I'd choose to be the powerful and rich industrial country every single time. If I had a button that would wipe out the entire Amazon jungle and replace it with a world class high technology industry, I wouldn't even think twice before pressing it. Clean water to swim in? Build a pool.
Frankly, any deindustrialized country is quite simply irrelevant. You need industry to have a middle class. You need middle class for capitalist consumption. There's a reason why american corporations kowtow to China now. The USA thought it could deindustrialize and act as the world's boss. China is proving them wrong via relentless industrialization. I only wish my own country had the balls to do the same.
> If I had a button that would wipe out the entire Amazon jungle and replace it with a world class high technology industry, I wouldn't even think twice before pressing it.
I used to think this way, but I've come to realize that it's very short-sighted. It's not sustainable, and we're already seeing how unchecked industrialization over the last couple centuries is leading to unintended/undesirable effects on our health, and indeed the suitability of the environment we need to live in. Sure, those problems can be pushed onto future generations, and so far (maybe) we've been able to solve them. But if we care at all about humanity's ability to thrive, we need to be more careful.
In developed countries, nobody has to struggle anymore just to stay alive, which is a far cry from the way it was 200 years ago. Advancements now are along the lines of increasing entertainment, or quality of life. But enjoying a good life doesn't have to be a zero-sum proposition, and I think society should put a higher cost on the ability of wealthy people to use up irreplaceable natural resources for their own benefit.
> It's not sustainable
You know what's not sustainable? Exponential growth fueled by credit.
Banks loaning money at nearly zero percent interest. Money that gets loaned out, spent, deposited back into the bank and loaned out again, and again, exponentially, until a ludicrously huge financial callstack is created.
This financial callstack wants to unwind. It can only do so safely by the payment of debts. At some point, someone will actually have to go out there and extract value out of this planet in order to pay back those debts. Since debt grows exponentially, so does the harvesting of the resources of this planet.
If you want to solve the problem, you need to go to the source. You need to get rid of credit. Without this, environmentalism is nothing but national suicide. You're opting out of exponential growth and promptly outcompeted by the countries that didn't opt out.
> In developed countries, nobody has to struggle anymore just to stay alive, which is a far cry from the way it was 200 years ago.
Yeah... Because they industrialized and got filthy rich. Now they can afford to give so called "rights" to their citizens.
Rights cost money. They don't appear out of thin air. Somebody's gotta work to provide them. Even the right to not get killed in broad daylight only exists because extremely violent men with guns are protecting the rest. Those men gotta be paid.
Money is not infinite. It runs out. The music can't stop. Gotta keep making money in order to keep providing all those nifty rights. The simple reality is if you don't have real industries you're probably not making that much money. My country is essentially the world's soy farm, nvidia stock alone probably moves more money in a day than my entire country put together.
Look at the national debts of countries the world over. That's money they don't have. Money future generations will be paying interest on for a long time. You want to get reelected but you're broke, so you borrow money you don't have and spend it all giving "benefits" to a population that is dumb enough to think it comes for free. Then there's so much money circulating the value of the currency is inflated away, and people's children grow up and get radicalized when they realize most of their taxes are spent on interest payments on loans made by the previous generation.
> At some point, someone will actually have to go out there and extract value out of this planet in order to pay back those debts.
Not a single atom on the planet has to be moved to extinguish all debts. Money and debt are (very useful and powerful!) bookkeeping constructs only.
> Look at the national debts of countries the world over. That's money they don't have.
Then who has it? Modern money is based on debt, and where there's a debt, there must be a creditor.
> Banks loaning money at nearly zero percent interest. Money that gets loaned out, spent, deposited back into the bank and loaned out again [...] Money is not infinite.
You seem to be basing your argument on some seriously outdated and thoroughly refuted models of money.
> Not a single atom on the planet has to be moved to extinguish all debts.
You should elaborate more on this bold claim.
> Then who has it?
Plenty of people. Treasury bonds holders. Pension funds. Insurance companies. Other countries. The government owes all of those people and regularly pays them interest.
