Meanwhile, the problem with communism is that it relies on everyone having aligned incentives on a nation-state level, which is a pleasant fiction and can only be achieved through authoritarian coercion.
Capitalists would argue that between capitalism and socialism, capitalism is the one that better accounts for greed, as it generally has laws to con strain it but otherwise uses it to generate all the production that’s the hallmark of modern society, division of labor, economy of scale, technological advancement, etc. Socialism doesn’t really deal with greed, it just sort of wishes it away. That’s why so many societies that have started down the socialist path have become at best poor and at worst authoritarian murder factories like the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Chavist Venezuela, the Khmer Rouge’s Cambodia, etc.
Communism quite literally exists to mitigate greed, and there is nothing stopping Capitalist countries from becoming authoritarian Murder Factories like Modern Russia, The United States, Britain, France, Belgium, and countless other examples of colonial powers that have exploited and murdered native populations. Billionaires get arrested and taxed all the time in modern China. While they almost never suffer the same fate in Capitalist countries.
No European country or the US is anything like Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Orders of magnitude different.
Billionaires get arrested and taxed all the time in modern China.
They don’t get arrested for the reasons you or I would arrest them, they get arrested for crossing the CCP. Billionaires do face punishment in the capitalist West.
Literally no economic system or political science yet has managed to prevent the internalised drive for familicide or authoritarian violence funnily enough, one can only hope that rationality prevails over bad thoughts, but not on the basis of civilization or self preservation, but through the collective conscience of humanity coming to understand how best to maximize the available entropy and energy within society to produce the most jobs, the most utility, the most potential sex, the most systems of funding and all other human desires.
Consider thot the US is a very rich democracy yet has many school shootings, Saudi Arabia has had to deal with corrupt funding of terrorists, China uses AI to bait people into crime and arrests people on false charges and then plays catch and release while Israel funds Hamas, imports overseas Jews and then exports violent “settlers” into the Palestinian borders.
Consider that even millionaire dictators who go on holiday will occasionally commit mass genocide. All of these bad things… Are not going to disappear because of capitalism, but we can at least say that they would become more foreseeable and preventable in a world where we have movies or stories that discuss our present these monstrosities to light
Given the choice between greed with poverty vs greed with wealth, I choose greed with wealth aka capitalism. Like I said, capitalism at least does some good with the greed. Socialism, etc. pretends it can make greed go away, but it obviously can’t.
Sidenote, a vanishingly small portion of people in the US are killed or injured in school shootings. They’re obviously bad, but when comparing societies on the societal scale, they make basically no impact.
Have you looked at Soviet Russia? They went from Feudal Backwater to Man in space within 43 years. Then Socialism was illegally overthrown against the will of the Soviet People, and all metrics fell, (Child) Prosecution, life expectancy,… There is no choice between Wealth or poverty you are born into one or the other and you are just lucky you are born in the West. Socialism always created better Economic outcomes for most people at the same level of Development as Capitalist countrys.
Everyone went from feudal backwater to something else in that era. The US was poorer than Argentina per capita. That’s not really saying that much. It’s also not saying that much because of course if you have a strong central authority you can divert resources from more valuable production toward national pride vanity projects like a space travel. What really matters is how productive your economy is, how much it can produce for its society, and on that front the US defeated the Soviet Union soundly.
I have nothing against a space program, I just don’t see that as a very strong indicator of the success of a society.
The US wasnt feudal in 1918, they where never Feudal. And they had a lot more industrial development than russia. Servdom in Russia was abolished in 1861. The US was always better economicly (for white people) because they had this industrial headstart, they werent destroyed in WW2 and the US had colonies and fought very hard to keep them. Panama, Chile,… If you want to compare a Capitalist countys with socialist ones at least pic one with a similar development level. You will soon find out that Capitalism only works for the heads of countys that are exploiting less developed countys resources and labour. Some scraps fall from the table down to the general population but only as much to keep them from revolting.
The space race on both sides created a lot of inovation that laid the ground work for among other things Computers and Satelites today.
And there is a declassified CIA document from 1983 that says that the soviet diet was potentialy better than the USs. That chaned drastically after the return to “Freedom” in Russia.
Very Similar to how Christianity became a world religion at the end of a spear. However Capitalism is about as anti-Christ as any economic system can be.
