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Page added on September 4, 2018
Unless It Changes, Capitalism Will Starve Humanity By 2050
Capitalism has generated massive wealth for some, but it’s devastated the planet and has failed to improve human well-being at scale.
• Species are going extinct at a rate 1,000 times faster than that of the natural rate over the previous 65 million years (see Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School).
• Since 2000, 6 million hectares of primary forest have been lost each year. That’s 14,826,322 acres, or just less than the entire state of West Virginia (see the 2010 assessment by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN).
• Even in the U.S., 15% of the population lives below the poverty line. For children under the age of 18, that number increases to 20% (see U.S. Census).
• The world’s population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050 (see United Nations’ projections).
Capitalism is unsustainable in its current form. (Credit: ZINIYANGE AUNTONY/AFP/Getty Images)
MORE FROM FORBES
How do we expect to feed that many people while we exhaust the resources that remain?
Human activities are behind the extinction crisis. Commercial agriculture, timber extraction, and infrastructure development are causing habitat loss and our reliance on fossil fuels is a major contributor to climate change.
Public corporations are responding to consumer demand and pressure from Wall Street. Professors Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg published Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations last fall, arguing that businesses are locked in a cycle of exploiting the world’s resources in ever more creative ways.
“Our book shows how large corporations are able to continue engaging in increasingly environmentally exploitative behaviour by obscuring the link between endless economic growth and worsening environmental destruction,” they wrote.
Yale sociologist Justin Farrell studied 20 years of corporate funding and found that “corporations have used their wealth to amplify contrarian views [of climate change] and create an impression of greater scientific uncertainty than actually exists.”
Corporate capitalism is committed to the relentless pursuit of growth, even if it ravages the planet and threatens human health.
We need to build a new system: one that will balance economic growth with sustainability and human flourishing.
A new generation of companies are showing the way forward. They’re infusing capitalism with fresh ideas, specifically in regards to employee ownership and agile management.
The Increasing Importance Of Distributed Ownership And Governance
Fund managers at global financial institutions own the majority (70%) of the public stock exchange. These absent owners have no stake in the communities in which the companies operate. Furthermore, management-controlled equity is concentrated in the hands of a select few: the CEO and other senior executives.
On the other hand, startups have been willing to distribute equity to employees. Sometimes such equity distribution is done to make up for less than competitive salaries, but more often it’s offered as a financial incentive to motivate employees toward building a successful company.
According to The Economist, today’s startups are keen to incentivize via shared ownership:
The central difference lies in ownership: whereas nobody is sure who owns public companies, startups go to great lengths to define who owns what. Early in a company’s life, the founders and first recruits own a majority stake—and they incentivise people with ownership stakes or performance-related rewards. That has always been true for startups, but today the rights and responsibilities are meticulously defined in contracts drawn up by lawyers. This aligns interests and creates a culture of hard work and camaraderie. Because they are private rather than public, they measure how they are doing using performance indicators (such as how many products they have produced) rather than elaborate accounting standards.
This trend hearkens back to cooperatives where employees collectively owned the enterprise and participated in management decisions through their voting rights. Mondragon is the oft-cited example of a successful, modern worker cooperative. Mondragon’s broad-based employee ownership is not the same as an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. With ownership comes a say – control – over the business. Their workers elect management, and management is responsible to the employees.
REI is a consumer cooperative that drew attention this past year when it opted out of Black Friday sales, encouraging its employees and customers to spend the day outside instead of shopping.
I suspect that the most successful companies under this emerging form of capitalism will have less concentrated, more egalitarian ownership structures. They will benefit not only financially but also communally.
Joint Ownership Will Lead To Collaborative Management
The hierarchical organization of modern corporations will give way to networks or communities that make collaboration paramount. Many options for more fluid, agile management structures could take hold.
For instance, newer companies are experimenting with alternative management models that seek to empower employees more than a traditional hierarchy typically does. Of these newer approaches, holacracy is the most widely known. It promises to bring structure and discipline to a peer-to-peer workplace.
Holacracy “is a new way of running an organization that removes power from a management hierarchy and distributes it across clear roles, which can then be executed autonomously, without a micromanaging boss.”
Companies like Zappos and Medium are in varying stages of implementing the management system.
Valve Software in Seattle goes even further, allowing employees to select which projects they want to work on. Employees then move their desks to the most conducive office area for collaborating with the project team.
