and just like in biology, you need a system to fight the cancer, you can’t just wish it away.
since we’ve refused to maintain such an immune system, we’re now going to have to go through a miserable period of chemo treatment to rid ourselves of the tumors.
WW1? I;m curious as to why your mind went there? I assumed they were referring to WW2, and having to fight against fascism AGAIN. Fascism is the malignant tumor.
I’ll bite. Until we have machines doing most things, communism is unlikely to work, especially in post agrarian societies. We need to first fully realize not just post scarcity, but post work. In theory it seems like things like anarcho syndicalism and basic communism should work, but I don’t think they really function at a large scale. Socialized democracy and worker owned cooperatives within a capitalism system gets the closest to solving the problems imo. I like the idea of anarcho syndicalism the most, but I just don’t see how it can survive in todays world.
With all systems the same problems crop up. Powerful people seek to exploit ANY system to their benefit, and unmotivated people seek to do the least to get by. Who cleans toilets in a equitable communist country, who picks up the trash? Do we force people into job roles to fill the need? Without economic incentives I don’t see how the system stays healthy. Removing class barriers to some jobs does not always make them desirable enough to fill the need. Capitalisms structure inherently results in people that are strongly incentivized into those roles, because the wage will usually rise to meet the demand for employees. (Low educated citizens seeing opportunity in jobs that make a living wage.)
Currently the biggest problem we have, imo, is really that people with power expend tremendous resources on controlling the flow of information, and that has left a lot of people very misinformed. No matter the system, those same people will be fooled into voting for things that benefit the powerful to the detriment of the rest of us. That’s not so much a capitalism problem, but an information problem. That’s a problem we have no solution for. It has been an issue with humans since civilization has existed. We can’t individually know everything, so we rely on others to fill in the gaps in our thinking and assumptions, and many of those people have a motive to only give you the information that benefits them, or worse off just lie. A lot of peoples anger towards capitalism, is a result of unbridled capitalism in a world where most people have incomplete information to make good decisions at the voting booth. We only have unbridled capitalism because of misinformation, not because capitalism is inherently bad.
Basic Communism is the preceding step to advanced Communism, yes. Marx makes this exceptionally clear. What specifically do you think people are advocating for that cannot work?
There are numerous solutions to the “undesirable jobs” questions. For background, Marx makes it very clear that intense labor is condensed unskilled labor, sake with skilled labor. In lower Communism by which skilled labor is still a requirement, and thus labor takes on different characters, pay would likely be represented in different manners depending on intensity and complexity. Feel free to ask any questions if this is confusing.
I agree that misinformation is a huge problem, but I disagree that your conclusion is that it causes the issues with Capitalism, rather than Capitalism itself. Capitalism structurally has issues with power imbalance, and issues like the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall that must be overcome via Socialism.
Overall, I think you would be served immensely by reading some Marx. I know that’s a very typical leftist response, but I do believe much of your issues come from assuming Communists want to jump straight to end-stage Communism now, rather than building it over time and adjusting with the change in Material conditions.
I AM left wing, have read about many social theories in my life all over the spectrum. There isn’t much one can do to distill that down to one post. Not one of the solutions to communisms problems I’ve seen in my lifetime are ever very fair or realistic. It comes with all of the same problems as capitalism as it pertains to power and it is infinitely less agile than capitalism. You can get to nearly the same place that communism wants to get, by adapting socialist ideals into capitalism while keeping capitalisms agility in the marketplace of needs.
I’m sorry, but you’ve made a number of blanket statements here with nothing to back it up, combined with a failure to address the very fact that your point on bullshit jobs was already thoroughly debunked by Marx.
If you’ve read Marx, why do you think people are advocating paying sewage workers the same as office workers? There are even methods that suggest working fewer hours for the same pay with regards to how strenuous it is.
How can you consider yourself left wing if you reject Socialism in favor of Capitalism? That’s just a centrist or right-winger.
How does Communism “come with all of the same power problems as Capitalism” if Communism is fundamentally democratic, and Capitalism fundamentally anti-democratic?
How is Capitalism more agile than Communism?
How can you say Capitalism can nearly get to a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society when it depends on all 3 to exist?
How can you “adapt Socialist ideas into Capitalism” when Capitalism and Socialism are mutually exclusive Modes of Production?
If you’ve read Marx, why do you think people are advocating paying sewage workers the same as office workers? There are even methods that suggest working fewer hours for the same pay with regards to how strenuous it is.
Who manages that? Who decides what resources goes to who and how much time people work? There are a lot of answers to those questions, often solved with central planning that can’t possibly keep up with ever shifting needs. This gets directly into your 4th question, whether you’ve realized it or not.
How can you consider yourself left wing if you reject Socialism in favor of Capitalism? That’s just a centrist or right-winger.
Its one of the silliest things on the left, that a lot of people like you think that everyone to the left of them is an extremist and everyone to the right of them is a right-winger or Nazi. It’s exhausting to say the least. Most of my political understanding drives me towards socialist mechanisms within a capitalist system. To call that right wing is to be intentionally obtuse and ideologically ridged to say the least. Certainly the USA, where I am, is further right than most places, but even in the most left wing countries I would still be on the left. To call that “centrism” or “a right-winger” is just trying to be willfully ridged to move the goalpost to exactly where you stand. It’s an entirely semantic argument of your making, but it’s not in line with how people generally view the political spectrum.
How does Communism “come with all of the same power problems as Capitalism” if Communism is fundamentally democratic, and Capitalism fundamentally anti-democratic?