The good ones tend to do something in-between, with a market based economy, but good regulations, solid welfare, and democracy. Scandinavian countries have the happiest populations in the world, maybe we should try to learn from them.
Unfortunately corporations get more power over time instead of less. They have an ever growing pile of money to buy media and politicians to push their interests, that’s probably the greatest challenge of democracy.
Sometimes corporations get bigger, sometimes they get toppled by new competitors. A lot of them that we think of as unstoppable are barely hanging on by a thread. Twitter/X and Facebook are examples that come to mind. People don’t realize how much power they as consumers have.
The first written evidence of slavery in the ancient world comes from ancient Mesopotamia. However, slavery was in practice much longer than that. Slavery most likely began when the first cities needed labor to keep food production up to feed growing populations.
There was plenty for everyone since there were a lot fewer people, plus there were no real territories that people claimed over longer periods at all since we were nomads.
The only real solution is intentional population control. But I don’t have high hopes we ever get there though.
Everyone could have way more resources than we’d ever want to even use. But instead, we seem focused on maxing out the world population leaving the least amount possible for each person.
Oh, there probably is. All things being equal (and that’s the important factor) there is next-to-no chance of us ever reaching such a bizarre amount of people - you could triple the amount of people on earth, and, all things being equal, we still wouldn’t be “overpopulated.”
However, things are not equal - which means we are already existing way beyond that which our ecology can support. And it’s all thanks to capitalist parasites - a very small group of people sucking everything dry at the expense of everyone and everything else.
That’s literally an article about how they don’t have enough water. Yes, the rich are using twice as much as the poor and it would go further if it was distributed more evenly but the fact remains that there’s a finite amount that is not sustainable beyond a certain population.
No? The article says rich people are using 2x as much water as poor people - 50% vs 23% and they are already having water problems. Assuming the water consumption was evened out this leaves the population room to go up no more than 4x what it is now even with equal consumption. That’s hardly out of the realm of possibility considering the population already has gone up 8x since 1950
The article says rich people are using 2x as much water as poor people domestically.
FTFY. That’s just household use, Clyde. We haven’t even started with the water usage that makes the rich rich - ie, the private ownership of industry and commerce (which, of course, externalizes the destruction of water resources).
That’s hardly out of the realm of possibility considering the population already has gone up 8x since 1950
That kind of population growth is a thing of the past. The only way to successfully reverse that would be by design - such as the measures taken by certain aspects of the US political establishment to enforce patriarchal norms through institutionalized violence (ie, the criminalization of women’s healthcare).
Water used for industry is still going to be used regardless of who controls that industry. Poor people can be just as greedy as rich ones, they just don’t have a means to act on it.
Population growth has slowed but it has not stopped. Even at 1 or 2 % per year it will be only a few generations before it becomes an issue. 1% of 6,000,000 people is a lot more than 1% of 600,000.
Absolutely not. Pretending that capitalism doesn’t work the way capitalism works is a certain dead-end for your argument.
Wtf does that even mean?. The point is there will still be a demand for goods whether it’s produced by a farm/factory owned by one individual or a collective of workers. They’ll still be consuming the water.
That is one piss-poor justification for the status quo.
I’m not justifying anything. All I’m trying to do is explain to you that resources are finite and too many people will burn through them. If you don’t think poor people can be greedy and wasteful then I encourage you to get out more.
The people at the top aren’t worried about population growth these days, Clyde - they are worried about population reversal. You wanna know why?
The only reason I ever hear for that is from racists because it’s the white people that slowed down the most. Population projections for the world do not show a decline. Unless of course you take the lack of resources into account…
Pretending that production for profit and production for need is the same thing is fallacious - end of story.
All I’m trying to do is explain to you that resources are finite and too many people will burn through them.
You still haven’t managed to justify the right-wing trope of “overpopulation” - pretending that the vast majority’s consumption is (somehow) the problem isn’t proving it, merely regurgitating it.
the white people that slowed down the most.
Sooo… you have figured out that in a capitalist society access to women’s healthcare is merely another commodity - and, thanks to colonialist pillaging and repression, white people do tend to have more access to that commmodity?
You don’t say.
Population projections for the world do not show a decline.
