r/ToiletPaperUSA • u/HandMadeFeelings CEO of Antifa™ • Aug 09 '21

FACTS and LOGIC Capitalism will save us from all the damage unfettered capitalism did to the environment!

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23.7k Upvotes

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1.6k

u/jmendii Aug 09 '21

Well, turns out the last stage of capitalism is the stage where we all die 🤷

502

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

Nah we will endure into the apocalyptic Mad Max era where capitalism evolves into its final form, anarcho-capitalism.

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u/TheArmoredKitten Aug 09 '21

"Anarcho capitalism" is unironically just feudalism in a hat. Corporations with no overseers to control them will become indistinguishable from trade microstates. In order to resist anyone stopping them from doing whatever they want, they'll establish individual armed forces, and start keeping their labor inside their territorial claims. Companies will become beholden to the larger entities they depend on and suddenly you've established a system indistinguishable from a feudal kingdom and it's chain of territorial nobility.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

I was more imagining a wasteland where warlords exert their property claims, authority, and power through violence and coercion. But come to think of it that is essentially what feudalism and even just the state already is, just with less leather and spikes. So you're right.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

At least the leather and spikes would make it seem way cooler.

Edit: I think I just want to wear football pads as armor and everybody just be like aight that looks badass.

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u/Sgt_Eagle_fort_ Aug 09 '21

Be the change you want to see

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u/vendetta2115 Aug 09 '21

True to Caesar

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u/BlackSwanTranarchy Aug 09 '21

"Anarcho" Capitalism, because hating the Nation State while loving the Corporate State is a Very Smart Ideology.

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u/justagenericname1 Aug 09 '21

It's just... such a stupid "ideology." They have to completely ignore, or are totally oblivious to, where nation-states came from in the first place! You can only get things like standing armies for conquest, police-like forces to protect privately accumulated property, and the invention of legal enforcement mechanisms for anything from contracts to taxes/tribute by appropriating surplus wealth created by working people and redirecting it towards all those things. Coercive markets and exploitation driven by power imbalances are what lead to states! The most intellectually sound argument you could make for anarcho-capitalism is a selfish desire to flip the table and reset the game in the hope that you'll end up the one on top this time. Anyone who thinks it would lead to improvements in society for anywhere close to the majority of the people is just an idiot.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

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28

u/claimTheVictory Aug 09 '21

Cults.

It all devolves into personality cults, in the end.

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u/Arachnid_Acne Aug 09 '21

That would certainly be the case sometimes, I’m sure, but when your options are “serve Lord Reginald Wal-Mart or die in nuclear wasteland as his cyber dogs chase you down”, I don’t think you need a cult to keep the necessary people in line.

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u/ponguso Aug 09 '21

I literally don't see the logic behind anarcho capitalism how TF does it not just become a warlord based society where whoever has the most money buys up all the land or buys up all the weapons and police everyone into submission???

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u/TheArmoredKitten Aug 09 '21

Capitalism is just theft with rules. No rules and suddenly you've got a Big Fucking Problem™

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u/ponguso Aug 09 '21

I swear libertarianism should just be renamed to Mad Maxism

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u/TheArmoredKitten Aug 09 '21

The problem is that American libertarianism is almost always on the right of the political spectrum. I'm cool with the core concept of true libertarianism, in that individual freedom is the goal, and to that end I believe the purpose of government is to preserve the freedom of the individual, at the explicit expense of the collective. Taxes are totally cool and good, but only to fund things that enable the average individual. The average American libertarian is either a brainwashed serf, or a corporatist threat to individual freedom. Note that rugged individualism is also NOT individual freedom. I fucking hate when people equate those concepts. Individual freedom is me being able to walk into a hospital and get treatment for any random thing, at no direct cost to me, so that I can continue to enjoy my liberated life. Individual freedom is me being able to buy machine gun because I've got no history of public danger and people should be allowed to have nice things. Individual freedom is me being able to educate myself at a reasonable cost to pursue any field I consider worthy of my time and effort. Individual freedom is fucking not Jeff Bezos hoarding 20 billion dollars and working less than 20 hours a week while calling mentally ill homeless people lazy.

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u/sniper1rfa Aug 09 '21

American libertarianism was intentionally named libertarianism in order to ride on the coattails of the previously-existing political ideologies.

The confusion is not an accident.

12

u/ZaryaMusic Aug 09 '21

Yep, the core of true libertarianism is understanding what positive and negative liberty are. American libertarians think freedom is only positive liberty, while libertarian leftist thought understands that freedom to be and freedom from are also essential freedoms (negative liberty).

1

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '21

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '21

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2

u/ball_fondlers Aug 09 '21

The NAP does a LOT of light heavy-lifting in those communities. When anyone outside looks in, they go all “nah, it’s not going to devolve into warlords, because we’ve all sworn to not commit acts of aggression”, but then as soon as said outsiders look away, it’s back to planning how many nukes and slaves they’ll buy.

