Why Elites Like Greta Thunberg Hate Capitalism
- Jerry Atrick
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Why Elites Like Greta Thunberg Hate Capitalism
https://michaelshellenberger.substack.c ... nberg-hate
Free markets have lifted millions out of poverty, liberated women, and protected the environment. Why, then, are so many progressives against them?
For the last three years, Greta Thunberg has said that her life’s purpose was to save the world from climate change. But last Sunday, she told an audience in London that climate activists must overthrow "the whole capitalist system," which she says is responsible for "imperialism, oppression, genocide... racist, oppressive extractionism." Her talk echoed the World Economic Forum's calls for a “Great Reset” away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. There is no “back to normal,” she said.
But her claims are absurd. The "whole capitalist system" has, over the last 200 years, allowed for the average life expectancy of humans to rise from 30 to 70 years of age. The "whole capitalist system" produces larger food surpluses than any other system in human history. And the "whole capitalist system" has resulted in declining greenhouse gas emissions in developed nations over the last 50 years.
Capitalism is far from perfect. It worsens inequality by making some people so rich that they can rocket into space on liquified hydrogen while leaving others too poor to afford natural gas. It is characterized by cycles of boom and bust that create frenzies of wealth followed by high unemployment. And it is constantly turning non-market relationships, including intimate ones, such as between parents and caregivers, into exchanges between buyers and sellers.
But capitalism is plainly better than any other system of economic organization yet devised. High levels of inequality are the result of more rich people, not more poor people, who are much better off under capitalism than feudalism or communism. The business cycle of booms and busts provokes manias and depressions, but it is much more efficient, and less oppressive than governments deciding what should be produced, by whom, and at what price. And while it’s true that capitalism undermines non-market relationships, that’s often a good thing, even in the case of childcare, since it allows women and others to be compensated for their labor.
Some of the people who have benefitted the most from industrial capitalism are people like Thunberg and her family. The remarkable wealth of their home nation of Sweden is due to the industrial revolution, which allows for a tiny number of people to produce food, energy, and other necessities for life so that the majority of Swedes can do other, less arduous, and more pleasurable things. The same is true across the West. In the U.S., just 2% of the population works on farms and just 8% in factories.
And industrial capitalism allowed Sweden to create a generous social welfare state consisting of free health care, free education, and 480 days of paid leave for parents when a child is born or adopted. The Thunbergs are, by any global or historical standard, rich: the annual per capita income globally, according to the World Bank, is $11,000, which is less than the cost of the two chairs in Thunberg’s living room.
Capitalism is far better for the natural environment than feudalism or communism. Under feudalism, subsistence farmers rely on wood and dung for cooking fuels and must farm large tracts of land to produce a small amount of food. The industrial revolution not only liberated most people from back-breaking farming but also reduced the amount of land required, thanks to fertilizer, irrigation, and tractors. The same process allowed humans to switch from using wood to coal to natural gas and uranium as primary fuels.
The result has been the return, and “re-wilding,” of grasslands and forests around the world, including in Sweden. The reason is that market capitalism rewards economic efficiency and thus reduced natural resource use. Consider the whales. What saved them, in capitalist nations, was cheaper substitute oils, first petroleum and then vegetable oils. The Soviet Union, by contrast, kept whaling long after it was economically efficient to do so because whalers were protected from market competition.
All of this and yet, around the world, it is affluent and educated progressives like Thunberg who are anti-capitalist. Our language reflects this. Across the West, affluent anti-capitalists are referred to as “latte liberals,” “Neiman Marxists,” “champagne socialists,” “radical chic,” and “cashmere communists.” Similar expressions exist in non-English language nations: izquierda caviar (caviar leftist in Spain); gauche caviar (caviar leftist in France); Salonsozialist (salon socialist in Germany); and — in Thunberg’s home nation of Sweden — Rödvinsvänster, which means “red wine leftists.”
