Once again point the finger at capitalism

# 4060

We have lots of talk about climate: how to accommodate to changes or prevent them. But there is very little discussion of how we go into this mess. Strange because it is obvious to many who can see the shifts in history that the discovery of coal and then oil fed the hockey sticks of at least GDP. temperature rise, fossil fuel burning, and several others, all riding together in a complex but synchronized choreography.

What is missing is a more accurate conversation about how we got here without which it is hard to figure out clearly what to do. The key culprit is capitalism, not starting in the 14th century but with origins among hunter-gatherers and the early empires. What emerged early in many cultures (not all) was ownership of the means of production, breeding cattle and hence cap, head, capitalism by a few, and the resulting impoverished lives of many, all the way from then till now.

Capitalism tends to concentrate wealth and wealth then can buy its way to monopolies. This is the obvious dynamic of the free market where the richest are the freeist. The rich have better information (often by suck-ups), and lower interest rates, all of which means that their transactions in the market yield more than is possible for others. The buying of the political process is the most egregious form of corruption and is killing us now as the rich pursue a class-based society and use the children of the impoverished to fight their wars.

We each should feel an obligation to sketch out our own version of this history.

see

Graeber and Wengro's The Dawn of Everything and Goetzman Money Changes Everything (Not quite the same everything but close.)