Have you read Woman and Nature by Susan Griffin? I think you will like it!
Industrial civilization that, as you say, sucks "everything that’s not nailed down in the world into one giant maw" (not just capitalism, but all the -isms do this) cannot last much longer as it acts as if it exists on an infinite planet. Economic growth acts as if it exists on an infinite planet.
As all who exist in reality understand, the planet is finite, and going to the Moon or to Mars to extract raw materials won't solve that problem for obvious reasons.
So this nature-eating machine that depends on infinite resources and infinite growth will not last much longer. Whether there are any humans left to create a more equitable future (with women, and with nature) after the collapse remains to be seen (personally, I doubt it). I hope any surviving future post-collapse humans will learn from our mistakes; however, I don't hold out much hope of that either, given we seen utterly incapable of learning from our mistakes now.
This way of life doesn't have 2500 years. It doesn't even have 250. We might eke out another 25, at most.
It’s not just workers and consumers that capitalism cannibalises. It’s nature too. Musk wants women to have more babies, to feed the growth that capitalism needs. And, not content with plundering our living planet for the materials that go into his inventions, he wants to plunder Mars as well.
We need an economy that meets human needs and respects the rest of nature. Neither capitalism nor patriarchy can provide this.
After I finished writing that post I picked up a copy of a book, Cannibal Capitalism, by Nancy Fraser. Have you read it? She goes into detail about the four "inputs" that capitalism cannibalizes. Those inputs include the social, ecological, political, and what she calls the racial, although that's too simple a term. Thanks for reading Alan.
No, I've not come across that. It sounds as though it's well worth reading. I did read an article of hers a while back about caregiving, which was very instructive.
Thanks for the tip, felicia, and for a thought provoking post.
Dont worry about capitalism. The best thing you can do to save western civilisation is to convince the youngest generation of women to have more babies. Demography predicts the future outcome of our society, blatherng about capitalism and patriarchy is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
So don't step up....lie down and get impregnated at least 3x (and dont get abortions).
Honestly I would not want to bear children in an Islamist culture. But i am now an old crone and won’t have to suffer what the future may hold. The world is never very good for women — even in our “advanced” western world.
I would argue that the way to encourage more young women to have babies is to change the environment -- natural, financial, social -- so that mothers can thrive in it. That means "blathering about capitalism and patriarchy."
I'm sure you'll disagree, but my opinion is that we in the wealthy first world have a fantastic environment in which mothers and their children can flourish. Better than any time in history. High standards of healthcare and a clean environment which is closely monitored are some of the factors. How fortunate indeed that women in the past valued their families and children first, rather than fretting that every "social justice" issue had to be resolved to their satisfaction before choosing motherhood. The sad likelihood is young women spend so much time angsting about trying to create the perfect conditions that many of them will delay too long and end up childless without choice.
Aged care homes will be weird places in about 50 years, full of childless women with no family to visit or care. It will be especially tough if we are living in a society dominated by Islamic Sharia principles which means these old womens lives will be especially bleak, as they will be despised by the majority of taxpayers for being such a burden. You'll probably live long enough to see it unfold, so I hope you ponder my thoughts into the future.
What do Bronze Age Judaic tribal leaders, early medieval Christian patriarchs, and fundamentalist Shia clerics running a theocratic dictatorship all have in common?
Did they:
a) Sanction the brutal subjugation of women;
b) Proclaim divine warrants for the ethnic cleansing of religious and ethnic out-groups;
c) Forbid blasphemy, apostasy, homosexuality, adultery (by women) and other “insults to god” on pain of death;
d) Forbid lending capital at interest; or…
e) All of the above!
The list of morally enlightened regimes that prohibit “usury” is short (zero) for a reason. The ability to borrow capital, combined with the incentive to lend that interest provides, has played a huge role in emancipating the wretched of the earth from the sheer deprivation and misery of human existence under repressive regimes like the ones you hold up as paradigms in your article.
Look at what micro-financing projects have accomplished by making small business loans to women in places like rural Tamil villages and the favelas of Rio de Janiero. To have liquid capital in hand is to have pure agency—if you use it properly, the interest will be an afterthought.