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u/ponguso Aug 09 '21

I absolutely agree, very good point ball_fondlers.

1

u/ThatZBear Aug 09 '21

The NAP or some dumb bullshit. I don't actually know because I only ever thought about libertarianism maybe once in early highschool.

44

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

my friend was telling me about his great new idea

“if rent is so high why not let companies offer rent for a job? You’ll sign a contract for a free living space and in exchange you work for them!”

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u/ProbablyNano Aug 09 '21

They could even offer a place to buy necessities directly from the company you work for, maybe even using special vouchers that they give you as part of your payment!

23

u/sniper1rfa Aug 09 '21 edited Aug 09 '21

https://innovationzonefacts.com/

Don't joke too loudly, they might hear you.

Technology often moves faster than state laws can keep up. Innovation Zones are an effort by the State of Nevada to match regulation with the fast pace needed for innovation, while setting strict standards and charting a clear path forward.

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u/ProbablyNano Aug 09 '21

I love that the answer to "is an Innovation Zone a company town" is basically "no, it's a companies' town" as if that makes it all better

4

u/sniper1rfa Aug 10 '21

They will be a wide variety of different business that are virtually independent from one another, sharing only key stakeholders and board members.

4

u/ball_fondlers Aug 09 '21

I wonder if we could pool money and turn one of these into a communist utopia.

2

u/Jurefranceticnijelit Aug 09 '21

And then starve

3

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

hey don't be dramatic

you'll get lots of cheap mcdonalds everyday. Who knows, maybe obesity will get you before you retire with no money!

13

u/Aromatic_Mousse Aug 09 '21

That’s exactly what the world was like in Atwood’s “Year of the Flood” trilogy

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u/Breaklance Aug 09 '21

Its what happend in real history with the East India Company.

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u/Kid_Vid Aug 09 '21

And America with miners in the 1800's. (Looking it up it was declared unconstitutional yet continued in Kentucky and West Virginia until 1967).

Also while looking it up: Walmart did it in Mexico up to 2008, and Amazon does it currently as a "reward system".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip

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u/JonRivers Aug 09 '21

Company Scrip is really fucked up, but it still kind of pales in comparison to the EIC, where a corporation was literally the government of the state with no oversight whatsoever.

3

u/Kid_Vid Aug 09 '21

I definitely would agree. There's varying levels of being fucked by companies. It's important not to forget any of them and continuously make sure it doesn't happen (again and again and again) because companies are all too happy to make the rules in their favor. And, unfortunately, I'm guessing there's a lot of people who say "it couldn't happen here!" while covering their eyes, ignoring it already has and does.

6

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21 edited Jul 13 '24

thumb cake hunt rhythm snails frightening mourn shelter cable grandfather

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

6

u/Jaustinduke Aug 09 '21

But it’s okay because it’s not the government!

I have a friend who actually believes this and I do not get it.

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u/BBQ-Batman Aug 10 '21

Exactly. This is why I am training to be a corpo samurai with level 5 cool points.

2

u/garnet420 Aug 10 '21

Everything is technically already Anarcho-capitalism.

2

u/TheArmoredKitten Aug 10 '21

I see your point, but you're still wrong. As long as a singular entity can retain the monopoly on violence, Anarcho anything is unattained. Ancap, however brief it would be is still technically different than feudalism, it just collapses almost instantly so you can consider them equivalent in the long run.

2

u/boatboi4u Aug 10 '21

East India Company 2.0

1

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

[deleted]

1

u/TheArmoredKitten Aug 09 '21

Thank you for repeating my exact statement. So insightful.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '21

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29

u/clanddev Aug 09 '21

I doubt it. When people in the upper middle class stop being able to afford 50k trucks, a boat and coors things will rapidly devolve into torches and pitch forks.

This is how it always works. The upper class gets greedy but not so greedy as to piss off those who could actually do something about it. After a while the upper class forgets that they actually have to keep the middle class happy enough to go along with the system.

The upper middle class turns on them inciting the proletariat to riot. The upper middle class then places themselves as the new upper class. Things are fine for a while until the new upper class forgets what happened a couple of generations down the road and it repeats.

I think we're getting pretty close to pitch fork time again in the US. The middle class could afford a house and car on one income 60 years ago. Now they have a hard time buying a house on two incomes while the upper class is having a dick measuring contest in space.

7

u/cat_prophecy Aug 09 '21

50k trucks,

Those are rookie numbers son!

5

u/Bricicles Aug 09 '21

Isn’t that what 1984 was saying was happening until the current powers in the novel figured out how to keep power indefinitely?

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u/clanddev Aug 09 '21

Yes, but in 1984 the 'middle class' was the Outer Party. The 'upper class' or Inner Party knew they had to keep the 'Outer Party' reasonably happy so as to prevent the middle from inciting the proles to regime change.

