Call it data prison. Once they get your files, they don't give them out, hold them hostage for a fee you pay.
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
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You can just call it capitalism. Almost every problem with everything listed is actually a capitalism problem not something inherent to itself.
the inherent problem with capitalism is that people strive for something. the moment that you want your situation to be B instead of A, you are unhappy (with A). that is how ambition inherently creates unhappiness. there is nothing you can do about it. only way to solve this would be to never strive for anything, but that's not gonna happen for the vast majority of people.
and the same also goes for larger macroeconomic situations. if you want to have a nice boat, you gotta chop down some trees for wood. so you're sacrificing a part of the peace of the landscape, for your ambitions. even if it's the ambition of a whole country. you're still sacrificing something.
All of those existed way before capitalism. Except the ones that require technology more advanced than what they had available.
And several of them were/are issues in "non-capitalist" countries like the USSR and China. (Though, to be fair, those are still state capitalist.)
So when was "before capitalism"?
Capitalism started when some no-nobles started having more power than (some) nobles. Meaning that the power balance shifted from nobles to capitalists. Which happened around (because of) the industrial revolution.
All of these undoubtedly existed before the industrial revolution: war, monoculture farming, clear cutting forests, building on floodplains, development that destroys habitats.
These were impossible before the industrial revolution for technological reasons: space tourism, deep sea mining.
This is impossible without capitalism for semantic reasons: corporations bulldozing ecosystems for endless "growth". Before capitalism, it wasn't corporations, and it wasn't done with a bulldozer. But kingdoms did "bulldoze" ecosystems. And communist countries did bulldoze ecosystems too.
Golf, lawns: these are harder to prove and I don't care enough to do the research. Golf probably couldn't be done before industrial revolution, but maybe a primitive version of golf could be played.
So at most, the tweet might be right in the best of cases about golf and lawns. Which would make for a much more boring tweet.
But.... But.... Number must go up!
Thank you! So many AI bros keep going "then why aren't you against xyz?" And I'm like, I am? I can actually have a consistent moral framework?
Monoculture farming is pretty much the only thing that's keeping billions upon billions from starvation and is pretty much the foundation of society.
There's also not that much wrong with it. You can absolutely do modern farming sustainably, it's just many don't. So, like all companies, farmers need to be forced to do the right thing.
Also, the Netherlands is basically a giant floodplane, and wetre all fine. It's not our fault other places have a skill issue.
There’s also not that much wrong with it. You can absolutely do modern farming sustainably, it’s just many don’t.
uh, i like the example of the Kansas aquifer. It's basically a whole lot of water that has been stored deep underground for thousands of years.
It is slowly being depleted. The reason is the center-pivot irrigation farming that produces food, and depletes water. The water is basically non-renewable on human timescales.
It will probably take another 100 years at the current extraction rate until the aquifer is completely dried up. So, it's not sustainable.
And yet i'm fine with this. Because we probably won't be around in 100 years anymore to actually worry about the water supply in the midwest. human population will shrink and we'll be able to live within the renewable bounds by then. So, it is unsustainable (since we cannot do this forever), but also we won't need to do this forever. So it's fine enough.
the Netherlands is basically a giant floodplane, and wetre all fine.
...so far.
What with climate change, larger storms, and sea level rise, though ... might get a bit more spicy in the times to come.
Well, turns out that you can actually prepare for that, since we know it's coming. Upgrading the flood defenses started decades ago.
River floods are much more risky than sealevel rise, since Germany is lagging hugely with providing water retention for the rivers, and getting people to move out of the way is kinda complex in such a densely populated country.
While some of the feats of large scale agriculture seem impressive, the fossil fuel industry and those who sell the machinery seem to have inflated the numbers quite a lot.
Biodiverse landscapes grow a higher density of food with fewer pesticides and herbicides, and better soil health and water retention in the long term. The problem: you need those pesky people to maintain and harvest complex biodiverse systems, and they want livable wages! Best call them savages and uncivilized, drive them away in the name of progess and force everyone to use your machines, fertilizer, pesticides, machinery and fuels.
The problem: you need those pesky people to maintain and harvest complex biodiverse systems, and they want livable wages! Best call them savages and uncivilized, drive them away in the name of progess and force everyone to use your machines, fertilizer, pesticides, machinery and fuels.
Yeah, you can pretty much only do polyculture by hand, that's true. Are you suggesting we go back to unmechanized farming?
That would be super great for the planet, as it would cause the deaths by starvation of roughly 90% of the population, with the majority of the remaining humans forced into subsistence farming.
Neither corpses not subsistence farmers would cause much pollution. It might be somewhat hard to get volunteers for it though.
On the other hand, you can absolutely maintain a biodiverse landscape AND use mechanized monoculture fields. You just need to give nature time and space too, and that's something most farmers refuse to do. Which is why they should be forced to. I don't see why a factory gets banned from destroying biodiversity, but it's fine when farmers do it.
give nature time and space
That's what a biodiverse landscape does? I didn't say unmechanized - but there's a difference between running giant machines over 200ha of the same and running a small tractor over a 2ha field. For the landscape it makes all the difference: having 2ha of one thing, then a hedge (that can contain edible fruits and berries), then something else, maybe have pasture with nut and chestnut on it, instead of just pasture.
