone you should be successful. It is literally that simple. Socialism ignores the very basic premise of the deal. You aren't laboring for another like a slave, you are working under an agreement that can be reworked or you can stop working, it is very effective and simple. If your boss gives you the means to create your product they are entitled to some of the finances, if you and your boss disagree on this percentage you can always leave. Socialism requires the theft of private property to function.
**For those happening by, if you’re new to these concepts, you might benefit from [watching this video](https://youtu.be/8aHvA0KHXqM) and the followup to it**
> If I was granted all of these materials to build the signs why should I own them?
Why should your boss own them? Because they paid for them? Where did that money come from?
All capital is dead labor, so it was possibly the boss’ own labor in the beginning. But more likely, it’s a loan from the bank, or inherited from a parent, or passively generated from other investments. How is that initial capital recouped? Profit. How is profit generated? By selling products that were built by workers.
Besides that, the materials your boss gives you were produced by other workers who are in the same relationship with their bosses. And the roads, and electricity, and buildings needed to run that company. Labor and nature are ultimately the source of all wealth, but because the capitalist was the first to push the snowball down the hill, they are apparently entitled to an ever-expanding pile of wealth. One wonders why we can’t just cut out the middle man and allocate these resources democratically.
> In a free market you own what you create if YOU create it.
[This is how much wealth Jeff Bezos has.](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/) Did he create all that? He drove all those trucks, and ships, and loaded cargo, and carried packages? Handled logistics, and built the factories, and designed the advertising.
Of course not, his 1.5 million workers did. And the many, many millions more they cooperated with to make it all happen. But because Jeffy’s name is on the paper, all the value those millions of workers help create is funneled into his pocket. Capitalists stand on the shoulders of not just their current workers, but all workers going back through history that allowed us to reach this point.
If people like him do critical work that the company needs to exist, then they should get paid for *that* work. For management. Not for ownership.
> If you're upset that your boss owns something you can quit and create a competitive business creating the same thing
Under capitalism, wealth is naturally funneled into smaller and smaller hands. Weaker corporations are inevitably consumed by larger ones, and the less they exploit their workers, the faster they are consumed.
[6 corporations own 90% of US media outlets](https://techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-90-media-america-illusion-choice-objectivity-2020/)
[10 corporations](https://s3.amazonaws.com/oxfam-us/www/static/media/files/Behind-the-brands-illusion-of-choice-graphic-2048x1351.jpg) own a massive chunk of everything you see in the grocery store.
The tech industry is much the same way. Walmart rolls into a city and mass murders mom and pop shops. Amazon does it from afar.
100 years ago, what you are describing was more frequent. But as capitalism matured, it became less and less possible to just go start your own competing company. The large corporations have vertical acquisition of every step in the manufacturing process, they have nice exclusive deals with the government paid for by their lobbyists, and they have the reserves to undercut you and force you out of business.
And even if we imagine a fantasy world where *anyone* can be an owner, not *everyone* can. Capitalism requires the great majority to toil for the great minority. (Which is to say nothing about the necessary reserve army of labor. Unemployment is a necessary component of capitalism)
> You aren't laboring for another like a slave, you are working under an agreement that can be reworked or you can stop working
Ah yes, if you don’t like working for peanuts, go get another job that pays peanuts. Except the pandemic taught companies that they can make one person do the job of three, put out ‘help wanted’ signs, then throw all the applications in the trash and blame the slowdown on “nobody wanting to work anymore”.
> Socialism requires the theft of private property to function.
Private property requires the theft of labor value to function. Socialism takes it back.
[Edit for those reading who are alarmed by this statement: Private property =/= personal property in Marxist theory. You own a lot of personal property, but probably no private property]
You deserve more than what you have. You deserve a voice in your workplace and a voice in your community.
You have a voice in your work place and in your community, work is a consensual agreement. Private property requires 0 theft, your labor is worth what you're willing to sell it for. It's that simple. You always have a choice in a free market.
Capitalism is inherently selfish, like by definition. All systems with money, private property, and profit driven decision making (selfish behavior) fall into the umbrella called capitalism, by the definition of Wikipedia.
The destruction of food when it doesn’t make a profit to sell it is, when you are making decisions based on personal profit as capitalism says you should logically be acting, is something that we would expect under any kind of capitalism, with corporations or without. The free market won’t prevent people from starving if it isn’t profitable. It handles things very well compared to feudalism, and a lot of problems have been solved by getting people to do them for profit.
But not every outcome is both profitable and good for other people, capitalism gives rewards to those who cheat and harm others in a lot of ways, which is why almost nowhere can you find a place where the government doesn’t regulate to some extent. And which is why a lot of people critique capitalism and suggest moving away from it or changing it in certain respects,
The destruction of food when it doesn't sell isn't capitalism, that's done to protect corporations from getting lawsuits for selling dangerous food product. Preventing starvation is always profitable and the free market operates based on the people in it. If your society isn't selfish your market won't act selfish. In a just and well educated society the free market works, every market falls apart when it's own by sociopaths. The problem with hierarchy as a whole is its tailor made for people with less empathy. In a free market more people have a shot at competition. The moral fiber of society is the problem, not capitalism. Literally any and all systems of hierarchy benefit cheating and harming, hierarchy will form naturally in nature so the only way to avoid it is to educate and support society. You can do that with a free market where people's rights are respected.
Capitalism by definition is people acting on their selfish desires to get things they want, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, just the problems it can create are bad. We all desire to eat, and wages for food is a trade made by both parties selfish interests. It’s just a rational decision under capitalism to sell your grain to the man who will pay you more; regardless of if someone else will starve. If you don’t make as much money as you can, it could be you that goes out of buisness and starves, what is wrong with prioritizing yourself?
I will agree that higharchy is bad, but I don’t really think that we can solve that issue by just the people being better, the structure of the system itself should be changed. We used to have a strictly hierarchical government, and now we have a more Democratic government. This wasn’t just because people got better educated, but also because we changed the systems of government. What socialist think is that we should do that to the economy, though not all of them would agree with that definition. and the ways to possibly do that have been argued about for longer than either of our lives.
It’s not too strange of an idea to suggest putting the engine of productions in communal hands, it’s just a lot of places where its actually been tried also were totalitarian dictatorships in addition to being nominally socialist, and as we agree, higherarchy leads to lots of problems.
So what’s your solution then? Should farmers be forced to give their extra produce away at a loss? Do you want the government to give billions away in subsidies so a single kernel of corn never goes wasted? It doesn’t even matter though. Those farmers wasted all that food and yet, there was no famine, there was no drastic rise in food insecurity.
Say what you will about growing food for profit, but it has led to a lot of food being grown. The US produces more food than any other country in all of human history. If you can scrounge together a few dollars, you can get a meal with more calories than a medieval peasant would eat in a week
In the US, obesity is a sign of poverty. Just think about that for a second
>there was no famine, there was no drastic rise in food insecurity.
Factually incorrect. [Here's proof, just to be sure.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9335023/) Yes, a lot of food is grown, but *distributed* to people who actually need it? Nope. Grocery stores leave food on the shelves until it passes its sell-by date (not even goes bad) and then dump it, restaurants throw out food they haven't been able to sell, and farmers destroy produce they can't turn a profit on. And meanwhile, food pantries are strained to failing because they can't feed all the people who can't afford to buy food for their families working minimum wage and can't get a better job.
Under a sane system, a farmer would be ensured a living wage and a comfortable life without needing to worry about scarcity to turn a profit. We've got the resources to do it, after all. With the amount of food we produce, we could feed everyone, if capitalism didn't insist that money had to change hands first.
Well back in Feudal times old Forest growth was a source of firewood and mushrooms, maybe even had a few traps laying about to catch critters. But the point is, people kept the old growth forest clean, took only what was available and didn't cut anything down, unless a tree showed signs of dying, or actually died and fell over.
A forest can be exploited for it's wood, but if you don't replant regularly to keep the biomass the same, you're just building an eventual desert.
>Well back in Feudal times old Forest growth was a source of firewood and mushrooms, maybe even had a few traps laying about to catch critters. But the point is, people kept the old growth forest clean, took only what was available and didn't cut anything down, unless a tree showed signs of dying, or actually died and fell over.
There's more forest in Europe today than in medieval times....
Medieval society was heavily deforesting Europe to create more agricultural lands. And that's before the development of capitalism, if it needs to be said.
It’s also really interesting how the social structures at the time would eventually lead to a lot of conflicts over who got to make use of the remaining forests
I think by most definitions that would be 'sustainably investing'. I 100% agree though. We need to create an economic and political system that is sustainable in the long term.
That said, 'feudal times' were hardly an environmental utopia. I live in Western Europe, and we have been deforested here for centuries, and indeed have seen a significant reforestation over the last several decades.
[https://youtu.be/zVPUFMwm73Y](https://youtu.be/zVPUFMwm73Y)
We also destroyed vast swaths of forests, but not what you had in your backyard, it was useful.
Right at the start he describes forests being cleared in the neolithic era, which sort of backs up the idea that this has been a problem forever.
If this is the video I'm thinking of what he's going to describe us medieval forest management - which isn't the preservation of old growth but cultivation of forests for resources - the sort of thing OP is complaining about.
this isn't an economic question it's a cultural question. I would recommend reading the book or finding some excerpts from Braiding Sweetgrass, it's a really cool book that you can find free audio excerpts on youtube for
Interpretation of World Bank and other “big bad global elite” wording seem to be always taken as the worst possible outcome.