These are small steps toward a system that values the employee more than what the employee can produce. By giving employees a greater say in decision-making, corporations will make choices that ensure the future of the planet and its inhabitants.
32 Comments on "Unless It Changes, Capitalism Will Starve Humanity By 2050"
onlooker on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 10:28 am
It is not just Capitalism but 7 plus billion and growing impacting so much the Earth Environment
Donad J Chump on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 10:35 am
Correct. Capitalism needs all those people to exploit.
Why is it whites just can’t admit that capitalism is stupid?
Whiteness does not mean infinite growth is possible on a FINITE planet.
duh on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 10:59 am
Is that you master fag? Pinkness isn’t good for anyone either.
There is a difference between capitalism and free markets. In capitalism dumb fags can use other dumb people’s money to make more money. No skin in the game. Especially with fake paper money and paper markets.
In free-markets you are free to trade your own property and labor as you see fit.
Cloggie on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 12:08 pm
Capitalism is not inherent polluting, you can have capitalism without it. It is the task of the government and international bodies to set the strict rules, within which a capitalist economy needs to operate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system, and competitive markets. In a capitalist market economy, decision-making and investment are determined by every owner of wealth, property or production ability in financial and capital markets, whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets.
You can still have capitalism if you forbid by law to burn fossil fuels, own a car, fly in a plane, use pesticides, etc., etc. That’s what the EU intends to do: forbid fossil fuel but keep capitalism.
It should be reminded that the original symbol of capitalism was the tulip, not the T-Ford:
https://tinyurl.com/yd5afeg2
Capitalism can be so beautiful.
Donad J Chimp insist in the mean time on a racial angle to it all: Why is it whites just can’t admit that capitalism is stupid?
It’s all “ignorant whitey’s” fault, welcome to the New America. One wonders what smart black economic model mr Donad J Chimp has in store for us.
Don’t hold your breath.
onlooker on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 12:59 pm
Sorry to say the Greed that Capitalism unleashes will just wash aways all restrictions in an orgy of corruption, bribery and self interest. And it will seek the highest return ie. Fossil fuels. It all played out exactly like that and would if we rewinded the tape. You lose Clog, so does the White race and every other race.
Davy on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 1:25 pm
Lots of whining about capitalism but little in the way of solutions. Maybe because there are only catch 22 trade-offs involved. I would love for one of our brilliant thinkers to explain how our civilization is going to generate enough economic activity to support 7.4BIL people and the 1BIL that live like we on this board are accustomed to without capitalism. Please don’t tell me capitalism is to blame for all the bad results of capitalism. Human nature is to blame. There are no good solutions and all roads lead to decline and a possible painful die down because capitalism as we know it is not sustainable. What I am reading is anger and resentment but little looking in the mirror. If you are on the internet right now reading this you are part of the problem. Why, because you are a modern human that consumes far more than is sustainable. There is no other system that can produce what capitalism produces and allows global nations to cooperate in commerce. Socialism is just capitalism with lipstick. Dictatorships have selective capitalism. We are in a trap of our own making and capitalism is our leaky boat.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 1:40 pm
Davy
Just wait till capitalistic collapses..then we move to socialism and then communism..and then we take back private property from fucks like you..Who did nothing to deserve what you were given..
You will be tared and feathered and ran out of town on a rail..Or hung from the nearest lamp post..
LMFAO!
onlooker on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 1:41 pm
Good post Davy. Yes, Capitalism allowed us to thrive. But now with 7 plus Billion it is counterproductive in any longer term horizon. And yes the devilish catch 22, is we cannot just unplug from it or Industrialization as that itself will reign immeasurable havoc down on all of us.
Anonymouse1 on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 2:02 pm
These staged fights you have periodically with own sock, are weird expcetionalturd. Just like you. Nice touch though, having the sock, make a sock.
Not.
You should worry less about the economic system your masters chain you to, and more time thinking about removing all those rotting stumps, old tires, and refrigerators that dot your, uh, ‘farms’ landscape.
Boat on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 2:09 pm
onlooker
Shouldn’t you be preaching to the countries that are adding the 80 million per year to the population? Try offering free robotic sex.
Cloggie on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 2:13 pm
Just wait till capitalistic collapses..then we move to socialism and then communism..and then we take back private property from fucks like you..Who did nothing to deserve what you were given..