Even in a small vegetable garden planting different plants together is so much easier. Higher plants give shade to smaller ones, aromatic ones protect pest-endangered ones ... recreating an actual ecosystem is the real deal.
Todays' rural areas are empty of people. They were bought out by those people who consented to being enslaved by the machine and fuel complex. The ones who were forced to leave had to become wage slaves in the cities. The ones who run the system now don't even want to touch the soil anymore! They just send a fucking drone to analyze where to dump how much of their chemicals. It's not a sustainable way of managing soil and water.
That's what a biodiverse landscape does? I didn't say unmechanized - but there's a difference between running giant machines over 200ha of the same and running a small tractor over a 2ha field. For the landscape it makes all the difference: having 2ha of one thing, then a hedge (that can contain edible fruits and berries), then something else, maybe have pasture with nut and chestnut on it, instead of just pasture.
I agree entirely, with pretty much everything you posted, but that's still monoculture. One crop per field, only much more ecologically friendly.
But hey, we all are going hard right in the Benelux, so in a decade you guys will probably have to pay some private equity company a monthly subscription for them to hold the dikes closed for you lol. Or maybe they will just be so fucked and non-maintained through privatization that the will all fail anyway because it isn't profitable enough
Yeah, but don't worry, maybe if we vote for the VVD even harder, it'll be different next time
Lawns are fine. Having lawns and nothing else is a problem. Filling your lawn with chemicals is a problem. Most people I know who have lawns don't do that. They also have rich borders and beds and planters and wild areas. I post a different pic everyday here of bugs I find in my garden; the grass and clover and soil itself is full of life. Most people need an open space to play or entertain or whatever, and a lawn - though not a wildflower meadow - beats decking or concrete.
Lawns are fine.
They really aren't. Even without the chemicals, they're still incredibly water-hungry and require intensive irrigation in most climates. And even if you have some garden beds around the edges, the lawn itself is still mostly an ecological dead zone when it comes to biodiversity and habitat. Not to mention that it also requires a lot of work (often assisted by fossil-fuel-powered machinery) to maintain.
And all just for aesthetics? Or -- at most -- used as a dog bathroom? Lawns are still incredibly wasteful, even in the most ideal circumstances.
Strong disagree for all aforesaid reasons. I'd say we're likely talking about different types of lawns when it comes down to it. Most lawns I know are a damp green rectangle that grows whether you want it to or not. It’s not an ecological villain. It’s just grass and 'weeds'.And culturally, British gardens have always mixed lawns with borders, hedges, trees, and beds. I've no doubt perfect lawns are sterile and water hungry but that's the extreme, and most aren't that. They're a space that people use. An outside room.
Edit: disregard this comment, I mistranslated lawn in to garden/backyard, i am not native english
Filling your lawn with chemicals is a problem
~~Nile~~ Mr. Green sweating in the corner
most lawns are monoculture, water hungry and non native
the native focused setups being the few alternatives but those are not really lawns
I don't think your first statement is true. Most people I know or places I've lived in or been have a mixed, lived‑in garden where the lawn is one component of a wider ecosystem. Most don't look like the green on a golf course.
A lawn with clover, moss, daisies, micro‑wild patches, little plants I can't even name that drift in on the wind, and healthy soil full of ants and worms and beetles and spiders and things I need to photograph and identify is not a monoculture. It’s a low meadow kept short that hosts plenty of life.
Go take a look in any real garden or lawn for 10 minutes. You'll find life.
this is just based off of info i’ve read on the internet so i can’t say i’ve tested it myself but most ‘nice’ lawns i’ve seen with people i’ve actually talked with do at least weekly watering outside of normal rainfall
i know for a fact none of the lawns here are native because this area used to be a swamp
as to the mono culture all the lawns here are even, maybe two types of grass sometimes
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1618866724002589
I water my lawn once or twice a week when it's dry. Nothing crazy, just a misting for 10-15 mins. I don't think it's wasting water to help an ecosystem blossom. The vast majority of grass seed we see in the UK would be native grasses. Mine is mixed hardy horse paddock grass. Grows like wildfire, and the bugs love it.
I still think even monoculture grass lawn is a good middle ground between nothing living at all and a wildflower meadow or the like. Not everyone cares about the plants around them, but grass and soil beats concrete or bare earth.
Monoculture lawns create massive gaps for various bugs that can’t transverse those gaps to eat, hide, breed, lay eggs/reproduce, hibernate for winter - and that impacts all the other species up and down the chain, from birds to microbial life. Mono culture lawns also limit the fungal life, which limits microbial life. Both those being limited along with introducing gaps where there once were highways for life means species dwindle, and that causes other species of plants and animals to dwindle. It’s a fucking massacre of life just to be “fine”. That hardly seems reasonable and fine to me.
As I said, a monoculture lawn is better than concrete or bare earth. I'm by no means a fan. I agree with you that they're shit, but most I know simply aren't that at all. They're healthy and host a variety of life.
Nah, golf’s great.
Yeah, if you live in Scotland. Basically anywhere else and it's an ecodisaster wrapped in massive land wastage.
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