Do most people itt agree that the deaths in Puerto Rico that we are discussing are a result of capitalism?

lol no

The problem is you can't determine which of all the people who died in the study period died from capitalism and which didn't.

So when deaths caused by natural disasters are almost perfectly correlated with wealth you believe that to be just a universal aspect of existence?

Forget how many it is. Just talk conceptually. Does someone not having access to resources that allow them to remain unaffected by natural disasters count as being a result of capitalism?

I mean does anyone think that Elon Musk would live without power and running water for months if the area he lived in got hit my a natural disaster?

I think what you're trying to say here is how wonderful it is that capitalism created enough wealth to at least save some people from natural disasters.

DWetz you know there are lots of words out there you could use that are not super offensive. So why would you pick one you know is offensive?

There was a really interesting radio programme about Cuba’s hurricane preparedness somewhere, sometime.

Mighta been this one:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cswdhk

I’m having trouble understand why you view this as a counterpoint to what I said. They are not mutually exclusive. Capitalism could be responsible both for the advancement of society in some aspects and also for leaving behind other parts of society.

capitalism also causing more and more storms and worse storms

That’s a good point, filthy

To say that those deaths were "caused" by capitalism is too strong I think. I doubt that capitalism is either a necessary or a sufficient cause. Mostly it's just too simplistic.

But I would agree that the way our society is structured contributed pretty substantially to the outcome. I think there's more to that story than just wealth-distribution-as-a-result-of-capitalism though. Like it's significant that Puerto Ricans are not generally perceived as being white, and that it's not a US state. And of course I also accept that there is a relationship between capitalism as a political-economic system and the specific historical processes related to racism and colonialism which are important to those other aspects, but I don't think that would justify collapsing the distinctions between all of them.

So if you point to events like this and say "there are problems here exacerbated by capitalism" then I think that's fair, and worth thinking about. But I think "capitalism caused this" (implying that absent capitalism it would or could not have occurred) then I'm skeptical.

Sure. I don’t think this substantially alters the meaning of the way I phrased it tbh. Just goes into more detail.

And yes, the fact that Puerto Rican’s are not seen as white and that it’s not a state is almost purely an outcome of capitalism.

That would be fine, and an excellent and nuanced discussion to have ...

which I'm utterly certain birdman is incapable of having, so in short, I prefer "lol no".

I know I have posted it before but I like this quote and I think it is relevant here.

I'm genuinely curious how "communism" would have solved the problem of allocating resources in a natural disaster situation, either one with limited prior notice (e.g. a hurricane), or with no notice at all (e.g. an earthquake), in a way that "capitalism" wouldn't.

I’m not even sure I understand the language of “problems exacerbated by capitalism”. Like let’s set aside the idea that global warming caused by capitalism is like partially responsible for the existence and severity of these storms. So I’ll say “hurricane” is independent of capitalism.

Beyond that I don’t know what exacerbated applies to. The resources exist to literally move every person in Puerto Rico out of the path of the storm to a safe location until such a time as their homes can be made livable again. But we didn’t do that. Blame for any death we can attribute to the storm (by the logic used in the article that people itt seem to think is accurate) then falls on the society that chose not to use resources to save those lives when it could.

“Exacerbate” doesn’t seem like the right word.

I’m not sure if it was the same specific storm, but I know when a recent hurricane was going to hit Cuba, they relocated close to a million people away from areas of danger and ended up having zero casualties while many other islands in the carribean suffered heavy casualties.

I even posted about it itt. Is that what you mean?

Obviously. The hurricane just wanted to make some of that paper.

You have a genuine plan to move approximately 3.3 million people off the entire island of Puerto Rico (and never mind all the other islands that were in the potential path) in about 96 hours?

I'd love to hear this.

Actually I may be wrong, I think they did have a few people die but it was very low.

Are you saying that progress only exists with capitalism? Without capitalism, pollution levels would be lower... is that because we would be better at controlling pollution, or because we had advanced less than our capitalist counterparts?

This is a pretty good article that explains some of the things Cuba does differently than any capitalist country when it comes to hurricane preparation:

https://cubaexplorer.com/hurricane-irma-cuba-reports/

Probably explains why, according to the article, you are 15x more likely to die from a hurricane in the US than in Cuba

Without capitalism we would be better at controlling our pollution. They have already done scientific studies that say that the US could be 100% green energy and that the only obstacle to that is “political”.

Perhaps fossil fuel companies funding anti-global-warming-awareness intiatives for decades contributes to that somewhat?