but Marxism/communism isn’t the answer either, not even FALC, which I don’t believe is going to be possible anyway.
You are probably correct, but only in the present slavery mentality exhibited by mankind. Once mankind becomes, if it survives long enough, co-operative instead of manipulative with the natural order and figures out how it all fits to enable its survival, we can get past the beast of burden stage of evolution which has deluded us into thinking we stand above it all as rulers. Religion, especially Christianity that deludes us into thinking we have “dominion” over the earth, is largely responsible for our impending demise.
The best example of my meaning I can think of is our current chemical-based agriculture. The unpleasant drudgery of spreading manure on fields to feed plants was replaced by simply examining the chemical content of manure and replicating its components from more easily obtained sources, primarily oil. This fits well into the capitalist system where oil already dominated most of our production so it didn’t threaten any status quo powers.
However, as we learned more about how plants grow we found that they don’t actually use the raw materials of manure directly. Instead, they use the manure of microbes that feed on the manure of animals, even having the ability to generate select enzymes to attract those highly specialized microbes as necessary to their nutrient needs. It turns out that there is another level of “farmer” below our farmers and the chemical stuff we thought we were feeding to plants actually kills the microbes they depend upon to convert raw nutrients to a form they can use.
Only the sheer abundant redundancy of nature masked this failure long enough to allow a “market” to evolve in chemical-based fertilizers that now does far more harm than good, with yields now falling below those obtained by simply grazing animals or collecting their manure and spreading it. Good luck though in ever reversing this as the capitalist market system is, if nothing else, very efficiently protective of itself. The power of money obtained from massive corporate profit to manipulate regulations and suppress unfavorable research will dominate even man’s desire to survive, simply because we don’t recognize slow poisoning well enough to elicit the fight or flight instinct that enabled us to evolve this far.
If we extend this example to the total relationship man has with his environment we find the pattern of destruction masquerading as progress repeated continually. Global warming is only the most evident of our problems created by this exploitive economic system. Market-based capitalism is simply too durable and self-protective to ever give ground to something as trivial as the survival of our species.
Man will go to his collective grave clutching his portfolio and smiling over his shareholder equity. Market-based capitalism, now defined as neoliberalism and generally subscribed to by all major economies, cannot be bargained with or reasoned with in time to save us. Centrism is only a slower death, albeit far more unpleasant, that is presently supported by the thing we are most proud of as a nation, the democratic process that gave us President Trump. None of us is as stupid as all of us and the Achilles heel of democracy turned out to be democracy. Whodathunkit?
