Conversation with Jem Bendell, part 1: is industrial capitalism coming to an end? 

So true. The book "1177bc the year ci ilization collapsed" speaks to the collapse of trade and expressly the trade if tin (needed for bronze), was based on climate and earthquakes throughout the mediteranean and into souther asia. It relevant to now. Our societies are not resilient. The fall for the first world will be much greater than for those in less developed countries. And, I am not even an anthropogenic climate change guy. Peak phosphorous or agriculture collapse will collapse us independent of co2 or global temps.

Very true! And we now see many trying to usher in authoritarian regimes presumably believing that it will preserve what in fact is already lost. Personally, I’m all for a system collapse. The sooner the better. Whenever it happens it is going to be extremely painful to many. The longer we hang onto something that is rotten at the core the more neurosis we build up inside ourselves. Better to meet what’s inevitable head on. On a personal level what’s called for now is a readiness for ones own spiritually growth and get a grip over the much larger picture in which these events unfold. That means to actually reconnect with our own spiritual dimensions that isn’t disturbed by worldly upheavals. This is not some flakey ideas disconnected with reality, but a reconnection with the same principles that human beings have been practicing for hundred of thousands of years but we seem to have forgotten in our age. I’m not suggesting adopting any of the Abrahamic dogmas found within Christianity, Islam or Judaism. These traditions are part of the problem we’re trying to solve and cannot be what future humans will find wisdom in. Not possible. Now is the time to find our true ground beyond dogma, ideology and false promises.

from my point of view it was always like that in history. The impression and illusion of living life freely appeared first in the last centuries

Over 50%food is wasted, the current food system is not efficient in the least bit. The economic system is a square peg for the environments round hole. People can uncouple the current to small scale decentralized diversified agriculture.​@@jmc0369

Amen

E.O. Wilson was an amazing man. Great quote.

Wow, that is a powerful quote!

"Godlike technology"... eh? Meanwhile we can't even fix basic things like blindness, deafness, and obesity. I think EO like many people makes statements more to have you think it is profound vs. its truth value. When we fix basic things like the above mentioned, while having functional societies, then maybe we can call our technology "Godlike".

And* its* sorry about the typos.

Growth generates wealth. Wealth generates rising standards of living and quality of life. Market economies simply facilitate the transaction of goods and services. No matter what kind of economic ideology you embrace, you will still need to provide yourself with food, shelter and clothing. There is no free lunch.

@@anthonymorris5084 Market economies are a self feeding resource extraction machine. They exist to extract resources as tokens of social standing (i.e., wealth) at ever higher quantities. Because they operate through a feedback mechanism they cannot be sustained without ever growing input of new energy and other resources. We really don't need more than 10% of what our market economies produce, but we cannot stop producing it. I don't have an economic ideology. I don't have a solution to our problem. I am just very aware that it is a problem that is killing us.

@@kimwelch4652 The entire western world embraces capitalism. The Western world represents the most successful societies this planet has ever seen. Success in any way you'd like to define it. It doesn't matter what economic ideology you embrace if you don't want to live in a mud hut you will require resource extraction. *"They exist to extract resources as tokens of social standing"* Market economies exist to facilitate the transaction of goods and services. Period. *"We really don't need more than 10% of what our market economies produce"* And what mechanism or arbiter should we utilize to determine what we "need"? You? Define "need". Do we need RU-vid which you seemingly enjoy using"? Do we need the device you're using to post? Yet both enhance our lives. Market economies have natural mechanisms that tell us what we need. It's called profit. A profit can only be realized by successfully providing what humanity wants, needs and demands. Failure to achieve this and no profit is realized. Profits in fact, are in direct correlation to the success of the product or service and humanity's desire to obtain it. What better arbiter is there? Can you think of one? *"I don't have an economic ideology. I don't have a solution to our problem. I am just very aware that it is a problem that is killing us."* Nothing is killing us. There are 8 billion people on the planet and growing. Millions continue to be lifted out of poverty. You're also confusing capitalism with consumption. How do we curtail consumption? ban it, regulate it, ration it, demonize it? No thanks, this is the path to authoritarianism. Capitalism is always the solution. Where do you think new energy sources are going to come from? Somalia? Ghana? Lebanon? They will come from entrepreneurs and investors who have access to capital.