Capitalism itself cannot collapse, but governments can destroy it, like they did for instance in Venezuela.
And now we have this fool and neo-bolshevik millimind who wants to reintroduce a murderous and discredited model that failed majestically in Russia and everywhere else, so he can satisfy his blood lust, directed against the upper layers of society.
Millimind urgently needs to be put to work in a rubber plant or something, obviously after a thorough delousing first.
wildbourgman on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 3:26 pm
“Unless It Changes, Capitalism Will Starve Humanity By 2050”
I don’t accept the premise but, you mean it outlasted the other forms of government that failed much sooner than 2050? Ok that’s pretty good.
In the real world most people need to know that we don’t have capitalism and haven’t had it for a very long time, so making that the straw man is very weak to say the least.
onlooker on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 3:54 pm
Free robotic sex. — haha good one Boat. Hey its worth a try, nothing else seems to be working. Funny, cause one time this women asked why are the poor people so horny. Duh, They are NOT more horny than us. Just have good reasons to have kids and sometimes difficulty in preventing having them
Donad J Chump on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 4:29 pm
Yeah, why do whites have so many kids?
Aren’t there enough of them already?
Each white expects the Earth to give them a car, cheap gasoline, air conditioning, abundant food, murderous police, suburban house, comfortable retirement, fast food, good healthcare and the white women expect to be treated like princesses, go to the mall, watch TV, and go on vacations and cruises.
Yet, the whites keeping breeding. The world can’t handle too many more white mouths to feed.
claes rydeman on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 4:49 pm
Davy , after reading your comment, I started thinking about what we have to do to get to a better society. Here’s a few thoughts about what attitudes we need to get rid of from the old society.
“A QUICK PEEK ON OBSTACLES IN OUR WAY TOWARDS A MORE FAIR SOCIETY
SOCIETAL HINDRANCES
1: The iron law of oligarcy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy
2: The idea that the more people we are the better.
3: Human exceptionalism . https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Human_exceptionalism
4: National exceptionalism.
5: Religious exceptionalism.
6: Class exceptionalism.
7: Racial exceptionalism.
PERSONAL HINDRANCES
8: Human tendency to wiev existing conditions as the normal (boiling frogg syndrome).
9: Human inginuity in circumventing/adapting existing rules and conventions to their own benefit. (such people do exist you know)
10: Personal greed (fairly common)
11: Male/female adoration of/submition to the more powerfull individuals and classes. (this goes for other people only – not you and me )
MARKET HINDRANCES
12: The idea that value (money) can exist without a basis in real stuff.
The idea of non existing money started with the concept of taking a fee for borrowed money, which was forbidden in the days of the old testament, and- i believe- even in the quran.
13: The idea that human inventions, thoughts and knowledge can be monopolized and monetarised. (copyright and patents are historically fairly new concepts- 100/200 years old I guess)”
But as soon as we have solved these few obstacles, I can’t see why we couldn’t make our way towards a better and more just global society.
makati1 on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 6:41 pm
Donald, you hit the bullseye! It is the White Western wants that are killing the planet’s ecosystem. The one that supports life here, including us. Why should the Us get more than 25% of the worlds resources when they are less than 5% of the world’s people? Time for that to stop. Today would be fine with me. I’m waiting.
makati1 on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 6:47 pm
“The illusion that the U.S. is immune to the unraveling of debt and asset valuations won’t last….
The belief that U.S. markets are somehow disconnected from global markets and immune to the repricing of risk, debt, assets and currencies is magical thinking….
Although few seem to notice, almost half the profits of the S&P 500 corporations are earned overseas….
This is only the first stage of a complete re-ordering of the global financial system…
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-global-financial-system-is.html
You will note that the chart of “meltdown” countries does not include the Philippines. It has a fairly healthy economy and financial position. As for the US … Slip slidin’…
makati1 on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 7:21 pm
BTW: By 2050, the world will not even come close to resembling the one we live in today. Thirty more years of climate change, wars, and greed will have decimated the 1st world and made most of the 3rd world worse. There will be no capitalism or governments as we now know them. Survival will be the name of the game, not wealth or invisible boundaries.
