Saturday, March 17, 2018

What's Next After Capitalism ???

You've probably seen articles like this one, which promotes "an ecologically-based socialist democracy":

To get through the climate change emergency, we need the state itself to become just and scientific because justice is a climate-change technology of great power, says award-winning science- and climate-fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. But it would require replacing capitalism with an ecologically-based socialist democracy.

You can read the rest @
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/43864-toward-an-ecologically-based-post-capitalism-interview-with-novelist-kim-stanley-robinson

I think it's more likely that capitalism will be replaced by an off-world-controlled form of oligarchy, enabled and fueled by the riches produced by asteroid mining:

The staggering potential value of the minerals in these asteroids is expected to make scarcity a non-defining feature of human existence. While mining on Earth isn’t about to end, the reality is that mineral deposits containing non-renewable resources such as copper and zinc are finite. Some studies even suggest that if demand continues for common and precious metals like aluminum, platinum or silver, these reserves will be gone in about 15, 20 and 80 years, respectively. Likewise, sources of materials like lead, zinc, tin, and certainly gold, are expected to be used up within 50 years.

You can read the rest @
http://wallstreetpit.com/114547-spacex-asteroid-mining-world-changing-reality/

Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and their ilk are not building space vehicles to ferry you and me to a paradise somewhere out in the solar system. They are building such craft to bring minerals to earth and to ferry THEM to an off-world paradise (perhaps an orbiting "Elysium").

Consider what the introduction of HUGE quantities of copper, zinc, aluminum, platinum, silver, lead, tin, and gold into our biosphere will do to life on this planet. All of them are toxic, and as they leach into our air, water, and soil they may very well turn this place into a lifeless wasteland.

And note well there is no FOOD out there somewhere that our brutal tech overlords have any intention of bringing down to earth to feed the rest of us. We're all going to wind up like King Midas, surrounded by riches which cannot be eaten and regardless of the lies we are being told cannot possibly improve the lives of We The People.

So, the short answer to the title question (What's Next After Capitalism ???) is "hell on earth".

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