“…any attempt at meaningful #mitigation of the crisis would have to waylay the dominant classes with force & confrontational resolve unlike anything in the common memory or #imagination.” #PostCapitalism #Degrowth
Overshoot or #Revolution - Andrew Ahern
"As growth recedes, the human needs and aspirations bracketed by capitalism’s exclusive pursuit of profit-driven efficiencies are left exposed. Its defenders had always argued that capitalist growth would supply the best means to deal with broader social challenges, whether political, cultural or environmental.footnote Yet attempts to incorporate other principles into capitalist operations—ethical consumption, esg investing, corporate social-responsibility programmes—remain constrained by the system’s profit-driven logic. Qualitative goals are reduced to quantitative targets, producing performative compliance with little tangible effect. Similarly, broader state-backed reforms aim to ameliorate the system by introducing secondary goals—social-democratic measures, environmental regulation—while leaving the logic of ‘single-criterion optimization’—that is, production for profit—unchanged. These programmes can play a welcome role in mitigating exploitation and ecological harm, but they remain at the mercy of capitalism’s profitability requirements and will be scythed by public-spending cuts should state revenues fall short.
But then, the deeper problem is not just that capitalism is failing to live up to its promise of rising living standards—the issue is that living standards are understood in an extremely narrow way: in terms of incomes, as measured by gdp per capita. Organizing a society around a single metric will always be an impoverished way of structuring collective life. The same logic would apply to any economy organized around a single guiding principle. Even a post-capitalist social order that abandoned profit maximization while maintaining output maximization as its organizing goal would still operate through single-criterion optimization. No matter which metric is chosen, the result is always a radical simplification of the multi-dimensional problems we face."
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii153/articles/aaron-benanav-beyond-capitalism-1
Ummmm... I believe in world that's #PostCapitalism. But yeah. #ClimateChange is a HUGE wake up call for us all!
#ClimateCrisis on track to destroy capitalism, warns top insurer
Action urgently needed to save the conditions under which markets – and civilisation itself – can operate, says senior Allianz figure
Damian Carrington Environment editor
Thu 3 Apr 2025
"The climate crisis is on track to destroy capitalism, a top insurer has warned, with the vast cost of extreme weather impacts leaving the financial sector unable to operate.
"The world is fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for many climate risks, said Günther Thallinger, on the board of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies. He said that without insurance, which is already being pulled in some places, many other financial services become unviable, from mortgages to investments.
"Global carbon emissions are still rising and current policies will result in a rise in global temperature between 2.2C and 3.4C above pre-industrial levels. The damage at 3C will be so great that governments will be unable to provide financial bailouts and it will be impossible to adapt to many climate impacts, said Thallinger, who is also the chair of the German company’s investment board and was previously CEO of Allianz Investment Management.
"The core business of the insurance industry is risk management and it has long taken the dangers of global heating very seriously. In recent reports, Aviva said extreme weather damages for the decade to 2023 hit $2tn, while GallagherRE said the figure was $400bn in 2024. Zurich said it was “essential” to hit net zero by 2050.
"Thallinger said: 'The good news is we already have the technologies to switch from fossil combustion to zero-emission energy. The only thing missing is speed and scale. This is about saving the conditions under which markets, finance, and civilisation itself can continue to operate.' "
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/0ndSt
The People's Union has called for a boycott of McDonald's from June 24 to 30: https://thepeoplesunionusa.com/
People have the power. 
The People's Union has called for a boycott of Wal*Mart from April 7 to 14: https://thepeoplesunionusa.com/
People have the power.
In this episode, Mo Gawdat, Peter Diamandis, and Salim Ismail discuss AGI, how to adapt to an AI-driven world, the future of jobs, and more. 
#solarpunk #postcapitalism #abundance #ai
AGI Is Here You Just Don’t Rea...
Please support The People's Union tomorrow by buying nothing. If you must buy something, please only buy from local businesses: https://thepeoplesunionusa.com/
People have the power.
Essential reading if you care about how we #educate young people. This is #OpenSource - but please always connect back with the creators if you use it. (edited to add: created by Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gmc217ACZ8xxjf6GFlUOYIDwxW20FiMW0sqYJq4N59c/edit?tab=t.0
Four Alternative Socio-Economic Models to Rethink Capitalism
Four Alternative Socio-Economic Models to Rethink Capitalism
Discover 4 alternative socio-economic models to capitalism:
Participatory Economy
Democratic Planning
Centralized Computer Planning
Community EconomyThese innovative approaches rethink work, ownership, and economic organization. Another world is possible! 