It wasn’t always this way. Left-wing parties, from communist to socialist to social democratic parties, used to be the parties of the working class. Now, across the Western world, they are the parties of educated elites. The latest polls show that Democrats have a 14-point advantage among college voters and a 15-point deficit among working-class voters, an 11-point increase since 2012. “Lest anyone think that declining working-class support was solely due to white working-class voters moving away from the Democrats,” writes the self-described social democrat Ruy Teixeira, “it should be noted that nonwhite working-class voters moved away from Democrats by 19 margin points over the time period.”
This is true across the Western world. From British Brexiteers to Dutch farmers to the French yellow vests, working-class people are turning away from the Left and embracing pro-free market political movements and pro-capitalist political parties. Why is that? How did educated elites like Thunberg become anti-capitalists, and working-class people become pro-capitalists?
Re: Why Elites Like Greta Thunberg Hate Capitalism
Elites like Greta Thunberg????? Sorry, don't you mean Donald Trump, Elon Musk and even Boris Johnson? Elites???
- truffledog
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Re: Why Elites Like Greta Thunberg Hate Capitalism
There is no ownership on free/public goods like air and water (and many other). If the cost of polluting would be priced into goods and services the world would look much different.
work is for people who cant find truffles
Re: Why Elites Like Greta Thunberg Hate Capitalism
So who pays for the infrastructure to deliver, maintain and clean the water to your homes? Not everyone lives next to a lake.truffledog wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 4:13 pm There is no ownership on free/public goods like air and water (and many other). If the cost of polluting would be priced into goods and services the world would look much different.
If people just drank water “wild” then the hospitals would be full. Who pays for the hospital and the carers?
People of the world, spice up your life.
- Jerry Atrick
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Re: Why Elites Like Greta Thunberg Hate Capitalism
Where I'm from we have a local water co-op made up of all the houses on our water main which all houses paid to install and pay annually to maintainmannanman wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 4:18 pmSo who pays for the infrastructure to deliver, maintain and clean the water to your homes? Not everyone lives next to a lake.truffledog wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 4:13 pm There is no ownership on free/public goods like air and water (and many other). If the cost of polluting would be priced into goods and services the world would look much different.
If people just drank water “wild” then the hospitals would be full. Who pays for the hospital and the carers?
- Jerry Atrick
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Re: Why Elites Like Greta Thunberg Hate Capitalism
Well, I didn't write the article but, upon reading it, I'm quite confident that the author did not mean "Donald Trump, Elon Musk and even Boris Johnson"
If you look up the definition of elite : a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence - we can see that the noun applies equally well to Thunberg as to any of the individuals you felt compelled to namecheck
Re: Why Elites Like Greta Thunberg Hate Capitalism
Greta was saying that while promoting her new book that can be paid for by visa, mastercard or paypal. Oh, and fuck capitalism.
Money can't buy happiness but it can buy beer
Re: Why Elites Like Greta Thunberg Hate Capitalism
She's hardly "elite", just a spoiled little princess who's trapped in a feedback loop with her followers. So she's progressively (lol) becoming more radical, dreaming up some lofty ideals of an utopia that will never materialize.
Many child actresses and singers who rose to fame at a young age couldn't handle it and went completely off the rails; this is basically just the same happening to another kind of child star.
Many child actresses and singers who rose to fame at a young age couldn't handle it and went completely off the rails; this is basically just the same happening to another kind of child star.
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Re: Why Elites Like Greta Thunberg Hate Capitalism
I'd have to agree. Can't stand her. At least (initially) the child star actors and singers provided us some entertainment. Greta, not so much.
Re: Why Elites Like Greta Thunberg Hate Capitalism
Cambodia shows proof for this statement on a daily basis, right?Jerry Atrick wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 3:57 pm
Free markets have lifted millions out of poverty, liberated women, and protected the environment.
Forests
River banks
Filled up lakes
I am afraid the last part of the statement has been proven wrong over time
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