Capitalism is Dead
Dwindling oil and ever more expensive energy guarantees it.
For a short time for a lucky few, capitalism raised some, but not most boats, built on the exploitation and death of others. Capitalism created not a rising tide bettering humanity, but rising oceans, violence, and unsustainable consumption. We created not a common good, but a rigged system of unconscionable wealth inequality and social and economic injustice. A few fly private jets and play on yachts with decks harvested from shrinking rainforests. Jeff Bezos built the decks of his $500 million yacht the Koru with illegal Myanmar teak. The money helped finance the Myanmar civil war whose thug military employs burnings, beheadings, mutilations and rape to accomplish their goals. The illegal sales also contributed to the country’s grim, deforestation. As usual, the poorest and most vulnerable, particularly the indigenous suffer theft of their lands, destruction of their cultures, and extermination for the black hole of capitalism.
A Native American Oglala Lakota, and generational survivor of the bloody birth of America, Amelia Mavis Christnot explains there are two forms of subjugation that colonizers have forced on the world in her thoughtful article on authoritarianism:
A settler-colonial country is one where the invading population eliminates or drastically reduces the population of the Indigenous inhabitants and replaces them through colonization and special privileges for settlers that share the same identity as the colonizers to create a new, transplanted racial or ethnic majority.
A colonized country is one where the Indigenous population retains the majority, but are subjugated and exploited by invading colonizers. Many such countries gained independence, but were forever altered by the colonizers, such as most of the Americas, most of Africa, and countries like India and Pakistan.
Those who for thousands of years lived simply, sustainably, and spiritually connected to the Earth through their subsistence lifestyles continue to lose the environments they have rights to. Most recently, the Apache lost sacred land to mining interests based on the right of discovery, a tortured idea dating back to the 15th century, a doctrine of the supposed Christian preeminence to take land occupied by those deemed to be “heathen.” Peter d’Errico, an attorney who focuses on crimes against Native Americans details the history of this ludicrous legal reasoning here.
Crimes against Native Americans have never ended. I wrote about the beginnings of America’s atrocities in Imagine an Earth First Policy, pointing out living sustainably on Mother Earth has already been accomplished by contrasting the lives of the Plimoth, Massachusetts settlers (the second English settlement after the barbarous slaughter that occurred in Jamestown) with those of the community of Patuxet, and the village’s Wampanoag inhabitants. It’s no small irony that the Puritans of Plimoth were fleeing religious persecution from King George III as Trump attempts to criminalize anyone and everyone who doesn’t bend to his fascist intent.
From Imagine An Earth First Policy:
Jamestown was the beginning of a gruesome disaster for native people, who preceded the invaders by twelve thousand years. In the winter of 1609-1610, the under prepared colonists experienced the “starving time” in which they resorted to cannibalism. Five hundred died, only sixty survived. Some fled to the Indians, where they were fed. That following summer, when the defectors were retrieved, Chief Powhatan was deemed to be, “prowde and disdaynefull.”
In retaliation, the English attacked an Indian village, killed fifteen or sixteen people, burned their homes to the ground, chopped the corn down, and abducted the queen and her children in boats. The children were thrown overboard, and the soldiers enjoyed “shoteinge owtt their Braynes” in the water. The queen was later stabbed to death.
Apparently, these policies were good for commerce.
Don’t worry about climate change. We have ICE.
The administration’s weaponization of ICE (formerly Immigration and Customs Enforcement, now Gestapo) has been the tool for cowardly hooded abductions of brown people without legitimate charges or due process. Flown to the notorious human rights abusing prison known as CECOT in El Salvador, the president, Nayib Bukele is a real authoritarian, not an ignorant imbecile who will never be able to describe himself as the “world’s coolest dictator.”
Here, the ignorant imbecile attempts to provoke violence in Los Angeles over those protesting Banana Republic style abductions against citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. Illegals, routinely employed by the wealthy in numerous critical industries aren’t on the streets for obvious reasons. This bald attempt of provocation through the use of the National Guard and Marines for fuck’s sake violates the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, establishing that the military cannot take part in domestic law enforcement (modern exceptions being cases of nuclear materials, counter drug operations, and emergencies involving chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction). Do peaceful protests qualify? Obviously no, but Trump and Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller (vile résumé here) who are calling for 3,000 immigrant arrests a day, would certainly like them to.
The wealthy employ over six million undocumented workers
Remember, the goal as clearly laid out in Project 2025, is a fascist state governed by Christians who have historically approved and carried out amusements such as the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the imprisonment of Galileo for pointing out Copernicus was correct, that the Earth circles the sun, not the other way around, and genocide of the indigenous on multiple continents.
I participated in No Kings Day, and thankfully there were no problems, at least locally. As protestors, we need to be extremely careful not to cross any lines that allow Trump to use the Insurrectionist Act which does allow the military to become a police force. From there, it’s a frighteningly short path to martial law, the imposition of military authority on civilians.
The Los Angeles protestors are of a group of rightfully frightened people of color, presently the focus of abductions without charges or due process. As laid out above, immigrants, legal or otherwise are essential to our economy. That graphic doesn’t include the scientific and medical communities. How many people from foreign nations supply our medical care and scientific research? As Trump attacks higher education, social welfare, and civil rights, those who come from other countries for higher degrees see no future here. Not only are we in danger of losing those who harvest our crops and do the toughest jobs in meat packing plants, we are in danger of losing our highest intellectual investments.
Making us dumb is one of the goals. Any dictator knows an ignorant populace is a controllable populace.