Powerful people have exploited every system the world has ever created, including the half assed attempts at communism. You are living in a dream world if you truly think that powerful people won’t exploit their decision making authority to drive the conversation to their benefit under communism. It’s one of the primary reasons communism could never get off the ground. Because people opted the quick way of trying to arrive at it by force and centralizing power in the hands of the few. But even if we try to get their slowly, the same thing will happen. Powerful people will exploit their power to prevent progress to their benefit. Power, and the ability to obtain it, objective negates the ability to create true communism.
How is Capitalism more agile than Communism?
Capitalisms core mechanism is supply and demand, that applies to workers as well. If a job needs to be filled, the system adjusts to fill that demand. If no one wants to pick up trash, wages have to go up to meet demand. That’s effectively what unions do, they put pressure on the supply and demand curve by striking and removing the supply of workers. The same thing happens with products themselves, if the market is missing something, then it gets expensive, causing a strong incentive for people to make that thing, which after the market adjusts and creates more products, causes the price to go down and availability to the masses to go up. Some of the things we produce are imperative to survival, like food. Capitalistic markets handle that naturally by adjusting quickly to those demands. People want to make money, so they put their effort towards the highest demands and the largest profitability. Communism is entirely supply based, and demand is centrally planned by some person making well educated guesses on how much of x the market needs. This is functionally not agile, it requires bureaucracy to manage demand and have a flawless picture of exactly what the demands are day to day, it’s impossible to be as agile as a system that adjusts as fluidly as capitalism, imo, and it is the biggest downside of communism. Central planners can literally make one mistake and the whole country starves to death.
How can you say Capitalism can nearly get to a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society when it depends on all 3 to exist?
At no point did I state that this was my goal, and you know that.
Stateless societies are functionally impossible in the modern world. If we press reset on the world today and removed nationhood, within a decade those with power will have grabbed up most of the land in the world, through massive bloodshed. This is why any stateless society can’t work, it creates a power vacuum that will necessarily be filled, and it will be filled by people that don’t care if you are alive or dead. Whether we like it or not, power exists, and some of those that wield more of it will always use that power to grab what they can. Nationhood is the assurance of less war. Despite all of the things wrong in the world today, we have the lowest portion of our society dying from wars in world history since we drew clear borders everywhere, a fairly modern thing. Borders used to be very fluid, and sometimes some areas were basically a collection of city states with undefined borders shifting every day. As much as the news seeks to tell you otherwise, this is the safest point in human history. stateless, classless, and moneyless societies would be the most vulnerable societies to power. Welcome to mad max express edition.
How can you “adapt Socialist ideas into Capitalism” when Capitalism and Socialism are mutually exclusive Modes of Production?
Capitalism and socialism are not mutually exclusive, whoever told you that is a next level moron. Both exist on a continuum. Additionally, capitalism is an economic system, while socialism is both an economic and political system. Social democracies are a blend of systems.
Worker cooperatives are an inherently socialist ideal and function perfectly well under capitalism. Social programs that seek to redistribute a portion of the wealth to those most in need are also socialist in nature. The fact is there are some things central planning does a better job at and there are other things that markets do a better job at. I certainly think that more central planning is good for specific things. Like the fact that we pay for internet is moronic, it should be entirely socialized. But centralizing food production would likely result in mass starvation eventually. And even if by some miracle it didn’t, it would greatly reduce choices. But I don’t need choices for electricity, water, sewer, etc. I just need them to exist and function properly. For internet, I want it to be fast, but a nationalized system could probably build that out generation to generation if collective society deems that necessary.
There are no Socialist mechanisms within a Capitalist system, and confusing left and right for how progressive something is, rather than as structural Modes of Production, is wrong.
Capitalism is centralization of power into the hands of the few, Communism is by definition a spreading of said power. You don’t need a central leader, lol, you can have worker councils.
That’s a lot of talk to essentially ignore what central planning is, lmao. It’s not some guy with a spreadsheet making one wrong move and everyone starves, it’s very decentralized and similar to regular infrastructure. Do you truly think central planning has a single planner, or do you think worker councils deciding at the local level cannot function?
That’s Communism, and you claimed Capitalism can nearly get to Communism.
Sorry, you’re the next-level moron here, I’m afraid. Capitalism and Socialism are both Modes of Production, and are mutually exclusive. Either the Workers own the Means of Production, or Capitalists do. Social Democracies are Capitalism with social safety nets, they aren’t a blend of Capitalism with Socialism.
All in all, terrible answers, sorry to say. You truly would benefit from reading Marx, you’re woefully misunderstanding what leftists advocate for, and I suggest you refrain from commenting until you do learn.
At the end, you even imply crops have a mystical quality about them that determines if they live or die solely based on who owns them. Sorry, but I prefer science.
I’ve read Marx. Every smug comment you continue to make just show how incredibly insecure you are about your beliefs. Stay on topic and stop wrapping your ego up into the conversation. Just because I don’t buy every single argument made, doesn’t mean I’m not well read, two people can read something and come to different conclusions. Maybe you should try reading things OTHER than Marx and see a multitude of perspective before you die on your hill. There is an immense portion of communisms ideals that is in line with what I believe in, but I am not someone that just rides an ideological train without addressing each things on it’s own merits. Applying ideology to everything instead of addressing each thing on it’s own merits is the antithesis of progress. You sound more like Communism is your religion than it’s a structural concept.
Worker councils.
Same problem, lack of agility. Worker councils in a system that has no money, or incentives to produce goods at the rate of demand, won’t meet demand. Worker councils would inherently be more concerned with the impact to them (the workers) than the impact to demand, and therefor the broad society at large. Again, people would starve.