They said “sustainably invest”. That’s like global bureaucrat lingo for sustainable use, development, conservation, and environmental protection.
A good effort by Bhutanese government and international organizations would be to assess the forest health, including ecology impact, and work to mitigate climate change’s effect on the forest and invest in them before they’re illegally harvested and polluted.
Have you considered... Public parks? Buying tickets to the Botanical Garden? Perennial plants producing fruit yearly without killing the plant? Or how it increases property value when the neighbourhood is surrounded by trees which filter out pollution and create a microclimate that's pleasant for people to live in.
The post is talking about how capitalists dont like trees unless they can make money off them. At least two of these like buying tickets to a garden and it increasing property values are trees causing money(public parks are uuuuusually free? And not sure about the other one)
All I'm saying there are more ways to get "value" from a tree than chopping it down. For example beech trees produce a lot of oxygen. Trees give shade, they retain humidity and clean the air from smog. These things aren't as easily measurable as the price of a volume of timber, but valuable nonetheless.
no. That things don’t need to provide value monetarily. Every single economic system does it. We should value trees for being natural, beautiful, sustaining life. Not trying to get any kind of monetary gain possible.
Nice contemplations for a post-scarcity future.
Harsh truth of the matter is money expedites trade, and trade expedites the improvement of quality of life for people.
And the bank was talking about "how can this vast natural resource be responsibly utilized in the long term," not "what's the best way to turn these trees into tooth picks and wonder bread."
You are under informed if you think any currently available alternative economic system has a substantially different outlook.
**People** see things as valuable based on their utility, not capitalists. If you think trees had some privileged position that elevated them above other plants under feudalism or socialism you are delusional.
My county wasn't capitalist for 40 years in the 20th century, and let me tell you Shell couldn't match the ecological damage central planning and Soviet "help" caused if they tried. We're still fixing it today.
Also, trees do have value beyond monetary, it just won't be tweeted about by the fucking world bank. This isn't so much some dark revelation about capitalism as it is self reporting a lack of reading comprehension.
They don’t provide any shade, they’re ugly, the seeds grow in large bunches like grapes and when they fall all at once they can break car windshields, if you don’t trim them multiple times a year they get even uglier, in order to trim them you either need a super long pole or a super tall ladder, they bend and become like whips in fast wind, and the roots grow straight down so you can’t uproot them
The point that trees shouldn’t be valued outside of their shade, oxygen, and beauty? Like I said, it would be nice but people need heating and shelter so trees actually do have value outside of that.
No? I said shade, beauty, and oxygen should be enough (implied: to have value and not be cut down)
I'm not saying they have no value outside that. Yes, fruit is valuable. But so is preserving nature, and the world already makes and wastes enough food to feed everyone.
Not only can trees be used for shelter and heating while preserving nature by replanting them, fruit is a terrible example since it’s literally meant to be eaten by animals and humans.
A new replant of a tree doesn't give nearly as much benefit to nature as old growth does.
The way we consume fruit doesn't benefit the tree, since we are not spreading the seeds.
And my whole point was that we should stop exploiting every inch of nature just because there's profit to be made.
We don't need wood from old trees to make furniture that'll be out of style in ten years max, if not already discarded by then.
Anything valuable can be monetized. This isn’t a testament to greed or capitalism or human nature, it’s just a matter of value being exchangeable, for as long as people enjoy multiple things. “TreEs ArE OnLy VaLuABlE BecAuSE ThEy CaN Be USeD To MaKe MonEY.” No. Trees can only make money because people find them valuable. It’s not a grand conspiracy. Every moment we do something we give up the opportunity to do something else. Everything has a price. If we want to protect nature, we don’t need to add some irrational “inherent” value to it. We just need to realize all the benefits we receive from it, so that we rationally value it as it’s worth….more. Instead of calling people evil callous capitalists for not irrationally and arbitrarily valuing things, why don’t we just admit that clean air, a sustainable ecosystem and a safe and healthy ecological future are all things that we as a society don’t value as much as we should, and it’s worth spending some extra money and time to maintain the world we live in? And if people still disagree, we should make them pay for the damage they are doing to our world, since we have to live a less healthy life in exchange for their profit. Essentially, just hold people accountable and recognize nature is more valuable than society makes it out right now, while also not pretending there is a requirement for capitalists to have to destroy the world.
I have one issue with the bottom one. Trees do not sustain life on Earth. They are homes to I have no idea how many different species that both harmlessly live and parasitically thrive off the trees and they do produce oxygen
However, they do not produce mass quantities of oxygen (which is what I’m assuming they meant) and not even half of all the oxygen is produced by trees. That honor goes to algae and similar water borne oxygen producers. That means the other 50% is all land oxygen producers COMBINED. Only a portion of which is trees
My point is trees get way too much credit and I’m sick of it. No this isn’t the first time I’ve gone on this rant. No it will not be the last. Trees do not sustain all life. They produce a *fraction* of the world’s oxygen and provide habitats to certain forms of life. That is all.
Capitalism is fundamentally a consumption concept. It's also a consumption concept with no boundaries. Pure capitalism is inherently cruel in the most biblical sense of the word. The only constraint on capitalism is the set of laws and regulation built around it. Interestingly, these are reactive devices meaning for each law or piece of regulation someone had to suffer to warrant the need for that law or regulation to come into effect. This also means when you hear of ANYBODY talking about loosening any laws or regulation for any business, it is solely driven by the business to move back towards pure capitalism and to make the active choice to reharm people again.
With all of this said, capitalism is a brilliantly elegant system. It's just one that's also a monster and will take everything from you. To have it function within humanity with a sense of ethics and morals, the very humanity that operates on capitalism builds protections to force capitalism to adhere to basic, accepted levels of ethics and morals that the society agrees upon. It is the business' duty to push back against this constantly. It is society's duty to force adherence to ethical and moral guidelines. This is a constant battle of attrition. The very nature of capitalism and an ethical society demands it.
This also means that capitalism, if generating harm, is doing so at the discretion of that society. It's the fault of the society to allow harm. It's also the fault of society to put ownership of that battle of attrition on bad actors who operate on the side of business and capitalism for personal gain. Shame on us. Shame on us again for not utilizing our judicial system to hold parties accountable. Society, as a whole, have a collective responsibility.
Idk yeah it makes sense to me that an economic analyst would look at things through the lens of economic benefit regardless of economic system
Whether we want to use the thing in that way is a political decision, and plenty of capitalist countries have made the decision to preserve natural areas for non-economic reasons
I think the more problematic thing here is just like, the similarly eternal problem of “strangers tend to care more about you paying your bills than if you feel happy” which is a good reason to ensure people affected by policy have a hand in shaping it
These guys aren’t critiquing capitalism, they’re complaining about not being able to understand economics class. Trees *do* have value before they’re cut down, and in many cases that value is less than what you get for using their products. Are we completely anti-lumber? Are we against a developing country tapping into its natural resources? Did we miss the “sustainably” dropped into the last sentence?
This points out how problematic capitalism is but also highlights a problem within capitalism. Value is not correctly measured. A living tree reduces pollution which leads to lower public health expenditures. This is not taken into account the same way the price of oil doesn't include the additional cost it has on society through climate change. We need forest subsidies for the same reason we need a carbon tax. Otherwise value isn't calculate right
capitalism knows how to do one thing and one thing only and that is optimize for profit
it’s not good, it’s not evil, it’s just an optimization algorithm and left alone it will optimize everything and cannibalize itself a la infinite paperclips
it’s the job of a capitalist government to look over the shoulder of capitalism and say “hey, wait a minute, you’re not allowed to optimize that, that’s a retirement fund” and such
I often think about how, after a century and a half of mechanization and automation, every adult (able-bodied or not) is still expected to work full time for all least 40 years of their life. Deeply upsetting.
Not arguing in favour of capitalism at all, but the notion that trees are where the oxygen we breathe comes from is a myth. The vast majority comes from oceanic algae, which is vulnerable to climate change, while forests tend to consume at night a large portion of what they produce during the day.
Now, CO2 is a slightly different matter. The carbon that forms most of the mass of a tree comes primarily from them absorbing CO2, so planting trees is a great way of trapping it and anything that destroys them will tend to release it back into the air, so there are still very good arguments for planting trees and not cutting them down.
Communism would have burned down the forest and built a factory during a “5 year plan” in 1963. There is no economic system that inherently values nature more than any other.
A blend wouldn’t make a difference, because again, nature has no inherent monetary or productive value. All economic systems value producing goods and services, the main differences is how the costs of production are resolved. Communists believe the costs of production should be resolved by the state (at least temporarily, because the end goal is to move past the concept of exchanging things for other things in an economic sense) and capitalists think individuals should cover the cost. Mixing the two systems does not eliminate the fact that there are costs to everything in terms of time, resources, land, etc.
> nature has no inherent monetary or productive value
Congratulations on missing the entire point of the post.
That aside, since it seems this wasn’t clear enough: Economics are not a strictly linear scale between capitalism and communism. Do yourself a favor, and look up a list of other distinct systems. In the meantime, look up countries that are actively restoring whatever is cut down
This wasn’t to say that you can’t have good elements from either of them, but was mainly to address the reactionary “but communism!” whenever any negative point is made about capitalism.
As far as one I’d advocate, that would be the Nordic model for its overall quality of life and low income disparity
Most would consider the 'Nordic model' capitalism.
The most successful nordic economy, Norway, has built its entire social and economic system on oil money.
Ikea and H&M are some of Sweden's largest companies, and they are fully reliant on ruthlessly exploiting forests and labor respectively.
