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What do you guys think of the reddit alternatives?
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You are treating advancement like it is a neutral force of nature, but it is really just driven by the need to keep growing. You say we can be efficient without excess, but that ignores how efficiency actually works in the real world. When we figure out how to use a resource more efficiently, we do not use less of it overall. We just consume more because it becomes cheaper. Making green tech more efficient does not hit the brakes on the machine. It just gives the system a cheaper, greener excuse to expand mining and infrastructure.
You assume a socialist state will just choose to stop producing once it is efficient enough, but the whole logic of advancement requires endless expansion. If the socialist state keeps up the project of endless industrial growth just with a red flag over the factories, the planet still burns. The relentless drive for more production caused the ecological crisis in the first place. Doing it faster and greener is not the cure. You cannot run an infinite growth engine on a finite planet and expect it to voluntarily stop. The climate does not care if the bulldozer destroying the forest is owned by a billionaire or a workers' collective. Believing that efficiency will magically solve overconsumption without us fundamentally changing our relationship to consumption is just wishful thinking.
I think you're confusing the profit motive with development. Accumulation of capital is what drives endless expansion and overconsumption. Socialism is necessary to stop that cycle, as rather than profit, suiting the needs of humanity becomes the goal.
You say that shifting from profit to human need stops the cycle of endless expansion, but I think you are underestimating how elastic "human needs" actually are. Under an industrial socialist system, if the state decides that everyone needs an electric car, a modern apartment, and global supply chains for fresh produce year-round, the expansion continues. The motive changes, but the physical extraction stays the same.
To build all that green infrastructure to meet those needs, you still have to mine lithium, cobalt, and rare earth metals on a massive scale. Those mines still destroy ecosystems and pollute water, whether the workers or capitalists own them. Profit does not physically dig the holes in the earth. Machines and labor do that. Changing the reason we dig the hole does not stop the hole from destroying the local environment.
The core issue is that you are replacing the profit motive with a productivist motive. You are assuming that as long as we are producing for need instead of profit, we can keep expanding production indefinitely. But the planet has hard physical limits. A truly socialist system has to recognize those limits and intentionally restrict what we consume, not just change who is doing the consuming. If your version of socialism just promises more stuff for everyone, you are still running an infinite growth engine on a finite planet.