There are no Socialist mechanisms within a Capitalist system, and confusing left and right for how progressive something is, rather than as structural Modes of Production, is wrong.
You don’t just get to change how words work because you want to parrot what Marx said word for word like everything he wrote was the word of god. In a modern context calling someone who believes in worker cooperatives, a broad social safety net, workers unions, and heavily regulated capitalism “right-wing” is objectively dishonest.
Capitalism is centralization of power into the hands of the few, Communism is by definition a spreading of said power. You don’t need a central leader, lol, you can have worker councils.
Sure, you will have those worker councils until someone with power convivences a bunch of scared people that they need control and then they slowly take over everything. Congrats, you had worker councils for 1-10 years. Welcome to the shortest “utopia” in the world. The lack of centralization is exactly what creates vulnerability. Why do you think Genghis Kahn existed? He saw the power vacuum that decentralized power created in Mongolia, and hated all of the war that it caused, and he incorrectly believed he could have the war to end all wars. One of the larges extermination events, by population percentage, in human history was caused by decentralized power, and that’s not exactly the first time. Are you expecting worker councils to stop some dude rolling up in a tank to take over?
That’s a lot of talk to essentially ignore what central planning is, lmao. It’s not some guy with a spreadsheet making one wrong move and everyone starves, it’s very decentralized and similar to regular infrastructure. Do you truly think central planning has a single planner, or do you think worker councils deciding at the local level cannot function?
It is functionally impossible to recreate the agility of capitalism within worker councils. Especially in todays globalized systems. It doesn’t matter how you do the planning, its the same issue, the incentives are not placed on demand. The incentives only meet what the workers want to supply.
That’s Communism, and you claimed Capitalism can nearly get to Communism.
All I said was “You can get to nearly the same place that communism wants to get”, I admit that was too broad in hindsight. What I meant is workers controlling the means of production and better outcomes for labor. A worker cooperative can exist within capitalism. The overarching system is capitalism, the micro system is socialist in nature. If I work for a factory that I and everyone else that works for it owns, then I work for a factory that operates on socialist principles. That factory can exist in a capitalist economy.
Sorry, you’re the next-level moron here, I’m afraid. Capitalism and Socialism are both Modes of Production, and are mutually exclusive. Either the Workers own the Means of Production, or Capitalists do. Social Democracies are Capitalism with social safety nets, they aren’t a blend of Capitalism with Socialism.
So worker cooperatives don’t exist in capitalist economy’s? That’s news to me, I must be delusional then! Only in their absolute forms could one argue they are opposed, and even then I think that gets into semantics that favor a strictly communist perspective. To anyone who isn’t breathing communist propaganda, socialism is both economic and political, and tends to be used in a lot of contexts. People don’t get to claim words for themselves, words have the meanings that society generally agrees it has. You might not like it, but playing these semantic games to redefine things to your worldview isn’t doing you any favors. You can search nearly any academic publication and you will get that answer, that Capitalism and Socialism are not diametrically opposed because they are not in the same category, they seek to define different things. But we don’t have absolute capitalism anyway, and you are well aware that I wasn’t stanning for absolute capitalism. But this is a tired semantics argument if your only point in this conversation is to rigidly define words only the way propagandists define them, and not how academia, and the general public defines them. If that’s your purpose, then this conversation is entirely pointless. I mean, it’s pointless anyway, but it’s even more pointless considering your goals of word definitions rather than substance of outcomes.
Needs clarification, lol. Worker councils are made up of the workers themselves in local areas. Do you think that because Capitalists only care about profit, that they let people starve? You’re continuing to prove a lack of understanding of the subject matter.
Regulated Capitalism is right wing, no matter how light or heavy, because Capitalism is right wing.
Sure, you will have liberal democracy until a Capitalist convinces a bunch or scared people they need control and slowly take over everything. Congrats, you have Nazi Germany, Batista’s Cuba, Mussolini’s Italy… and other Capitalist Dictatorships.
This is a nothingpoint. Communism is global.
Citation needed. Capitalist economies plan all the time, lmao.
Worker Cooperatives are Socialism, not Capitalism, even if they compete with Capitalist entities.
Worker Cooperatives are not Capitalist, even if they can exist in market economies.
Read Marx, you clearly haven’t because all of your points can be easily debunked by reading Marx. I haven’t needed to write walls of text for every point because all of your points have been easily debunked.
You have yet to debunk a single thing, all you’ve done is regurgitate propaganda.
Do you think that because Capitalists only care about profit, that they let people starve?
I think capitalists would let literally everyone starve if they didn’t need the labor. But the system is self correcting, if food is in demand, then people see the opportunity and meet the demand. Because under capitalism people will always fill a void with their own desire to make a profit. You still have not given a single reason why workers councils would raise to that level of agility.
Regulated Capitalism is right wing, no matter how light or heavy, because Capitalism is right wing.
Right wing is political, capitalism is economic. Again, I repeat, you don’t get to define words, society as a whole has a mutual understanding of what words mean. Right-wing is an inherently political determination, not an economic system. Within that system people who are right-wing tend to be anti-communist, and to that extent you’re right I am anti-“pure communism” at least. Because I think it’s impossible. But that doesn’t make me right wing, it’s like saying Greg wears a blue hat and Greg is a jerk therefor all people in blue hats are jerks, it’s an enormous logic leap.
Communism is global.
It’s global but decentralized, you still need to address the glaring flaws of a power vacuum. At no point in human history has a power vacuum not been filled with power. You’re asking me to trust on faith that suddenly humans would stop being human.
Citation needed. Capitalist economies plan all the time, lmao.
You seem to have entirely missed my point.