As I will likely not be here to see if my prognostication comes true (I would be 106) it does not matter, but it does to some here who will be in old age by then, if they survive the coming wars, famine, plagues, etc..
makati1 on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 7:46 pm
“Nearly 51 million U.S. households — or 43 percent — don’t earn enough to cover their monthly bills for housing, food, childcare, health care, transportation and a cell phone, according to a report released by the United Way ALICE Project. That number includes the 16.1 million households living in poverty, along with the 34.7 million families the United Way has dubbed ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. Frequently called the “working poor,” the group doesn’t make enough to make it in today’s economy. –Metro”
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/one-third-of-americans-have-less-than-5000-saved-for-retirement_09042018
Slip slidin’…
claes rydeman on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 7:52 pm
Mak, it is incredible that you can’t see that the chinese communistic experiment is just a repetition of the western capitalistic class society- just with “chinese characteristics”.
Suppression of ethnic minorities.(xinjiang,tibet)
Suppression of religions (muslims,buddist, christians etc)
A han-chinese upper class that calls all the rulings.
And let’s not forget their attempts to “dept book colonisation” of poor indepted countries.
As Davy said: let’s hear it from the board philosophers how they would like the new world order to look, and how we will get there.
Not that the existing order is good, but what would come instead?
China is a clean cut fascist state, and they are trying to export their system to the rest of the world.
China is a surveilance state of the worst kind this world has ever seen. They have the most complete suppression of free speech ever seen.
Their understanding of pollution and climate change is only an issue for china, because it hits them selves the hardest.
For god’s sake let’s stop this fascist state from further influence in humanity’s future.
I’m not fond of the western worlds way to manege their global influence, but if the chinese get it their way the alternative will be much worse.
Ass plant would say: cheers
makati1 on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 8:52 pm
claes, the world will not last much longer anyway. So, why worry about a future that will not exist soon? The Chinese have a method that has worked, with variations, for thousands of years. It will continue to work as long as there are Chinese. It may be no better, but is certainly no worse, than that in the US today.
China is using trade to build its power. The US uses death and plunder. The sooner the US goes down, the better for the rest of the world. Today would be fine with me. Are YOU prepared for that coming event? I am.
Tell me what is so good about the current system in the US? Most of the US is owned by a small percentage of oligarchs that run the country to suit their needs/wants, not yours.
How is that so different than in any other country? The delusion of freedom and democracy in America is just that, delusion, and has been for most of its existence.
That you side with delusional Davy only proves my point. You too are in denial of reality and believe all of the anti=Chinese propaganda that the USMSM spews out both ends daily. Or … are you a new, temporary, Davy sock puppet trying to support his delusions? Probably. There seem to be a rash of delusionists lately.
claes rydeman on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 9:21 pm
China is up and coming. They are one quarter of the worlds population, and you don’t see any reason to be critical to their blatantly fascistic system. No no no, you are only going for america, which you anyway see as a down and out nation, that will soon lie in ruins. The absense of china critizism could lead others to assume that you actually support the chinese suppression of speech, minorities and religion. Well, do you?
makati1 on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 10:22 pm
Actually claes, America suppresses speech and all other “freedoms” just as much, if not more so as China. But you are so brainwashed that you cannot see the forest for the trees. You believe all of the bullshit that spews from both orifices of the USMSM propaganda machine about the current “enemies of the US, China, Russia, Iran and N. Korea.
If you are old enough, you might remember when they were “friends” of the US and nothing but good came out of the USMSM about them. Perspective is a wonderful thing. Get some.
makati1 on Tue, 4th Sep 2018 10:25 pm
BTW: China is my neighbor here in the Ps. I am neither for or against them. I am a realist. You don’t badmouth your neighbors/bankers/suppliers of necessities, if you want to survive what is coming. The Us has never learned that lesson. They/you soon will, and it will cause a great amount of pain.
Clogtard on Wed, 5th Sep 2018 1:51 am
The next time you hear somebody state that there is safety in numbers, tell them to say that to 6 million Jews.
Cloggie on Wed, 5th Sep 2018 2:26 am
http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-holocaust-denial/
1674 (!) comments.
Victors justice is no justice.
I’ll give you 200k, mainly caused by sickness:
https://goo.gl/images/BNcz9u
deadly on Wed, 5th Sep 2018 5:08 am
Socialism would have starved humanity a hundred years ago if it had had its way.
People are stupid, they never learn.
