Capitalism, the Doomsday Machine (or, How to Repurpose Growth Capital)

By Richard Heinberg, Common Dreams

Why wait for collapse? Repurposing growth capital now could help unwind the doomsday machine sooner rather than later.

Intensive Fishing and the Birth of Capitalism

By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism

An important factor in the rise of the Dutch merchant-industrialist class, scarcely mentioned in many accounts, was the absolute dominance of the Dutch fishing industry in the North Sea.

The economic legacy of the Holocene

By Lisi Krall, Resilience.org

We should face reality: The other-than-human-world now has become almost entirely eclipsed by an unassailable “superorganism”—us, the human species—that continues to expand in evermore destructive fashion.

Brexit stems from a civil war in capitalism – we are all just collateral damage

By George Monbiot, The Guardian blog

To one sort of capitalist, the insecurity and chaos that Brexit will bring is horrifying. To the other, it is highly profitable

Einstein’s Take on Capitalism, Socialism, and a New Kind of Business

By Eduardo Sasso, Resilience.org

A glimpse at the headlines surrounding the upcoming presidential election in the U.S. reveals how we are still largely governed by the old dichotomy of business vs. society.

What If Preventing Collapse Isn’t Profitable?

By Richard Heinberg, Common Dreams

You see, the real downside of the green-profit narrative has been that it created the assumption in many people’s minds that the solution to climate change and other environmental dilemmas is technical, and that policy makers and industrialists will implement it for us, so that the way we live doesn’t need to change in any fundamental way.

COVID-19 and the Death of Market Fundamentalism

By Paul Gilding, The Cockatoo Chronicles

COVID-19 gives us clear evidence that market fundamentalism is a failed economic strategy. Interpreting markets as an ideology or quasi-religious belief system, results in unmanageable and systemic economic risks.

The Three Causes of Global Ecocide

By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future

In a recent post I questioned the well-known formula: Human Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology. But I don’t question that humans now have a severe impact on earth systems. So if not PAT, then what? Here I’m going to lay out some other factors that I suggest underlie our impact and our present predicament in a more fundamental sense than the PAT variables.

Riding the Populist Wave

By Thomas H. Greco, Jr., Beyond Money

In either case, the ultimate realization of social justice, economic equity, true democracy, peace, and environmental stability will depend on people learning to work together in our communities to find common ground and tackle the larger task of building systems that better serve all the people and promote the common good. Your vote does count, so stand up and be counted.

Charming Psychopaths: The Modern Corporation

By Joel Bakan, Transnational Institute

We need to see ourselves as political actors, citizens, obliged to take part in and contribute to creating good and just societies. We need to accept that democratic governance is messy and uncertain, that it’s as much about the process of participation as it is about the resulting policies, and that it can only flourish in social conditions that nurture empathy and solidarity among citizens.

Reclaiming Capital

By Patrick Noble, Feasta

It may come as a surprise to most, that my answer for the times is capitalism. What is capitalism? – it is the ethics of a society, whose aim is to maintain its capital – that is, spiritual, pleasurable and human assets, combined with that which maintains all those things – the undiminished vigour of life – in soil, sea, biomass and biodiversity.

Capitalism – a Self Organizing Structure That Leads to Self Extinction

By Norton Smith, Resilience.org

We live with the belief that we have created an economic system called capitalism and that we have control over it though government policy and taxes.   What if the tables were turned and capitalism only describes a self organizing system that creates itself in an environment of surplus goods and services?