1) Given the market economy requires consumption in order to maintain demand for human employment and further economic growth as needed, is there a structural incentive to reduce resource use, biodiversity loss, the global pollution footprint and hence assist the ever-increasing need for improved ecological sustainability in the world today?
Yes. It's the price. As resources get too used, and become scarce, their supply, and thus price, will go up. Things like cost of oil, gas, and other resources going up will make us look for cheaper alternatives, like solar, wind, nuclear, wave, and other more easily acquired, though less dense, sources of energy. Removing barriers to being able to bring lawsuits against companies that damage other's property (the environment those others live in), the barriers which are ironically instituted by regulations created by the environmental protection agencies meant to prevent pollution from happening in the first place, will help a lot too. (For example, we can't sue BP and Horizons for the oil spill, because they made a deal with the EPA that they will pay a relatively minor fine for the damage, as proscribed by prior environmental regulations and related punishments for damages, in exchange for protection against any future lawsuits by private entities).
Dude makes a blatant mistake here by claiming that the market "promotes and rewards infinite consumption." Yes, if we could consume infinitely, then the company creating that product would be able to make infinite products, but in the real world, real scarcity forces the market to look for alternatives when things we consume become more scarce. So, price of the scarce thing goes up, companies look for alternatives, jobs involved with the old consumption product die, jobs around a new product gets creates, and we move on to consuming something else. (Do note that, right now, mining out, refining, and burning oil is still much more efficient than mining materials for, creating, and using solar panels and batteries. We know this because one is much cheaper than the other, the price telling us how scarce and efficient each option is.
2) In an economic system where companies seek to limit their production costs (“cost efficiency”) in order to maximize profits and remain competitive against other producers, what structural incentive exists to keep human beings employed, in the wake of an emerging technological condition where the majority of jobs can now be done more cheaply and effectively by machine automation?
Human beings are able to perform much more diverse jobs than machines, and are much easier to teach complex tasks than computers. As long as this is true, we will still need human beings to perform jobs machines can't, OR perform jobs that machines are too expensive to use for. So the premise that "the majority of jobs can now be done more cheaply..." is false. Farming equipment can do the job much cheaper than human farmers, but we need humans to design, maintain, and operate it. Office software can create and manage documents and spreadsheets much faster and easier than dozens of humans with pencils, papers, and calculators, yet we need people to design and code this software, and know how to use it. Likewise, a fast food place that uses a burger making robot will not be able to compete with a fast food place where unskilled labor humans can be taught to make different types of burgers and other food items every few months. Robots are cheap only because they can make a lot of the same thing over and over, but the machines themselves are extremely expensive, so buying one of these pretty much locks you into producing a single type of item for a long time. And time is ALWAYS limited in our lives, so there will ALWAYS be something out there that we would rather hire someone else to do for us (clean house, walk dog, watch baby, cut lawn, etc.) The main limits are not machine automation making jobs obsolete, since that has been happening for centuries and has been creating more and more different jobs in the process. The main limits are the legal and regulatory limits to whom you can hire to do what and for how much.
So, to answer this question, the structural incentive is competition itself, driven by our need for things to be new, unique, and different, and by our ever scarce time, which means companies have to diversify and customize the products and services they can offer, and do it quicker, meaning those people who used to make shoes by hand, can now instead use those shoe-making robots to design a bigger variety of shoes, invent much more complex and technically advanced shoes, or make custom shoes that are very specific in design and function to each customer that orders them.
As for the "thinking machines" fear. we used to do all math on paper using nothing but pencils. Calculators came about, and instead of losing all our math skills to calculators, we simply used them as tools to make more complex math easier for everyone. Advanced calculators, and eventually computers came out, and instead of losing all our math jobs to computers, we are simply focusing on doing much more abstract math, such as calculating financial forecasts, mechanical loads on a construction design, or interaction of radio and magnetic fields for complex communications systems, at a MUCH higher and more complex level, letting computers do all the nitty gritty mathematics stuff. Even the much more advanced and involved stuff. This frees the financial analyst, bridge engineer, or communications systems designer, to focus on the larger picture and more abstract and complex designs, rather than have them slave in front of a paper and pencil, or even a calculator, for weeks for every single tiny change in their idea (changes that are now processed and results given for in seconds). These "scary" more and more complex thinking machines that are being shown as boogie men will simply keep making the job of thinking and processing data easier for us, just as calculators have improved on the abacus, and computers have improved on the calculator. So, for example, instead of losing your architectural design job to a thinking robot that can design architecture just as well as you could, you will work to come up with architectural concepts, like "Colonial mixed with Greek, X meters wide, Y meters deep, Z meters tall," the thinking robot will whip up the best design combination it can think up of, and you will spend your time tweaking to make sure it looks pleasing, unique, and functional, without having to recalculate every window and every load bearing wall's structural integrity.
By the way, side comment, his claim that "All it takes is 20% to 30% rate of unemployment to destabilize society into disorder and outrage" is complete and total bullshit. I won't even ask where he got that number from, but for the longest time women didn't even work, meaning that unemployment was near 50%. Right now, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000), 59% of the population in US is employed.
That means that, right now, in USA, about 40% of the population is unemployed. No "disorder and outrage" here. At least not yet.
3) In an economic system which inherently generates class stratification and overall inequity, how can the effects of “Structural Violence” - a phenomenon noted by public health researchers to kill well over 18 million a year, generating a vast range of systemic detriments such as behavioral, emotional and physical disorders – be minimized or even removed as an effect?
"Structural Violence" is a made up bullshit term for "some people are not skilled enough to produce and survive in this world as others." There is no answer to this one, because we are all different, and some people will simply be more skilled, more driven, and more clever to survive than others. Moreso, there SHOULDN'T be an answer, because this difference and competitiveness is what drives us to create, invent, and come up with ways to survive more efficiently in the first place. A business that is committing so-called "structural violence" on a group of people by producing a product those people are not able to produce more efficiently, DRIVES those people to invent a completely new product that itself will be more efficient, or more useful, than that business's product. Overcoming of "structural violence" is the key to progress, and will not happen without it. This is why the idea of everyone being taken care of, and everything anyone ever wants can be provided to them, is the idea of nothing changing, everyone sitting around being content and not doing anything, and our race becoming a dull, boring parasite.
So, in short, Peter Joseph is still a moron with no understanding of the thing he criticizes, and no creativity or imagination.