I enjoyed reading these perspectives because I share them both. I am absolutely antiauthoritarian. I believe in the right to fruits of ones own labor and remain unmolested by whoever calls themselve government or highwayman alike. Ive travel through Mises/Austrian Economics and Ancap, then on to syndicalism and market anarchy. The only way for the market to work correctly, i think, is to remove all protectionist amd regulatory rackets, let the crooks be culled, the fat be trimmed by force, and simultaneously restructure society around soilhealth/food/agrarianism. Event the cities should ve involved in soil and food production. Soil health = human health. We are soil; from it we sustain and to it we return.

@@jmc0369 Market economies are a grift. Their whole existence is to exponentially extract resources to produce tokens of social status (i.e. wealth) which are then hoarded to establish social hierarchies according to the primate social ordering instinct evolved in humans. They are technically unnecessary for human survival, though they do help in species large scale organization to the detriment of the individual. The crooks are never culled because they are integral to the markets themselves. When you remove the controls on markets you let them run amok and destroy everything in their path for the creation of useless wealth. (Yes, there is useful wealth, but we need much much less of it) We are in the situation we are in because of uncontrolled exponentially growing markets not because of regulations. You might find David Fleming's "Surviving the Future" which proposes Lean economies that are heavily restricted local economies and are the antithesis of the unrestricted global markets we have today. Yes, all our markets today are very much unregulated or under-regulated despite what the propaganda says. However, no one has ever successfully engineered an economy, so if we get there, it will likely be out of necessity rather than choice. Agrarianism is the opposite of Free-market-ism so I am not sure how you hop from one to the other.

Collect seeds if you can, maybe even some for plants that don't grow well in your area. You may be able to trade them or give them away to help others.

@@brushstroke3733 plants that do well, I grow out to seed. I have a large seed bank as well.😁

Listen: You accept collapse of capitalism. So - you accept collapse of civilization. After that: All Nuclear Power Plants explode. End Do what ever you really love.

They're musicians playing while the Titanic sinks.

In their defense, they may have read it and not wanted to open up and spread a discussion of ideas that could have got all 3 of you fired. It could at least have got you simply not called back if it reached enough ears that you were "peddling conspiracy theories" to all who would listen. In their conformist way they may have been looking out for you by not encouraging you. Substitute teacher (been there!) is not a powerful enough place in the system to be rocking the boat from, they'll just ditch you. Engage people who do not have heirarchical power over you. At least protect yourself with a "real" teaching position with a license and union contract before you start openly challenging what is being taught. Our system barely delivers "Academic Freedom" to tenured professors in prestigious universities; you're not going to find so much as a wisp of it as a substitute in a school.

​@@peteunderdown6889😮 yes

they will be affected, anyway

Hey, too late to worry about that... I worked there for 2 yrs... would have been longer if not for Covid... they all KNEW my stance on this issue and Planetary overshoot... one day in a history class, the teacher left a movie to play about "How oil built the 20th century"... soooo, first period, when it first started playing and the guy said that on the movie, I automatically said "...and destroyed the 21st century"... THEN, by about 4 period, when the movie started, a kid piped up "....and destroyed the 21 st century1... this was highschool... I am really glad I did all I did to spread the information to those kids. I talked about it when I could , in a TEACHING way, with giving them sources, too.

Hyperbolic nonsense. No scientist on the face of this Earth is predicting human extinction. Data proves that humanity has never been safer, healthier or more prosperous than at any time in history. How do you reconcile this?

What exactly is collapsing?

@@anthonymorris5084 The global economy for one. And while we never really reached global cooperation, what cooperation there is is eroding. Along with that, crop yields have been declining globally due to shifts in climate around the world.

@@anthonymorris5084 Somebodies head is buried deep in the sand. Far be it from me to wake you up. Go back to sleep. All the data you need is easily available. It's not my job to convert you to reality. Sooner rather than later the evidence will be so obvious you will not be able to get around it, but you will try. Good luck with that.

@@anthonymorris5084 Thankfully, the Earth contains an infinite amount of fossil fuels, an infinite amount of forests to chop down, an infinite amount of fish in the ocean, etc., and we can add an infinite amount of carbon to the atmosphere without unwanted consequences, in order to maintain exponential economic growth forever. Otherwise, we might be in a bad way.