Worker Cooperatives are Socialism, not Capitalism, even if they compete with Capitalist entities. Worker Cooperatives are not Capitalist, even if they can exist in market economies.
Yes that was my point, I’m glad to see you are finally listening. You were claiming that they can’t exist at the same time, while in fact the most certainly can and do.
As for your points against worker councils, why would they let themselves starve? Do you misunderstand what a Worker council even is? Do you think it’s just a group of people at the very top of a system, like an oligarchy? Why do you think the word worker is the descriptive factor?
Capitalism is right wing, Socialism is left wing.
How is there a power vacuum? How do people amass tanks in global Communism to fight the rest of the globe?
The co-ops do not exist within the same space as Capitalism. You cannot have 100% Capitalism and 100% Socialism, they are mutually exclusive.
One was implemented and works to this day on a global scale. The other was implemented in barely a few countries and they all failed or they still work but under the dictator regime.
You can’t tell me the Great Purge is something a left-wing person would do. He thought Hitler was “a great man”.
I’m far from an expert in political history, but if we were to look at controversial figures on the left, Guevara and Castro are probably the “worst” I can think of that still clearly had left-wing ideals in mind.
Leftism isn’t synonymous with being a good person. As for Hitler, many Americans called Hitler a great man as well, it wasn’t until wartime that anyone went against Hitler meaningfully.
Stalin and Mao were both leftists, and both pretty damn brutal. Read anything Stalin has written, and it’s clear that he certainly believed himself to be a leftist, and a student of Marx and Lenin, no matter how horrible his actions.
I mean, it’s not an absolute, but Wikipedia defines Left-wing politics as “the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy as a whole or certain social hierarchies”.
Stalin actively repressed and killed ethnic minorities during the Great Purge. That’s absolutely not egalitarianism. I don’t know much of his politics but if he was trying to be a communist, his government was not really a “Dictatorship of the proletariat”. He could’ve written anything, actions speak clearer than words.
I’m not in any way defending the Moscow Trials or the Great Purge, but the reasoning behind Stalin’s Great Purge was to eliminate counter revolutionaries and solidify his own power so that he may continue the path to Communism, in his eyes and the eyes of the party.
Even if he was targeting different ethnicities just because of the risk they could’ve been spies, what he effectively did was put a different “value” on his citizens, which is the opposite of social equality, a center aspect of leftism.
Maybe in his and his followers’ minds the end justified the means and he was actually aiming to build a better society for everyone, but ultimately what he did was enact racism and social hierarchies. If that still counts as left-wing to you we have different definitions.
Do you believe that every single action one must do be perfectly in line with leftist ideas to be a leftist? Is it not possible to commit evil for the purposes of, in their minds, securing the chances for achieving Socialism and Communism?
Stalin, by and large, was a leftist that was dedicated to the cause of achieving Communism. He was also a cruel, evil brute, who cared little for the Means of achieving it.
I prefer to recognize evil leftists to learn from them and their mistakes so as not to repeat them.
Do you believe that every single action one must do be perfectly in line with leftist ideas to be a leftist? Is it not possible to commit evil for the purposes of, in their minds, securing the chances for achieving Socialism and Communism?
If an action has such a big impact and such little payoff as the ethnic cleansing in the great purge, I think that disqualifies you from actually being a leftist.
By that reasoning, even christian fundamentalists would be leftists: they want everyone to believe in god and adhere to their teachings so that we can all be at peace for eternity in heaven. But if what they’re doing to achieve it is Crusades, discrimination and antagonizing progress, the end result isn’t worth it (especially since, like with the great purge, there’s no guarantee all this suffering will actually bring results).
And we can learn from the mistakes of people even if we don’t think they align with our political stance, me considering Stalin a leftist or not doesn’t change my opinion on what he’s done.
Same here! For now, I try to focus on implementing self-sufficiency and communal practices, even if the bulk of my life is engaged with Capitalist systems.
Get into anarcho-syndicalism. Form and join existing anarcho-communist worker’s associations. The only sustainable way for us to end capitalism is if we start collectively associating and operating outside the framework of capitalism today.
Yep, that’s why more democratic Modes of Production such as Communism are more resistant to corruption than antidemocratic Capitalistic Modes of Productuon.
Capitalism, by definition, is a system where Capital Owners pay wage laboring workers to create commodities. Functionally, you have people with excess power.
Communism, on the other hand, requires collective ownership of Capital. You don’t have fundamental power imbalances baked in.
Following, it’s easier to implement anti-corruption practices, such as forming democratic worker councils.
Several reasons. The politburo was highly corrupt due to flaws within Democratic Centralism. Additionally, corruption comes with being a developing country, which all eastern European Socialist states were.
If you can find a non-corrupt developing Capitalist nation, I’ll be thoroughly impressed.
Sure. The mechanisms of Capitalism support corruption even in developed nations, meanwhile it appears that corruption in Socialist systems is similar to corruption in developing Capitalist nations, as there haven’t been any developed Socialist nations. Fair?
There was never socialism in Asia or Eastern Europe. At no point have the workers seized the means of production and had a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Maybe there’s a sweet spot in between Capitalism and Communism. They are basically the 2 extremes of the political spectrum after all. Surely there’s a spot on the spectrum that embraces worker’s rights while also incentivising commercial enterprise. Checks and balances are always necessary, even in a utopia.
Who literally says that? Capitalism is the only system that allows people to dig themselves out of that hole. Know any Cubans? Socialism works awesome…says nobody crushed by it.
Can you explain the structural issues you belive Socialism to necessarily have? Can you explain why they are inevitable in Socialism, and moreso than Capitalism?
