In my perfect society, capitalism operates in a way that is transparent. The only regulation would be that you would have to make your business ecological and humanitarian practices 100% public. Then people would actually know what they’re buying from source to shelf. I don’t think it would take long for people to leave companies that destroy human lives and the environment if they knew exactly who was doing what and to what scale. Right now, we are “blind” capitalists, which is hardly capitalism at all.
I think Eco-Socialism is a response to the current “capitalist” system, which is actually a form of corporatism, corporate socialism, or (like in the old days) people just called it good ol’ fashioned fascism. Corporate subsidies (also known as corporate welfare) are a huge part of the problem. Here’s as example:
Fishing boats overfished, but before they did, they became billion dollar companies. Now (because they overfished), they couldn’t make fishing profitable because costs to go further in the ocean, longer trips, more fuels, etc... caused the price of fish to skyrocket. If left alone, the companies would have failed, fishing would have slowed and the environment would have replenished itself. Instead, the government chose to subsidize the fishing companies, eating the costs on behalf of the fishing companies (remember, subsidies are like the most non-capitalist thing you can do). Thus allowed the companies to fish further away from their base, on bigger boats, overfishing even more!
Left to it’s own devices, capitalism MUST care about the environment at some point, because it eventually stops giving back (things stop being profitable) and it must slow down. We, however, do not live in a capitalist society, so to blame capitalism (when it’s actually a form of socialism) for destroying the planet is incorrect. Maybe?