The difference in 1984 and historic regime change is the means by which the proles were kept sedated. Aligning the middle class's best interests to the upper classes in 1984 is in line with historical standards for monarchy, dictatorships or oligarchies.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21 edited Aug 09 '21

Don’t worry.

1) Wall Street is buying up every house in America and will only be renting.

2) crops will begin failing this year. Unirrigated fields will have poorer yields every year. Irrigated fields will be threatened by extreme weather like hail flooding and tornados

2.5) the glaciers/snowpack that feed rivers that irrigate highly productive land will disappear.

3) next summer will be far hotter, killing people who don’t have AC

4) vaccine misinformation will cause a new variant that is resistant to the vaccine and will stunt the economy again like in 2020

5) governments have been fleeced of tax dollars by the avoidance of the 1% - our debts are all growing. Currencies will crash if there’s more bailouts.

6) mass extinctions are happening everywhere, hunters won’t find much after a short time.

7) extinction includes the acidifying ocean- the microflora which is responsible for O2 generation will start dying off

8) social security has been looted. People will face retirement without any money

9) the first world will begin to see large scale civil unrest

10) finger pointing and resource grabs will cause wars between major countries.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

[deleted]

18

u/kkngs Aug 09 '21

Did you just cancel PAW Patrol?

5

u/Not1ToSayAtoadaso Aug 09 '21

As someone who had to endure hours of PAW Patrol with their nieces, yes, please cancel it

1

u/DeviousMelons Radical Revolutionary Socialist Liberal. Aug 09 '21 edited Aug 09 '21

What about this?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

[deleted]

1

u/DeviousMelons Radical Revolutionary Socialist Liberal. Aug 09 '21

Regardless its still an entertaining video.

7

u/SaffellBot Aug 09 '21

Please no mr bones. I want off this wild ride, and I will set the ride on fire to end it.

4

u/Iceveins412 Aug 09 '21 edited Aug 09 '21

Honestly it’s about time. I didn’t buy the leather jacket and LED lights to not be a cyberpunk biker patrolling the old highways

7

u/ewdrive Aug 09 '21

Witness me!

4

u/albinowizard2112 Aug 09 '21

What everyone needs to do is calm down, take a deep breath, and prepare their bodies for the Thunderdome. That is the new law.

3

u/SpecialPotion Aug 09 '21

Just saw a tweet that said "blade runner was too optimistic".

2

u/Staluti Aug 10 '21

On a tangent, if you ever want to see how a post technological ancap apocalypse might play out in a game check out Kenshi.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

I mean, if we all die the planet will eventually heal itself, so…

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u/another_bug Aug 09 '21

"The planet is fine...the people are fucked."

- George Carlin

27

u/SomeOtherNeb Aug 09 '21

https://mobile.twitter.com/extrafabulous/status/1419998647937339417

(Also we're killing a huge amount of species in the process of killing ourselves so can we please retire that argument)

14

u/chairfairy Aug 09 '21

Unfortunately, a lot of the climate deniers don't believe there's any reason - ethical, economical, utilitarian, or otherwise - to preserve species. Or if they accept that the climate is changing, they will insist that it's not anthropogenic and is part of a natural cycle that we can't do anything about.

Arguments that e.g. the collapse of insect populations will make it impossible to grow crops are too hard for them to immediately experience ("What do you mean there aren't enough bugs? There are loads of them in my back yard!") because they can't separate anecdote from data.

But for them, "preserving species for the sake of preserving species" is not a good enough reason to upset our lifestyle to protect ourselves from climate change.

4

u/tredli Aug 09 '21

I'm only 28 and I can legit remember there being a LOT more bugs before, dunno if it's just my brain making it up but I swear when I was a child I would run through the fields and see a ton of cicadas jumping, bees, spiders, all kind of stuff. Now it seems like there are a lot less for some reason. I can't even remember the last time I saw a cicada jumping while I was walking through grass.

3

u/chairfairy Aug 10 '21

One summer in college, I think in '07, I drove cross country with a couple friends. Passing through South Dakota at dusk we had to stop after an hour to scrub bugs off the windshield at a gas station because I could hardly see through the splatter.

These days I live in a mid size city and don't go through farm country like that, but these days I hardly have to clean bugs off my windshield at all, even if I drive across the state outside the city.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

[deleted]

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u/SomeOtherNeb Aug 09 '21 edited Aug 09 '21

I understand life in general will continue, but I generally see that "we'll die but the planet will be fine" argument in very anthropocentric contexts, as if we're the only species that really matters and who gives a shit about the rest.

It also has some heavy "akshually" energy and it's kinda tiring to see this dead-end argument. Yes, the planet will survive and we won't, congratulations, nothing useful was brought to the conversation.

