Replies to post #388074 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

OOPS - With links - Destroying the world’s living systems and draining its wealth are not perversions of capitalism. They are capitalism.

"Capitalism’s fake cosmogony was formalised in 1689 by John Locke, in his Second Treatise of Government. “In the beginning all the world was America”, he tells us, a blank slate without people whose wealth was just sitting there, ready to be taken. But unlike Madeira, America was inhabited, and the indigenous people had to be killed or enslaved to create his terra nullius. The right to the world, he claimed, was established through hard work: when a man has “mixed his labour” with natural wealth, he “thereby makes it his property.” But those who laid claim to large amounts of natural wealth did not mix their own labour with it, but that of their slaves. The justifying fairytale capitalism tells about itself – you become rich through hard work and enterprise, adding value to natural wealth – is the greatest propaganda coup in human history.

As Laleh Khalili explains .. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n18/laleh-khalili/how-to-get-rich .. in the London Review of Books, the extractive colonial economy never ended. It continues through commodity traders working with kleptocrats and oligarchs, grabbing poor nations’ resources without payment with the help of clever instruments such as “transfer pricing”. It persists through the use of offshore tax havens and secrecy regimes by corrupt elites, who drain their nation’s wealth then channel it into “English funds”, whose true ownership is hidden by shell companies. "

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/06/offshoring-wealth-capitalism-pandora-papers

You missed the link is all. Good article by Monbiot. Wonder what he sees as an alternative. See reply.

[B402]

All our philosophies do us little good without action at some point...

Capitalism has served it purpose with reward for innovation, its also been abused to the point of cruelty to its fellow man and the planet...Not to mention the corruption that money brings to leadership....

Like all problems, you either address them or face the consequences of not.....

Right now we have no real replacement for capitalism nor do we have the will to reign in its abuses....

So,,,,,,What philosophy will convince man he needs to act?