> You seem to be basing your argument on some seriously outdated and thoroughly refuted models of money.
Fractional reserve banking is outdated and refuted?
> If I had a button that would wipe out the entire Amazon jungle and replace it with a world class high technology industry, I wouldn't even think twice before pressing it.
Wow. Why, because the Amazon is just a bunch of trees or something boring? If "high technology industry" is so much more valuable without even thinking twice about it, you probably don't understand very much of the world.
I understand. I just don't care. I'd rather my country got rich and powerful instead. Would be nice to industrialize and keep the Amazon but I'd totally sacrifice it if needed. It's home to huge rare earths reserves.
> Build a pool.
How does this work without water?
The Earth has a functionally infinite amount of water. If it's dirty, clean it.
That's not how it works. Transporting water from a different location will be an extra cost. Cleaning will be an extra cost. And cleaning is also not perfect. Those who will need water, are usually not those who can afford all this. So at the end you are just moving the problems to someone else, out of greed and ignorance.
Not a problem. Countries should get rich first, then they can afford all of those costs and have money to spare.
We've been building canals for thousands of years.
California has droughts, but never water shortages.
Depends on the usage. According to news, there were water shortages in the past in California. Though, we are not talking just about California here.
The only shortages are for farmers, and a few isolated and very poor towns.
IMO, the (existing) towns should get more state support to have affordable safe domestic water. The shortage is not raw untreated water, but just transporting it and treating it.
The farmers? I sympathize, but they are trying to grow crops in an extremely fertile but arid valley. It's going to be constrained by the natural environment.
Municipal water usage in California is only 20% of all water usage. The rest is almost entirely agriculture, and all that agriculture uses a strange system of water rights where you do not have to reduce consumption during a drought, and the last person in line instead absorbs all the drought problems.
This creates an insane political environment where the rich as fuck agribusiness which owns that final water right is incentivized to get that tiny municipal water usage reduced as much as possible to squeeze out a tiny bit more water for their own business, rather than reform the dumb water rights system which would ensure that they only shoulder a tiny tiny portion of drought scarcity but probably force them to pay a little bit for irrigation improvements or stop growing almonds as cheaply.
The only reason the rest of the country even knows about the California water situation is because those bottom rung agribusinesses are still wealthy as all fuck and have actively paid for national political campaigns
Most municipalities get their water out of the same system, it's just they need so much less so they get by. Also, of the 20% that used by urban water systems, 50% is for outdoor irrigation.
The definitive book on the subject is "Cadillac Desert"
> Clean water to swim in? Build a pool.
Where do you find clean water to fill the pool with?
> You need industry to have a middle class.
Your average industrial assembly-line worker is _not_ middle class. They are horrible jobs no-one really wants back, or at least not for themselves.
It is very much possible to keep your air and environment clean, and still reasonably grow and remain relevant - look at France.
> You need middle class for capitalist consumption.
Again, industry workers were not middle class, and if you pay them enough to be middle class, your product's price stops being competitive.
To have middle class for capitalist consumption, you need to stop funneling literally _all the money_ to single-digit amount of people and companies, leaving everyone else poor, regardless of what they do for work.
> Your average industrial assembly-line worker is _not_ middle class. They are horrible jobs no-one really wants back, or at least not for themselves.
That's incorrect. Factory work is a ramp from low to middle class. It's low skill on entry but teaches on the job. Long term employees are valuable because they have expertise on the process and are, therefore, more valuable.
Ask Detroit if they want the Auto Industry's manufacturing back.
> Where do you find clean water to fill the pool with?
The Earth is literally surrounded by water. I'm sure people will find a way. Treat the water if needed.
> if you pay them enough to be middle class, your product's price stops being competitive
Tell that to China's growing middle class, not me. We have western corporations shitting all over western values and culture and kowtowing before China and their censorship because they can't afford to lose the chinese market. That's where money is flowing now. It's one of the reasons why Trump wants to weaken the US dollar.