On Jan 25, 2026, at 11:35, David Walters via groups.io <[email protected]> wrote: > > I'm glad Mark returned to this discussion. I find it endlessly fascinating.
Thanks David > > Generally I don't agree with Mark's solutions to the problem of > overproduction/commodity production, etc...mostly because he doesn't offer an > alternatives. I agree with a lot of the facts around pollution and climate > change he raises, not just in this recent post, but in past ones as well. Our default alternative is the planned production of use values. There may be other alternatives and actions such as the reduction of the workweek. > > I find it strange to use the analogy of building highways to exemplify the > problem of the expansion of the suburbs into "farmland". Suburbs expand into > ALL land, I didn't mean to say all highways cut across farmland. Some go through deserts. My point is that miles driven has increased from 0.7 trillion miles-driven per year in 1960 to 2.8 trillion miles in 2000 (I have attached to this note a graph from https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/11535/chapter/4#41). Automobiles in the USA are the greatest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. That growth is strongly correlated, I'd say caused, by the growth of suburbs and exurbs. It is a fantasy solution to getting everyone drive electric cars, as if this rapid replacement of cars, electrical grid, and other infrastructure won't push us over the 1.5 degree centigrade threshold - the threshold when humans lose control of runaway global warming. > mot may of been farmland at one time other another but isn't today, not east > of the Mississippi River, anyway. So why strange? Because the state (there > are almost no private highways built in the U.S. Some, by probably <1%. > Someone else can look that up) doesn't really build that many highways. The US housing industry was invented by Herbert Hoover in the 1920s. He brought banks, real-estate, and construction companies together and developed federal legislation to build a profit engine of home building for the next century. It doesn't matter who builds the highways, this building is a capitalist enterprise that was architected by our greatest capitalist statesmen; the US President who watched helplessly as US capitalism collapsed after 1929 on his watch. ... > > > So, Mark, what is to be done? What politically do you think is needed to stem > the kind development you point out is so detrimental to our species? In the context of what we are discussing, we would produce housing as use value rather than exchange value. The long-term solution to rapidly-growing homelessness in the US is for the state to buy apartments near public transportation and rent apartments at the cost of maintenance and replacement rather than to pay off the building loan. This will have the effect of pulling down rents in the neighborhoods where these apartments operate. > > I will address Mark's point about developing/poor countries a bit more in > detail than his one liner. > > Lastly, no, the expansion/freeing of the productive forces and the > explanation for this is detailed on Engels 1880 Socialism: Utopian and > Scientific. Almost all of Chapter 3 deals with this question. It is not > relegate to one line in Marx's 1859 Preface to a Critique of Political > Economy. I want to review the dozen or so email messages that were exchanged on this topic last year. Mark -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40375): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40375 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117439078/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
