A system of disturbing goods and services that can't handle negative value is not a system that should be maintained. Our collect pursuit as a species should be the abundance of these things, not the artificially managed scarcity of them.
this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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Problems for Capitalism are Solutions for Humanity
Capitalism has always been the problem, nothing new here.
I would post that passage from Grapes of Wrath about oranges. But copy-paste doesn't work on my phone
I got you.
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
Thanks. I love this quote. But it pisses me off so bad
The question comes down to this. How do you incentivize work other than with money?
Capitalism makes abundance problematic.
Supply side Jesus says put your faith in the wisdom of the CEO.
oh no the power is too cheap. God forbid our trillions of tax dollars go to something actually useful and good for the people oh well looks like we will get the F-47 instead and pay it to private military contracts 😂
We need more military! Cut social security!
Wasn't there a town in China that produced such a glut of surplus electricity that they didn't know what to do with it? And it was 100% solar?
I guess the biggest bottleneck for renewables is energy storage.
Pretty much. Once we got that covered there is no excuse anymore.
It's basically solved. Sodium batteries are cheaper and much more durable than lithium batteries, and are currently being commercialized. Their only downside is that they are heavier, but that does not matter for grid-scale storage.
I remember reading about those. Sodium batteries are revolutionary. They don't need a rare earth mineral... sodium is friggen everywhere.
Story of 2010s Germany as well.
The answer is batteries. And dismantling capitalism, but batteries first
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It's funny how capitalist apologists in this thread attack the format of a tweet and people not reading the actual article, when they clearly haven't read the original article.
Negative prices are only mentioned in passing, as a very rare phenomenon, while most of it is dedicated to value deflation of energy (mentioned 4 times), aka private sector investors not earning enough profits to justify expanding the grid. Basically a cautionary tale of leaving such a critical component of society up to a privatized market.
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Who is "we"? Fuck that.
The capitalist class?
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