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It should be pretty obvious by now that capitalism is not sustainable in the long term, because it encourages, or even forces the ever growing consumption of natural resources and the increasing environmental destruction. Products have limited lifetimes and little effort is made to recycle because it is (still) cheaper to obtain most raw materials. This will not be the case for our descendants in N generations, because we will have wasted a significant amount of the accessible natural resources. (And it will require a huge increase in energy use to recycle, which will probably come from more nuclear power as it is more Capitalist - renewable solutions can't be monopolized.)

The increase in wealth over the past few centuries can be put mainly down to the discovery of natural resources, although some wealth is generated by human labour. Both of these are finite, so it's impossible to have infinite growth forever. Which brings us to the point that, for the wealth of an individual to grow in an economy with a finite amount of wealth, either more wealth must be created by increased human labour, or some people will lose wealth.

My view is that while Capitalism does improve our lifestyles, it functions by taking loans from the earth, and passing the debt to our descendants. They have improved lifestyles in some areas, but certainly not all (Increased consumption doesn't increase happiness, overuse of antibiotics does not solve the problem of bacteria, and more pollution does not improve health, etc).

It's hard to say whether socialism would work, because it hasn't been properly tried yet. Whatever system we come up with to organize people, it needs to be based around sustainability rather than "wealth creation".

Perhaps we need to redefine what wealth really is. IMO, it's not "I own more than you", but is something internal - real happiness and physical health. We'll only be truly wealthy when all of us (and our descendants) are.

Capitalism is not the root cause, because it's just an idea created by humans. The problem is us, and the solution is to change ourselves. Here's a recent keynote given by Alan Kay on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0R0tAOf7KI

⬐ waps

> It should be pretty obvious by now that capitalism is not sustainable in the long term, because it encourages, or even forces the ever growing consumption of natural resources and the increasing environmental destruction.

The same is true of the universe and evolution. Especially evolution has the exact same problem. In practice though :

1) 4.1 billion years and counting

2) it has overcome every obstacle either humanity or anything else has thrown at it (same can be said for capitalism, and the same cannot be said for any form of collectivism, unless you want to call organisations like Christianity collectivist, which they sort-of are. Christianity is a lot younger than capitalism though)

3) it is always using exponential growth and competition everywhere

> (And it will require a huge increase in energy use to recycle, which will probably come from more nuclear power as it is more Capitalist - renewable solutions can't be monopolized.)

Aside from being "more capitalist" (?) nuclear power is also just plain "more". Furthermore, I'd argue that nuclear power plants are much more communist. They're the sort of thing where everything will be hammered down by regulation, including monopolies for the companies.

And the argument about which is more sustainable renewable or nuclear, is not settled. Due to oil-based production of renewable generators, for which renewable power provides no alternative at all, consumption of non-renewable resources is going up, not down.

> It's hard to say whether socialism would work, because it hasn't been properly tried yet. Whatever system we come up with to organize people, it needs to be based around sustainability rather than "wealth creation".

No offence, but the last few attempts at socialism weren't exactly environmentally friendly, or sustainable. Nor were they anywhere near equal. Why would this time be different ?

⬐ vixen99

Natural resources? As in Japan, Switzerland, Iceland, Britain, Hong Kong, Singapore? Have you ever read 'The Wealth of Nations' by Adam Smith. Seems not.