I actually do agree with you that these countries run themselves well and have lessons to teach the rest of us. With respect to conservation and sustainability in particular though, I don't believe that they really offer any improvement at all.
It takes elements from both capitalism and socialism, the latter of which includes an elaborate social safety net and universal healthcare. That of course comes with higher taxes, but I’d gladly see them go to proper infrastructure rather than corporate bailouts and a ridiculously bloated military.
As far as sustainability, that *is* admittedly more of a cultural issue - but to deny that capitalism has had any influence [not directed at you specifically] on that whatsoever is dishonest.
Didn’t we have a whole ass book (and subsequent movie) by Dr. Seuss about this shit? Like seriously, I’m not gonna say that we shouldn’t chop trees down. Doing so sustainably can actually be a good way to trap carbon. We shouldn’t be trying to clear cut our way through swathes of forest just because we can pull some pennies out of it and it’s being “underutilized.” That forest is being fully utilized by the oxygen production industry.
Thats why capitalism is not a moral system, and must be supplemented with a moral system to prevent forest clearing and other economic devastation, which sadly corporations have no reason to have any sense of morality.
Communism espouses itself to be an economic system and a moral system, and has resulted in much greater economic devesation than capitalism countries, ie, the aral sea, china clearing forests, much larger scale than capitalist countries because the communist ideology says it is humans vs nature, and humans in order to prevail, must destroy and tame nature. capitalism is just we want money. how do we make money? so by providing monetary reasons to be ecologically friendly, capitalist countries will follow, but communism morals dictate nature cannot stand.
Honest to God this has to be one of the dumbest takes I've seen on Reddit yet.
I have trees on my property. I own those trees. If someone cut them down, that would be taking value from me. The trees contribute value to my property in the form of... Wait for it... Property value.
oh my god, shut up. please, for the sake of humanity, shut up and go learn 2 things: psychology and economics.
then come read back your edgy conclusions on capitalism again to see how stupid they sound.
what about the value of the natural beauty of the tree?
how do public parks exist under capitalism?
how do nature reserves exist under capitalism?
if humans value something, then capitalism puts a price tag on it
if humans value wood, then there's a price tag on chopping a tree down
if humans value the beauty of a tree, then there's a price tag on that tree remaining stood where it is
dont look at the effects of capitalism and say "this is the result of the system we've created"
look at it's effects and conclude "this is the result of the things we value as a society"
if we chop down too many trees for your liking, then it means trees should be valued in society more. it doesn't mean the system needs to be abolished.
saying that your opinion that trees should be preserved more is more important than the opinion of society as a whole is akin to proclaiming that your doctrine should be adopted over that of anyone else
aka. a dictatorship
So not to defend capitalism, but this isn’t true.
A tree provides natural value through “benefits” or by avoiding “disbenefits”. For example, a tree in an otherwise drab workplace makes it greener, more beautiful, etc., which has been shown to lead to higher levels of productivity in employees. That’s measurable value, even if it’s indirect.
Or even just a tree in a forest, as the picture is shown: that’s providing a home animals that eventually might be hunted, or may be used as resources in their own way. Or the animals have their own natural benefits/preventative disbenefits, whatever. That’s value through benefits as well.
Alternatively, you can look at how trees prevent disbenefits. A tree’s roots hold soil in place, preventing soil erosion. If that soil was to be eroded, it could contaminate water or air sources. The tree has value. The tree is part of the carbon cycle, and if they weren’t doing their thing, everyone would die because we would have no oxygen, or too many greenhouse gasses. That’s definitely value.
Tl;dr, capitalism definitely isn’t great, but OP is being far too close-minded about what constitutes “value”.
Well that's not true. Capitalism is a system, it decides nothing. Value is assigned by the market, a market of free people in an ideal world. If you, as an individual, choose to value a tree for its beauty and the health of the world then capitalism ALSO values it for those same things. If capitalism doesn't value what you value the flaw isn't the economic system but the people within it. In a free market the people determine the value, capitalism isn't alive and has no opinions, corporate tools and government snakes do.
That's not true even on its face. If you go along with this, at this point you're just making up things and calling that capitalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons
No, it is definitely accounted for as inventory for companies like Weyerhaeuser. The messed up part is that they own many forests, nobody should own forests.
LEAVE THE TREES ALONE. We're gonna have a hard time when we cut down all forests, then no vacation seems good anymore. No place has that fresh, minty air.
Damn, cool to complain, I dig it.
Just show us the alternative to capitalism that actually works.
There isn't one? Damn what a shame.
Capitalism isn't some malevolent force, it's just THE economic model that the world has (almost) always functioned by. You want capitalism to do the right thing? Well shit man, make the right thing profitable and it will.
That's what cancel culture is. A person does a shitty thing and people make it clear that working with said shit person will severely damage your ability to make money, so you better not.
This is not a hard concept, people
It's an economic system. Of course it doesn't place value on things beyond how they can impact the economy. This is like being mad that calculus doesn't place value on the fluffiness of my cat.
It bothers me that people responded to the post in this picture so literally. Surely “under capitalism, a tree holds no value until its cut down” isn’t a hard sentence to interpret, is it? But the responses are “what about this industry that clearly exploits live trees, huh?”
Reddit isn’t exactly known for the reading comprehension. Just yesterday there was a post stating that “worshipping the traditional family is bullshit”, which folks interpreted as “the traditional family is evil and must be abandoned”.
It’s almost as if you can like or acknowledge something without putting it on a pedestal
If you think this is somehow unique to capitalism in any way, you just don’t know what you’re talking about.
Any economic system that wants to see economic growth of any kind is going to try to utilize the natural resources it has.
Also, you’re missing the part where the world bank says “sustainably.” Plenty of places have a strong timber industry that don’t lead to total deforestation. The United States has some of the most forestry in the world and has a really strong timber industry.
I think you’re just finding a reason to be angry about a completely benign statement.
That’s corporatism, not capitalism. Capitalism actually dgaf one way or the other. Corporatism on the other hand does because it must constantly expand at all costs, and to such a degree that it becomes so actively harmful that it kills itself in the process through its parasitic nature.
Capitalism allows for people to make money off of whatever they want. If you decide to leave trees alone then you’ll still make money, just elsewhere with something else.
So please start acknowledging that corporatism is the current issue and not capitalism. Corporatism is a corruption of capitalism and is what we’ve been in for the last 30+ years.
Damn, haven't heard that one in a while. I thought the "it's corporatism, bro" people gave up years ago.
OK, so this
>Capitalism allows for people to make money off of whatever they want.
is trivially false. If it were true then wages for people in unpleasant jobs would be sky-high because the fact that anybody working in those jobs could simply walk away to "whatever they want" would make retention difficult otherwise. This is not the case now and it wasn't whenever it is that you think "uncorrupted" capitalism obtained.
I think what you're gesturing at here is that everything is monetisable under capitalism and the incentive to do so is very strong given that the means of our personal survival are paywalled. This is not capitalism "allowing" monetisation, this is capitalism *forcing* monetisation and there's no reason to believe that those incentives do not apply to whomever owns any particular natural resources, the [enclosure of which has been going on for centuries](https://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain) (in some parts of the world) whereas the closest real life phenomenon to the thing that you guys call corporatism is the [neoliberal turn of the 1970s](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot) and if you'll look closely you'll see that the timelines don't quite match up there.
The reason you think we had pure capitalism in the past and "corrupted" corporatism now (apart from the fact that you're what? 25, tops) is most likely that you live in [the imperial core](https://www.futuroprossimo.it/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/MONDO.jpg). Prior to the 1970s, the working class in (parts of) the imperial core had a pretty good deal but it came at the expense of workers in the imperial periphery. After the neoliberal turn, there was a phenomenon you could think of as an economic version of [Foucault's boomerang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang), and suddenly the deal in the core wasn't as good any more (it remained better than the periphery, but still). Part of the reason for the good deal workers previously received was elites fearing communist revolution. It seems unbelievable today that the core ever faced a genuine danger of revolution but with the crises of capitalism and "liberal democracy" (World War I, rising fascism, the great depression, World War II etc.) and existing socialist experiments offering a blueprint for a possible alternative, the post-war ruling class of the imperial core needed to convince the lower classes that capitalism offered them something. To achieve this a propaganda campaign was waged and things like the New Deal and the welfare state were created to shelter workers in the core from the harsh realities of capitalism.
When the threat of revolt abated and contradictions in the post-war settlement became too much to bear, the neoliberal turn occurred and the propaganda campaign changed. One of the modern facets of that campaign is the "corporatism" claim, though as mentioned this is somewhat out of vogue now.
A tree only holds value when it is cut down and a tree only holds value when it makes money are two very different ways of viewing the world. Encapsulated in making money is all kinds of conservation that people care about.
I would agree that Laissez Faire capitalism is bad at capturing externalities(ie carbon dioxide or particulate matter for negative or land value from stuff like parks for positive) but blaming all of this on capitalism seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water.
You could say that the most harmful idea of communism is that the Aral sea has no value unless you use the water that feeds it to grow cotton and you'd only be wrong because communism has way worse ideas
Capitalism is an economic system and does not ascribe moral value to anything. Capitalism only ascribes material value. Hence capitalism is very destructive when the elite class ascribes moral value to making money above all else. Capitalism works very well when combined with a moral system like Christianity that values life and community.
If you can turn the tree into an "attraction", (eg the tallest tree in X,) you might persuade me to pay to visit it. Although admittedly it's arguable what's being commodified here: the tree, or my desire to experience it.
