• boonhet@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    If you think those 2 are communist countries, you’re stuck in the last century. Let me give you some news. The Soviet Union collapsed and gave way to a capitalist oligarchy. China realized that capitalism is profitable and brings them tons of money from the west. I have no idea why tankies still simp those countries as communist (wait, I do actually - because tankies never had any principles of their own, they just wanted to be anti-west).

    There is one country that needs to kickstart change for it to have any effect, it’s the US. Not only does it pollute the most per capita, it’s a huge market. My tiny ass country with fuel prices already being twice as much in the US, can raise fuel prices even more, but that won’t affect global demand. Americans no longer getting fuel for essentially free, would actually affect global demand.

    • Steeve@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Yes, of course, because political systems are binary and there’s only capitalism and communism lmao

      • boonhet@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        There’s plenty of systems that mix both, but Russia and China aren’t actually good examples. They’re pretty capitalist.

        If you want a better example of mixing capitalism with socialism, you can take a look at something like the Nordic countries, where there are tons of social services and safety nets, but there’s still a very strong (just regulated) free market.

        • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          There’s plenty of systems that mix both, but Russia and China aren’t actually good examples. They’re pretty capitalist.

          State companies and state-connected companies own more than half of each one’s economy. More than in Nordic countries.

          • agarorn@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            Do you belive that in a communist country everything is owned by the state? If so, I urge you to look up communism again.

          • boonhet@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Because capitalism with state protection is not capitalism I guess.

            In each, we’re talking about capitalism with the caveat that the owners of the country want a kickback too, and in return local capitalists are protected from foreign capitalists. Vladimir Putin owns Russia, the CCP owns China. In neither case does capital belong to “the people” as a whole.

            • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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              1 year ago

              Yes, it’s not. I mean, for Marxists it is, because Marx describes something similar specifically to XIX century Germany with state-supported enormous trusts, influential aristocracy, and so on. Which is for obvious reason of living there, just not very relevant, because real economists use the term differently.

              In neither case does capital belong to “the people” as a whole.

              Well, CCP is not different from CPSU in this case.

        • Steeve@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Seems a bit silly to decide that “capitalism” is the majority contributor to climate change when the country that produces the most greenhouse gases is only “pretty capitalist” doesn’t it? If capitalism is the major contributor, why don’t more capitalist country produce more greenhouse gases?

          I never set out to argue that capitalism doesn’t exist in countries that aren’t primarily capitalist.

          • 133arc585@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Seems a bit silly to decide that “capitalism” is the majority contributor to climate change when the country that produces the most greenhouse gases is only “pretty capitalist” doesn’t it? If capitalism is the major contributor, why don’t more capitalist country produce more greenhouse gases?

            That’s not necessarily the case. The pollution comes from where manufacturing is, not necessarily where consumption is. The demand is coming from capitalist countries.

            Edit: To account for this, we can look at per-capita consumption-based emissions (thanks to @boonhet@lemm.ee for the data link).

          • boonhet@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            The country that produces the most greenhouse gases is doing so to satisfy the demands of private industry that’s producing goods for private profit. What part of that is not capitalism?

            Also the country that produces the most per capita, is arguably the most capitalist country, the USA.

            • 133arc585@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              While I agree that per capita emissions is a useful metric, perhaps even more useful than raw emissions numbers, where are you getting that the USA has the highest production per capita?

              This table shows data from 2018 so things change, but the per capita emissions would have had to double in five years to put the USA on top.

              If you look at the non-per capita numbers, the USA is the second largest emitter behind China (using data from 2018).

              • boonhet@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                Good point, I was a bit inaccurate with my last comment.

                If you look at the non-per capita consumption based emissions and divide that by the amount of people, you’ll find that Americans consume way more per capita.

                China has the bigger (even per capita) number in terms of production, but they export a lot of what they produce, whereas Americans get all their shit from China and can then claim China has the worse emissions.

                Here’s a map showing consumption-based emissions per capita, you can see that the US has a number twice as big as China’s.