Economic growth is over, The world economy is already too big to ever become sustainable - the maximum size of a sustainable world economy is probably about half its current size. I’m talking about the real economy, of course, where real raw materials are extracted and refined, real products made, transported and used, real services provided, real energy harvested and used.
This is utterly incompatible with Capitalism, of course. Any type of economy driven by private property and market forces must either grow or collapse. Since any further growth is unsustainable, the Capitalist economy becomes a zero sum game in which one person’s gain is another person’s loss,, which in turn is the source for future conflicts over land and resources. If something is unsustainable, we eventually won’t be able to sustain it anymore, and then things get really ugly.
The easiest way out of this dilemma would be an ecosocialist world revolution. Yeah,, right. We’re probably fucked. Our current political systems are so utterly devoted to sustaining private property and finding merket “solutions” that any attempt to fundamentally change the way we humans live on this planet will be stopped at all cost, even if it costs us complex civilisation as a whole.
Thirteen years after its broadcast on The WB, Dycaite, founder of The Lost Media Wiki, tracked down Rapsittie Street Kids director Colin Slater, who demanded several payments of increasing amounts for a copy of the special, then ghosted the internet archivist partway through negotiations. Though Dycaite labeled the protracted and acrimonious process a “scam,” he successfully brokered a deal to obtain Slater’s copy of the film, and uploaded Rapsittie Street Kids to both Lost Media Wiki and Vimeo in full in 2015.
Dycaite’s discovery marked a new chapter in the special’s memetic afterlife, starting new rumors linking the film to conspiracies and scamming. There were theories — Slater had referenced Xenu in some of his old tweets, leading some to believe there was a Scientology connection — but as I discovered investigating the movie and speaking to eight cast and crew members, the real story behind Rapsittie Street Kids is something so convoluted that not even the internet could think it up. It’s the tale of two Long Island guys watching their dream turn into a nightmare, a software company’s bid to revolutionize the animation industry, and a bunch of talented artists stuck with a director looking to strike gold — and it’s all tied up with a Christmas bow.
honestly my favourite insight from this article was the confirmation that yes, the grandma’s performance was 100% intended this way. truly iconic.
“But the question is, Did John Brown fail? He certainly did fail to get out of Harpers Ferry before being beaten down by United States soldiers; he did fail to save his own life, and to lead a liberating army into the mountains of Virginia. But he did not go to Harpers Ferry to save his life.
“The true question is, Did John Brown draw his sword against slavery and thereby lose his life in vain? And to this I answer ten thousand times, No! No man fails, or can fail, who so grandly gives himself and all he has to a righteous cause. No man, who in his hour of extremest need, when on his way to meet an ignominious death, could so forget himself as to stop and kiss a little child, one of the hated race for whom he was about to die, could by any possibility fail.”
Frederick Douglass, 30 May 1881, oration on the fourteenth anniversary of the raid on Harpers Ferry
