madisk wrote...
Zulu_DFA wrote...
I have an impression that the decline in biodiversity is the consequence of the same factor as the global warming, namely, human activity. However, unlike the global warming, the decline in biodiversity isn't going to hit us back.
Decline in biodiversity could kill off most life on Earth within a century or two to maybe a couple of decades. Technically all living things on Earth are interdependant, and the extinction rates of different species are at an all time high right now, approaching 1000 times the background extinction rate. Basically, kill off this species, and another species has lost their main food source. Eventually it'll unleash a chain reaction that natural evolution just can't keep up with.
http://www.globaliss...and-extinctions
Global warming and it's implications are entirely questionable.
That is true. But I say, that the extinction of the freaking pandas and zebras and plankton crustaceans will not kill the mankind. We’ll easily survive on genetically modified potatoes and soy beans or even some syntetically manufactured nutritious goo.
Global warming will affect the infrastructure of humanity directly. Not only it will contribute to accelerating the wildlife extinction, but also to:
Stage 1.
- Polar caps & glacier thawing, which will result in sea level rise and permanent flooding of vast shore areas and devastating spring flooding in river valleys. Contribution to further global temperature rise due to minimization of sunlight reflection back to space.
- Permafrost thawing. Vast areas in Siberia and Canada (Yes, BioWare, listen up!) will turn into marshlands. Contribution to further global temperature rise due to release of enormous amount of methane and carbon dioxide, stored in the permafrost.
- Extreme weather. Hurricanes/typhoons will result in massive property damage and prolonged seasonal droughts in crops failure (so much for my genetically modified potatoes) and fresh water shortage.
+ The only positive result will be the improved access to the Arctic trade route and Arctic shelf hydrocarbon deposits. But it will in no way compensate fully for all the negative effects. Instead, it will help to sustain the present model of energy supply a little bit longer, thus delaying the ultimate collapse and thus making it even worse.
Stage 2.
- Famine, water shortage, energy shortage, and living space shortage will drive God knows how many millions of people into migration. Which will result in violence at unpredictable scale anywhere from street crime to preemptive nuclear strikes.
- Civilization in decline, probably some order and decent standard of living could be maintained at geographically isolated locations, reinforced by all kinds of military grade fortification.
Stage 3.
- Over time water vapor, accumulated in the atmosphere due to high temperature will form into global-wide cloud cover and the sunlight will be reflected back into space without penetration to the ground level, which will result in a steep decline of global temperatures to the level below the pre-industrial level. Welcome to the Ice Age.
In the worst case scenario these events will occur as described above in a matter of two centuries. And the survival of the human race will depend on the extremities’ extent of the Stage 2. The most intricate part is that the “worst case scenario” isn’t a constant thing. It tends to continually worsen with the new data and modeling techniques becoming available over the course of the last three decades.
Now, we’ve recently had that Global warming conference in Denmark, where all our great world leaders magnificently managed to miss the point entirely. All they were eager to discuss was who’s fault is it, and how “fair” the freakin’ third world must be treated. Whereas the point is very simple: how soon we’re going to cross the point of no-return? What do the scientists have to say?
Well… some scientists have to say that we’re already past the point of no-return and it doesn’t really matter already, if we switch off every electrical appliance in the world. The climate change is triggered and soon we’ll enjoy the hell of it. The pessimists are still in the minority though.
But the way the governments are failing to even acknowledge the problem, at least publicly, the pessimists don’t look that crazy.
And now we are closing on the capitalism.
madisk wrote...
Zulu_DFA wrote...
It's not the question of "need".
Everything points out that our current societal norms won't be overcome. Capitalism conquered all ideology-based forms of society. Which means that the "invisible hand of the free market" (read: basic human insticts rationalized into currency flow) will blindly carry the modern civilization from crisis to crisis, until there comes the ultimate crisis from which it will never recover.
So you're saying that Capitalism will ultimately block out any societal progress whatsoever just because it's capitalism? What's so special about capitalism?
We'll go trough different crises and eventually we'll learn, improve and adapt to new conditions. That's progress after all. It took us more than a thousand years to go from christian dark ages to renaissance, and I'd say that capitalism (albeit ridiculously inefficient as a global society considering the theoretical alternatives we have) is a rather stabilizing element - meaning, it will sustain our civilization long enough until we'll move on to better, brighter forms of society (anticipating your rebuttal about omg terrorists).
The current monetary system is ridiculous, but don't underestimate all the economists who are more than capable of keeping the system afloat as long as it benefits them. We're problem solvers by nature, so when it eventually isn't worth maintaining, it will be replaced by something more beneficial.
What’s so special about capitalism? Well, if are you seriously interested in the answer, there are Bible-sized books on the topic. But I’ll try to be short.