Do you think tools have mystical mind control aspects to them that cause their owners to commit genocide if society collectively owns them? If so, then why does genocide also happen in Capitalist countries?
You can’t have it. It simply does not work like that. We saw what happens when you try that and it’s the world we’re living in. And when I say ‘the world we’re living in’ I mean exclusively the west. This kind of thing gets you and your entire town killed if you try it where the US is allowed to set off bombs.
Yes, with corruption, we can’t have anything. So what I need to do is become the most powerful man in the universe and be loving and kind, but with fair and swift judgment. There is no I ther way. No way possible. OR, we can keep trying.
Adam Smith even said: “every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.”
So, we need to constantly keep fighting against corruption and harm towards other humans. If not, you are the problem. Instead of always saying how that will not happen, maybe come up with an answer. I mean, since humans keep causing problems, maybe we should get rid of humans? Right?
Yours is a failure of imagination. There’s no alternative between the current order and god from heaven coming down to smite the bad people? Because I say a strategy that was tried in the past didn’t work, and has observable and learnable outcomes, that saying it’s not the path to achieving what you want is the exact same as saying we should kill off the human race? Right?
Batshit reply. Not sure what the Adam Smith filler is for.
The very nature of capitalism facilitates concentrations of power, which will utilize that power to accumulate even more in any conceivable way. The system is fundamentally flawed and needs to be replaced if we care at all for basic human rights and a future for this species.
Social Democracy historically still results in increasing disparity, and economic Imperialism. You can’t fix the issues with Capitalism with a band-aid.
Concentrations of power is made from the greed of people. Honestly, I beliefe that any sufficiently large society will eventually fall into capitalism, and the other way around, capitalism encourages border-less states, making effectively bigger communities.
However, with the current economic trend of de-globalization, things may eventually change.
I’d agree, but I think public sentiment for globalization is souring. Right wing populists have been gaining in elections the last 10 years because of this, running largely anti-immigration and economically protectionist. I think they’re predicting a future reduction in globalization based on this.
There’s always people in power, there is no other way. Either citizens can be empowered, or only the gov’t. Those are the only two options regardless of the system.
The very nature of capitalism facilitates concentrations of power
No. Capitalism is one thing and one thing only: the private ownership of the means of production. The very nature of private ownership, means private citizens have the freedom to own what’s theirs, and trade it with whoever. The nature of capitalism, meaning its logical end state, is a free market in the truest sense. This is the opposite of concentrating power, because the means of power are completely disunited. In less favorable terms, the logical end state of capitalism is anarchy or chaos
Socialism is the common/public/collective ownership of the means of production. Holding the means of power in a collective is another way of saying it’s being concentrated. The logical end of socialism is the concentration of everything.
Of course, I don’t think we need to take either extreme too seriously. They both have faults, clearly, and they both devolve into something that more resembles the other with time. Capitalism adopts regulations or develop a state to concentrate their power against and enemy. Socialism reduces state power when civilians want more freedoms.
Point is, your characterizing of Capitalism seems misinformed, and it’s incredibly silly to think a fundamental replacement of our current system is in order, as if there’s some perfect ideology we can obviously replace it with
If you own the source of wealth, you can buy more in a positive feedback loop, thus concentrating wealth and therefore power. Them being private actors means they are accountable to nobody.
I feel like you are both arguing different things. The simple fact of ownership isn’t the concentration of power, it’s the fact that we don’t put limits on that ownership that causes concentration of power. People always argue for or against systems by taking those systems to their absolutes instead of arguing how they should be in practice. If we put a high tax on anyone with a high net worth, high yearly earnings, high estate value, etc., and also take anti-trust laws seriously, then we can largely solve much of that and still operate under capitalism. The problem is more how we are currently operating under capitalism more than capitalism itself, imo.
It is amazing how delusional that entire screed is. Capitalism is owning the means of production that you have nothing to do with creating. It never creates; it only destroys.
Commerce is a moral economic system based on healthy competition among individual owners. Capitalism is the utter destruction of that system in favor of economic authoritarian rule.
I’m not a fan of any overarching system, however capitalism is the one I, and I suspect most of the people reading this, live in. Therefore the best way of addressing the problems our society faces is to do so using the tools that our capitalistic system provides (such as regulation and oversight) rather than twiddle our thumbs waiting for some grand revolution to fix everything.
Claiming that the only way to improve our situation is to completely overturn the system does nothing but promote inaction.
Sitting my kids down and telling them that the only way to send them to college is to keep buying scratch-off lottery tickets.
Angrily insisting that the only other alternative is to tear up the entire higher education system. Its either gambling on scratchers or doing a bloody uprising. No other alternatives.
Just ignore all those times that regulation and oversight were overturned by capitalists taking control of a capitalist system. I mean, we in the US have a major political party that is BUILT on capitalist overthrow of regulation. The UK is doing the same thing and failng miserably.
Yes, you’ll have to constantly fight against that, but you’d have to constantly fight against greed and corruption in any system. The fact is that they wouldn’t be trying to overturn regulations if they didn’t exist in the first place.
So is anybody that’s actually sane. I love all the make believe “links” made with the anti-capitalism crowd. Keep in mind those are the same ones that are highly educated, went to good schools, worked their way up the corporate ladder so they could have their big house and nice cars… but against Capitalism LOL. It’s all talk.
Yes yes you love the idea of people being taken advantage of by the very nature of the system and think anti-capitalism means communist, we know your types, it’s tiresome.