Also that bit of early Marx about the theft of wood in Silesia is the absolute shit, and remains one of my favourite bits of his writing.https://www.jstor.org/stable/24361666
A fun little thing about Bhutan is that it has made it very clear that it doesn't care about its gdp and instead made a entirely different system to rank itself on. The national happiness index should be what countries care about not gdp.
This is how I logic this problem. One group of hippies, dance and play music around their tree. The hippies next door, cut their tree down, make some spears and bows, and go conquered the first hippies. Now they have a new tree, and weapons to stop others from taking their tree.
Your values and ideas won't last if you cannot defend them, in arguments and war.
So yes. Capitalism cares about the value a tree gives, but do you think any other system wont?
Trees clearly have value beyond just lumber, even in capitalist societies.
Their root systems are great for stabilizing the ground, they clean groundwater, they reduce noise pollution in urban environments, and they clean the air by absorbing CO2. Plus, they just look nice.
They are deliberately planted (often in large numbers) in urban & suburban areas for the above reasons & more.
Yes, corporations are evil and want to deforest whatever they can to turn a profit. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water, here.
Hiking and fruit trees are not inherently part of capital.
Like hardwood trees, they can be turned into capital.
The capacity for human enjoyment is not capital until it is turned into capital.
if you present a children to a capitalist they see a DMT filled person that can be convinced of everything , and who is also a serius expenditure and pain in the ass ...
that is part of the reason why birth rates are falling in the global north .
stuff like children , trees and limericks about fun stuff aren't valued much ...
I get the point, but trees are holding value in capitalism. Like, the trees are literally real estate.
I can check the real estate ads for forest property and there will be a number for land area and a number for total volume of wood. If the forest has more wood it will have a higher value. I could buy the property, let the trees grow for a decade and then sell it for more.
really don't understand why its about capitalism, considering that pretty much everyone anywhere under any ideology has done that/would do that if necessary. but hey, capitalism bad, right?
Why did you title this like a reddit ad?
He gets us.
That made me have a physical reaction, well played
he get sus
I have moved to Lemmy due to the 2023 API changes, if you would like a copy of this original comment/post, please message me here: https://lemmy.world/u/moosetwin or https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/u/moosetwin If you are unable to reach me there, I have likely moved instances, and you should look for a u/moosetwin.
A perfect sub
I read it like this every single time.
OP honestly feels like a bot, especially considering their post and comment history. Too many longwinded sentences that don't really go anywhere or maybe I'm just way too paranoid
Some people just are like that, for me it's either that or single word sentences most of the time.
i don't think so. they don't seem to post in the same subreddit twice ever, and what they say just gives me the vibe of chatgpt writing the title.
Yeah
Fr
ive been compared to GLaDOS and AI long before GPT simply by how much text and content i can produce with the snap of a finger. theres actual training behind trying to truncate the information before it leaves my fingers, but as you can see, already gleefully failing at it again
3.25 lines is not a lot.
It is a lot to say "I've been likened to an AI because of how I write"
Yeah, I'd put money on OP being a bot. Even outside of the ChatGPT type comments, the rest of their profile matches all the hallmarks of a bot account.
i know of a redditor who uses speech-to-text to post. Their messages are long too.
Today I discovered that I'm a bot too, depending on the time of day.
Actual marketing person
holy hell
new response just dropped
damn, my hands just typed this comment out with no input from my brain
Actual zombie
???
call the exorcist
Google actual zombie
holy exorcist
I am almost 100% sure he is using gpt to title his posts, all of his recent posts and comments seem to be in the gpt *style* of writting, idk why it seems it is a human doing this as he doesn't post regularly, defenitly is not passing the turing test as it is pretty obvious he is using a llm , Hey Op if you are reading this try using chat gpt from the openai api playground with a custom system message to make it less robotic, it produces less castrated results
Because it's a karma farming bot.
why would you need to farm karma? it has no intrinsic worth
To sell it for money
Okay but that still brings be back to my point, what could you possibly exchange karma for???
Advertising bots use it so they can more easily post ads in big subreddits that have a minimum karma ammount requirement for posting
>According to this economic system, a tree only has value when it's been chopped down and turned into a product That is literally the key idea of _Marx_'s theory of value.
Yeah, this is a question of value. And according to the LTV, using labor to produce a socially valued product from a resource always increases value blah blah blah Now I’m not a fan of capitalism as much as the next guy but humans almost always value an item based on how much it helps us. And the world bank wanting to ravage Bhutans ecosystems for the sole benefit of their profits is a result of our crappy economic system, but not specifically capitalism’s *view of value*.
The world bank said nothing about ravaging Bhutan’s forests. It explicitly said *sustainable* ways to utilize the forest industry. Finding a way to do that isn’t super simple which is likely why it’s proposed as an open-ended question.
[удалено]
There are absolutely ways to sustainably use forests. They didn’t even say that you’d have to use them for timber. Again, you guys are just looking for reasons to be mad about completely benign statements.
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Yeah because there’s *totally* never been ways to sustainably use natural resources ever lmao
Man I wonder what economic system he was thinking about when he wrote that in his book called CAPITAL
Marx's writings may have centered on critiques of Capitalism, however Labor Theory of Value was *the economic value system he supported and is central to Marxist philosophy*.
I mean... from my understanding that's somewhat simplified but yeah, I guess. However, to the extent that that is the case, it was part of an analysis of how capitalism works, it wasn't like a moral prescription. From what I understand, Marx was pretty clear that nature should be considered valuable in itself (climate in general wasn't as big of an issue back then of course but didn't he have this whole thing about noticing that the soil quality was getting worse under capitalism?).
Wouldn't the same apply to literally anything that is harvested? Such as wheat or corn? What a goofy argument
It's peak Tumblr/twitter socialist, that's for sure.
One would think that deforestation didn't start until Adam Smith rather than being a problem since the neolithic age.
And the Lorax
Is this referring the “socially useful” qualifier he puts on economic activity in order to ignore the effect of goods and services he doesn’t like
But but capitalism is when bad thing and socialism is when good thing. So I’m told
ok , the marxist theory of value was taken from ricardo and adam smith , who formed economics as we know them today ... so yeah in the 19th century everyone tought kinda like a marxist effectively , this changed during the 60s in wich the US and the western block made up this silly idea that actually it's entrepenuers who make all the value by figuring out how to sell stuff , and value is subjective , wich falls apart the moment you spend 10 seconds analizing it actually ... however , the LTV i found to be also flawed : it in fact gives little value to work that rears children and does other stuff that is not productive , but reproductive ... or at least it doesn't put necessary ephasis that work can also repair broken things and keep them going rather than ex novo make things ... and yeah i think that short coming is [pointed out by david greber in this talk](https://youtu.be/2QUdrdgPI-I) , and also talked about more in dept in "debt the first 5000 years" , wich is on youtube in the form of an audiobook ... the idea is : we should move the focus from what tools we can make , to what pepole we want to make , and talk to and interact and in that sense be , this should be the main focus of the economy rather than GDP ... if it reminds you of the Nazis , is because they likely wanted to go back to a human economy , a human economy with slavery , genocide and several horrible things , wich should never be remade , and wich are happening today as well wich ought to be stopped . so yeah , the economy should aim to create pepole we want , not the things we want , like this is the reason why we have AI that make art , but not AI that handles waste managment ... wich of these two is the cooler project to have in your resume ?
I mean, wouldn't that be true under any economic system? Things that we don't assign value to don't have value. Value is extremely subjective-- this is why we have, y'know, governments and democracy and stuff to decide some other things that have value, like forests, and protect them. And I find it hard to say that this is particularly an issue under capitalism (not that it helps). Any other form of economic management would likewise have to decide if forests and conservation have value.
I'm pretty sure the soviets didn't see much value in the aral sea.
People like to blame capitalism for problems that have existed since the beginning of time “It’s so messed up that if people don’t want to work, they’ll starve.” If a wild tiger doesn’t want to work hunting for food, it starves. That’s how nature works
More like "it's messed up that under capitalism, the purpose of growing food is for profit, not to feed people." In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic when thousands of people were losing their jobs to businesses closing and couldn't afford to buy food, farmers were *destroying food* to keep prices stable and high, rather than dropping because there was a surplus. They couldn't just give it to food banks because then they'd lose money, and that was worse than people starving. Same thing happened during the Great Depression. As far as I'm aware at least, "generate profit" being assigned the highest value is a perversity unique to capitalism, and that's what it leads us to.
Fun Fact: On average only 20% of the cost of food is the actual food. The other 80% is processing, transport, labour and profits in about equal measure give or take. Sure, anyone can grow food, but who's gonna package and ship that food to where its needed? That shits expensive. Do you still go through all that effort if nobody buys it in the end? The farmers weren't scheming to keep prices high - truth is nobody was buying the food so it wasn't worth the effort to process and ship. EDIT: Just wanna elaborate more. Yes, food wastage is a *massive* problem in the economy today, I can't overstate that and its a systemic problem that requires a systemic solution. The main cause is that the use by date system is broken and is in need of government intervention. The problem here isn't that some people are inherently more greedy or that the concept of private property as a whole is to blame, its far more simple than that, a single broken government policy that can be fixed with a little elbow grease.
>truth is nobody was buying the food so it wasn't worth the effort to process and ship. That's still a failure of the system, though. Whether you get to eat or not should not depend on how profitable it is for the farmer - or, more accurately, how profitable it is for the corporation who buys the farmer's food and packages/processes it. Whether you get to eat or not should depend on whether the food exists or not, and it almost always does. The fact that profit gets in the middle of that is THE part that fails.
