Thoughts on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xr9rIQxwj4&t=3s
The main question is: Are they wrong?
And, if they are right, what are the implications? I would say that it is absolutely necessary to manage the planet's resources in a scientific and planned manner.
There are a number of things wrong in this video:
That fossil fuel brought billions of people out of poverty (5:00) is likely based on the World Bank's definition of poverty. But poverty only exists in class society, and is in fact created by it. You don't find poverty in pre-class society such as hunter-gatherer societies or early agrarian societies like the Ubaid culture.
9:40 "Money is ultimately a direct claim on energy and resources" this is true in a sense but ignores the social power of money, the ability to command the labour of another (see Adam Smith). There are more problems like this in the video so I won't bother listing them all, as they are obvious to anyone who has read their classical political economy.
14:35 The system is actually controlled by a rather small section of the haute bourgeoisie. Your Elon Musks and Jeff Bezoses. It's not *total* control of course, but enough that moving to a sustainable economy is actively being suppressed.
The bit about social media is overly focused on the superstructure. One grating thing in particular is the attempt to compare the superstructure of our time to that of hunter-gatherers, as if H-G's don't know how to live within their ecological means. One only needs to look at current vestigial H-G societies to see that this is not the case. For example the Sentinelese will periodically move around Sentinel island so as to let depleted areas of it regrow.
22:20 This is putting the cart before the horse.
Capital as an emergent organism, an alien parasite, is not a new one. Ian Wright for example (who I think has a user on here) calls it a "real god" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvp8khkvoQQ ).
29:50 This is actually wrong. We have plenty of ways to make more energy available to the human economy. It's just that using petroleum has required less labour historically, and has therefore been cheaper. Plenty of energy falls on Earth from our great fusion reactor in the sky.
Overall I'm not fond of degrowth which this piece seems to be propagating. "The great simplification" is also amusingly similarly named to dear old Klaus Schwab's Great Reset.
@thardin "29:50 This is actually wrong. We have plenty of ways to make more energy available to the human economy. It's just that using petroleum has required less labour historically, and has therefore been cheaper. Plenty of energy falls on Earth from our great fusion reactor in the sky."
The question is how feasible it would be to replace **all** fossil-based energy sources with solar, wind and nuclear. People who claim that the main solution to future problems lie in adopting renewables tend to be 1) pro-capitalism, 2) are not really making any quantifiable claims, just "look at this new shiny tech".
@enrique_lescure Since most energy is used in production this can be handled by proper scheduling. There is also the possibility to develop HVDC tech. The PRC has a 3300 km 1.1 MV line. Bump that up to three megavolt and we should be able to distribute equatorial PV power to polar regions. With six megavolt it becomes possible to transport power from Earth's dark side to the light side.
9:40 "Money is ultimately a direct claim on energy and resources" this is true in a sense but ignores the social power of money, the ability to command the labour of another (see Adam Smith). There are more problems like this in the video so I won't bother listing them all, as they are obvious to anyone who has read their classical political economy.
I actually agree with this statement, which is why I believe that money should be abolished - since most of its value are based on subjective and social metrics rather than physical metrics. I think we should have a medium of measurement which is informing our sense of value rather than informed by it, since we are having such an advanced economy right now.
@enrique_lescure The value of money is emphatically not subjective. It is useful and will continue to be useful until something more useful replaces it. You cannot for example get rid of money by writ, because commodity money will just re-appear in the form of things like precious metals or bottles of vodka.
If we want to get really technical the value of fiat money is quite a bit less than the price printed on them. But that gets into a long discussion about rent.
@enrique_lescure The value of money is emphatically not subjective. It is useful and will continue to be useful until something more useful replaces it. You cannot for example get rid of money by writ, because commodity money will just re-appear in the form of things like precious metals or bottles of vodka.
If we want to get really technical the value of fiat money is quite a bit less than the price printed on them. But that gets into a long discussion about rent.
I agree they cannot be gotten rid of by writ, but with a system like Energy Accounting, they will become obsolete.