Capitalism is a BAMF, like Chuck Norris. Nobody can stand against Chuck Norris, and nobody can stand against Capitalism. And the only proper match in a fight against Capitalism is Capitalism. The only difference is that while Chuck Norris in a fight against himself will win, the Capitalism in the fight against itself will eventually lose.
As I said before, Capitalism defeated all ideology-based forms of society. That is, namely: Religious Fundamentalism (Middle Age Christianity), Nationalism (Napoleonic France), Fascism (WWII Axis), and Communism (Soviet block).
The true power of Capitalism is that capitalist society doesn’t have an ideology that compels its members to stick together. And the public government in capitalist society has only few fat targets to hit. That is the corporations that grow to big (explanation down below). Conversely, the ideology-based society has to monitor every its member, and extinguish any form of non-conformity,
including social apathy. Because if a single human being (or at least eligible citizen) refuses to participate in the social activities in the way that ideology dictates, it breaks the integrity of said society.
Capitalist society is based not on some abstract thinking, but on rationalization of all the desires and abilities of every and all of its members into currency. It’s a natural force of sort. And as such it greatly denies culture. Any cultural value (like, let’s say, a painting, or a book, or a holy matrimony) is fitted into the system on the basis of its market value. And at this point any difference between a cultural value and primitive instinctive desire of a mean human being is abolished. We can have any work of Michelangelo precisely measured in hamburgers or gas gallons. And this is the second source of power for Capitalism. It very well works with math. Everything gets quantified and calculated. And here we come to the first subtle weakness of Capitalism: things that are not easily quantified simply get eliminated from the equation, usually under assumption that they do not exist! But humans and their primitive desires are easily quantified, and therefore easily accounted for as something called “aggregate demand” and easily satisfied with industrial output of certain commodities, and here we have GNP and stock market indexes and all that stuff, and as long as numbers climb higher we call it “progress”. And here we even have a derivative ideology of “progress = consumption rate”, which, being backed up by the de facto victorious (for now) social practice of Capitalism, is winning in the field where it was previously scorned at – moral philosophy.
Now, what’s wrong with corporations. As early as in the middle of the 19th century it was noticed that the stock (“Kapital” in German) tends to aggregate. Individual entrepreneurs do not withstand competition with firms, small firms go bankrupt when a larger firm enters the local market, large firms are bought out by nation-wide companies, nation-wide companies form trusts and trusts tend to subjugate entire market sectors, undermining the principle of the free market, namely, competition. Without competition, prices climb and folks get annoyed and take to the streets with red flags. Especially when trusts mess up with their business plans and overproduce certain goods, then fire all their employees. Therefore the first exercises in anti-trust legislation were taken in the end of the 19th century. And it was quite timely in order to save the world from a global communist revolution, that was already looming. However, the natural law of stock aggregation continued to work just as well as the law of gravitation. In the 20th century national companies buy assets on foreign soil, thus paving the road to what we now call Globalization and trans-national corporations. Few 19th century economists anticipated that (due to their nationalistic preconceptions, I think). Anti-trust legislation has been steadily improved and internationalized. The simple truth is: if left unchecked the free market system will lead to the situation, when all the fish in the pond will be eaten by the few biggest sharkies and then they simply merge into one global super-corporation, and all the economic activity in the world will be directed by a single executive board in accordance with a single business plan, and there will be no competition. Again, welcome to Communism! Luckily, that threat has been averted as well by the God-given anti-trust legislation. As long as the governments protect competition by non-market measures, we’re safe. All the rest can be effectively governed by the “invisible hand of the market”. As I said, it’s an easy task for the public officials. They don’t need to search for dissent in every single human mind, including their own, they only have to occasionally blow away some very fat and too greedy businesses (lining a little own pockets in the process). Not much IQ and diligence is required to perform this noble task. So this particular weakness of Capitalism is not that grave.
But there is another one. And it is called limited resources. Let’s go back the dawn of modern capitalist civilization and open the book with precious to us ME fans title “Leviathan”. In short, the author states that human nature is quite primitive and ape-like (correct, see Charles Darwin), and any attempt to deny or amend this simple fact will lead to nightmarish results (correct, see Communism, Fascism), and to have some sort of decent existence people have to strike a bargain with each other (correct, see Social Contract, Declaration of Independence), and fulfill the daily necessities of life (aka eating, sleeping, ****ing & ****ing) in a rational fashion (correct, see: Capitalism). This will provide peaceful and happy existence to every good member of such society, until the day when there will be too many of them and too little land to live and thrive on. And from that day on there will be only perpetual violence and misery, until the very last human being vanishes from the face of the Earth. Of course, everyone is free to dismiss this prognosis or accept it and (like Hobbes himself) still happily indulge in thoughts that the end of the world is far away and is not going to be here in yet another lifetime. But the warning has been given.
EDIT: Crap, I failed to be short.
Modifié par Zulu_DFA, 14 mars 2010 - 06:40 .
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