@@kevincrady2831 All of your posts contain hyperbole, sarcasm and alarmism. You are not examining any of this calmly and rationally. Everything that is alive is infinite. Fish reproduce and trees get replanted. Everything we dig up from the ground is finite. You're making the claim that we've reached this finite point and all is lost. It simply isn't true. The issue is over population not warming. Over population is the foundation of almost every single threat facing humanity. Are you aware that the ratio between the amount of fossil fuels we consume compared to the number of known reserves has never been better? We are finding oil and gas everywhere. In the 1950's geologists proclaimed that the US had reached peak oil. In 1973 an energy "crisis" was proclaimed. Today the US is the largest producer of energy in the world. Many scientists stated that humanity would starve to death by the 1980's because there would be no way to feed the projected amount of people. Data proves that humanity has never been safer, healthier or more prosperous than at any time in history, by any measurement you care to examine. It's a very large planet and humans are expert problem solvers. As you go through life, because I'm guessing you're quite young, you will be subjected to doomsday preachers continuously.

Hi Jed. Yes, Jem is a gem. You are so clever, Jed. This is fine.

@@dianewallace6064 Hi Diane, hope you are well!

@@dianewallace6064 what do you mean by "for now"? Are you anticipating a global collapse sometimes soon, with dramatic and action-packed consequences possibly involving the deaths of many people? Because if you are I LOVE that stuff its so exciting to listen to!!! PLEASE TELL ME I WANT TO HEAR THE JUICY DETAILS

Just get rid of the concept of money. You would be better off.

@@johnwozniak7160 agreed

Your only mistake is assuming there will be "future survivors". Our situation is much, much more dire than you yet realize.

@@Mike80528 Technically, I was making a joke. A very dark joke, but that is my style of humor. Still, I would not underestimate human ingenuity when faced with extinction. This is not our first dance with death, and it is really hard to eliminate 8 billion of anything much less human beings. Also, I would not assume that what comes out the other side is recognizably human as real evolution occurs at the edge of extinction.

@@kimwelch4652 I get it, but your comment about ingenuity smacks a bit of hubris. You cannot actually think humanity has the ability to literally prop up life on a dying planet do you? Evolution is being well outpaced by change. There is no other side to this. Sorry, but I do not have magical thinking.

@@Mike80528 Okay, then we go extinct. How does that change the equation. Are you suggesting we just lay down and die? Generally, as a species, animals including humans struggle to avoid dying so pre- deciding on an existential case is mostly a waste of time. You do what you can and look for of opportunities for survival. That's what adaptation is all about. I do not advocate a rosy picture. Everything will not be fine. Our world is ending, but as Conan the Barbarian would say when stranded in the desert: you can't go back, you can't stay here, you can only go forward.

Data proves that humanity has never been safer, healthier or more prosperous than at any time in history, by any measurement you care to examine.

@@anthonymorris5084 you're such a moron, you're obviously white, rich and employed... The issues aren't, is there anything great happening, it's the fact that everything that is great about society is under direct threat by our cultural blind spots ya numpty .... Haven't you worked that out yet? People don't care because it is bad, people care because they don't want to lose the hard won progress that HAS been made....

@@anthonymorris5084 Of course, I see you live Steven Pinker and Co. While not denying that life improved a lot for a lot of people, please don't play down the negative effects of our systems.

@@JaseboMonkeyRex When you want to have an adult conversation get back to me.

@@adambazso9207 I have no idea who Steven Pinker even is. Nice attempt at invalidation though. This is what people resort to when they have no argument. The data is overwhelming. By any measurement you care to examine. Life is improving across the globe. Your argument suddenly states that things aren't perfect. No kidding. Environmentalists myopically believe that the Earth is some kind of pristine place of harmony and purity. That humans, like a parasite are wrecking everything. The fact is the Earth is a hostile place that will kill you at any opportunity. Humans have made it more livable with each passing decade. Our "systems" ensure that life improves and that we become better stewards of the environment. Humans are problem solvers.

It is just crazy! It is insane how no one talks about overpopulation!

Good luck to you and yours. Hope you make it when the rest of us are gone.

I totally agree. My life boat is a 55 foot Herreshoff three master in New Zealand. The "global south" will be th best place in the future.... Sadly. I am from Europe, but look what is going on there....

@@gerdfehlbaum7059 I'm attempting to get through Neumyers "Sailing the Farm", which I downloaded in PDF form. Some good ideas for more sustainability, there.

