So we could basically solve climate change just by killing a few thousand people?
Sounds like a fair trade for the billions of lives it would save.
From the article:
The richest 1 percent (77 million people) were responsible for 16 percent of global consumption emissions in 2019 —more than all car and road transport emissions. The richest 10 percent accounted for half (50 percent) of emissions.
To be a member of the richest 1% of the world you need a net worth of about $800k – so while the billionaire class is still a massive problem, an even larger problem ecologically is that tens of millions of moderately wealthy people from wealthy nations have massively outsized carbon footprints.
To be a member of the richest 1% of the world you need a net worth of about $800k – so while the billionaire class is still a massive problem, an even larger problem ecologically is that tens of millions of moderately wealthy people from wealthy nations have massively outsized carbon footprints.
This can not be correct. My wife inherited her parent’s house when the last one died when she was 17 or so (guardianship until 18, whatever, not the point) - but we’re poor af. I mean we’re not lining up at the food bank, but no way we’re top 1%. It’s worth $800k easy (CAD, but still, throw in some other ‘things’ we own and we’re there).
In most of the world, $800,000 is enough money that you and your wife would never have to work another day in your lives. Even in Canada that’s 20-ish years of the median household income.
77 million people
This would include several members of my family and they can either give up their destructive lifestyles or get fucked too.
Do they live in NYC and just refuse to use public transit? If so, yea I agree, fuck’em. Do they live in the suburbs because they likely can’t afford to live in a city where they wouldn’t need their car? Well now you get into the actual problem that a competent, non-capitalist government would need to solve. Simply killing the petite-bourgeious will solve nothing and honestly would just cause their wealth to be sucked upward make the problem even worse for everyone else.
while the billionaire class is still a massive problem, an even larger problem ecologically is that tens of millions of moderately wealthy people from wealthy nations have massively outsized carbon footprints.
It is definitely false that that’s a larger problem. The top corporations emit way more carbon than all the petite-bourgeois SUV drivers and so on. I think the number people constantly trot out is that the top 100 companies (a fraction of a fraction of a percent here) do 70% of the emitting.
The soviet union eliminated capitalism and I’ll say their environmental record was pretty awful.
not as awful as countries like amerikkka, and soviet environmental protection laws were very strong at the start and they were diluted over time by revisionists after the death of Stalin. But even IF the USSR had not been better it is a mistake of the past, and climate change and environmental preservation and restoration is central to every leftist platform, so like wtf is ur point. Like even IF u werent just outright factually wrong what is ur point “we cant fix anything because someone in the past failed”?
Okay, and replace it with what, exactly?
Initially socialism, and then communism in the long run. The only sane approach is to have worker ownership of the means of production.
Is there an example in history where this has attempted and implemented as such and not devolved into straight up persecusion, authoritarianism, cult of personally or tens+ of millions dead? And general lower standards of living to most, outside the party or political class like the Politburo? Could not find any. The Nordics and Canada are capitalistic with some social services. They seem to have a good valance but that is only because the USA military protects them out of geopolitical interests.
I am all good with say, limiting wealth of the rich, they can be rich but not stupifyingly rich and some socialised healthcare and the like. Coming from a third world, I have seen that abolishing private property is just oppression with extra steps, overtime. Most 1st world people have no idea of what they are asking and of how it devolves, in practice.
In your mind, how would workers “own” the means of production? Shares? Votes?
Is there an example in history where this has attempted and implemented as such and not devolved into straight up persecusion, authoritarianism, cult of personally or tens+ of millions dead?
That’s literally every single example in the real world example of communist revolutions. Standard of living improves for the majority as people get jobs, education, food and housing as a right. It’s incredible that people continue to repeat these tropes that have been debunked many times without a hint of embarrassment.
Could not find any.
Then you obviously haven’t bothered actually looking.
The Nordics and Canada are capitalistic with some social services. They seem to have a good valance but that is only because the USA military protects them out of geopolitical interests.
Not only is this blatantly false, but the meager standard of living the working majority in these countries enjoys is built on brutal colonialism and exploitation of the global majority.
In your mind, how would workers “own” the means of production? Shares? Votes?
In my mind, the workers would own the means of production through a combination of state owned enterprise and cooperative ownership of the private businesses. This is not rocket science. How cooperatives and state owned enterprise work in practice is well documented.
And general lower standards of living to most, outside the party or political class like the Politburo?
Do you actually, literally believe that the standard of living was lower for regular people in the USSR (the world’s first spacefaring nation, at the time the second most powerful country in the world, a country that eliminated famines completely once they’d dealt with the consequences of WW2, a country where by the 80s, people were twice as likely as a modern American to take a vacation away from home) than for peasants in the Russian Empire?
Are you being deliberately dishonest or are you just completely ignorant about the topic in spite of speaking so authoritatively about it?
What do you mean ‘replace them with what’? What vital role do you think they’re playing now?
They’re nothing but parasites.
You said replacing “capitalism,” okay, with what? Other have responded with their take, already. So you do not have to.
People confuse the richest 1% of America and the richest 1% of the world. The former is multimillionnaires, the latter is like, software engineers in America. This article concerns the latter.
The US is, give or take, 4% of the global population. So, the top income quintile ($153,000/yr and above) brings you to around 1% of the global population, with room for well-off people in other countries.
In case your math skills are rusty, the global 1% is 80 million people. That’s the same size as Germany, the country. Yes it includes oil barons, multinational CEOs, and whatnot, but also like, professionals in expensive cost-of-living areas like Californian software engineers.