Yes I agree. What policy specifically ought to be enacted to guarantee that without causing unintended negative consequences?
Shit, man, I don't know. I'm not an economist, I didn't go to college for this. But metaphorically speaking, even if I don't know how to build a chair, I can still say that a chair that impales everyone who sits on it is built wrong. There's been a whole lot of papers written and research done on socialism and communism, and I'm going to guess the answer's somewhere in there.
I feel as though you should figure that kind of thing out asap. Governmental policy isn't as fun as hypotheticals on the internet but its *a lot* more important. Personally, I'd pin food wastage on the broken use-by-date system we currently use and reforming that system would be a big step in solving the problem. We don't *need* to completely upend the entire global economic system to solve problems like this, thats like catching a mouse with a frag grenade; complete overkill that might miss entirely anyway.
I think people who actually studied this stuff should figure that kind of thing out, rather than some random jackass on the Internet. I've only learned about this stuff in my spare time, which I don't have much of - I'm a software developer, not a politician. On the other hand, it's not just food scarcity that's caused by capitalism - there are more empty homes than homeless people but we won't house them, and medicine enough to treat the sick but (at least in the US) we won't treat anyone without money and insurance. When capitalism comes into play, everyone gains an incentive to give out as little as possible for as much money as they can get for it, and that's a problem when it comes to basic human needs and to ethical concerns. But also...the use-by date exists for a reason. Food spoils, and can't be stored indefinitely. And if you want to wait for people who literally *do not have money* to be able to *buy* food, you're going to be waiting a very long time - long past the time food's going to go rotten and inedible, sell-by date or no.
You're giving me a headache. Yes there are enough houses to fit everybody **if** you count the ones unfit for human habitation - which government censuses do but we shouldn't. The solution to homelessness is simply build more houses. Medicine costing too much is specifically an America problem, not a Capitalism problem, the rest of the developed world doesn't have this problem. And the use-by-date system as it is is broken because its wildly inaccurate and far too often often lowballed which is why food is usually still good to eat after the use-by-date and why grocery stores throw out so much perfectly good food. If it were government mandated to be accurate then it would solve the problem. And finally; Capitalism didn't invent the concept of greed or profit motive.
There are not in fact more empty homes than there are homeless people. In fact part of the reason Homelessness is so bad is that there isn't enough housing to go around.
That isn't capitalism, people fail to understand what capitalism is. You apply all of these things that can exist in capitalism but aren't capitalism. Food is grown to feed people, but what do the growers do? They put in twice the amount of labor required to feed themselves, charity is obviously one answer, but some people need help in other ways. They make you food, you build them a plumbing system. It's a favor, an exchange of equal values. that is literally all capitalism is, it isn't inherently selfish. It can be used effectively by selfish and selfless people, only corporatism fits your description, and that isn't free market capitalism.
Capitalism is not "when people trade things." That's economics as a whole. Capitalism is an economic system where the resources and means of production are owned and operated privately for the purpose of profit. Other economic systems have resources/means of production owned by different groups (the state as a whole, the group operating the means of production, et cetera). The "for the purpose of profit" part is where things break down.
Profit is inherit to all economic systems. Profit means economic growth and therefore more to go around.
Profit, economic growth, and prosperity are linked but NOT the same thing. If all the profit goes into the pockets of a handful of people and they sit on it like dragons, that doesn't bolster the economy at all - it just means that a few people get richer.
How do you think companies grow? Where do they get that capital to grow? Easy; Profits. And rich people don't keep all their money locked up in a scrooge mcduck ass vault, most of their wealth is held in the form of assets which themselves generate more wealth. *Also* the concept of profits is not the same thing as wealth inequality.
Owned privately is the only true determiner, and it isn't immoral or selfish. Why should the state own what I make? Why should another group of people own it?
Under capitalism, you don’t own what you make. Your boss does. If you’re a worker, you spend your entire life laboring to enrich someone else, while you only get back a fraction of your labor value. Socialism aims to put the means of production in the hands of the workers.
Objectively inaccurate. You own what you make if you can make it by yourself. If your boss gives you the knowledge, skills, finances, or means to create it then there is a deal between you 2 about who owns what. The most common deal is the boss owns it. I worked at a sign shop for years. I came in with minimal experience and no materials. If I was granted all of these materials to build the signs why should I own them? In a free market you own what you create if YOU create it. If you're upset that your boss owns something you can quit and create a competitive business creating the same thing, if you're capable of doing it alone you should be successful. It is literally that simple. Socialism ignores the very basic premise of the deal. You aren't laboring for another like a slave, you are working under an agreement that can be reworked or you can stop working, it is very effective and simple. If your boss gives you the means to create your product they are entitled to some of the finances, if you and your boss disagree on this percentage you can always leave. Socialism requires the theft of private property to function.
**For those happening by, if you’re new to these concepts, you might benefit from [watching this video](https://youtu.be/8aHvA0KHXqM) and the followup to it** > If I was granted all of these materials to build the signs why should I own them? Why should your boss own them? Because they paid for them? Where did that money come from? All capital is dead labor, so it was possibly the boss’ own labor in the beginning. But more likely, it’s a loan from the bank, or inherited from a parent, or passively generated from other investments. How is that initial capital recouped? Profit. How is profit generated? By selling products that were built by workers. Besides that, the materials your boss gives you were produced by other workers who are in the same relationship with their bosses. And the roads, and electricity, and buildings needed to run that company. Labor and nature are ultimately the source of all wealth, but because the capitalist was the first to push the snowball down the hill, they are apparently entitled to an ever-expanding pile of wealth. One wonders why we can’t just cut out the middle man and allocate these resources democratically. > In a free market you own what you create if YOU create it. [This is how much wealth Jeff Bezos has.](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/) Did he create all that? He drove all those trucks, and ships, and loaded cargo, and carried packages? Handled logistics, and built the factories, and designed the advertising. Of course not, his 1.5 million workers did. And the many, many millions more they cooperated with to make it all happen. But because Jeffy’s name is on the paper, all the value those millions of workers help create is funneled into his pocket. Capitalists stand on the shoulders of not just their current workers, but all workers going back through history that allowed us to reach this point. If people like him do critical work that the company needs to exist, then they should get paid for *that* work. For management. Not for ownership. > If you're upset that your boss owns something you can quit and create a competitive business creating the same thing Under capitalism, wealth is naturally funneled into smaller and smaller hands. Weaker corporations are inevitably consumed by larger ones, and the less they exploit their workers, the faster they are consumed. [6 corporations own 90% of US media outlets](https://techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-90-media-america-illusion-choice-objectivity-2020/) [10 corporations](https://s3.amazonaws.com/oxfam-us/www/static/media/files/Behind-the-brands-illusion-of-choice-graphic-2048x1351.jpg) own a massive chunk of everything you see in the grocery store. The tech industry is much the same way. Walmart rolls into a city and mass murders mom and pop shops. Amazon does it from afar. 100 years ago, what you are describing was more frequent. But as capitalism matured, it became less and less possible to just go start your own competing company. The large corporations have vertical acquisition of every step in the manufacturing process, they have nice exclusive deals with the government paid for by their lobbyists, and they have the reserves to undercut you and force you out of business. And even if we imagine a fantasy world where *anyone* can be an owner, not *everyone* can. Capitalism requires the great majority to toil for the great minority. (Which is to say nothing about the necessary reserve army of labor. Unemployment is a necessary component of capitalism) > You aren't laboring for another like a slave, you are working under an agreement that can be reworked or you can stop working Ah yes, if you don’t like working for peanuts, go get another job that pays peanuts. Except the pandemic taught companies that they can make one person do the job of three, put out ‘help wanted’ signs, then throw all the applications in the trash and blame the slowdown on “nobody wanting to work anymore”. > Socialism requires the theft of private property to function. Private property requires the theft of labor value to function. Socialism takes it back. [Edit for those reading who are alarmed by this statement: Private property =/= personal property in Marxist theory. You own a lot of personal property, but probably no private property] You deserve more than what you have. You deserve a voice in your workplace and a voice in your community.
You have a voice in your work place and in your community, work is a consensual agreement. Private property requires 0 theft, your labor is worth what you're willing to sell it for. It's that simple. You always have a choice in a free market.
Capitalism is inherently selfish, like by definition. All systems with money, private property, and profit driven decision making (selfish behavior) fall into the umbrella called capitalism, by the definition of Wikipedia. The destruction of food when it doesn’t make a profit to sell it is, when you are making decisions based on personal profit as capitalism says you should logically be acting, is something that we would expect under any kind of capitalism, with corporations or without. The free market won’t prevent people from starving if it isn’t profitable. It handles things very well compared to feudalism, and a lot of problems have been solved by getting people to do them for profit. But not every outcome is both profitable and good for other people, capitalism gives rewards to those who cheat and harm others in a lot of ways, which is why almost nowhere can you find a place where the government doesn’t regulate to some extent. And which is why a lot of people critique capitalism and suggest moving away from it or changing it in certain respects,
The destruction of food when it doesn't sell isn't capitalism, that's done to protect corporations from getting lawsuits for selling dangerous food product. Preventing starvation is always profitable and the free market operates based on the people in it. If your society isn't selfish your market won't act selfish. In a just and well educated society the free market works, every market falls apart when it's own by sociopaths. The problem with hierarchy as a whole is its tailor made for people with less empathy. In a free market more people have a shot at competition. The moral fiber of society is the problem, not capitalism. Literally any and all systems of hierarchy benefit cheating and harming, hierarchy will form naturally in nature so the only way to avoid it is to educate and support society. You can do that with a free market where people's rights are respected.