No… it shows a trend towards stabilization - which, just by itself, demoslishes the entire concept of “overpopulation.”
Unless of course you take the lack of resources into account…
What lack of resources. Resources being hoarded by a capitalist elite was as true in 1950 as it was in 2023 - so how does that affect the trope you are trying to justify?
Whether Malthus himself was a right-winger or not isn’t really important… it doesn’t change how the trope of overpopulation has been used to protect power and privilege (ie, the whole point of right-wing ideology). For instance, there is a very good reason why white supremacists support the criminalization of women’s health care in (supposedly) “white” countries while demonizing 3rd world countries for their (supposedly) “explosive population growth.”
It’s a very old trope that flattens human consumption and therefore camouflages the reality that certain classes of people consume resources at astronomical rates in comparison with the rest. It’s utility in shielding class hierarchies from scrutiny should be perfectly obvious.
The problem is the improper distribution of resources, not overpopulation. If we truly tried we could sustainably support our current population and work on healing the world.
Talking about intentional population control is a fat too slippery slope.
Check out The Dawn of Everything, puts to rest a lot of the myths about prehistoric societies that we tell ourselves. Early societies were consciously experimenting with different social arrangements and they were far more peaceful and egalitarian than we usually give them credit for. Their ideas on property were vastly different than ours as well. There wasn’t really an “our hunting grounds” to speak of. If you’re interested I’ll leave this video by Andrewism about human history. It’s well sourced and pretty informative
I think it sort of depends on what time period we’re talking about. Jericho and other walled cities came about after a certain point. By then, there certainly were societies that lived off raiding the less nomadic agrarian societies, not very peaceful or egalitarian.
I’m just answering the question. They ask what system rewards kindness, I say a hunter-gatherer one does. I’m not implying that going back to the stone age is realistic by any means.
Because with capitalism, the greed is out in the open. Everyone understands it. It is clear and legal to push against the greed of those who have more.
In a system that incentivizes “virtues”, greed will hide behind those virtues. And when you then fight against that greed, you are accused of attacking those virtues instead.
Hey, that makes sense. Now, in this capitalist system that exists in real life—the one that you think is working out better than any alternatives you can think of—are everyone’s cards laid out?
Yes…? We are aware of how bad we’re being fucked. We saw the Panama papers. Rich people dodge taxes with loopholes. War is waged to line pockets. Senators practice insider trading. Huge, major problems exist with capitalism and of course, we can’t know the full extent. What do you think would be different under your preference?
Yes? It’s that obvious? What percentage of the population knows how the animals they consume are raised and slaughtered, or that it’s illegal to show them? What percentage knows that in many other nations, the burger flipping jobs the U.S. loves to debate do pay better, and yet the food is cheaper? What percentage is aware that many European nations simply do not allow large corporations like Google and Facebook to “own” your data, and that they do not have some sort of inherent right to it? All of these things are legal—passing laws to hide information you don’t like, having no obligation to pay livable wages or provide healthcare, lining your pockets with money nobody else knew you could just… take. Seems like a system in which these actions weren’t both legal and highly rewarded could, you know, put more of the cards on the table.
I asked you what would be different under your preferred alternative to capitalism and you’ve responded with policy from other capitalist nations. Perhaps the ideas you have presented are not solutions to capitalisms failings but instead just good ideas that can coexist within a capitalist society. I’m really not sure I understand your point but feel free to clarify if you’d like to continue the discussion.
Chiming in to a conversation with a weak point, just to have no one respond to you.
No wonder you haven’t made so many comments today. This poor troll is starving because he’s having a hard time getting people to take the bait. Anyway, see you tomorrow buddy. I hope for your sake you do better next time
It must kill you that I have a laugh about you to the people you argue with here. Hey man, no one is making you respond with all these little love letters to me
Don’t I recall you trying to call me out for making fun of mental patients yesterday? I guess your ego knows no hypocrisy. You’re a man of no principles, and that’s what makes you a good troll
Hey man, I appreciate you practicing on me. You could do a little better though. Is “ghoulphrenic” the only insult you could muster after 10+ comments?
Hey buddy, I really love that you’re using a made up word to boot. The only hit “ghoulphrenic” got on any search engine I tried was an off brand 4chan Incel chamber. Nice to know what media you do consume.
