Dear Nancy Tishku:
Here is how I go at this question:
Apart from capitalism, is a healthy sustainable society possible? Maybe not:
A healthy society requires a high level of public health, consequently great
longevity.
Great longevity requires a low birth rate (or else, population expands
insustainably).
A low birth rate (apparently and usually) requires a high level of living
standards (and consequent
damage to the environment).
The only (ethical) way out of this Malthusian bind, it seems to me, is to
create cultures which have
a high living standard with low use of materials.
Now, as for capitalism, it is a system of economics that depends on the
realization of investment through
material growth. Any form of capitalism that allows buying and selling of
stock in companies on the basis
of maximizing potential profit contains within it a driving wheel of material
growth that rules out the ethical
solution to the Malthusian problem.
I can think of a couple of strange ways around this, but the straightforward
answer, in my view, is no,
absolutely not. Look around. Witness the desperate pressure for growth in
the first world, when the
world so badly needs limited consumption in the first world if sustainability
is to be at all possible.
Regards, Andrew
[log in to unmask] wrote:
> Hi! I am new to the list, and I'm sure that this subject has been discussed
> before. However, I couldn't find any direct references. So maybe somebody
> could fill me in with comments and/or references.
>
> Can we have environmentally healthy, sustainability communities under
> capitalism? If so, how so; if not, why not?
>
> Thanks
>
> Nancy
--
Andrew Jameton, Ph.D., Assoc. Prof.
University of Nebraska Medical Center
Phone: 402-559-4680 Fax: 402-559-7259
Emails: [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]
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