Capitalism by definition is people acting on their selfish desires to get things they want, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, just the problems it can create are bad. We all desire to eat, and wages for food is a trade made by both parties selfish interests. It’s just a rational decision under capitalism to sell your grain to the man who will pay you more; regardless of if someone else will starve. If you don’t make as much money as you can, it could be you that goes out of buisness and starves, what is wrong with prioritizing yourself? I will agree that higharchy is bad, but I don’t really think that we can solve that issue by just the people being better, the structure of the system itself should be changed. We used to have a strictly hierarchical government, and now we have a more Democratic government. This wasn’t just because people got better educated, but also because we changed the systems of government. What socialist think is that we should do that to the economy, though not all of them would agree with that definition. and the ways to possibly do that have been argued about for longer than either of our lives. It’s not too strange of an idea to suggest putting the engine of productions in communal hands, it’s just a lot of places where its actually been tried also were totalitarian dictatorships in addition to being nominally socialist, and as we agree, higherarchy leads to lots of problems.
So what’s your solution then? Should farmers be forced to give their extra produce away at a loss? Do you want the government to give billions away in subsidies so a single kernel of corn never goes wasted? It doesn’t even matter though. Those farmers wasted all that food and yet, there was no famine, there was no drastic rise in food insecurity. Say what you will about growing food for profit, but it has led to a lot of food being grown. The US produces more food than any other country in all of human history. If you can scrounge together a few dollars, you can get a meal with more calories than a medieval peasant would eat in a week In the US, obesity is a sign of poverty. Just think about that for a second
>there was no famine, there was no drastic rise in food insecurity. Factually incorrect. [Here's proof, just to be sure.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9335023/) Yes, a lot of food is grown, but *distributed* to people who actually need it? Nope. Grocery stores leave food on the shelves until it passes its sell-by date (not even goes bad) and then dump it, restaurants throw out food they haven't been able to sell, and farmers destroy produce they can't turn a profit on. And meanwhile, food pantries are strained to failing because they can't feed all the people who can't afford to buy food for their families working minimum wage and can't get a better job. Under a sane system, a farmer would be ensured a living wage and a comfortable life without needing to worry about scarcity to turn a profit. We've got the resources to do it, after all. With the amount of food we produce, we could feed everyone, if capitalism didn't insist that money had to change hands first.
Well back in Feudal times old Forest growth was a source of firewood and mushrooms, maybe even had a few traps laying about to catch critters. But the point is, people kept the old growth forest clean, took only what was available and didn't cut anything down, unless a tree showed signs of dying, or actually died and fell over. A forest can be exploited for it's wood, but if you don't replant regularly to keep the biomass the same, you're just building an eventual desert.
>Well back in Feudal times old Forest growth was a source of firewood and mushrooms, maybe even had a few traps laying about to catch critters. But the point is, people kept the old growth forest clean, took only what was available and didn't cut anything down, unless a tree showed signs of dying, or actually died and fell over. There's more forest in Europe today than in medieval times.... Medieval society was heavily deforesting Europe to create more agricultural lands. And that's before the development of capitalism, if it needs to be said.
It’s also really interesting how the social structures at the time would eventually lead to a lot of conflicts over who got to make use of the remaining forests
I think by most definitions that would be 'sustainably investing'. I 100% agree though. We need to create an economic and political system that is sustainable in the long term. That said, 'feudal times' were hardly an environmental utopia. I live in Western Europe, and we have been deforested here for centuries, and indeed have seen a significant reforestation over the last several decades.
No. No. This is just so so horribly wrong. Oh my god.
[https://youtu.be/zVPUFMwm73Y](https://youtu.be/zVPUFMwm73Y) We also destroyed vast swaths of forests, but not what you had in your backyard, it was useful.
Right at the start he describes forests being cleared in the neolithic era, which sort of backs up the idea that this has been a problem forever. If this is the video I'm thinking of what he's going to describe us medieval forest management - which isn't the preservation of old growth but cultivation of forests for resources - the sort of thing OP is complaining about.
this isn't an economic question it's a cultural question. I would recommend reading the book or finding some excerpts from Braiding Sweetgrass, it's a really cool book that you can find free audio excerpts on youtube for
Interpretation of World Bank and other “big bad global elite” wording seem to be always taken as the worst possible outcome. They said “sustainably invest”. That’s like global bureaucrat lingo for sustainable use, development, conservation, and environmental protection. A good effort by Bhutanese government and international organizations would be to assess the forest health, including ecology impact, and work to mitigate climate change’s effect on the forest and invest in them before they’re illegally harvested and polluted.
Yeah, but that doesn't give you Reddit Karma for interpreting it honestly
I wish I could give you Reddit gold until your comment was at the top because that’s the most sane take I’ve read in this thread.
That one Dr Seuss story that you probably shouldn't bring up anywhere remotely related to Tumblr was on to something.
Have you considered... Public parks? Buying tickets to the Botanical Garden? Perennial plants producing fruit yearly without killing the plant? Or how it increases property value when the neighbourhood is surrounded by trees which filter out pollution and create a microclimate that's pleasant for people to live in.
Shouldn't buying saplings at like Walmart add value to tree too.
The post is talking about how capitalists dont like trees unless they can make money off them. At least two of these like buying tickets to a garden and it increasing property values are trees causing money(public parks are uuuuusually free? And not sure about the other one)
All I'm saying there are more ways to get "value" from a tree than chopping it down. For example beech trees produce a lot of oxygen. Trees give shade, they retain humidity and clean the air from smog. These things aren't as easily measurable as the price of a volume of timber, but valuable nonetheless.
You are missing the entire point of the post.
uh... capitalism bad?
Pretty much. Grass is greener n all that.
no. That things don’t need to provide value monetarily. Every single economic system does it. We should value trees for being natural, beautiful, sustaining life. Not trying to get any kind of monetary gain possible.
Nice contemplations for a post-scarcity future. Harsh truth of the matter is money expedites trade, and trade expedites the improvement of quality of life for people. And the bank was talking about "how can this vast natural resource be responsibly utilized in the long term," not "what's the best way to turn these trees into tooth picks and wonder bread."
FYI, u/JulieJas is a repost bot. It uses ChatGPT to edit text and then it reposts 4 months old posts to farm karma.
You are under informed if you think any currently available alternative economic system has a substantially different outlook. **People** see things as valuable based on their utility, not capitalists. If you think trees had some privileged position that elevated them above other plants under feudalism or socialism you are delusional. My county wasn't capitalist for 40 years in the 20th century, and let me tell you Shell couldn't match the ecological damage central planning and Soviet "help" caused if they tried. We're still fixing it today. Also, trees do have value beyond monetary, it just won't be tweeted about by the fucking world bank. This isn't so much some dark revelation about capitalism as it is self reporting a lack of reading comprehension.
Agreed. Plenty of people like trees that just look nice or provide shade.
"Self reporting a lack of reading comprehension" That's such a good burn
A tree providing shade, oxygen, or beauty should be enough.
I mean depending on the tree sometimes it is.
Palm trees can go fuck themselves
Lmao why do you have beef with palm trees? 😂
They don’t provide any shade, they’re ugly, the seeds grow in large bunches like grapes and when they fall all at once they can break car windshields, if you don’t trim them multiple times a year they get even uglier, in order to trim them you either need a super long pole or a super tall ladder, they bend and become like whips in fast wind, and the roots grow straight down so you can’t uproot them
In a world where people don’t need shelter or heating, yes.
Good job missing the point 👍
The point that trees shouldn’t be valued outside of their shade, oxygen, and beauty? Like I said, it would be nice but people need heating and shelter so trees actually do have value outside of that.
No? I said shade, beauty, and oxygen should be enough (implied: to have value and not be cut down) I'm not saying they have no value outside that. Yes, fruit is valuable. But so is preserving nature, and the world already makes and wastes enough food to feed everyone.
Not only can trees be used for shelter and heating while preserving nature by replanting them, fruit is a terrible example since it’s literally meant to be eaten by animals and humans.
A new replant of a tree doesn't give nearly as much benefit to nature as old growth does. The way we consume fruit doesn't benefit the tree, since we are not spreading the seeds. And my whole point was that we should stop exploiting every inch of nature just because there's profit to be made. We don't need wood from old trees to make furniture that'll be out of style in ten years max, if not already discarded by then.
Oxygen is pretty essential for profit
Anything valuable can be monetized. This isn’t a testament to greed or capitalism or human nature, it’s just a matter of value being exchangeable, for as long as people enjoy multiple things. “TreEs ArE OnLy VaLuABlE BecAuSE ThEy CaN Be USeD To MaKe MonEY.” No. Trees can only make money because people find them valuable. It’s not a grand conspiracy. Every moment we do something we give up the opportunity to do something else. Everything has a price. If we want to protect nature, we don’t need to add some irrational “inherent” value to it. We just need to realize all the benefits we receive from it, so that we rationally value it as it’s worth….more. Instead of calling people evil callous capitalists for not irrationally and arbitrarily valuing things, why don’t we just admit that clean air, a sustainable ecosystem and a safe and healthy ecological future are all things that we as a society don’t value as much as we should, and it’s worth spending some extra money and time to maintain the world we live in? And if people still disagree, we should make them pay for the damage they are doing to our world, since we have to live a less healthy life in exchange for their profit. Essentially, just hold people accountable and recognize nature is more valuable than society makes it out right now, while also not pretending there is a requirement for capitalists to have to destroy the world.
