Its a pity so many people have voted (as an example) for UK governments over so many years who’ve chosen to destroy their own industries. Cheapest has often been not proven best and inbuilt obsolescence or shoddily-made stuff guarantees paying more in the long run. Short term thinking will never stop until the world slows down and incorporates the rythms of all - including the elderly’s. But it has to learn, develop and believe in an attention span longer than a competive flea’s !
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You’re right of course Heinrike - but it’s no good complaining about short-termism without trying to change the forms of social organisation that underpin it. In fact demand it!
The fundamental legal/financial infrastructure of big business is probably the most egregious example. For most big business, company law almost forces the ‘maximising shareholder return’ interpretation on directors, but since for listed companies shareholders are unstable (their investments can move easily elsewhere) the returns have to be immediate. Nor would changing individual shareholders’ views necessarily change this: the same short-termism is built into the ethos, and often the regulation of investment funds - ie. most investment. It has many aspects, for example beyond investment, the legalities of directors’ duties and responsibilities, and limited liability, all tend to facilitate short-termism.
It’s worse in the anglo-saxon counties - here on the continent of Europe both in legal and in cultural terms there is more acknowledgement of big business’ social and environmental responsibility, for example of the interests of other stakeholders such as employees besides shareholders. But such provisions still need to go much further.
This is why - in my view - there is ultimately no difference between socialism and environmentalism: both require similar basic changes to the legal/financial environment for business and investment.
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If I had received a salary for the 30+ years I’ve spent recycling people’s waste, I would now have the money to spend it on sustainable goods and services, which I’ve always tried to support
The problem is, that wages for caring for the planet and people still don’t match up to a decent standard of living, so people don’t get to chose where we buy nececities from
If we want a sustainable future we have to have an end to poverty.
The only way is to stop voting for consumerist, monetarist policies
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Perhaps because they have never had the chance to vote for the alternative, and, as long as the present fraudulent voting system is in place, they never will have.