Wrong, commerce does that, but to do that you need companies investing tons of money upfront, market research, development and a very substantial up front investment or there’s no product to sell, and then no commerce. If money can’t be made either by the companies or the people behind them, theirs no drive to do it.
Where are the socialists standing with their commerce vs capitalism?
China has almost 1.5 BILLION people vs the US’ couple hundred million, so it’s not size or numbers.
Wait are you now rejecting the Pull Up By Your Bootstraps, borrow money from friends and family/stock offering method of breaking into commerce? Because capitalism doesnt need what you described. If you velievd whar you say then you would have to admit that private equity and hedge fund offices should be abolished. Capitalism is what removed chocolate from Hershey, Reese’s and Nestle products. Capitalism forced local vet offices to sell to private equity firms or be shut out of business. Capitalism is what destroyed the living wage. Capitalism is why we have economic crashes every ten years. Capitalism is why there isnt enough housing and food is dumped into landfills. Nothing good comes from capitalism, and it never has. Small business and local commerce creates; capitalism destroys.
Lot of rambling and blaming Capitalism for things you can’t back up, so where are these Socialist countries with better commerce/business and as a result higher GDP?
GDO doesnt mean jack fucking shit if there’s no societal benefit from it. The US is a fucking third world country under neofuedalist rule for the past 50 fucking years.
Ghodsee, an acclaimed ethnographer and professor of Russian and East European Studies, spent years researching what happened to women in countries that transitioned from state socialism to capitalism. She argues here that unregulated capitalism disproportionately harms women, and that we should learn from the past. By rejecting the bad and salvaging the good, we can adapt some socialist ideas to the 21st century and improve our lives.
Anarchist Capitalism is a delusion. You’re always going to have someone with a bigger gun telling other people what to do. That’s a de facto state whether Peter Thiel and Murray Rothbard want to admit it or not.
Once you sever democratic control of capital and allow landlords the freedom to raise rents, the ball only continues to roll downhill. People will keep looking for chinks in the regulatory armor (or create them through brute force) until the market system collapses. There is no “regulated capitalism” that endures continuous contact with the corruptive influence of the profit motive.
Honestly I think capitalism works so long as you can make sure greedy people can only satisfy their greed through productivity rather than insider trading and buying companies that are competitive or implementing micro transactions into fully priced games infact that’s the reason why I’ve been against stock markets just like how are these people improving life for others
Greed seems to be the inevitable outcome, at the expense of other humans and animals around us all. It’s disturbing and has no real end-game of benefit now that we have automation. The question is how do we take back control from the authoritarians?
I still don’t know why communism gets a bad rap, as a CONCEPT, not IMPLEMENTATION. People seem to conflate the two, whereas in the modern age of technology it makes the most sense.
Sometimes a meme should be taken at face value but it really does leave it open here, not only does Thanos lose, he gets whooped on by Captain Liberalism first.
Also, we don’t confuse CONCEPT and IMPLEMENTATION in a lot of other cases. Like, do I like fresh air? Yes, certainly! Do I like open windows in the winter? No, definitely not.
We can’t. People like to think it’s possible by voting in the “right” type of person and things like peacefully protesting etc. The truth is that it’s a lost cause. We can’t make the changes necessary to fix the planet, stop the ultra rich or any other large scale issue. I know I sound defeatist, but it’s true. Short of bloody violence we’re stuck like this.
I’m all for an individual decreasing their own consumption for the environment. I try to do that. But decreasing someone else’s quality of life is where it gets dicy. You can very easily get discrimination.
Put a high upper limit only. Don’t touch the bottomline.
For example, no more than 4 cars per person: Average Joe won’t even know this rule exists but it will still reduce mineral mining due to people who collect cars.
Possible problems with my shitty example: Now a car is a controlled substance. Who decides the limit and how? What if there is a mental disease (with a better example this would make more sense) which requires a person to have 20 cars?
I believe that’s called Clarkson’s Disease and mostly affects lovable assholes.
I think a better solution is to give everyone less reasons to need and use cars, that a ban becomes unnecessary. But if we’re putting limits on things to reduce their consumption, that’s what excise taxes are for, most places already do it for fuel.
And of course there could always be taxation relative to a person or company’s environmental impact. People get angry at this one.
Cars already have defined limits. You already have to have insurance, for example. They are already registered in a person’s name. This could be actually easily implemented.
Decreasing someones consumption will likely decrease their quality of life. Assuming they wanted to maximize their quality of life, they would consume what would do that. Though there are exceptions, like limiting addiction or short range fights.
I would argue that a lot of consumption, at least in “developed” nations, is driven by artificial demand. Some examples: the tobacco industry, the invention of “halitosis,” bottled water, planned obsolescence. So much of what we produce doesn’t raise, and often lowers, quality of life. Having to meet these levels of demand is deleterious directly and indirectly; being overworked and living in a polluted environment also lowers quality of life.
But that’s not really the point. Viewing quality of life as identical to consumption is pathological and borderline offensive. If you want to increase your quality of life, spend more time with your friends, family, and neighbors. Create in ways that inspire you. Rest and relax. Spend more time in the moment. Go outside and visit nature. Volunteer and give back to others. There is so much more to being human than having the latest phone.
I absolutely agree about artificial demand, especially in situations of addiction or mental trickery. So I think those should be regulated.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, when you reduce someone else’s consumption, you’re saying you know better than them what is good for them. That can often be the case, like in gambling, scams, addiction, and a lot of marketing. But it can be dangerous if you don’t actually know better than them what’s best for them, but think you do.
