[ralfy]

Sustainability refers to living within the physical limitations of the biosphere. Given that, preventing wastage won't help if consumption levels are too high.

For example, take carpets, which was given as one example. The issue isn't just re-using materials to make new carpets from old ones to increase profits while using the same amount of resources. Rather, it's buying and using carpets, which is a middle class concern.

Also, the profits are plowed back into the system through investment to make, among other things, more carpets. Thus, more resources need to be used.

With that, there is no sustainability.

[americandream]

Who Owns The Earth? -- Paul Roberts

In my latest book, The Failure Of Laissez Faire Capitalism And Economic Dissolution of The West:Towards A New Economics For A Full World (Clarity Press, 2013), I emphasize that nature's capital, not man-made capital, is the limiting factor for life on earth. I learned from ecological economist Herman Daly and others who were able to escape dogma and to think independently that the measure used by economists to measure economic success -- the growth of GDP -- does not include the most important costs.

What this means is that economics as presently understood is defective and is leading humanity to its destruction.


In his commencement address at the American University of Beirut on June 14, 2013, Chomsky makes the point that our planet is our common possession. It does not belong to Monsanto, or to the military/security complex, or to Wall Street, or to the oil, mining, and timber industries. It belongs to life. If we don't defend it, short-term profit greed will destroy it. Unbridled capitalism means the destruction of the Earth.

The amount of profits that can be made depends on how much of the cost can be imposed on nature. Therefore, in the world economy where unchecked greed operates, humans with their short-term thinking impose huge costs on nature in order to provide profits for executive bonuses, shareholders, and Wall Street.

Chomsky's statement is true that "the Earth now desperately needs defense from impending environmental catastrophe."

The question is: are there sufficient rational and literate persons to save Earth? And if such astute people do exist, do they have the power to save Earth from capitalist greed and Washington's desire for hegemony?

opednews

Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration. He was associate editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service. He is a contributing editor to Gerald Celente's Trends Journal. He has had numerous university appointments.


Amazon description

This very readable book by a distinguished economist, Wall Street Journal editor, and Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury is a major challenge both to economic theory and to media explanations of the ongoing 21st century economic crisis. The one percent have pulled off an economic and political revolution. By offshoring manufacturing and professional service jobs, US corporations destroyed the growth of consumer income, the basis of the US economy, leaving the bulk of the population mired in debt. Deregulation was used to concentrate income and wealth in fewer hands and financial firms in corporations “too big to fail,” removing financial corporations from market discipline and forcing taxpayers in the US and Europe to cover bankster losses. Environmental destruction has accelerated as economists refuse to count the exhaustion of nature’s resources as a cost and as corporations impose the cost of their activities on the environment and on third parties who do not share in the profits. This is the book to read for those who want to understand the mistakes that are bringing the West to its knees.

In fact as social systems go, capitalism has quite objectively given rise to the conditions that continues to see its expansion across the globe:

1 Widespread alienation as the quest for accumulation sees the reduction of the social to the individual in the fullest sense of this word (breakdown of tribal, national, familial and ultimately personal identity as the market reduces the individual to a collection of his or her wants (to be funded by whatever means, including debt).);

2 Wealth consolidation as cronyism deepens;

3 The shift to deflation as the labour surplus pot grows smaller with increased competition (and the drive to minimise competition or the urge to consolidate.)

4 And of course, the destrustion of the nation state and historic cultures that are rooted in previous systems as the core basis of consumerism gives rise to a global mutuality. In other words, a global culture.

No amount of regulation, ethics, calls to charity and other such splendid notions can alter the impulses that underlie the capitalist social economy. Why, even a risen messiah would not be able to resist the forces that he/she would encounter in his or her power arena.

Capitalism must ultimately face its objective forces which It will eventually do through us, the actors and of course something new will arise. However, any attempt tp make it more palatable is a fools errand.