Bednarz says:: Mostly the enviroment and profit coexsist. A smart capitalist would not slash and burn rain forest as it only economical in the short run.
As one famous capitalist once said, "in the long run, we're all dead." Most capitalist producers choose short-term profit over long-term profit because short-term losses can mean bankruptcy, forcing the capitalist out of business NOW. Short-term profit, on the other hand, can keep a business alive until it can diversify. This, for instance, is why Hurwitz, the chair of Maxxam Inc., is planning to clearcut huge sections of Mendocino County in California -- to pay off junk bond debts acquired in prior Wall Street speculations. Another example of short-term profit compelling the clearcut of forests is the general destruction of the Cascades and the Olympics in Washington State, meant generally to keep Washington lumber industries alive in a business era when cheap Canadian lumber has flooded the market, depressing the price of wood and making the profit margin for the Americans in this business oh-so-small. So they clearcut, and overcut. I've observed the overcutting myself in my travels through the North Cascades. They put up a facade of ecologically sustainable cutting in the Forest Service offices, while slowly and systematically removing whole forests.
This link describes the operative concept, the "tragedy of the commons." Capitalists are likely to grab anything that is held in common, the air, the water, the ecology, the labor-power of the working class, etc., and exploit it until it is all gone. If an individual capitalist doesn't exploit the commons, other capitalists will do so.
The presumption of the above paragraph is that all of the individuals are playing the capitalist game. Playing the capitalist game also means playing the "tragedy of the commons" game. There's another game that has the same rules as the "tragedy of the commons" game, it's called "prisoner's dilemma." Read about it in the link I provided on this page.
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