• EDITED on 10/14/24 for content and style*

The current economic order runs on the "profit motive"; markets do things in the pursuit of the elusive profit,sometimes even the mere rumor of profit(see tech corps that spend decades living on external investments to survive).

Even a child can see why this is a bad idea; without profit, or at least a reasonable belief that profit is possible, the market has no interest in being involved. People with no money, for example, aren't served by the modern supply chain without some kind of external intervention. Walmart, predicated on profit, has no business interest in addressing food insecurity. Asking it's customers to donate money to various charities, while it itself is the largest non-state economy on the planet, is a profit-neutral activity. Or at least a small enough expenditure that it can be offset by adjusting prices at a small enough increment that the consumer is unaware.

This forces an uncomfortable ontological reality onto billions of people; without money, you don't exist in the modern world. Starving children have no recourse in capitalism without relying on charity or "development" (a topic deserving of it's own discussion).

Or the fact that the trillion dollar petro industrial complex works tirelessy to keep fossil fuels cheaper than renewables, despite the well established connection between their products and the ongoing destablisation of the climate. Sometimes while also being subsidized by the state. the negative consequences of their actions are irrelevant if their are economic benefits to be reaped. The only recourse is a kind af economic transducer that turns non-monetary costs (or "negative externalities" as economics nerds call it) into a form that will negatively impact profits. Things like carbon taxes or cap and trade. this, unfortunately, often simply means higher costs for consumers rather than a reduction in emissions. And since these are external regulations imposed by the state rather than innate elements of the market, they are easily repealed by non-interventionist politicians (often funded by the very industries they should be regulating).

It is clear that the market has been thus far unable to address these "negative externalities" in a timely manner to prevent the ongoing climate disaster. it is either an ontological impossibility, in the free-market model, or is prevented by the entities most enriched by the economic order in the interventionist model. We are hamstrung in every way by our refusal to opperate outside the capitalist economy to prevent an existential threat to the entire biosphere.

A world in search of economic profit is not a world compatible with life.