Do you environmentalists understand...

[emilynghiem]

I am not arguing that the exercise of capitalism cannot or should not be done in a manner as protective of natural systems and resources as possible. I'm saying there is nothing intrinsic to it that demands such behavior. Your logging company can save itself a great deal of money if it doesn't replant the forest or take care with its access roads but if it simply clear cuts every piece of land it can find and moves on.

The energy company can simply lie about their activities to create a good public image while producing energy as cheaply (with the least possible regard for pollution and carbon emissions) as possible.

By dumping hazardous waste on public lands, a company saves the fees of using waste treatment services. If caught, they dissolve the company and flee quietly into the night.

Obviously, there are advantages to being 'green' about the way you do business and, thankfully, many companies now choose to do so. But nothing about the practice of free market capitalism - whose number one priority is, always has been and always will be to maximize net profits - that requires it.

Dear Crick Yes and no.
Your take on capitalism is if it exists in a vacuum. As if people are robots or sociopaths that have no empathy and only do what the bottom line dictates.

But in reality Crick the loggers who work for such a logging company are people with families, who want sustainable jobs so the money and profits IN THE LONGRUN exceed the short term gains. The shareholders are people also, and the public, too.

Sure in the short run people who engage in trafficking make more money than teachers who teach in school for years and produce more future teachers to keep the knowledge passing forward.

By your model of making more money, shouldn't you and others make more money dancing on tabletops or selling porn videos online? Because that would make more money in the short term. Even if it cost money to do what Jenner did and pay for surgery to generate reality TV hype, as long as the investment pays off, then by your math you should do similar, right?

Sorry, Crick you can't leave the human factor out of business.

People are human, our conscience connects us to each other, society and the planet as a whole.

Just because SOME narcissists and SOME antisocial mindsets can turn off the empathy or have no sense of impact on others so they CAN focus on just the bottom line, doesn't mean all the workers, shareholders, investors, consumers and public will operate to that same extreme. Most do not, thus the 1% versus the 99%.

If people get too destructive for dollars, consumers don't have to keep patronizing such companies. Right now, yes, workers still need their Walmart jobs, dancers still need to pay for their kids or college, even children in sweatshops have no choice in feeding their families who would face starvation.

In the short term yes Crick until humanity organizes better alternatives, then of course the cheaper route to faster profit is going to EXPLOIT that market.

But not forever Crick

The people enslaved in China, the cost to the environment that conscientious consumers lobby to stop and address, these have a cost to people now and to future generations that you aren't counting but consumer-awareness groups are tracking.

In Headwaters Forest alone, which I cited as an example of sustainable logging vs clearcutting, taxpayers paid at least 1.6 billion not million and counting for the cost of MAXXAM doing business before they went under and took all the money they gutted with them.

Do you think that debt and damage goes away?

We don't count the cost of war to civilians when our laws actually include part of the military budget paying for collateral damage to innocent civilians.

So Crick by your model of only counting short term gains we should keep making money for military contractors and jobs racking in billions per day because you don't count the long-term costs of civilians in war

Is that what you suggest capitalism dictates?

Sorry but capitalism is based on free enterprise and human free will which does not operate in a vacuum. Your argument would work if all people were sociopaths who just went for the fast profit, and all victims of exploitation believed in sacrificing for persecution and only receiving reward after death in heaven instead of fighting for justice on earth.

People have a conscience that catches up with us in the longrun.

That's what you try out leave out of your equation.

In reality cooperative economics is the more sustainable and ethical form of free enterprise.

Microlending and distributing wealth of knowledge so more communities can build stable economies.

While nonprofits like Grameen Foundation, Pace Universal, Habitat for Humanity, Doctors Without Borders, or the Heidi Search Center (teamed up with Laster Global to rescue victims kidnapped by traffickers) don't make high profits but invest in social capital, and save more lives and resources in the longrun, those models will sustain and keep serving donors and recipients long after people get wise and quit giving business to corporations exploiting people and the environment.

You can only make money off ignorance of the public and poverty of workers for so long.
Eventually the market will not buy it.
But yes it works in the short term.
That's why we still have slave labor today because affording our consumer lifestyle still depends on it until we transition to a more sustainable way based on training wages for students who still receive benefits under a barter or credit system that doesn't exploit workers for lower cost labor.

See www.ithacahours.com
Www.grameenfoundation.org
Www.paceuniversal.com
Www.rightfortheworkers.org
Www.earnedamnesty.org