romeotuma wrote: 
Nothing we change will address the most devastating problem we have in this country and around the world - over population.

Regardless of the economic situation the planet cannot provide for the current population much less the projected growth. 

We have passed the point of world "peak oil" and it's downhill from here.  Greedy capitalists (notice I did not say "all") will just hasten it a bit

My biggest concern with capitalism is not the class war going on now between the rich and the middle class...  in fact, my biggest concern makes the class war trivial...

my biggest concern is the environment...

capitalism requires constant economic growth...  with that as the ideological priority, the environment suffers...

we are consuming the planet the way a virus grows and consumes something until the carrier dies...

last year, we saw The Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and this year we have seen the nuclear disaster in Japan... there is land in Japan that will be radioactive for the next 10,000 generations of humans...

what's next?

I do not want capitalism to fall into the dustbin of history as another failed ideology...  I like it...  but we need to find a way to regulate growth and protect the environment, or we are doomed...

 

Robot take-over?

 nuggler wrote: 
For us humans, there will always be wars, corrupt politicians and religious leaders...but there will also always be "progress", if only as an undercurrent.

 black321 wrote: 
The white horse runs with the military.

 rosedraws wrote: 

the white horse of technology will have to be the answer - as it has in the past; but when will we see it ride up over the hill?  I fear there may be a long economic downslide before it comes...or perhaps we can buy our way out of this mess and bide our time until then?  Regardless, all is not lost...the end of the world will only come once. 

 Zep wrote: 

Yeah, I checked out the article.  The consumerist culture exists largly in The West, those who can't afford to be consumers elsewhere in the world become essentially microbes eating our garbage.  Lovely.

 oldslabsides wrote: 
Ghana.

The hardware is being burnt to get at the heavy metals and rare earth minerals for recovery and resale. Terrible way to do it — nasty pollution, and probably not all that effective, but they have no technology otherwise.

 rosedraws wrote: 
It's a pretty good image of where the entire planet is headed.

 Zep wrote: 

lovely.

Thanks for starting this topic Rose. It touches on a lot of modern economic questions and issues — not just topics such as pollution and emissions, but growth and sustainability.

Can our economies continue to grow at the current (last 100 years') rate?  What are the implications for answers either way?

If growth, there needs to be a way to sustain it without adverse effects.

If no growth, then what? A steady state? A decline? Even with a steady state, there needs to be a fundamental reevaluation of the entire financial sector.

 Zep wrote: 


This is what consumerism looks like.

That's our garbage, dumped on a country too poor and too uneducated to defend themselves.

A Global Graveyard for Dead Computers

 kopak wrote: 

Sadly we are not, and due to human nature we never will I fear. I'm not sure Governments can really help (unless it were a global effort with no exceptions). We tried it in the 60's and 70's here in the UK, using 95% Income Tax, Death Duties and Inheritance Tax to "re-distribute wealth" - it didn't work - the super wealthy are super wealthy because they are prepared to circumnavigate the system to avoid any social reponsibility. We do at least have universal health care and social housing, so it could be worse I suppose, but Utpoia is a long way off! 

 beamends wrote: 
I used to think that there's some sort of an unconscious deathwish in the process of this "cunning" plan you describe (aka market globalisation). Blind avidity is one thing, common happiness (some call it "welfare") is another. In a regular/ideal world, laws and governments are meant to regulate individual avidity in order to avoid pauperisation. We're not living in that world, are we ?

I love the way proponents of Globalisation choose to overlook the flaw in their plan. Since Globalisation invariably means moving production to cheaper areas, the whole plan is undermined by the very consumers for whom the production is intended being put out of work by the Glabalisation process, and therefore being unable to consume.

Consumerism was not an accident, and we didn't start out this way.

Included in this plan was planned obsolesence, so that Consumerism would thrive even futher.  

This, supposedly, was going to fuel our massive, productive economy.  But they didn't plan on globalization, and executive greed, and the massive pollution issues, and WHERE THE HELL were we planning to PUT all these obsolete consumer goods when they were discarded by 300 million Americans??

 

This topic has been eating at me for most of my adult life.  

We are a consumer society.

It's ridiculously unsustainable.

How do we live through it?  Can we change it?  Can it ever be sustainable?