Summary:
Paul Craig Roberts writes about Mosanto's Roundup and how it's ingredient glyphosate maybe causing cancer. Monsanto's scientists say no but independent scientists say out does and is now so widespread and in nearly all our food. PCR says that our present capitalist system has become too expensive to be viable where too many costs have been externalised. Or consider something simple like a pet store. All the pet store owners and customers who sold and purchased colorful 18 to 24 inch pythons, boa constrictors, and anacondas gave no thought to the massive size these snakes would be, and neither did the regulatory agencies that permitted their import. Faced with a creature capable of devouring the family pet and children and suffocating the life out of large strong adults, the snakes
Topics:
Mike Norman considers the following as important:
This could be interesting, too:
Paul Craig Roberts writes about Mosanto's Roundup and how it's ingredient glyphosate maybe causing cancer. Monsanto's scientists say no but independent scientists say out does and is now so widespread and in nearly all our food. PCR says that our present capitalist system has become too expensive to be viable where too many costs have been externalised. Or consider something simple like a pet store. All the pet store owners and customers who sold and purchased colorful 18 to 24 inch pythons, boa constrictors, and anacondas gave no thought to the massive size these snakes would be, and neither did the regulatory agencies that permitted their import. Faced with a creature capable of devouring the family pet and children and suffocating the life out of large strong adults, the snakes
Topics:
Mike Norman considers the following as important:
This could be interesting, too:
Mike Norman writes Trade deficit
Mike Norman writes Bond market now pricing in one 25 bps rate cut by Fed in 2025
New Economics Foundation writes What are we getting wrong about tax
Sandwichman writes The more this contradiction develops…
Paul Craig Roberts writes about Mosanto's Roundup and how it's ingredient glyphosate maybe causing cancer. Monsanto's scientists say no but independent scientists say out does and is now so widespread and in nearly all our food. PCR says that our present capitalist system has become too expensive to be viable where too many costs have been externalised.
Or consider something simple like a pet store. All the pet store owners and customers who sold and purchased colorful 18 to 24 inch pythons, boa constrictors, and anacondas gave no thought to the massive size these snakes would be, and neither did the regulatory agencies that permitted their import. Faced with a creature capable of devouring the family pet and children and suffocating the life out of large strong adults, the snakes were dumped into the Everglades where they have devastated the natural fauna and now are too numerous to be controlled. The external costs easily exceed many times the total price of all such snakes sold by pet stores.
Ecological economists stress that capitalism works in an “empty economy,” where the pressure of humans on natural resources is slight. But capitalism doesn’t work in a “full economy” where natural resources are on the point of exhaustion. The external costs associated with economic growth as measured by GDP can be more costly than the value of the output.
A strong case can be made that this is the situation we currently face. The disappearance of species, the appearance of toxins in food, beverages, water, mothers’ breast milk, air, land, desperate attempts to secure energy from fracking which destroys groundwater and causes earthquakes, and so forth are signs of a hard-pressed planet. When we get right down to it, all of the profits that capitalism has generated over the centuries are probably due to capitalists not having to cover the full cost of their production. They passed the cost on to the environment and to third parties and pocketed the savings as profit.
Update: Herman Daly notes that last year the British medical journal, Lancet, estimated the annual cost of pollution was about 6 % of the global economy whereas the annual global economic growth rate was about 2 percent, with the difference being about a 4% annual decline in wellbeing, not a 2 percent rise. In other words, we could already be in the situation where economic growth is uneconomical.