As for the virtue of requiring all homebuyers to pay up front and in cash…based on my research, the going rate for residential property in Tehran is around $1,500/sq m. That would put the price of an average 750 sq m home there north of $1,100,000.00 USD. Do you know a single person with that kind of petty cash on hand? For 99.99999% of the population, a world without lending for profit would put buying a home, a car, an education, a small business, a new mattress—literally anything worth more than a few thousand bucks—permanently out of reach.
There are bad, predatory lenders out there, and we need to do better informing folks on how to borrow wisely. But let’s not make the good—nay, the world-historically great—the enemy of the perfect.
It’s relatively cheap harmful medical care for 0.015% of the population (not even in the top 20 in cost: 14,000 kids for $120M over 5 years is $8000 a kid - near the same cost as braces), medication which is made for $300 a kilo wholesale.
It’s “supported” via blackmail - being blacklisted as anti-GLB because of the T.
I do like the gist of your article. We have allowed a relatively small group of people to become ultra rich and powerful, and in a Globalist (Socialist) world the elite few (oligarchy) rule.
I'm sorry - but for all the accurate criticisms of the issues that exist some of the claims the article makes are just plain incorrect.
Usury is just a name for moneylending at exploitative rates - that is not capitalism. What it is is basically a resource allocation system which does two things: 1 pools capital together that people have (ie the investor class) and 2 allocates it wherever they expect to make most profit. That's it. You may argue that the regulation grossly favours the investor class over the wage earning classes - it sure does.
It worked just fine before the elites got too greedy and started rolling back social democracy after the post WW2 boom. The left is equally to blame here since they "gave away" concern for the working class to trade for minority interest groups - there's the source of preoccupation with "trans people". BTW people do already favour the things that prioritise women & children - just their own ones, not other people's.
Have you read Woman and Nature by Susan Griffin? I think you will like it!
Industrial civilization that, as you say, sucks "everything that’s not nailed down in the world into one giant maw" (not just capitalism, but all the -isms do this) cannot last much longer as it acts as if it exists on an infinite planet. Economic growth acts as if it exists on an infinite planet.
As all who exist in reality understand, the planet is finite, and going to the Moon or to Mars to extract raw materials won't solve that problem for obvious reasons.
So this nature-eating machine that depends on infinite resources and infinite growth will not last much longer. Whether there are any humans left to create a more equitable future (with women, and with nature) after the collapse remains to be seen (personally, I doubt it). I hope any surviving future post-collapse humans will learn from our mistakes; however, I don't hold out much hope of that either, given we seen utterly incapable of learning from our mistakes now.
This way of life doesn't have 2500 years. It doesn't even have 250. We might eke out another 25, at most.
I will check out Susan Griffin, thank you!
Wow! 👏
It’s not just workers and consumers that capitalism cannibalises. It’s nature too. Musk wants women to have more babies, to feed the growth that capitalism needs. And, not content with plundering our living planet for the materials that go into his inventions, he wants to plunder Mars as well.
We need an economy that meets human needs and respects the rest of nature. Neither capitalism nor patriarchy can provide this.
After I finished writing that post I picked up a copy of a book, Cannibal Capitalism, by Nancy Fraser. Have you read it? She goes into detail about the four "inputs" that capitalism cannibalizes. Those inputs include the social, ecological, political, and what she calls the racial, although that's too simple a term. Thanks for reading Alan.
No, I've not come across that. It sounds as though it's well worth reading. I did read an article of hers a while back about caregiving, which was very instructive.
Thanks for the tip, felicia, and for a thought provoking post.
Dont worry about capitalism. The best thing you can do to save western civilisation is to convince the youngest generation of women to have more babies. Demography predicts the future outcome of our society, blatherng about capitalism and patriarchy is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
So don't step up....lie down and get impregnated at least 3x (and dont get abortions).
Honestly I would not want to bear children in an Islamist culture. But i am now an old crone and won’t have to suffer what the future may hold. The world is never very good for women — even in our “advanced” western world.
