My use of China as an example was not meant to show that capitalism is superior to communism when it comes to environmental sustainability, it was to disprove the idea that magically turning everyone communist would solve global warming. And China isn’t really communist in a pure form anymore and hasn’t been for decades so it’s a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to this discussion because it’s really just a different flavor of mixed economy at this point

The reasons to ignore Cuba when talking about environmental sustainability is that their economy is heavily influenced by both the long history of sanctions and the dominant drivers of their economy being fundamentally different than the makeup of the global economy which makes an apples to apples comparison fairly futile. Larger economies tend to more closely approximate the global economy (in large part because they are a bigger part of it) and they also have a much larger impact on it due to their size, so while treating China as representative of all communist countries is less than ideal it’s certainly closer to correct than giving it equal weight with Cuba

Finally - I am not suggesting that we should ignore the difficulties involved in industrialization and modernization when it comes to environmental impacts, but I believe that correctly and fully dealing with those historical discrepancies requires a far broader effort towards global economic parity than is remotely possible in our current world, and fully explaining that would require me to get deep into a whole bunch of other issues like nationalism and globalization and the differences between what I think would be ideal versus what I think has the best chance of “succeeding” in practice

I like my dog. I usually only scowl at her like 50% of the time.

Honestly, though, I cloak isn't a bad idea...

Why do you think this was something that needed disproving?

Why or how do you think it is that things like the Paris accord/Kyoto agreement have come about? Is it your argument that the ruling class has not embraced climate change?

First off I care less about the absolute GDP than the rate of growth in this context, but I feel that it means that historically communist economies have tended to grow more slowly as a whole than comparable capitalist economies. This means that in order to justify a communist economy as superior you are necessarily making a value trade off by saying that certain other benefits of a communist economy are more important than the value of GDP growth. I happen to agree with that, but it’s not a provable or disprovable fact, it’s a value judgment

The bourgeoisie absolutely knows global warming is happening and that it is caused by human activity. The calculus for them is different than for most of us for a few reasons

1) they care about how it affects their money (businesses, economies, etc)
2) they have a ton of money and resources so will be able to protect themselves against the effects for a while

Because if you disprove that to start, you can then start to talk about the specific things within communist and capitalist economies that contribute to global warming and environmental degradation, instead of using the system itself as a stand in for those specific aspects

I should also note that every economy in the world currently is a mixed economy in practice, it’s just a question of how mixed and the specific ways in which they are socialist versus capitalist

And I expect birdman considers that portrayal flattering

The point of all this is to say that many of these things do actually involve value judgments and are not simple questions of right versus wrong or true versus false. Calling out non-factual bull**** “opinions” that are actually just willful ignorance is important, but when you take it too far and assign truth value to things that are actually value judgments is when you actually work against the cause of advancing truth by equating differences of opinion with ignorance of facts

The idea of a "mixed economy" is not a real thing. Either the bourgeoisie still own the means of production or they do not.

And yes, I would say to at least one of the previously mentioned topics (Abortion) that there is a legitimate difference of opinion based on a value judgment. It doesn’t mean I think both sides of the debate are equal but it does mean that if someone has a different opinion than I do about it they aren’t being “anti-fact” by saying so - they just have values that I don’t share and that I consider to be inferior to my own (if I didn’t I would share them)

So then China is a capitalist country in your mind?

First off, I do not think anyone itt was saying that magically turning people communist would solve global warming. I do not even think "communism" in and of itself would solve global warming. What is true is that capitalism will not be able to prevent environmental destruction. Period. So the point is not to say "hey we just need communism and then the environment will be fixed". It is to say "hey we need communism so we can then go about the process of stopping the destruction of the environment and slowly changing human behavior to keep the species alive".

It is an oversimplification to think of capitalism and communism as switches you can just turn on and off, or even to think that global warming is just something you can "solve". It is something that is going to take decades of concerted effort, but it will never happen as long as we have capitalism.

no, I don't think so

I get the idea of value judgements. And in those situations I will criticize people's values. But in the case we were discussing I do not think it was a matter of values. I would venture to say you and I share, relatively, the same values. In this case I genuinely believe it was a matter of ignorance.

Is the US a capitalist country in your mind?

Unequivocally

So then the Paris accord, while still promoted by the ruling class, was a positive step?

This is your belief? It seems like there should be some cognitive dissonance there.

The only countries that I would say are not capitalist are: China, Vietnam, Cuba, the DPRK, Laos,

There may be one or two I'm missing but that is pretty much it.

What is Venezuela?

Meh I think it is mostly a dog and pony show. Assuming it actually amounted to anything at all, it would be an approach to the global warming issue attenuated to the needs of the bourgeoisie.

VZ is tough. I would honestly have to study more of their history to give a firm answer. If someone insisted they were socialist I probably would put up too much of a fight. But I do not quite see them on the same way as a Cuba, for instance.

VZ is worth supporting either way though, because they are staunchly anti-imperialist, just like Syria.