>I'll make it REAL simple, Enzo: capitalism exploits BOTH workers and
>nature.
So let me be as plain: exploiting nature is what is good about capitalism; exploiting workers is what is bad.
Try this simple thought experiment: imagine a society that did not exploit nature.
Foragers, basically, a sustainable population not even a percentage point of today's.
Are you willing to countenance that kind of population reduction?
In message <l03130300b28868201f0e@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>So, James, you're not the least bit worried that a chunk of ice the size of
>Delaware recently broke off the polar icecap? That storms seem to be
>getting more frequent, destructive, and unpredictable? Just the fantasies
>of Malthusian misanthropes?
I haven't worried about it recently, I must admit. Is that very bad of me? Have you? What are you doing about it? Or is it something that you just like to worry about? I wonder, how often each day should one think about the melting ice caps. Every time you turn on the light perhaps? Is this an emotional or spiritual need that you are addressing, when you worry about the melting polar ice caps? Do you visualise the collapsing ice shelf and then resolve not to take the lift? Does the resolution last? Or is it just a ritual observance, like mumbling the Lord's Prayer over dinner?
Are you confident that the weather is less predictable than it used to be? I'm fairly certain that it is more predictable than it was fifty years ago. Are storms more destructive now than they were? How would you measure it? I suppose that insurance claims are higher now than they once were, but then more property is insured than once was. Are natural conditions more destructive of human life than they were fifty years ago? It seems unlikely to me. More destructive of property, perhaps, but then there is more property to be damaged.
I don't worry about the crime statistics, or BSE, or that a meteorite might hit the earth or a whole host of other terrible things. When I was burgled, I worried about the crime statistics. But most often I prefer to put them out of my mind. It's a bit like cancer, or dying. It's just there. I don't know what to do about it. Do you? I don't suffer from existential angst at the sheer facticity of existence, though I must say that Sartre's argument why one should was very persuasive when I first heard it.
>
>I won't even bring up the fact that most red-greens are as critical of
>Malthusian misanthropes as you are.
Critical? Or just embarrassed to hear the logical conclusion of their thinking made explicit?
-- Jim heartfield