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Anonymous

8 months ago

The cost of labour per unit of output is constantly diminishing and the price of products is also tending to fall. The more the quantity of labour for a given output decreases, the more the value produced per worker — productivity — has to increase if the amount of achievable profit is not to fall. We have, then, this apparent paradox: the more productivity rises, the more it has to go on rising, in order to prevent the volume of profit from diminishing. Hence the pursuit of productivity gains moves ever faster, manpower levels tend to reduce, while pressure on workers intensifies and wage levels fall, as does the overall payroll. The system is approaching an internal limit at which production and investment in production cease to be sufficiently profitable.

Over time, Gorz explains, this leads investors to turn away from the “real economy” of production, where productivity gains and profits are harder to achieve and instead seek profit through financial speculation in “fictitious” forms of value such as debt and new types of financial instruments. The value is fictitious in the sense that loans, return on investment, future economic growth, trust and goodwill are social intangibles that are quite unlike physical capital. They depend upon collective belief and social trust and can evaporate overnight.

Still, it is generally easier and more profitable to invest in these (fictitious, speculative) forms of financial value than in actually producing goods and services at a time when productivity gains and profit are declining. No wonder speculative bubbles are so attractive: There is just too much capital is sloshing around looking for profitable investment which the real economy is less capable of delivering. No wonder companies have so much cash on hand (from profits) that they are declining to invest. No wonder the amount of available finance capital dwarfs the real economy. Gorz noted that financial assets in 2007 stood at $160 trillion, which was three to four times global GDP — a ratio that has surely gotten more extreme in the past eight years.

Meanwhile, climate change adds yet another layer of difficulty because it virtually requires an abrupt retreat from capitalism, as Naomi Klein argues in her recent book This Changes Everything. Gorz made this point quite clear:

“It is impossible to avoid climate catastrophe without a radical break with the economic logic and methods that have been taking us in that direction for 150 years. On current trend projections, global GDP will increase by a factor of three or four by 2050. But, according to a report by the UN Climate Council, CO2 emissions will have to fall by 85% by that date to limit global warming to a maximum of 2°C. Beyond 2°C, the consequences will be irreversible and uncontrollable.

“Negative growth is, therefore, imperative for our survival. But it presupposes a different economy, a different lifestyle, a different civilization and different social relations. In the absence of these, collapse could be avoided only through restrictions, rationing, and the kind of authoritarian resource-allocation typical of a war economy. The exit from capitalism will happen, then, one way or another, either in a civilized or barbarous fashion. The question is simply what form it will take and how quickly it will occur.

“To envisage a different economy, different social relations, different modes and means of production and different ways of life is regarded as “unrealistic,” as though the society based on commodities, wages, and money could not be surpassed. In reality, a whole host of convergent indices suggest that the surpassing of that society is already under way, and that the chances of a civilized exit from capitalism depend primarily on our capacity to discern the trends and practices that herald its possibility.”

This is where the many initiatives and movements that revolve around the commons, peer production, the solidarity economy, co-operatives, Transition Towns, degrowth, the sharing and collaborative economy, and much else, come in. These are all harbingers of a different way of meeting everyday needs without becoming ensnared in utopian capitalist imperatives (constant growth, ever-increasing productivity gains, profits from the real economy). Pursuing this path ultimately destroys a society, as we can see from years of austerity politics in Greece.

In other words, the most promising way to resolve the capitalist crisis of our time is to start to decommodify production and consumption – i.e., extend and invent non-market ways to meet our needs. Indeed, we need to reconceptualize “production” and “consumption” themselves as separate categories, and begin to re-integrate them — and our role as actors in them — through commons-based peer production.

André Gorz in 2007 wrote “The Exit from Capitalism Has Already Begun”.

#climatechange_💬
#capitalism_💬 #allconsumingbeast_💬 #gifteconomy_💬

tagged: #fskynet_💬

-279 comments(4) raw

Anonymous

14 months ago

“Essentially, overshoot is a crisis of human behaviour,” says Merz. “For decades we’ve been telling people to change their behaviour without saying: ‘Change your behaviour.’ We’ve been saying ‘be more green’ or ‘fly less’, but meanwhile all of the things that drive behaviour have been pushing the other way. All of these subtle cues and not so subtle cues have literally been pushing the opposite direction – and we’ve been wondering why nothing’s changing.”

The paper explores how neuropsychology, social signalling and norms have been exploited to drive human behaviours which grow the economy, from consuming goods to having large families. The authors suggest that ancient drives to belong in a tribe or signal one’s status or attract a mate have been co-opted by marketing strategiesto create behaviours incompatible with a sustainable world.

“People are the victims – we have been exploited to the point we are in crisis. These tools are being used to drive us to extinction,” says the evolutionary behavioural ecologist and study co-author Phoebe Barnard. “Why not use them to build a genuinely sustainable world?”

#climatechange_💬 #psychology_💬 #quote_💬
#globalwarming_💬 #fskynet_💬

tagged: #article_💬

+5 comments(1) raw

Anonymous

18 months ago

Interesting #article_💬 about the breakdown of our climate being due to a "behavioral crisis" driven by marketing. The accumulation of advertisers and counter-intelligence programs to confuse and persuade the populace for a variety of profit-motivated reasons have conspired to rob us of our better judgment and left the populace degenerating into consumerist addicts who cannot address large collective problems or have a cohesive narrative or conversation that won't be polluted by corporate interests.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/13/human-behavioural-crisis-at-root-of-climate-breakdown-say-scientists

“We’ve socially engineered ourselves the way we geoengineered the planet,” says Joseph Merz, lead author of a new paper which proposes that climate breakdown is a symptom of ecological overshoot, which in turn is caused by the deliberate exploitation of human behaviour.

#climatechange_💬 #psychology_💬 #article_💬
#globalwarming_💬 #fskynet_💬

-7 comments(1) raw

Anonymous

40 months ago

https://climateclock.world/

This is a countdown to how much time we have left to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius!!! Only a couple years left... We gotta get our shit together!!!

#ClimateChange_💬 #globalwarming_💬 #infographics_💬
#science_💬

#fskynet_💬

-248 comments(23) raw

Anonymous

83 months ago

We're starting to see some more effects of global warming...

"It's So Damn Hot Around The World Right Now"
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/j5w3k8/its-so-damn-hot-around-the-world-right-now

..these symptoms are a sign of all of us humans failing each other, and they will only worsen as long as we fail to rapidly and radically alter our lifestyles to better suit our biosphere.

Excerpts:

"[wildfires are] also burning throughout the Arctic Circle, particularly in Siberia. The flames release climate-heating carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."

“The amount of CO2 emitted from Arctic Circle fires in June 2019 is larger than all of the CO2 released from Arctic Circle fires in the same month from 2010 through to 2018 put together,” Thomas Smith, a geography professor at the London School of Economics, told Motherboard.

"The heat baked France, which shattered its temperature record: In Gallargues-le-Montueux, in southern France, temps hit 114 degrees Fahrenheit on June 28, beating the 2003 record of 111 degrees during a heat wave that left 15,000 dead."

"Temperatures hit 120 degrees Fahrenheit in early June in Churu in Northern India. They’ve abated since, but water reservoirs are still drying up."

"In the Chinese capital, temperatures hit at least 102 degrees Fahrenheit in early June, according to the Beijing News. That’s the hottest day the city’s seen in the last 50 years."

#climatechange_💬 #globalwarming_💬

tagged: #fskynet_💬

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