Davy on Wed, 5th Sep 2018 5:12 am
“Italy’s Stagnant Economy The Most Likely Trigger To Europe’s Existential Crisis”
https://tinyurl.com/y9rcyvp2
“The Italian issue is raised again in part because it is timely with the end of the summer holiday season. The view here remains that a systemic event in financial markets is more likely to be triggered by Italy and the Eurozone than other candidates currently discussed by pundits, be it a Donald Trump-triggered trade war, a much anticipated (by talking heads) Chinese currency collapse or overvalued Wall Street FANG stocks. Still, they are all interconnected phenomena since, for example, a renewed focus on the existential risks in the Eurozone is likely to put renewed downward pressure on the euro which, if what happened in the second quarter is any guide, will then lead to broader US dollar strength against emerging market currencies. This will in turn make it more challenging for China to manage the capital outflow issue.”
Davy on Wed, 5th Sep 2018 5:18 am
“Hungary And Italy Unite On Migrants: EU Is About To Take A Nosedive”
https://tinyurl.com/y8jqfv53
“The EU is facing a real problem now that a new alliance has emerged within it. The Aug. 28 Hungary-Italy high-level meeting was a landmark event that seriously jeopardized European unity as those deep divisions emerged into the open. Budapest and Rome agreed to jointly oppose Brussels on the issue of migration. Expressing their determination to take a tough stance, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Italian Deputy Head of State and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini hit it off, creating what CNN called a Trojan horse within the European Union. The two agreed to jointly pursue their anti-immigration agenda prior to the European elections next May. Both slammed French President Macron for his stance on the problem. PM Orban described Macron as “the leader of the pro-migration parties in Europe today.” According to him, “There are currently two camps in Europe and one is headed by (Emmanuel) Macron.”
“The Sunday Express cited Massimiliano Panarari, a political science professor at Luiss University in Rome, who believes that “Italy has become a laboratory of European populism and risks moving away not only from Europe, but also from western democracies and getting closer, together with Orbán’s Hungary, to Vladimir Putin, who enjoys Salvini’s manifestations of sympathy.”
“The idea of a multi-speed Europe has been revived by the French president, auguring a possible split of that bloc that is already divided into mini-coalitions. Chances are slim for the EU to remain united. The bloc is about to take a nosedive. It’ll have to work really hard to survive, but the chances of overcoming the deepening rift appear to be slim at best.”
Cloggie on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 7:34 am
“Hungary And Italy Unite On Migrants: EU Is About To Take A Nosedive”
Europe is taking a nosedive because it gets tough on immigration. Uhuh.
Expressing their determination to take a tough stance, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Italian Deputy Head of State and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini hit it off, creating what CNN called a Trojan horse within the European Union.
Says who? Ah, Trump’s enemy #1, CNN. I’m not surprised CNN calls anti-immigration populists “Trojan horse’s”. I in contrast call CNN “The Enemy of white people”.
Both slammed French President Macron for his stance on the problem. PM Orban described Macron as “the leader of the pro-migration parties in Europe today.”
Both Salvini and Orban are wrong here. Although Macron does indeed send mixed signals, the reality is that he has closed his borders without stressing it too much and that he is busy promoting asylum application centers in Africa, which in practice would mean that hardly anybody would make it to Europe anymore.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-14/emmanuel-macron-s-immigration-policy-offends-all-parties
Macron is relying on a new and controversial law to fix France’s dysfunctional immigration policy and hopefully prevent a similar fate. The law promises to streamline the processing of asylum applications while introducing tough penalties, including detention, for undocumented immigrants. It is popular with the French right, but viewed as a serious breaking of the faith on the left, the bedrock of Macron’s majority.
Macron talks left, but acts right.
The Merkel-2015 attitude (“everybody is welcome”) is completely discredited and the main reason for the meteoric rise of populism in Europe, with even Sweden could end up later this month with a populist party being the largest.
Doomerang on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 8:49 pm
EcoShock Radio recently interviewed Roy Scranton in relation to his book “We’re Doomed. Now What?”:
https://www.ecoshock.net/downloads/ES_Scranton.mp3
Transcript and full podcast at https://www.ecoshock.org/2018/09/global-heat-crisis-new.html
Duncan Idaho on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 9:17 pm
“EcoShock Radio recently interviewed Roy Scranton in relation to his book “We’re Doomed. Now What?”
Yep, give it a listen– It is probably too late.