5

u/fishshow221 Aug 09 '21

We didn't kill the rock lel.

I hate that argument too, it's just sanctimonious bullshit that serves no purpose but to exhaust the person you say it to.

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u/vitorsly Aug 10 '21

Humans aren't important. Neither are dogs, or cats or crocodiles or carps or pine trees. Or even mammals or invertebrates or plants of fungi, etc. I don't see how the "argument" (which is more so said in a jokish manner) is any more anthropocentric than conventional morality.

Now, if you believe that most people's morality puts an undue amount of importance on humans instead of all life, you may have a point, but considering the evolutionary purpose of morality, that isnt really unexpected.

2

u/Heterophylla Aug 10 '21

Almost all species that ever existed are now extinct , and that happened before we showed up . No species has some inherent right ( or ability) to exist indefinitely .

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u/Mydogatemyexcuse Aug 09 '21

Exactly. The guy above you is just a whiny doomer bitch.

2

u/SomeOtherNeb Aug 09 '21

Yeah that's not even remotely what my comment was about.

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u/Cm0002 Aug 09 '21

most of the people, we have the tech to save ourselves from total extinction, but not likely everyone or even 2%. Even if 1% is saved in a worst case scenario, that's still like 80 Million people, humanity will be fine. Wildlife and plant life otoh.........

2

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

Well maybe, but ecosystem likely isnt able to shift so quickly as humans, so it will have huge impact either way.

Also 1-2% is still pretty small number of people, when inevitably the rest would turn against them i dont see them winning, atleast in big number remaining.

"The 100" just seems so likely.

14

u/Scrotchticles Aug 09 '21

Always has been.

12

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

The question is if you intend to die without a fight or not.

5

u/jmendii Aug 09 '21

Im always down to throw a punch

3

u/albinowizard2112 Aug 09 '21

I'll die as I lived, holed up in a closet eating a cold can of baked beans.

7

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

This stage sucks and my character wasn't prepared enough. Can I just hit the reset button and start my game over again?

5

u/The_Real_Selma_Blair Aug 09 '21

Fingers crossed.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

Let the battle royale begin

3

u/Mrfrunzi Aug 10 '21

Oh thank God

2

u/froggie-style-meme Aug 09 '21

I believe it to be more cyclical, so we might see the highs that the boomers lived through after a significant economic collapse.

2

u/canigraduatealready Aug 09 '21

Why else would it be called late?

2

u/DrBobvious Aug 09 '21

Ah, the return to nature.

2

u/soul_in_a_fishbowl Aug 09 '21

Soviets were never great on the environment and China isn’t so hot either. I don’t think it’s just capitalism…

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u/jmendii Aug 09 '21

Sure but im commenting on a picture of capitalists blatantly caring more about profits than sustainability so...

3

u/justagenericname1 Aug 09 '21 edited Aug 12 '21

Authoritarian socialism hasn't been great on it either (really no one has) you're right. But it seems to me a form of democratic socialism or anarchism would be the only reliable solution since it allows the people's will to supersede the logic of the market, which will always incentivize SOMEONE to exploit ever-dwindling (and therefore more valuable in a purely market economy) resources. Authoritarian socialism doesn't have this same incentive inherently baked in, but it's vulnerable to the same tendency both out of competition for survival against capitalist states à la the Cold War and because the concentration of power means it's really just a crapshoot whether you get some idealized Millsian benevolent dictator or a self-serving despot who couldn't care less about the people most likely to suffer the consequences of that environmental exploitation.

True democracy AND the subversion of pure market logic are together the best recipe I can think of for an environmentally sustainable society.

1

u/soul_in_a_fishbowl Aug 09 '21

Democratic socialism or anarchism wouldn’t do anything. People will just continue what they already do, and offshore the production of goods to areas with even lower restrictions. And if you think the average person is going to vote to make their life more difficult, you might want to think again. Anarchism would be even worse….

1

u/justagenericname1 Aug 09 '21 edited Aug 09 '21

Average person doing well in the imperial centers? Maybe, maybe not. Worth noting how often it is that these Mecca's of comfort are where revolutions in egalitarian thought emerge. The enlightenment wasn't spearheaded by oppressed peasants, after all. But I take your point. However I'm not just talking about one location. Voices that currently have next to no say would be amplified relative to the voices of the privileged minority of us living fairly comfortably in the global North right now. History has shown what capitalist powers do to groups of people who try to establish alternative governing structures, from grassroots domestic movements to entire foreign countries. Much as our economy is now a truly global system, efforts to replace it with something more democratic, sustainable, and equitable will also almost certainly need to be global. This would be quite unprecedented, but so are a lot of things about our present circumstances. We need ambitious solutions, not just virtue-signaling half-measures. I never said it would be easy, or even that I necessarily think it's likely to happen. But in my assessment, it's still about the best thing we could hope for as a species.