I would argue that the way to encourage more young women to have babies is to change the environment -- natural, financial, social -- so that mothers can thrive in it. That means "blathering about capitalism and patriarchy."
I'm sure you'll disagree, but my opinion is that we in the wealthy first world have a fantastic environment in which mothers and their children can flourish. Better than any time in history. High standards of healthcare and a clean environment which is closely monitored are some of the factors. How fortunate indeed that women in the past valued their families and children first, rather than fretting that every "social justice" issue had to be resolved to their satisfaction before choosing motherhood. The sad likelihood is young women spend so much time angsting about trying to create the perfect conditions that many of them will delay too long and end up childless without choice.
Aged care homes will be weird places in about 50 years, full of childless women with no family to visit or care. It will be especially tough if we are living in a society dominated by Islamic Sharia principles which means these old womens lives will be especially bleak, as they will be despised by the majority of taxpayers for being such a burden. You'll probably live long enough to see it unfold, so I hope you ponder my thoughts into the future.
What do Bronze Age Judaic tribal leaders, early medieval Christian patriarchs, and fundamentalist Shia clerics running a theocratic dictatorship all have in common?
Did they:
a) Sanction the brutal subjugation of women;
b) Proclaim divine warrants for the ethnic cleansing of religious and ethnic out-groups;
c) Forbid blasphemy, apostasy, homosexuality, adultery (by women) and other “insults to god” on pain of death;
d) Forbid lending capital at interest; or…
e) All of the above!
The list of morally enlightened regimes that prohibit “usury” is short (zero) for a reason. The ability to borrow capital, combined with the incentive to lend that interest provides, has played a huge role in emancipating the wretched of the earth from the sheer deprivation and misery of human existence under repressive regimes like the ones you hold up as paradigms in your article.
Look at what micro-financing projects have accomplished by making small business loans to women in places like rural Tamil villages and the favelas of Rio de Janiero. To have liquid capital in hand is to have pure agency—if you use it properly, the interest will be an afterthought.
As for the virtue of requiring all homebuyers to pay up front and in cash…based on my research, the going rate for residential property in Tehran is around $1,500/sq m. That would put the price of an average 750 sq m home there north of $1,100,000.00 USD. Do you know a single person with that kind of petty cash on hand? For 99.99999% of the population, a world without lending for profit would put buying a home, a car, an education, a small business, a new mattress—literally anything worth more than a few thousand bucks—permanently out of reach.
There are bad, predatory lenders out there, and we need to do better informing folks on how to borrow wisely. But let’s not make the good—nay, the world-historically great—the enemy of the perfect.
I am not sure how trans factors into any of this.
It’s relatively cheap harmful medical care for 0.015% of the population (not even in the top 20 in cost: 14,000 kids for $120M over 5 years is $8000 a kid - near the same cost as braces), medication which is made for $300 a kilo wholesale.
It’s “supported” via blackmail - being blacklisted as anti-GLB because of the T.
I do like the gist of your article. We have allowed a relatively small group of people to become ultra rich and powerful, and in a Globalist (Socialist) world the elite few (oligarchy) rule.
It was moneychangers, not money lenders that Jesus threw out of the Temple. They are different!
Gah, what a silly mistake!.
I'm sorry - but for all the accurate criticisms of the issues that exist some of the claims the article makes are just plain incorrect.
Usury is just a name for moneylending at exploitative rates - that is not capitalism. What it is is basically a resource allocation system which does two things: 1 pools capital together that people have (ie the investor class) and 2 allocates it wherever they expect to make most profit. That's it. You may argue that the regulation grossly favours the investor class over the wage earning classes - it sure does.
It worked just fine before the elites got too greedy and started rolling back social democracy after the post WW2 boom. The left is equally to blame here since they "gave away" concern for the working class to trade for minority interest groups - there's the source of preoccupation with "trans people". BTW people do already favour the things that prioritise women & children - just their own ones, not other people's.
Sure but who's going to help me? Sounds like the Little Red Hen and we're back to economics.
The Little Red Hen?
"The sky is falling! The sky is falling." [It was just raining...]