#AlternativeEconomy #PostCapitalism #EcologicalTransition Capitalism, the…
So, FYI... If you're here for just #Doomposting, you might want to mute me on Sundays. Unless there's breaking news, I'll be focusing on #SolarPunkSunday and posting about solutions and hope -- and ways we can build #resiliency and #community. #PostCapitalism #Degrowth #CircularEconomy #GreenLiving #FoodSecurity #BuildingCommunity
A #Solarpunk Manifesto from #TheAnarchistLibrary
"Solarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion, and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question 'what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?'
"The aesthetics of solarpunk merge the practical with the beautiful, the well-designed with the green and lush, the bright and colorful with the earthy and solid.
"Solarpunk can be utopian, just optimistic, or concerned with the struggles en route to a better world , but never dystopian. As our world roils with calamity, we need solutions, not only warnings.
Solutions to thrive without fossil fuels, to equitably manage real scarcity and share in abundance instead of supporting false scarcity and false abundance, to be kinder to each other and to the planet we share.
Solarpunk is at once a vision of the future, a thoughtful provocation, a way of living and a set of achievable proposals to get there.
1, We are solarpunks because optimism has been taken away from us and we are trying to take it back.
2. We are solarpunks because the only other options are denial or despair.
3. At its core, Solarpunk is a vision of a future that embodies the best of what humanity can achieve: a post-scarcity, post-hierarchy, post-capitalistic world where humanity sees itself as part of nature and clean energy replaces fossil fuels.
4. The “punk” in Solarpunk is about rebellion, counterculture, post-capitalism, decolonialism and enthusiasm. It is about going in a different direction than the mainstream, which is increasingly going in a scary direction.
5. Solarpunk is a movement as much as it is a genre: it is not just about the stories, it is also about how we can get there.
6. Solarpunk embraces a diversity of tactics: there is no single right way to do solarpunk. Instead, diverse communities from around the world adopt the name and the ideas, and build little nests of self-sustaining revolution.
7. Solarpunk provides a valuable new perspective, a paradigm and a vocabulary through which to describe one possible future. Instead of embracing retrofuturism, solarpunk looks completely to the future. Not an alternative future, but a possible future.
8. Our futurism is not nihilistic like cyberpunk and it avoids steampunk’s potentially quasi-reactionary tendencies: it is about ingenuity, generativity, independence, and community.
9. Solarpunk emphasizes environmental sustainability and social justice.
10. Solarpunk is about finding ways to make life more wonderful for us right now, and also for the generations that follow us.
11. Our future must involve repurposing and creating new things from what we already have. Imagine “smart cities” being junked in favor of smart citizenry.
12. Solarpunk recognizes the historical influence politics and science fiction have had on each other.
13. Solarpunk recognizes science fiction as not just entertainment but as a form of activism.
14. Solarpunk wants to counter the scenarios of a dying earth, an insuperable gap between rich and poor, and a society controlled by corporations. Not in hundreds of years, but within reach.
15. Solarpunk is about youth maker culture, local solutions, local energy grids, ways of creating autonomous functioning systems. It is about loving the world.
16. Solarpunk culture includes all cultures, religions, abilities, sexes, genders and sexual identities.
17. Solarpunk is the idea of humanity achieving a social evolution that embraces not just mere tolerance, but a more expansive compassion and acceptance.
18. The visual aesthetics of Solarpunk are open and evolving. As it stands, it is a mash-up of the following:
- 1800s age-of-sail/frontier living (but with more bicycles)
- Creative reuse of existing infrastructure (sometimes post-apocalyptic, sometimes present-weird)
- Appropriate technology
- Art Nouveau
- Hayao Miyazaki
- Jugaad-style innovation from the non-Western world
- High-tech backends with simple, elegant outputs
19. Solarpunk is set in a future built according to principles of New Urbanism or New Pedestrianism and environmental sustainability.
20. Solarpunk envisions a built environment creatively adapted for solar gain, amongst other things, using different technologies. The objective is to promote self sufficiency and living within natural limits.
21. In Solarpunk we’ve pulled back just in time to stop the slow destruction of our planet. We’ve learned to use science wisely, for the betterment of our life conditions as part of our planet. We’re no longer overlords. We’re caretakers. We’re gardeners.