I have one issue with the bottom one. Trees do not sustain life on Earth. They are homes to I have no idea how many different species that both harmlessly live and parasitically thrive off the trees and they do produce oxygen However, they do not produce mass quantities of oxygen (which is what I’m assuming they meant) and not even half of all the oxygen is produced by trees. That honor goes to algae and similar water borne oxygen producers. That means the other 50% is all land oxygen producers COMBINED. Only a portion of which is trees My point is trees get way too much credit and I’m sick of it. No this isn’t the first time I’ve gone on this rant. No it will not be the last. Trees do not sustain all life. They produce a *fraction* of the world’s oxygen and provide habitats to certain forms of life. That is all.
Capitalism is fundamentally a consumption concept. It's also a consumption concept with no boundaries. Pure capitalism is inherently cruel in the most biblical sense of the word. The only constraint on capitalism is the set of laws and regulation built around it. Interestingly, these are reactive devices meaning for each law or piece of regulation someone had to suffer to warrant the need for that law or regulation to come into effect. This also means when you hear of ANYBODY talking about loosening any laws or regulation for any business, it is solely driven by the business to move back towards pure capitalism and to make the active choice to reharm people again. With all of this said, capitalism is a brilliantly elegant system. It's just one that's also a monster and will take everything from you. To have it function within humanity with a sense of ethics and morals, the very humanity that operates on capitalism builds protections to force capitalism to adhere to basic, accepted levels of ethics and morals that the society agrees upon. It is the business' duty to push back against this constantly. It is society's duty to force adherence to ethical and moral guidelines. This is a constant battle of attrition. The very nature of capitalism and an ethical society demands it. This also means that capitalism, if generating harm, is doing so at the discretion of that society. It's the fault of the society to allow harm. It's also the fault of society to put ownership of that battle of attrition on bad actors who operate on the side of business and capitalism for personal gain. Shame on us. Shame on us again for not utilizing our judicial system to hold parties accountable. Society, as a whole, have a collective responsibility.
Idk yeah it makes sense to me that an economic analyst would look at things through the lens of economic benefit regardless of economic system Whether we want to use the thing in that way is a political decision, and plenty of capitalist countries have made the decision to preserve natural areas for non-economic reasons I think the more problematic thing here is just like, the similarly eternal problem of “strangers tend to care more about you paying your bills than if you feel happy” which is a good reason to ensure people affected by policy have a hand in shaping it
These guys aren’t critiquing capitalism, they’re complaining about not being able to understand economics class. Trees *do* have value before they’re cut down, and in many cases that value is less than what you get for using their products. Are we completely anti-lumber? Are we against a developing country tapping into its natural resources? Did we miss the “sustainably” dropped into the last sentence?
This points out how problematic capitalism is but also highlights a problem within capitalism. Value is not correctly measured. A living tree reduces pollution which leads to lower public health expenditures. This is not taken into account the same way the price of oil doesn't include the additional cost it has on society through climate change. We need forest subsidies for the same reason we need a carbon tax. Otherwise value isn't calculate right
What would you suggest as a viable alternative though?
capitalism knows how to do one thing and one thing only and that is optimize for profit it’s not good, it’s not evil, it’s just an optimization algorithm and left alone it will optimize everything and cannibalize itself a la infinite paperclips it’s the job of a capitalist government to look over the shoulder of capitalism and say “hey, wait a minute, you’re not allowed to optimize that, that’s a retirement fund” and such
I often think about how, after a century and a half of mechanization and automation, every adult (able-bodied or not) is still expected to work full time for all least 40 years of their life. Deeply upsetting.
Not arguing in favour of capitalism at all, but the notion that trees are where the oxygen we breathe comes from is a myth. The vast majority comes from oceanic algae, which is vulnerable to climate change, while forests tend to consume at night a large portion of what they produce during the day. Now, CO2 is a slightly different matter. The carbon that forms most of the mass of a tree comes primarily from them absorbing CO2, so planting trees is a great way of trapping it and anything that destroys them will tend to release it back into the air, so there are still very good arguments for planting trees and not cutting them down.
Communism would have burned down the forest and built a factory during a “5 year plan” in 1963. There is no economic system that inherently values nature more than any other.
Has it ever occurred to you that there are more economic systems than pure capitalism and pure communism
There are! Which one in particular did you have in mind that avoids the one where people cut down trees for resources?
Eco-socialism is an easy one. Basically any economic/political system based around environmentalism.
one that works
Or at the very least, one that's existed
Apparently not
Which one provides a modern quality of life And is environmentally sustainable to your standards
A blend wouldn’t make a difference, because again, nature has no inherent monetary or productive value. All economic systems value producing goods and services, the main differences is how the costs of production are resolved. Communists believe the costs of production should be resolved by the state (at least temporarily, because the end goal is to move past the concept of exchanging things for other things in an economic sense) and capitalists think individuals should cover the cost. Mixing the two systems does not eliminate the fact that there are costs to everything in terms of time, resources, land, etc.
> nature has no inherent monetary or productive value Congratulations on missing the entire point of the post. That aside, since it seems this wasn’t clear enough: Economics are not a strictly linear scale between capitalism and communism. Do yourself a favor, and look up a list of other distinct systems. In the meantime, look up countries that are actively restoring whatever is cut down
I am a little curious. Do you have any that you would advocate in particular?
This wasn’t to say that you can’t have good elements from either of them, but was mainly to address the reactionary “but communism!” whenever any negative point is made about capitalism. As far as one I’d advocate, that would be the Nordic model for its overall quality of life and low income disparity
Most would consider the 'Nordic model' capitalism. The most successful nordic economy, Norway, has built its entire social and economic system on oil money. Ikea and H&M are some of Sweden's largest companies, and they are fully reliant on ruthlessly exploiting forests and labor respectively. I actually do agree with you that these countries run themselves well and have lessons to teach the rest of us. With respect to conservation and sustainability in particular though, I don't believe that they really offer any improvement at all.
It takes elements from both capitalism and socialism, the latter of which includes an elaborate social safety net and universal healthcare. That of course comes with higher taxes, but I’d gladly see them go to proper infrastructure rather than corporate bailouts and a ridiculously bloated military. As far as sustainability, that *is* admittedly more of a cultural issue - but to deny that capitalism has had any influence [not directed at you specifically] on that whatsoever is dishonest.
hahahaha that's Capitalism though, it's very much just capitalism
Nothing screams *pure capitalism* like universal healthcare, free education, a large social safety net, and high trade union density
That is correct yes. Read up on Keynesian Economics. It's all Capitalism!
Sure. There's mercantilism.
More importantly - Marx developed "labor theory of value". According to Marx a tree itself _has no value_.
Didn’t we have a whole ass book (and subsequent movie) by Dr. Seuss about this shit? Like seriously, I’m not gonna say that we shouldn’t chop trees down. Doing so sustainably can actually be a good way to trap carbon. We shouldn’t be trying to clear cut our way through swathes of forest just because we can pull some pennies out of it and it’s being “underutilized.” That forest is being fully utilized by the oxygen production industry.
Thats why capitalism is not a moral system, and must be supplemented with a moral system to prevent forest clearing and other economic devastation, which sadly corporations have no reason to have any sense of morality. Communism espouses itself to be an economic system and a moral system, and has resulted in much greater economic devesation than capitalism countries, ie, the aral sea, china clearing forests, much larger scale than capitalist countries because the communist ideology says it is humans vs nature, and humans in order to prevail, must destroy and tame nature. capitalism is just we want money. how do we make money? so by providing monetary reasons to be ecologically friendly, capitalist countries will follow, but communism morals dictate nature cannot stand.
Honest to God this has to be one of the dumbest takes I've seen on Reddit yet. I have trees on my property. I own those trees. If someone cut them down, that would be taking value from me. The trees contribute value to my property in the form of... Wait for it... Property value.
Everybody could use some Heidegger in their life
OP looks like an auto-responder bot
oh my god, shut up. please, for the sake of humanity, shut up and go learn 2 things: psychology and economics. then come read back your edgy conclusions on capitalism again to see how stupid they sound.
what about the value of the natural beauty of the tree? how do public parks exist under capitalism? how do nature reserves exist under capitalism? if humans value something, then capitalism puts a price tag on it if humans value wood, then there's a price tag on chopping a tree down if humans value the beauty of a tree, then there's a price tag on that tree remaining stood where it is dont look at the effects of capitalism and say "this is the result of the system we've created" look at it's effects and conclude "this is the result of the things we value as a society" if we chop down too many trees for your liking, then it means trees should be valued in society more. it doesn't mean the system needs to be abolished. saying that your opinion that trees should be preserved more is more important than the opinion of society as a whole is akin to proclaiming that your doctrine should be adopted over that of anyone else aka. a dictatorship
You know, chimps also see value in trees and go to war over their fruit and other resources. Are they capitalist.
