And again SCIENCE DOES NOT PROVIDES VALUES, nor a direction to go, nor a meaning of life.
I agree.
As I stated before, you decide the desired outcome (with your values), then you reach it using the scientific method.
Science is the method, the tool, the technology that allows you to reach your goal in the most efficient manner.
Well, then you have to define formally "well being".
Without loosing us into a circular semantic argument: a state characterized by physical and mental health, happiness, and prosperity.
That's why I think sustainability is not compatible with people having free access to what they want.
Free access to what they
need, and that can be studies and evaluated scientifically.
As for what they want, it goes back to culture and values. That's really the starting point, culture, education and values.
I don't think free market capitalists believe we have 10 planets.
They sure act like they don't.
Also I don't like capitalism, just free market. Gesell can explain you in depth how to end with capitalism without eliminating free market.
I'll look into it, the two things seem to go hand in hand.
There's many factors that lead to inequality, you can't blame the free market and pretend that is obvious.
The competitive structure and the complete disregard for human life leads to inequality, that's a fact.
The goal of a profit based society is to make money, not to maximise the well being of people.Read any book on the subject, or report from corporation, or attend their meetings. The bottom line is always profit.
That is enough to prove that it's
wrong.
[quopte]
Big companies are often "powered" by states, they also use coercion (coercion is not free trade).
[/quote]
No, states are coerced by corporations into doing what they want. Read "Confessions of an economic hitman" by John Perkins.
There's no authorities or there's no producers in a RBE?
No authorities, or at least not in the way you think about authorities.
Monopolies, cartels and such need some form of coercion to keep being monopolies.
Yeah. It's called "profit".
My plan for sustainability is probably close to yours: increase localization of food and energy production, permaculture, renewable energies...
Good! And how would you achieve that? Raising the culture, educating people, free exchange of information so that they don't have to reinvent to wheel every time... scientific method without the profit motive to stand on the way.
The profit motive will tell you to patent a technology, instead of sharing. It would tell you to withdraw information, instead of sharing it. It would tell you to plan intrinsic obsolescence on what you produce, so that you can sell more in the future even though it's unnecessary. It would tell you to make crappy things, to save money due to the price mechanism. It would tell you to pollute, because it costs much less than using proper productions systems and materials.
To sum up, it's one of the most wasteful and inefficient systems you can think of.I just think we don't have to sacrifice freedom for that.
I agree.
As you said, people must educate themselves and the scarcity of resources will help on that.
+1
Have you heard about peak oil?
Sure. It's one of the many aspects of the unsustainability of the current economic model.
Have you heard of the loss of biodiversity, rampant desertification, overfishing, soil erosion, ecosystems destruction... ?
Peak oil is just of of the many symptoms that there is something fundamentally wrong with this system.
We just won't have a monetary system that is based on exponential growth like the one we have today. Just because is unsustainable.
+999
To replace it you don't want money at all.
No necessarily, I see a period of transition where it might be useful. I just see the inevitable consequence of the shift in culture.