22. Solarpunk:
1. is diverse
2. has room for spirituality and science to coexist
3. is beautiful
4. can happen. Now
Source:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-solarpunk-community-a-solarpunk-manifesto
Essay: #Capitalism Is Dead, the Future Is #Solarpunk
Solarpunk provides hope in an age of darkness. It is a bright vision of the future. A future we will have to fight for.
by Antonio Melonio 
May 18, 2024
"Don’t you feel like there is something inherently wrong with the world? That this is not how it is supposed to be? That something — it’s difficult to say what exactly — is missing? Poverty, inequality, discrimination, hunger, disease, war, estrangement from people and nature, isolation, the rise of mental illnesses, suicides, pollution, mind-numbing and useless office jobs, the destruction of the environment, and countless other terrifying social issues.
"Capitalists are trying to convince us that we are living in the best possible world. That this is how it is supposed to be — that, if we just wait a little longer, things will become much better and there will be peace and prosperity for everyone.
"Things will not become better and nothing will change. Politicians and the system that sustains and feeds them have proven that over and over again. If we want the world to change, if we want a better future — for us, for our children, and future generations — then we will have to take things into our own hands. There are more of us than there are of them. It is time for a Solarpunk revolution.
"In the following four chapters, I will try to define and explain what exactly Solarpunk is and how it can improve our lives. To achieve this, we first have to discuss the prevalent dystopian visions that surround us in all forms of media. After that, we will take a look at how our current reality differs from these dystopias, and how fiction, in fact, influences how we perceive and design our own society. In the last chapter, I will then lay out the absolute basics of Solarpunk. These will serve as a starting point for subsequent articles, in which I will discuss how we can build a Solarpunk society from scratch and what we all can do to support this vision. But first, let’s take a look at some not-so-happy visions of the future..."
Read more:
https://medium.com/the-universe-is-a-melon/capitalism-is-dead-the-future-is-solarpunk-3fea0727bb7b
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/NnWos
So, years ago, when I lived in #PortlandMaine, I was part of a #TimeBank, where I offered computing assistance and web services to others, in exchange for rides, mending, artwork and sometimes food (the local food co-op was part of the Time Bank). It was a good system and a way to connect with community and provide #MutualAid and share skills!
TimeBanking 101
"Time banking replaces money. Provide an hour of service to your neighbor and earn one time dollar. A TimeBank is a network of members that have agreed they will provide and receive services from each other, albeit not directly. (This is not Barter.) Nothing is given 'in consideration of' and there are no binding contracts. Members have a moral obligation of reciprocity to the community.
Five Core Values:
- Human Value: We recognize the intrinsic value of every human being regardless of race, creed, color, or station in life.
- Human Equality: We honor the presence of every living spirit on this planet and consider that we are all equally sacred.
- Human Partnership: We believe that when we work together to meet each others needs, every human being will be cared for.
- Human Effort: We honor the contribution of every human being equally, regardless of how slight or grand it may be.
- Human Reward: We each apply ourselves to what we love. As members of the human family we are entitled to share in the proceeds of our collective activity."
Lear more:
https://hourworld.org/index.htm
And fewer people would list to Group 2, if we didn’t have a system where people weren’t screwed over on a daily basis by multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies and a multi-trillion-dollar healthcare industry.
#capitalism #postCapitalism #universalHealthCare #peopleBeforeProfit https://qoto.org/@medigoth/113519695162979128
Whatever happens in these Elections, we can all see Fascism has arrived in the USA and that means the end of #Capitalism as we know it is not far behind.
So now is perhaps a good time to look at what that #PostCapitalism world may look like. #USpol
https://mayflybooks.org/future-for-all-a-vision-for-2048/
1/6 'Before Progress: On the Power of Utopian Thinking for Open Access Publishing’ by Jefferson Pooley: latest excellent read from the new Publishing After Progress special issue of Culture Machine, edited by Rebekka Kiesewetter:
https://culturemachine.net/archives/vol-23-publishing-after-progress/
New blog post: Optimal automation
https://ar.al/2024/10/16/optimal-automation/
This has been on my mind quite a bit recently so I just wrote a little something about it.
Rêve économique au petit déjeuner (1/2)
Ce matin au réveil, j’avais l’esprit tout occupé à produire un nouveau système économique mondial. Carrément – je ne sais pas ce dont j’ai rêvé, et pourquoi, à ce moment du rêve, j’en étais arrivé à penser à ce qui ressemblait à un système économique global post-capitaliste, pour le dire vite, mais, durant le petit-déjeuner, les derniers fragments du rêve me hantaient encore.