Man, god made you a perfect little troll didn’t he?
Actually professor I don’t much care to continue. I asked if all the cards are on the table (because I know they’re not) and you responding with “yes…?” so this isn’t going to go anywhere. Especially since I don’t have a favorite -ism to provide you with so you can tell me how it would never work!
The ideas I’ve presented force cooperation in opposition to capitalist market forces. They coexist in the way my white blood cells coexist with the flu.
By the way, the Panama Papers aren’t available to the public, and they’re culturally relevant because they were secret for so long, and represent an opportunity that isn’t on the table for the rest of us. Better examples are key when upholding the status quo 👌
I apologize if I offended you or otherwise indicated hostility with my “yes…?”. I felt my position was clear and unchallenged by your reply. I’d also point out that you made assumptions about my opinions prior, which while it didn’t really bother me, could certainly change the temperament of discussion.
I do think it’s important to have a clear point in a debate though and I don’t see that you have presented one. From what I gather, you value cooperation in society and disagree with pure capitalism. For what it’s worth, I actually agree with both of those points and feel the same. I’ll respect your wish to leave it here and wish you the best of luck.
I’m allowed to go take out a loan and start my own business to be a piece of shit like every other business owner and noone will stop me from doing so.
Noone will stop you either, question is why you aren’t dealing your cards.
I’m a leftist but I’m not much of a fan of the Soviet Union. I’m Finnish and middle-aged so I know a bunch of people who had to escape from there and I’ve heard first-hand stories about the shit that went on, and I’ve visited Soviet Estonia who got the short end of the stick with Russian imperialism compared to us. At least we stayed independent although had to grant a lot of power over eg. our foreign policy to the Russians – ie. Soviets, but it’s not like it wasn’t essentially a Russian project since they pretty quickly forgot about korenization and went for Russification instead – to keep them from invading (again…)
One of the biggest failures of alot of leftists spaces is failing to criticize the failures of the USSR. Yes they had alot of Ws but they also took their fair shares of Ls due to external and internal forces. That being said there arent many leftists that geninuinly want to recreate the USSR. We are merely trying to pierce through the veil of Capitalist propaganda to recontectuallize what they did right and incorporate it into the modern political discourse.
That was well said. Recontextualization is exactly the thing; it’s not that I think the Soviet Union was absolute evil with zero redeeming features. They got more right during the early years although I’m not necessarily a huge fan of that period either, and to a large extent it was Stalin who fucked them up pretty severely with the frankly sociopathic system that the Union turned into.
Russian political culture has been outright brutal for a long time. Eg. these KGB-like secret police organizations have been around for a while and have invariably had brutal methods of dealing with politically displeasing individuals or just who-the-hell-ever in many cases. This, coupled with the cultural ethos that Russia and Russians – and specifically meaning ethnic Russians – are superior to anyone outside their borders and a tendency for imperialism, means that Russian rule has nearly invariably been a shitty time, with Finland being one of the few exceptions as we mostly faced little repression or cultural erasure compared to other Russian “colonies” and this was done intentionally; most of the Russian Emperors during our time as a Grand Duchy in some ways thought of Finland as way to show the European powers that they can run things in a “western” way, and to work as a kind of window to the West. For the last 20 or so years they did try to Russify us, which we – being stubborn fucks – did not take well. We also kept our previous Parliament for the most part even though even starting from Alexander I the Emperors wanted to have autocratic rule, but – again in parts thanks to us being stubborn fucks – it took something like 4 emperors for it to happen. Their other historical or the currently existing colonies (nobody seems to think of Russia as a colonialist empire because their colonies are inside contiguous borders) weren’t quite so lucky, as Russification and “Russian supremacy” has been the standard.
This political culture played a large part in the problems with the Union. It was nominally multicultural (and korenization was briefly a thing until they went back to Russification as usual) but it wasn’t exactly unclear who were ultimately in charge.
And before some smartass barges in asking me why it’s OK if the US/UK/France/whoever does this stuff: I don’t like imperialism any more regardless of who’s doing it.
Jokes aside communism is just as bad because it does nothing to prevent power from congregating at the top. The only difference is the type of corruption.
Talk to anyone who grew up in the eastern block about bread lines. Communism is a failure in comparison to capitalism.