@@brushstroke3733 If my cancer is too advanced for Newcastle vaccine to handle, I might be gone before the rest of you. Pheochromocytosas can be fought with the chicken vaccine for Newcastle Disease. And, now I'm fighting Parvovirus, too. I don't know how to give up, that's all. Because of what I know about Climate Change, and Pheo releasing hormones that cause anxiety and panic attacks, they thought I was Bipolar 1, and locked me up in a phych ward, for over a week. Pheo is also causing Bradycardia and unstable blood pressure. I need to prep the boat, but these other things keep getting in the way. Damn, at 66, and alone, my life is getting hard.

@@gerdfehlbaum7059 If Putin goes crazy, I am aware that few targets exist in South America. I'm eyeing the Rio Grande, in southern Argentina, myself. Fresh water, in a dry part of the country.

Probably. But, like the chap in the video said, we're not in control. We never were. The incomparable advantages offered by fossil fuels mean that any society that rejected their use would be absolutely clobbered by any society that went all-in. It was the same situation as with the development of agriculture, but on steroids and crack. Any effort to "cut back" on fossil fuels just lowers their prices and creates a perverse incentive for others to use them. Then those people (or nations) gain the overwhelming competitive advantage cheap fossil fuels provide. Fossil fuels are like some dark Lovecraftian magic left over from the Great Old Ones (well, "great" probably doesn't apply to the plants and bacteria that became fossil fuels...), lying in wait for millions of years for some clever critter to come along and fall into their trap. If it wasn't us, it would have been the corvids or the raccoons. 😉

@@kevincrady2831 raccoons possibly corvids no as they have already have wings. 😁

@@kevincrady2831 We can of course use the Carbon for an alternative and more beneficial purpose such as the construction of Clarke's space freight elevator.

@@kevincrady2831If you love, feed, care for, maintain, train, upgrade and bury something, such as an automobile or a computer, or any cherished materialistic treasure for that matter, is it alive? It’s certainly sucking the life out of its “owner”. Maybe these material creations are alive and smarter than we think? Maybe the AI brain wants us to create it's body, nervous system and it's "Internet of things" organs so that it can leave the nest and explore the cosmos?

​@@kevincrady2831Humanity's problem is that its technological prowess has outstripped it's moral/ethical acumen! This places us squarely upon the broad path to self-annihilation. I believe that this is the Great Filter that explains Fermi's Paradox. Where are all the aliens? They destroyed themselves! The universe is likely filled with the ruins of such extinct civilizations. The purpose of our universe appears to be, either by chance or by design, to produce an ethical creature (like unto God?) and to destroy all other unethical species (through self-extinction). Morality thus determines the continued evolution or extinction of a civilized sentient species. No God or gods need be invoked to punish or save, we do this ourselves, by our own ethical decisions and actions. Thus the universe functions as a giant high-pass filter. That is why the reestablishment of Free Will through the reestablishment of individual control over our "means of subsistence" (our individual life-support systems) ought to be everyone's primary goal and the cornerstone of public policy reform. Our survival as individuals and as a species depends upon it and throwing off the yoke of dependence upon big business monopolies/big government "providers" (and controllers) and other elitist hierarchical totalitarian structures and reasserting our own responsibility to provide for and control ourselves and our local communities and ecosystems is the first step! Cheers from the USA!

There's the popcorn I was looking for. It's a sign. We're toast.

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Y2Rkr1qjBMQ.html agree mate

You got that right. The end of capitalism is the least of our worries. How about the end of all life on Earth!!!

@@roberthornack1692 life will very likely survive unless our panicked species and the power structures controlling it does something very drastic when it's clear our normality is ending like undertake large scale nuclear war. Much of the life living now will struggle to adapt to survive, and may not, but in a few million years (the spans of time this planet actually operates at), life will be thriving again most likely with new creatures and organisms inhabiting ecological niches left empty due to the conceit and arrogance of one species of "intelligent" ape

Life isn’t going to end on earth. There could be a polar reversal killing many countries but life will find a way. The mini ice ages 400 years ago and 1000 years ago collapsed Europe but they reproduced and lived on.

And yet everywhere it's embraced you find the most successful societies on the planet. Go figure.

Yes, we need to know it, to make sure we never do it again. Bakunin was right. (agreed about financial capitalism)