I guess consumption is a bad word for it. Those activities you mention still have an opportunity cost associated with them, but you’re right, they shouldn’t really be called consumption. Let’s say allocating your effort? People usually know themselves better than someone else how they can allocate their effort for their own good. Limiting how they can do that should only be done when you’re pretty sure you know better than them what’s good for them.
Not necessarily in favor of degrowth, but consumption and consumerism doesn’t necessarily mean higher quality of life. Consumerism is purely fed by Capitalism, without advertising people generally “want” far less.
Lemme give you a very small concrete example where reduced consumption will not alter the quality of life.
Take a small neighbourhood, maybe 10ish families there. Everybody in that neighbourhood has basic tools that they use maybe once a month or less. Hammers, screwdrivers, spanners, etc. Instead of each family having those tools, have a tool library where you have 2-3 of each tool. Anyone in the neighbourhood can borrow the tools they need when they need them and give them back when done. Congratulations, you’ve reduced tool consumption by 70-80% with no downsides.
This is just one small example, but there are methods for more efficiently allocating resources within communities.
You decrease quality of life by increasing travel time and resistance to getting the tools, plus rarely not being able to use a tool because it’s in use. But it is an efficiency improvement. Same idea with gymns, everyone can share one place instead of duplicating resources. But then you need to make sure everything gets put away and you need to keep the lights on, so you need to charge for it. All that works under normal markets. It’s just not as good as ideal because people take advantage of each other. We need more oversight to minimize that, but I don’t think it means throwing out the system.
I don’t think walking 1 minute to a library inside your immediate vicinity qualifies as a reduction in QoL. Fair point on the potential very unlikely case of 5 people all needing a screwdriver at the same time, but that can be solved by buying 1-2 extra screwdrivers.
I went to this example specifically because I thought it was not controversial and low-hanging fruit. Nobody is talking about throwing out the system. Book libraries exist, and they haven’t caused the downfall of modern civilization. All I’m trying to say here is that even in the context of our modern capitalist reality, there are ways of reducing consumption without any aggreived parties that we’re just not doing.
I have seen what other people do to communal tools.
Could you elaborate a bit on that? I used to be part of a maker space and the tools were generally well cared for, and members normally donated anything we were missing
The biggest thing is tools just going missing. Joe brings it home to work on whatever and never brings it back. It’s pretty common with hand tools if people are allowed to bring them to their homes.
Other common problems are people not caring for stuff properly. Not changing the oil on lawn mowers, for example.
I already have a robust maintenance and tracking system. The tools live on a specific shelf and they return to that shelf when unused. When spring rolls around, the lawn mower is getting its oil changed too.
As I said, I won’t prevent you from using communal tools, don’t prevent me from using the fruits of my labor to purchase my own tools. One would think we could agree that is a fair system to all.
Nothing about capitalism prevents you from doing this. I just looked online and there are multiple apps that let you do this. It’s just a hammer is a relatively inconsequential purchase and fairly cheap. It might take $5 in gas and $20 in lost wages just to save the materials in a $10 tool. Not too mention the administration required to maintain this system. Car sharing though and parking share have become popular though.
So you’re going to ban products that you personally don’t like? Or anything that isn’t strictly utilitarian? No flavour in our drinks, no snacks, no smoking, no anything else…
Are you suggesting I’ve never had oranges squeezed then drunk the juice? What an absolutely bizarre assumption.
I’m fascinated to be honest, like at some point you’ve had fresh orange juice and it was such a magical experience you can’t imagine anyone else living through it? Or you found a dusty shack in the woods where a wizened old man let you use the juicer hes been hiding ever since whatever dystopian hell you’re from banned them.
Fresh orange is pretty good, I very much recommend spending a day in a spanish orange grove, smoking weed, listening to miles Davis and drinking fresh orange over ice. The stuff in bottles is pretty much as good, in the US they do frozen concentrate which is really good because it’s frozen when fresh so you still get all the nutrition and taste plus it takes up less volume so easier to transport and better for the environment.
By almost as good I mean like good stuff is a tier, fresh off the tree on a sunny day is a tier
Maybe I’m misunderstanding degrowth. Is it trying to decrease GDP? How does it do that? Or is it moreso increased worker rights and protections with decreased GDP growth as a byproduct? Because I’m all for the second version.
I believe that the intent is to shift focus away from material goods, since we have long passed the point of diminishing returns on increasing material wealth increasing individual well-being, and focusing on things that actually do improve it, which our system overall neglects. That would be things like meaningful work, community, art, leisure, et cetera. In short, the things that make us happy, but which GDP doesn’t measure.
at least to my understanding degrowth is about not doing things that are ultimately not actually productive for our quality of life, the prime example being the clothing industry which churns out more clothes than we would ever need every year and literally just throws it in the garbage, going so far as cutting things up just so people won’t fish it out of the container and wear it without paying.
There are a ton of things like that, which basically only serve to enrich the already wealthy, and if we stop doing that shit and just give people what they need to live regardless of if they have an employment, we can all enjoy life more while also being more sustainable.
Yeah, but if everyone decreases work, you get less production and less stuff, and then increased poverty. It’s easy to say more stuff isn’t always better from the comfort of the Internet, but the truth is that abundance of material production is responsible for the relative extreme wealth we do have today.
And poverty is many many times lower today than it was a few hundred years ago before capitalism. Even entertaining the idea that it’s not is completely insane. Capitalism correlates extremely strongly with low poverty country to country within a single time period, as well. 2023, for example.
Objectively if we were to scale back enough, many people currently struggling would die. Excess is the only reason they’re still living. Think the rainforest and rain passing the canopy trees enough to still allow life below. Remove the mass amount of rain, that ecosystem suffers.
