https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=aFpf0w2VlbI
Question how is capitalism compatible with your definition of good if it requires ever increasing uses of the finite resources of the planet? Where once depleted would mean our end well I would say Capitalism isn’t compatible with my definition of good if it requires ever increasing uses of the finite resources of the planet but that’s by no means self-evident even though the Scuttlebutt let’s say especially among the environmentalist oriented types Who might have some sympathy for by the way especially with regards to ocean depletion There’s a huge argument and there has been for many many years between the economists and the biologists And this is a really important thing to know and the economists point out that human ingenuity is such that we’re continually able to make More with less and certainly over the last well 500 years That especially in the last 150 years. That’s just absolutely evident You know like people say we’re going to run out of energy. I think that’s absolutely preposterous It’s like this. It’s as crazy as thinking we’re going to run out of matter I mean we’re we’re going through a bit of a bottleneck right now because you know the population is going to increase to about 9 billion, and then it’s going to decrease That’s that’s the most reliable projections and 9 billion isn’t a lot more than we have now, and you know there’s going to be some Environmental disruption as a consequence of that, but I don’t think there’s any reason to assume at all that Capitalism necessarily requires ever increasing uses of the finite resources of the planet it’s also not obvious to what degree the resources of the planet are actually finite because We can continually think up new uses for things that nobody thought had any use at all and so it depends to some degree on whether or not you’re willing to bet on human imaginativeness or You’re going to be a Malthusian Pessimist and I’m not saying that there aren’t reasons for both I’m just saying that it is by no means self-evident that things are getting worse You know like there I can give you an example, so you know in the last in the last 15 years The Millennium goal for the UN was to have world poverty like absolute poverty So that’s less than a dollar fifty a day by fifty percent within 15 years That was actually reached ahead of schedule We’ve lifted hundreds of millions of people into the middle class over the last 30 years and so there is an increasing inequality in the West because the working class has taken the brunt of that say that Redistribution to third world countries, but by the same token you know there’s no starvation in the world anymore except really for reasons of misdistribution and and and and political purpose and People are becoming richer and more educated all the time You know and we are waking up to our planetary Responsibilities once people stop starving to death and having to burn like dirt and and eat You know substandard food that they’ve scraped out of the ground They do start to turn their attention to things that might be more aesthetic and so look I don’t think there’s any reason to be pessimistic not fundamentally and I guess the reason that capitalism is compatible with my definition of good. I wouldn’t say that exactly I would say that I don’t see an alternative that has manifested itself that doesn’t have far more negative Consequences, you know, it’s sort of a minimal pessimism issue. It’s like well this is the best devil that we have and I do believe it is because the successful societies by any stretch of the imagination by virtually any Metric are the capitalist societies. It’s certainly the case For example that the Soviet Union demolished far more of its natural resources to far less productive Consequence than the West did there’s evidence There’s suggestions that between 10 and 15 percent of the total area of the Soviet Union has been rendered more or less permanently uninhabitable So the question is compared to what? You