Even very old capitalist owners think long term, because they think of the legacy they want to leave even if they don't have children. Otherwise they also don't want to ruin the asset for their children--do farmers ever trash their own farm in their last years? What the Greens don't understand is that corporations are very long-life entities. It is in their interest to think many decades into the future, and plan accordingly. In fact, bigger the corporation, ESPECIALLY those involved in energy, the more likely they will plan extremely long term, and they need to.

Dale Halling will love your comment, especially the last paragraph about "taking innovation into account.".

Busy writing my second novel. Almost done now, another day or two. As in, the first manuscript is done, needs me to proofread and edit a few times, then a professional copy editor.

I was a Greenie decades ago but saw it switch to religion and left.

Yes, any capitalist biz (i.e. no tax money funding or bailouts) first objective is to please the customer. Think Apple under Steve Jobs, no debt ever only equity investment.

Many people confuse capitalism with a quest for short term profits. Capitalism is just one of the systems for deciding who get's to determine how to use the assets generated by productivity.

One of the most common historical mechanisms was the Chief/King. When, under the leadership of the Chief, assets were accumulated, he got to decide what to do with them. The implicit presumption is that he had the abilities to do so. Since this role was typically hereditary, it counted on genetics which works -- until regression to the mean gets you or the situation changes requiring a different skill set.

There are also political means for deciding, either through democracy or communist type structures. This implies that the person who can get the most votes or the one who can rise to the top of the party is the one qualified to decide how to manage resources. This fails pretty quickly but remains popular.

Capitalism says that the person who made the wealth gets to decide what to do with it. This does not guarantee that they will decide wisely but it does mean that if they decide poorly they lose the power of decision relatively quickly.

Nothing in this implies that the person who makes the wealth should not think long term. I do have a problem with the word 'sustainable' because it typically fails to take innovation into account and assumes that you will always keep doing things the same way. Of course trashing the water is obviously bad and if you cut down trees you should plant more. But there are good capitalist reasons for doing both of those things.

Thank you. I joined over a year ago, but was "offline" for a few months..

Capitalism is like a chainsaw - powerfully constructive in the hands of people with intelligence and skill, and horrifically destructive and dangerous in the hands of idiots.

In the capitalism and environment debate, it's useful to reference New Zealand, a country with two major assets - a predominantly pasture-fed dairy industry with top breeding lines, and a stunning tourist-magnet environment.

The dairy industry is rapidly destroying the environment, to the point where most rivers, lakes and creeks are now too dangerously polluted to swim in. This is threatening the tourist industry. And now, the dairy industry is destroying itself, through farmers burning out their pastures through excessive herd densities and over-fertilisation, as well as selling off their top genetic breeding lines to overseas competitors. This form of capitalism is completely unsustainable, and will turn New Zealand into a third world country (or at least an impoverished post-Soviet-style state) within 10 years. KPMG produced a report in 2010 warning New Zealand about this; New Zealand ignored it in search of short term profits.

The Greens party here have embraced capitalism, but they do so from much longer term strategic timelines. They think: what decisions now will imbue our children's generation with greater business opportunities than we've had today? And from that perspective, environmental sustainability makes a ton of financial sense!

I wasn't aware of that that one - thanks! Most of all I like one of their FAQ: "•Why don’t you just kill yourself?" Unfortunately, their answer is not genuine - it goes into a diatribe, but the real answer is: "We will gladly consider it after everyone else kill themselves; Can we help you?"

Coincidentally, this time last year, I interviewed the Greenpeace co-founder turned whistle-blower.
http://www.thesavvystreet.com/greenpe...

"Greed is good," in the 80s movie speech [Wall Street], but it was meant as passion and even then the character is highly flawed.

The problem we have is that our history has been revised and confounded. Even those of us that went to school in the fifties and sixties learned it wrong. I would put this as a top priority to fix first. I wish we could put this article on a billboard or play a narrated version just under the rapping while those are skateboarding around. I laughing here, but this is a problem...so is the present level of consciousness, but that's my job here.

Interesting point about the word "Greed"; it seems greed was not always a bad thing, prior to the French connotation, it was a good thing and a resource to be counted upon when times got hard.

His predecessor - a politics PhD - stayed the course throughout his tenure, and doubled the Greens vote. He made some enemies amongst the dreadlocks sandal muncher set, but lifted his party to #3, and into a kingmaker position.

And the biggest reason nobody believes that narrative is people like Trump telling the world that what they practice is Capitalism.

How long before he bails, like the founder of Greenpeace did?

Here's another one (just a 1-minute video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gLG6...

That VHEMT site is just pure naked evil. But yes, that's pure 100% Green-ism.

It's very easy to drift from Green ideology to something more like this: http://www.vhemt.org/

Many thanks. There will be much more in the New Year..

In Australia, the Greens are extreme Marxists, and full on peddlers, not only of a false climate science narrative, but also of tribal anti-industrial and anti-civilization paradigms.

"Capitalism wastes nothing"---lovely phrase, thank you.

For some reason, just on this article, there was this issue for an hour when it was first published, but I have no idea why. Apologies.