Skyhilist
24th June 2013, 17:18
Let me explain what I mean by "environmentally risky". What I mean is resources where it's not an issue of "is there enough of this for everybody to have free access to it", but rather is an issue of "if we use too much of this resource it could have damning environmental consequences."
Lets take rare earth metals, for example. We all use them in our electronics, and they're a very important resource. How, if every single person on earth had access to say certain high-tech devices that use a lot of these metals, the environmental impact of mining would increase exponentially (because electronics are things that people tend to want). So maybe for some electronics there would be enough of them for everyone to have free access "according to need", but doing that would be ecologically harmful. This is only one example, so if you spot small flaws in this one example, please don't spend an entire response pointing it out because that's not the point.
My point is that, communism states that everyone who contributes gets everything according to his/her "need", which generally relates to what people want (e.g. electronics). But with some things, just giving them away to every worker might have very damning environmental consequences. So how would this be prevented without restricting access to certain items to an elite group of people?
I imagine new technology will help alleviate this burden (e.g. if electronics could be made with more recycled materials and no rare earth metals in the future), but it seems that such problems would, at least sometimes, would still occur.
So what are some solutions to this?
Personally, here's what I was thinking. Every worker has access to, say, X number of items that are labelled as of special concern to the environment... and to consume these items they must do something to reduce their environmental footprint so as to not have a net negative effect (e.g. being more carbon neutral). The authority of environmental scientists would be voluntarily deferred to in order to collectively make decisions about which items would require this. Would this be compatible with communism still since it's somewhat restricting access? I mean, something has to be done in situations like these. Sustainability isn't really possible if enough workers demand numerous computers, TVs, etc.
Your thoughts?
Lets take rare earth metals, for example. We all use them in our electronics, and they're a very important resource. How, if every single person on earth had access to say certain high-tech devices that use a lot of these metals, the environmental impact of mining would increase exponentially (because electronics are things that people tend to want). So maybe for some electronics there would be enough of them for everyone to have free access "according to need", but doing that would be ecologically harmful. This is only one example, so if you spot small flaws in this one example, please don't spend an entire response pointing it out because that's not the point.
My point is that, communism states that everyone who contributes gets everything according to his/her "need", which generally relates to what people want (e.g. electronics). But with some things, just giving them away to every worker might have very damning environmental consequences. So how would this be prevented without restricting access to certain items to an elite group of people?
I imagine new technology will help alleviate this burden (e.g. if electronics could be made with more recycled materials and no rare earth metals in the future), but it seems that such problems would, at least sometimes, would still occur.
So what are some solutions to this?
Personally, here's what I was thinking. Every worker has access to, say, X number of items that are labelled as of special concern to the environment... and to consume these items they must do something to reduce their environmental footprint so as to not have a net negative effect (e.g. being more carbon neutral). The authority of environmental scientists would be voluntarily deferred to in order to collectively make decisions about which items would require this. Would this be compatible with communism still since it's somewhat restricting access? I mean, something has to be done in situations like these. Sustainability isn't really possible if enough workers demand numerous computers, TVs, etc.
Your thoughts?