C’est très confus, mais il était question comme toujours de justice sociale et environnementale, envisagée d’un point de vue radical – c’est-à-dire global, dans un monde économique où le sort d’un travailleur (ou de n’importe quelle existence, travailleur ou pas d’ailleurs) du Global South vaut autant que celui d’un travailleur européen, pour le dire vite. L’idée directrice ressemblait à quelque chose comme un système global de production et de consommation totalement exempt d’exploitation – des humains et des non-humains, y compris donc tout ce qu’on extrait de la terre. Mettre fin à l’extraction de la survaleur et donc au « travail non payé », dont l’extension est infiniment plus vaste qu’on le pense habituellement, comme le rappelle par exemple Stefania Barca (Forces of Reproduction : Notes for a Counter-Hegemonic Anthropocene, Cambridge University Press, 2020) . Je ne développe pas ici, mais vous renvoie à cette synthèse percutante de la chercheuse et militante italienne.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/forces-of-reproduction/BE9B0DBDC89593F3284FE3F51D3B0418
Au petit-déjeuner donc, j’imaginais que tous les travailleurs et travailleuses, ou qu’ils/elles soient dans le monde, soient payés à la juste valeur pour leur travail. On pourrait imaginer une grille de salaire « valant universellement », quelque chose dans ce goût, un peu comme il a été imaginé un Revenu Minimum Universel mondial (par le Programme des Nations Unies pour le développement, organisme qui n’est pas précisément anti-capitaliste, mais bon, l’idée est là).
Émergeait aussi, autour de mon bol de céréales (dont je préfère ne pas savoir où et dans quelles conditions elles ont été cultivées), le thème d’une extraction des richesses de la terre limitée aux besoins vitaux. Par des entreprises nationalisées, ou, mieux encore : contrainte par les règles de « commonalités » – quelque chose dans ce goût : toute ressource devrait être mise dans un pot commun, extraite sans qu’il en soit tiré profit (plus de spéculation financière évidemment, cela va de soi), et distribuée équitablement entre tous les habitants de cette planète exsangue. (même si, là maintenant, je crois qu’il faudrait d’abord « réparer » l’histoire coloniale et esclavagiste : que les empires payent d’abord ce qu’ils doivent – et ce qu’ils doivent est immense, à leurs anciennes colonies, à leurs anciens esclaves. En toute justice, ça mettrait immédiatement une bonne partie de l’Europe à genoux. Et, à partir de là, on pourrait commencer à penser à une mise en commun internationale des ressources)
Du point de vue du consommateur, notamment les consommateurs des pays riches qui profitent, sans y penser, du système d’exploitation généralisé, c’est-à-dire de marchandises à des prix extrêmement bas – c’est le miracle du « mode de vie » occidental, dont la prospérité (certes fort mal répartie !) repose depuis l’invention du capitalisme, sur le travail non payé, des diverses nuances et déclinaisons de l’esclavage pour dire vite, mais aussi, comme le dit Stefania Barca, l’exploitation gratuite du « travail de reproduction » de toutes celles et ceux qui prennent soin des générations nouvelles, mais aussi des plantes, des animaux, de la terre elle-même – quand on y songe sérieusement, le Capital ne paye qu’une partie infime de ce qu’il devrait payer si tout ce travail était sérieusement pris en compte !
Du point de vue du consommateur aisé européen, évidemment, une telle perspective ferait augmenter les prix d’une manière considérable : payer au salaire juste les travailleurs du sud, et tous celles et ceux « qui prennent soin », payer les dégâts environnementaux qu’occasionnent inévitablement l’extraction et la production, sans parler des flux de marchandises, des infrastructures logistiques et de transports, etc. En quelques jours, le mode de vie « européen » s’effondrerait (une deuxième fois donc, si l’on me suit, après la réparation des torts historiques). Si l’on prenait la peine de dresser un tableau complet de la totalité des chaînes d’approvisionnement, depuis l’extraction de la matière brute quelque part dans le monde, jusqu’à l’arrivée dans la boîte aux lettres du consommateur européen, impliquées dans l’acquisition de chaque marchandise, on se rendrait vite compte que ce mode de vie n’est soutenable qu’à la condition d’une exploitation démente et généralisée de la plus grande partie de l’humanité, sans parler d’une infinité de non-humains.
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Author | 
Existential Detective 
