Freedom is meaningless. If freedom is the right to endlessly exploit Earth's resources at a rate of depletion contradictory to the sustainability of human life, freedom is not an option. The infinite growth paradigm is a flawed one. Wealth is not infinitely expandable in a closed system with non-renewable resources. Capitalism may have aided in bringing us a higher 'quality' of life but at what cost? We consume more per capita than ever before in history, we consume for the sake of consumption because it is necessary to perpetuate growth and consumption. Our growth as a civilization has been almost exclusively driven by capitalist exploitation of oil, so where does that leave us?
The exploitation of oil has been nearly the sole driver of technological and economic development in the last 100 years. Capitalism which necessarily maximizes production and consumption of commodities has done just that with oil. It has marched forward at the fastest possible rate of consumption. When will this rate slow, when will it stop? When the oil runs out. If our population grew to 7 billion on the consumption of oil, what does it mean for our population when the oil runs out? Imagine the reverse. Whether or not you think alternative energy will take its place, capitalism continues to fail in respect to sustainability and the environment.
Capitalism has no mechanisms within it for the preservation of resources, it is effective at consuming resources at the fastest rate possible because it necessarily consumes them at the fastest rate possible. The system cannot sustain itself without constant growth. This means the depletion of our oil, uranium, mass-deforestation, ecosystem destruction, over-fishing, run-away climate change and a whole host of other problems with no capitalist solutions. Capitalism is like a virus on the whole of humanity. It necessarily depletes our resources in order to reproduce and grow driving forward every moment toward our ultimate demise. The problem with this virus is it hasn't yet adapted to occupy a different host, so it drives to its own destruction just the same.
People will say communism and state-driven economies are no better, that the Soviet Union was as destructive as capitalist societies. First, this argument in itself doesn't justify the capitalist paradigm. Secondly, communists have thus far played in an unfair game. Because of the largely unfettered growth of capitalist societies, communists have had to play the state-driven growth game, consuming at rates similar but slightly short of capitalist societies in order to keep up and maintain their sovereignty.
So in conclusion, if freedom means to commit species suicide, the most counter-evolutionary act possible, then I want nothing to do with freedom. If freedom is the ability to grow to a destructive end and to consume for the sake of consuming, let freedom whither and die for I will not commit myself to the cause of species suicide. It may be better to burn out than fade away, but remember Neil Young followed that line with, "Once you're gone, you can't come back."
Capitalism is necessarily the most destructive, idiotic and ill-conceived economic system ever devised and our salvation as a species lies in one thing, conscious evolution. We must recognize that long-term survival depends on a no-growth, steady-state economy.
