Naomi Klein is right: Unchecked capitalism will destroy civilization
via Grist:
Naomi Klein is right: Unchecked capitalism will destroy civilization
By Joseph Romm
Cross-posted from Climate Progress
19 Sep 2014 10:44 AM
Best-selling progressive journalist Naomi Klein has an important new book out, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. The author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine now “tackles the most profound threat humanity has ever faced: the war our economic model is waging against life on earth,” as the book jacket aptly puts it.
In diagnosing the unprecedented existential threat humanity faces thanks to our myopia and unbridled greed, Klein has three essential points to make:
1. Because we have ignored the increasingly urgent warnings and pleas for action from climate scientists for a quarter century (!) now, the incremental or evolutionary paths to avert catastrophic global warming that we might have been able to take in the past are closed to us.
2. Humanity faces a stark choice as a result: the end of civilization as we know it or the end of capitalism as we know it.
3. Choosing “unregulated capitalism” over human civilization would be a “morally monstrous” choice — and so the winning message for the climate movement is a moral one.
As an aside, readers may remember that I don’t always agree with Klein on either substance or messaging. And obviously I have quibbles with her book — in particular I am skeptical of some elements of her proposed “cure” (and how she frames them) as I’ll discuss in a later post. But in fairness to Klein, our 25-year dawdling has made the diagnosis (and prognosis) unimaginably graver and thus made all cures look politically implausible, as the pessimistic, do-little “eco-modernists” keep pointing out far too gleefully.
To anyone who thinks attacking unchecked capitalism is not a winning message (when done correctly), I’d urge you to read the advice of Frank Luntz, the GOP’s top messaging guru, on the subject: “don’t say capitalism” because Americans “think capitalism is immoral.”
The great value in the book lies in Klein’s understanding and elaboration of the three essential points above. Indeed I’m not certain any other book has so clearly spelled out these points. And yet these three points are, arguably, the most important ones for climate hawks, for the (misnamed) “intelligentsia,” and, indeed, for all homo sapiens to understand at a deep level, since they clarify the choices we now must make. .................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://grist.org/climate-energy/naomi-klein-is-right-unchecked-capitalism-will-destroy-civilization/
= new reply since forum marked as read
...only more so.
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If you eliminated the elite profit-takers from our midst, people would still labor. They would teach school, fix teeth, pour concrete, bake cookies, design software, build bridges, clean motel rooms, assemble cars, litigate court cases, and lay carpets.
The only difference is they wouldn't be kicking up the profits from those labors to someone else.
How hard is that to understand?
how much more do you think folks can take? The gini coefficient continues to show growing inequality when comparing countries. There we are down there with Mexico:
some of their "hard earned" wealth. Hell and/or the earth will freeze over first. It appears to me that the quest for power is stronger in our human nature than being altruistic. Possibly, after millions die, the wealthy elite might agree to do something. Most likely they will wait too long and the goose that laid the golden egg will be already dead.
Possibly the robot/computer singularity will have occurred and they will continue on in our stead. 