We live in a world of 24/7 lies now amplified or given tacit approval by the omissions of billionaire owned media. Speaking out is increasingly dangerous. The genocide in Gaza so painfully obvious in photos and footage in social media is repressed, and protesting this gruesome atrocity can land you in jail. We saw this on our college campuses last year as cowardly university presidents, beholden to billionaire money allowed the police to abuse and arrest those students, our children. I wrote of it in “Order Must Prevail,” Joe Biden, the Zionist supporter’s own words.
And don’t accuse me of being an antisemite. There is a chasm between being a Jew and being a Zionist. All white people don’t wish to hang black people from trees, either.
Enslavement has been with us almost forever, at least since the advent of settled agriculture, perhaps longer. It’s a feature of human behavior. The wars and atrocities we were able to commit before the discovery of fossil fuels were horrific, but pale in comparison since. FDR’s New Deal brought the robber barons of the 19th and early 20th century under control, but now we live under both a new robber baron class, (the tech bros), and the old ones, (bankers and oil magnates). The global south has lived under corporate enslavement for centuries, made particularly virulent since neoliberal economics was installed around the world based on the economic theories of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economics. It was installed in Chile first with a US backed coup courtesy of Kissinger and Nixon. Ford police cars were used to abduct Chileans off the street, and the Ford plant even featured a jail. I wrote about this in The Economy We Need to Save Ourselves.
Neoliberal corporate enslavement of America started with Reagan’s presidency, and those policies have been carried forward since then. Bill Clinton built on them, and the American economy boomed as planetary rape sped up. With few exceptions, both parties promoted these policies culminating in the near depression of 2007 when Obama bailed out the looting banks with our tax dollars. They should have been nationalized. Privatization has destroyed the average person’s prosperity, security, and hope for the future. What we are witnessing now in the US is the same as what happened in South America, organized crime destined to sweep the globe.
Having eaten the rest of the world, the pathologically wealthy (yes, it’s mental illness) have come to eat America, too. They wish to kill most of us. I mean this in the most literal sense. It’s evidenced in the decades long erosion of wages and dependable employment conditions that literally kill people from stress. It’s evidenced in the attacks being made on Medicaid, FEMA, and currently human who is not white, male and straight. It’s demonstrated by history. Trust me, being white, male and straight won’t mean a thing soon, a practical reason protesting for those of color, apart from the obvious morality. If you’re not powerful, you’re fodder for the machine, period. The smartest of these fascists (not Trump or his moronic lackey appointments) know climate change, dwindling economically harvestable oil, and overshoot are real. They realize they don’t need eight billion of us to build yachts like the Koru. Getting rid of half (or more of us) makes sense from their perspective of superiority.
This is the beginning of the end if we don’t fight. And I haven’t even gotten to climate change and overshoot, the ultimate enemies, which really pisses me off. We don’t have time for this bullshit.
A few climate change updates.
Canada is burning again with a two-week jump on the stunning record fires of 2023 which burned 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres), an area larger than the entire country of England. As of June 4, 33,000 people have been forced to evacuate, and the season is projected to be the second worst after 2023. The ten-year average of land burned is just 800,000 hectares, already well surpassed.
India has again been facing life-threatening heat waves since April, heat which is projected to cross the limits of survivability by 2050. Imagine living in Death Valley, with no place to run or hide. Most citizens of India have no air conditioning and labor under the sun. Wet bulb temperature is critical to understand for those of us in the south and west US as well, as the likelihood of power outages is increasing from infrastructure not designed to cope with these extremes, and a future of dwindling oil to run that infrastructure. Plan for increasing brownouts and blackouts.
California has already had nearly 90,000 acres burn this year. Yeah, that’s way more than Canada to date. California is the fifth-biggest economy in the world. How do you think that’s going to work out as it burns, and its agricultural workers are deported?
Protect yourself.
I’ve written about wet bulb temperature twice, in Wet Bulb Temperature Explained, and Stunning Wet Bulb Temperature Update. Killer heat waves are happening in the western and southern US as well, not just at the equator. It’s important to understand your thresholds to protect yourself and your loved ones.
Protect yourself some more. Protest.
Remember, there is no free speech, only truth, lies and responsibility. Words are tremendously powerful, and speech is a sacred responsibility, as is the honest transfer of human knowledge. There are no alternate facts. We are living in a new Dark Age that threatens not just progress, but the survival of humanity. The Information Age, an idea never achieved has been subverted, and AI is being used to subvert it further, as well as demanding yet more unsustainable fossil fuel and water use. Technology won’t save us, it brought us to this precipice. With the fossil fuel age ending, so does the gaslighting called renewables. Without fossil fuels that technology can’t be built to a scale that remotely supports the obscene consumption we’re accustomed to.
Capitalism is dead. Fascism is a growing and immediate danger. A new system was demanded long ago. Degrowth was conceived in 1972, a sane plan that could have brought this death spiral under control. Degrowth is coming, but not gently and planned over time. Let’s be brave and fight for all we can save. We’re all Palestinians now. See you at the next protest.
I wish more people would connect the dots between war and environmental destruction. I'd love to see. more environmentalists protesting this. The silos that keep environmentalists becoming anti-war activists as well -- even just by showing up to these kinds of demonstrations and offering support -- has never made sense to me.
I hope you are right and that indeed this system will self-implode. The problem is that it will be kept on life support by the powers-that-be at all cost, unless they are brought down by either the natural cycle or a deliberate effort on our part.