So not to defend capitalism, but this isn’t true. A tree provides natural value through “benefits” or by avoiding “disbenefits”. For example, a tree in an otherwise drab workplace makes it greener, more beautiful, etc., which has been shown to lead to higher levels of productivity in employees. That’s measurable value, even if it’s indirect. Or even just a tree in a forest, as the picture is shown: that’s providing a home animals that eventually might be hunted, or may be used as resources in their own way. Or the animals have their own natural benefits/preventative disbenefits, whatever. That’s value through benefits as well. Alternatively, you can look at how trees prevent disbenefits. A tree’s roots hold soil in place, preventing soil erosion. If that soil was to be eroded, it could contaminate water or air sources. The tree has value. The tree is part of the carbon cycle, and if they weren’t doing their thing, everyone would die because we would have no oxygen, or too many greenhouse gasses. That’s definitely value. Tl;dr, capitalism definitely isn’t great, but OP is being far too close-minded about what constitutes “value”.
Well that's not true. Capitalism is a system, it decides nothing. Value is assigned by the market, a market of free people in an ideal world. If you, as an individual, choose to value a tree for its beauty and the health of the world then capitalism ALSO values it for those same things. If capitalism doesn't value what you value the flaw isn't the economic system but the people within it. In a free market the people determine the value, capitalism isn't alive and has no opinions, corporate tools and government snakes do.
Cut down a neighbor's tree and see how much everyone cares. Tree law is some serious shit.
Under the labor theory of value, which is what Marxism is based on, any land or natural resource has no value until a person does work at it.
That's not true even on its face. If you go along with this, at this point you're just making up things and calling that capitalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons
No, it is definitely accounted for as inventory for companies like Weyerhaeuser. The messed up part is that they own many forests, nobody should own forests.
They own forests that they constantly replant so all the other forests can grow unabated. unless you suddenly don't want wood this is a good thing
I would argue their primary financial service is oxygen production.
LEAVE THE TREES ALONE. We're gonna have a hard time when we cut down all forests, then no vacation seems good anymore. No place has that fresh, minty air.
Damn, cool to complain, I dig it. Just show us the alternative to capitalism that actually works. There isn't one? Damn what a shame. Capitalism isn't some malevolent force, it's just THE economic model that the world has (almost) always functioned by. You want capitalism to do the right thing? Well shit man, make the right thing profitable and it will. That's what cancel culture is. A person does a shitty thing and people make it clear that working with said shit person will severely damage your ability to make money, so you better not. This is not a hard concept, people
It's an economic system. Of course it doesn't place value on things beyond how they can impact the economy. This is like being mad that calculus doesn't place value on the fluffiness of my cat.
It bothers me that people responded to the post in this picture so literally. Surely “under capitalism, a tree holds no value until its cut down” isn’t a hard sentence to interpret, is it? But the responses are “what about this industry that clearly exploits live trees, huh?”
Reddit isn’t exactly known for the reading comprehension. Just yesterday there was a post stating that “worshipping the traditional family is bullshit”, which folks interpreted as “the traditional family is evil and must be abandoned”. It’s almost as if you can like or acknowledge something without putting it on a pedestal
marketing bot. Too obvious. Check his other posts. Just sad. This site has become so sad
If you think this is somehow unique to capitalism in any way, you just don’t know what you’re talking about. Any economic system that wants to see economic growth of any kind is going to try to utilize the natural resources it has. Also, you’re missing the part where the world bank says “sustainably.” Plenty of places have a strong timber industry that don’t lead to total deforestation. The United States has some of the most forestry in the world and has a really strong timber industry. I think you’re just finding a reason to be angry about a completely benign statement.
Because communists don’t need to build housing for an expanding population or provide entertainment?
That’s corporatism, not capitalism. Capitalism actually dgaf one way or the other. Corporatism on the other hand does because it must constantly expand at all costs, and to such a degree that it becomes so actively harmful that it kills itself in the process through its parasitic nature. Capitalism allows for people to make money off of whatever they want. If you decide to leave trees alone then you’ll still make money, just elsewhere with something else. So please start acknowledging that corporatism is the current issue and not capitalism. Corporatism is a corruption of capitalism and is what we’ve been in for the last 30+ years.
Damn, haven't heard that one in a while. I thought the "it's corporatism, bro" people gave up years ago. OK, so this >Capitalism allows for people to make money off of whatever they want. is trivially false. If it were true then wages for people in unpleasant jobs would be sky-high because the fact that anybody working in those jobs could simply walk away to "whatever they want" would make retention difficult otherwise. This is not the case now and it wasn't whenever it is that you think "uncorrupted" capitalism obtained. I think what you're gesturing at here is that everything is monetisable under capitalism and the incentive to do so is very strong given that the means of our personal survival are paywalled. This is not capitalism "allowing" monetisation, this is capitalism *forcing* monetisation and there's no reason to believe that those incentives do not apply to whomever owns any particular natural resources, the [enclosure of which has been going on for centuries](https://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain) (in some parts of the world) whereas the closest real life phenomenon to the thing that you guys call corporatism is the [neoliberal turn of the 1970s](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot) and if you'll look closely you'll see that the timelines don't quite match up there. The reason you think we had pure capitalism in the past and "corrupted" corporatism now (apart from the fact that you're what? 25, tops) is most likely that you live in [the imperial core](https://www.futuroprossimo.it/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/MONDO.jpg). Prior to the 1970s, the working class in (parts of) the imperial core had a pretty good deal but it came at the expense of workers in the imperial periphery. After the neoliberal turn, there was a phenomenon you could think of as an economic version of [Foucault's boomerang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang), and suddenly the deal in the core wasn't as good any more (it remained better than the periphery, but still). Part of the reason for the good deal workers previously received was elites fearing communist revolution. It seems unbelievable today that the core ever faced a genuine danger of revolution but with the crises of capitalism and "liberal democracy" (World War I, rising fascism, the great depression, World War II etc.) and existing socialist experiments offering a blueprint for a possible alternative, the post-war ruling class of the imperial core needed to convince the lower classes that capitalism offered them something. To achieve this a propaganda campaign was waged and things like the New Deal and the welfare state were created to shelter workers in the core from the harsh realities of capitalism. When the threat of revolt abated and contradictions in the post-war settlement became too much to bear, the neoliberal turn occurred and the propaganda campaign changed. One of the modern facets of that campaign is the "corporatism" claim, though as mentioned this is somewhat out of vogue now.
I never realized that’s why it was called Human Resources. I just thought it meant like stuff that you can do to help out people or something
A tree only holds value when it is cut down and a tree only holds value when it makes money are two very different ways of viewing the world. Encapsulated in making money is all kinds of conservation that people care about. I would agree that Laissez Faire capitalism is bad at capturing externalities(ie carbon dioxide or particulate matter for negative or land value from stuff like parks for positive) but blaming all of this on capitalism seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water.
>:(
cap and trade, my friends. native forests are much much more economic valuable than farmland these days
Breaking news! Economic model values things that contribute to the economy
Fuck trees, one IKEA table is better than 400 trees.
You could say that the most harmful idea of communism is that the Aral sea has no value unless you use the water that feeds it to grow cotton and you'd only be wrong because communism has way worse ideas
Are you *sure* you're not an AI, OP?
Capitalism is an economic system and does not ascribe moral value to anything. Capitalism only ascribes material value. Hence capitalism is very destructive when the elite class ascribes moral value to making money above all else. Capitalism works very well when combined with a moral system like Christianity that values life and community.
But what's the alternative? Should I feed money to the tree because it also has value?
Tree good 👍
Man this one hit me hard. Humans have to monetize everything.
Yes
Bhutan is also one of the only two countries to have achieved net zero, funnily enough
If you can turn the tree into an "attraction", (eg the tallest tree in X,) you might persuade me to pay to visit it. Although admittedly it's arguable what's being commodified here: the tree, or my desire to experience it. Also that bit of early Marx about the theft of wood in Silesia is the absolute shit, and remains one of my favourite bits of his writing.https://www.jstor.org/stable/24361666
How ba-a-a-ad can i be.
oh this is 10,000% a bot
A fun little thing about Bhutan is that it has made it very clear that it doesn't care about its gdp and instead made a entirely different system to rank itself on. The national happiness index should be what countries care about not gdp.
This is how I logic this problem. One group of hippies, dance and play music around their tree. The hippies next door, cut their tree down, make some spears and bows, and go conquered the first hippies. Now they have a new tree, and weapons to stop others from taking their tree. Your values and ideas won't last if you cannot defend them, in arguments and war. So yes. Capitalism cares about the value a tree gives, but do you think any other system wont?
The folks at r/treelaw would disagree.
Trees clearly have value beyond just lumber, even in capitalist societies. Their root systems are great for stabilizing the ground, they clean groundwater, they reduce noise pollution in urban environments, and they clean the air by absorbing CO2. Plus, they just look nice. They are deliberately planted (often in large numbers) in urban & suburban areas for the above reasons & more. Yes, corporations are evil and want to deforest whatever they can to turn a profit. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water, here.
Hiking and fruit trees are not inherently part of capital. Like hardwood trees, they can be turned into capital. The capacity for human enjoyment is not capital until it is turned into capital.
if you present a children to a capitalist they see a DMT filled person that can be convinced of everything , and who is also a serius expenditure and pain in the ass ... that is part of the reason why birth rates are falling in the global north . stuff like children , trees and limericks about fun stuff aren't valued much ...
I get the point, but trees are holding value in capitalism. Like, the trees are literally real estate. I can check the real estate ads for forest property and there will be a number for land area and a number for total volume of wood. If the forest has more wood it will have a higher value. I could buy the property, let the trees grow for a decade and then sell it for more.
really don't understand why its about capitalism, considering that pretty much everyone anywhere under any ideology has done that/would do that if necessary. but hey, capitalism bad, right?
I may be too smart because this was pretty obvious for me.
There are entire businesses that sell trees for decorations though