@Snoro

Well, for one thing, if each government stubbornly insists on avoiding the application of MMT we'll be in big trouble, I think. I'm neither expert in nor a regular evangelist for MMT, but I have been gradually persuaded that its advocates are speaking sense and that monetary availability is better controllable than we're letting it be. There are thongs that must be done and done now, not later, so even if we have to print money to do them, that's what we need to do.

The REAL problem seems to me to be the fatalistic theory that markets are smarter than people and must be left to themselves, that the mythical Unseen Hand never fails. Sometimes timelines matter, and during Covid capitalism did (pardon use of technical term) crap to help. Gloves, lysol, tests, toilet paper were all in short supply because the Unseen Hand of the unfettered free market just was not interested.

Since I doubt the feasability of replacing capitalism wholesale, even as I recognize it as a key part of the problem, a change to stakeholder capitalism is essential so that corporate leaders can make decisions in the interest of entities other than The Almighty Shareholders, and be graded on such. Under stakeholder theory, entities like the general public and the environment, including a habitable climate, start to matter again.

Meanwhile, any focus on debt is a potentially very bad thing just now. Monetary availability for spending on necessary climate issues is key, to the point that they could and likely should block out all else society does for a while if the public really understood the threat. Avoiding a climate disaster needs to be humanity's key buskness just now if we don't want disaster recovery and, frankly, just plain death to be humanity's key business soon.

It is as if the people we trust to tell us what is right are comfortable with the preposterous notion that if we get debt in order but fail to prevent climate change's rapid onset, all will be well, and if we get climate under control but are left with debt, that's a disaster. That cannot be allowed to stand.

I know Mastodon readers are globally distributed, but speaking from a US-centric point of view for just a moment, since national debt here infects many conversations, I have to think the world will much more easily forgive us some debt if we stop destroying the climate than they will praise us for tightening our debt position at the expense of human civilization being laid to waste. And the choice is just that stark.

(Also, don't even get me started on "growth" as an economic metric of health. If we don't figure out a way to measure health sime other way, that alone will be the siren call leading us to foul our finite nest. We must come up with ways to measure, target and enforce sustainability and to seriously, even criminally, penalize exploitation of externalities for profit.)

#environment #capitalism #climate #NationalDebt #MMT #StakeholderTheory #StakeholderCapitalism #economy #EnvironmentalJustice #Degrowth #sustainability #debt #ClimateCollapse #ClimateCatastrophe #Extinction

@Pampa
I doubt you could find a workable wholesale replacement for capitalism, at least on the necessary timescale.

But I think there are things that can usefully be done to make a dent in that space.

1. Regulate the ill effects. As long as the regulations apply uniformly, they still make for fair markets. Environmental and safety regulations, for example. But it wouldn't hurt in health care to outlaw "pooling", since each attempt to subdivide the market gives individuals worse bargaining leverage and Big Pharma more.

2. Socialize markets (i.e., convert to things like universal single payer) where fair prices are not achievable and/or where the public is better served by aggregate bargaining. Health care is an example. People cannot fairly walk away from extractive pricing if their life depends on a solution at any price. They have to take what's offered. So market pricing cannot be expected to converge on fair prices. Also, the timelines and levels of volume individual buyers have is not enough to bargain fairly, where collective bargaining would be.

3. Get rid of pressures in capitalism to only respond to shareholders. Here's a summary of why reverting to stakeholder theory instead of shareholder theory would improve things. (Bernie and Warren both had plans to do things like this in the US 2020 election. Their ideas could be used elsewhere.)

4. Get big money out of politics, so that those with large economic interest cannot purchase regulatory favor.

http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

#Capitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #ShareholderTheory #StakeholderTheory #RegulatoryCapture #SinglePayer #EnvironmentalRegulation