You posted a photo of fully stocked shelves and every word you said is a straight up trope. “Corruption” does so much work with politically illiterate westerners to paper over why ‘bad thing is bad’ without a lick of knowledge about either the bad system or the good one in your mind. And I always love hearing about how bad socialism is from people who suffered from the end of socialism.
Ultimately the only actual reason the west has for why socialism is bad is “We’ll kill you”
Point taken. I am not for communism as I’ve seen first hand what it looks like. All communism does is congregate the power in the government instead of private hands. It’s still corrupt just in a different way.
Doesn’t matter the form of government. Power will narrow and corrupt IMHO. It’s human nature.
A lot of it, as a “Westerner” is also the devil you know.
You can’t use personal experiences as evidence when you’re staying anonymous and won’t say what those experiences were. If you’re 60 years old you got a solid 10 years of socialism in the last phase of being overtaken by the west to make adult brained judgements about it.
Let’s start with how old you are. Are you 60 or older? And what country are you talking about?
“These individuals and groups synthesise radical far-right politics with environmentalism,[5][6] and will typically argue that overpopulation is the primary threat to the environment and that the only solution is a complete halt to immigration or, at their most extreme, genocide against minority groups and ethnicities”
It’s not just about systems, It’s about conditions. Certain conditions make certain strategies more profitable - see game theory. I think low population density and hard life conditions cam lead to kindness being among the winning strategies.
Yeah well we dont have any of those conditions and it would make sense to make oue life conditions harder or to lower the population density so drastically so this meme doesnt make any sense
Fortunately, we’re doing our best to make our life conditions harder in the future and possibly to lower the population as well!
Of course, there can be other sets of conditions that lead to kindness win. Like probably heavy cultural persecution of selfishness. The conditions can also be pretty complex. I wonder whether those things have been studied in some meaningful way.
What fantasy land are you living in where working class individuals are learning survival skills? What the fuck is even a modern skill?
I’m well off and spend thousands of hours being a mechanic for fun. You think someone with less time and resources than me can fix their car better because they had to figure it out to get to work a few times?
You think some random dude working two jobs is going to be better prepared than a guy with the time to have a dedicated hobby?
I can honestly say that being poor forced me to learn how to survive under adverse circumstances. Rich people lack even that. They’re completely useless to themselves and to society.
That’s not capitalism, lol.
What a snide fucking remark brimful of ignorance. I never even mentioned capitalism, yet here you are to defend it. Bootlicker or capitalist?
Edit: Dude bought a car for 35k. Rich person detected, opinion discarded.
You think buying a car for 35k makes me rich? You do realize that even middle class people are just as much a few missed paychecks away from being homeless just as much as you are?
Actual rich people make so much money they’ve never worked a day in their life, and they most definitely want us distracted fighting eachother instead of thinking about how they assfuck us ever day with this fucked up system.
Edit: Just to drive my point home. I grew up poor as dirt with a single mother, and eventually a drunk violent asshat step father. The only reason I have any money at all is bcz I went to university and have a decent job now.
Complaining about the rich does not mean people that pay 35k for a car. This is exactly the type of attitude that keeps us proletarians stuck in the mud. A person that makes 100k a year and a person that makes zero a year are in the same class. There are the workers, and the rich capitalists. A doctor or lawyer who can buy a nice car is not ‘the rich’.
What does that even mean? Why are you mad at people who work just like you. I didn’t say anything about working hard for it and deserving to have what I have.
We should both be pissed at the jackass billionaires that own everything, not the people getting by just like you. My struggles may be different than yours, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand what being poor means.
I think you’re speaking to a young person who has a lot of heart, just misplaced. The lower class and middle class are much closer together than they realize. You handled yourself well.
Reading through people’s comment history and judging them based on it is super toxic. Let’s leave that behavior on previous platforms? Also, $35k for a new car is unfortunately lower than average ($46k). I wouldn’t call anyone rich merely because they bought a modest car.
Your blanket opinion of “rich people” is naive and reductionist. There are plenty of smart and capable rich people. They also have the resources to actually go out and train in hobbies, which commonly include survival shit. I’m sure whatever bullshit survivalist skills you are trying to be vague about are pale in comparison to a rich person with time and resources.
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