I mean, yes, if we scaled back enough, people would die. But if we scaled up enough, people would also die. If you drink enough water it will kill you.
many people currently struggling would die
Many people currently struggling are dying because of how much consumption is taking place.
Handing out new rain to the trees in the canopy may or may not increase rain at the lower levels, but reducing rain at the canopy for sure reduces rain at lower levels.
Not that I’m capitalism’s greatest fan, but this sounds about as clever as, “evolution is impossible because the second law of thermodynamics says chaos always increases, and the sun doesn’t exist.”
Evolution and the stars reside in a local entropy minimum but they speed up the increase of entropy by converting a lot of energy. So low entropy and the global increase aren’t contradicting each other. But yes, I agree equating cancer and capitalism isn’t very useful. Especially when the main problem with capitalism is distribution and not scarcity.
I had an argument with someone about the nature of motivation within a capitalist system. Specifically related to people who find their motivations in non-monetary ends such as personal pride, the greater good, morality, etc. He said that those people were rubes, but I countered that surely those people were suckers. We still haven’t resolved…
I don’t think greed is necessary. I’d argue markets exist to cater to human wants and needs. If someone is using an inherently fucky system (as all non-voluntary systems are to some extent) to find happiness, then it’s working at least a little.
“evolution is impossible because the second law of thermodynamics says chaos always increases, and the sun doesn’t exist.”
The second law only applies to closed system systems. Neither earth nor sun are closed systems (they interact with each other) and if they were there your statement would probably be true but not for the reason you suggested.
Using “tankie” to mean anything left of center, truly the mark of a complete moron. By the way, rightwingers aren’t people and don’t deserve to enjoy the benefits of being people.
A complete moron would start to make accusations from assumptions instead of asking to clarify. I don’t mean “anything left of center”. I’m very left of center. But I do mean the militant and belligerent tankies of the Fediverse of which I see many. I wonder, did the shoe fit or is it an anger management issue?
What about Communism assumes people are nice and honest, and won’t abuse power? If someone wasn’t nice and honest, and is willing to abuse power, what part of Communism specifically allows this to be taken advantage of?
Why is it more acceptable for a system based on abusing power and greed like Capitalism preferable over democratic control?
If you’d really like to know, there is a Wikipedia page that has a huge list of dictators killing their OWN population. Even the Austrian painter called his party (Nazionale) socialist…
But if you don’t count him, he would be one of the ONLY ones that has killed over a milion of their OWN people that was NOT a supposed communist.
COMMUNISM IS A FANTASTIC IDEA!
(but not more than that, unfortunately)
I WILL VOTE COMMUNIST WHEN THEIR LEADER IS me. Or an Ai.
Many of these dictators, such as Batista, Hitler, and Pinochet, were Capitalist. Yes, despite calling himself a National Socialist, Hitler actually entrenched corporate power and maintained Capitalism in Germany. He adopted aesthetics of Socialism and Marxism in order to persuade the Working Class, however firmly rejected Marxism and Socialism. He claimed he had “stolen Socialism from the Marxists.”
For the sake of argument, imagine we have the choice of transitioning a society to Socialism and then Communism in the future, or remaining Capitalist. Which would you choose, and why? What structural flaws are a necessity of Communism that aren’t present, or are less present, within Capitalism, and why? Do you think Communism is when Mr. Bureaucrat moves some lines on his excel sheet and then 30 people starve, because that’s the entire economy, or have you actually bothered to learn about what Communism is and what Communists advocate for?
15 años de correistas hijodep I’m talking about 11% interest payments to China for projects that aren’t EVER finished… To give 100million to Cuba for generators that are NEVER delivered.
That’s just a small taste of how a former president (Correa) can make 30 years of misery by signing away the country. Argentina even worse it’s now OWNED by China.
Of course not, my friend. The problem only arises when you make a BAD contract for 11% interest, discount on crude sales, overpriced project with 100% Chinese engineers and no warranty (just so Mr president can recieve some usd in cayman or Vatican # account…)
They may have visited for a month and talked to 40% of the people there tho, who are so uneducated they are indoctrinated by church and (state) political parties
Yup ignoring your actual argument about why Capitalism is better at regulating greed. Because they know it isn’t, they have to ignore that, and rely on whataboutisms, while ignoring the fact that Capitalism doesn’t even work on paper. Classic.
A small tiny example can be this: a communist government buys from China, shitty works, no guarantee, high interests, no local staff hired.
A capitalist government buys (loans) from us and actually has an insurance and guarantee and warranty that their hidroeléctric dam will be finished and 100% of promised capacity.
One is basically STEALING (with help of local president, in south am or Africa or Asia).
The other may make rich people Richer.
BUT AT LEAST THE PROJECT IS DONE.
AND THE US IS NOT ASKING FOR 11% INTERÉS NOR FOR 3$ DISCOUNT ON EACH BARREL OF CRUDE. NOR TO SIGN AWAY THE GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS IF DEFAULT ON DEBT. (this is Ecuador, I can do Venezuela or argentina or african countries too, just let me know which you want a passionate lecture on.
No, it’s the lack of respect for common sense and the extreme greed of its leaders. Historically 99.99% of comunist leaders live lavish lifestyles, kids in private schools and holidays in miami
Yesss! That works fine if your lefties are balanced with righties in a multinparty system in a modern healthy economy in a wester country. (e.g. EUROPE). it Shamefully does not work in ECUADOR, VENEZUELA ARGENTINA COLOMBIA PERÚ BRASIL And That’s Just the ones I know of.
Let disregard us of a(holes). They don’t have politics, just LOBBYists
Their point is still wrong, though. Their argument is purely against existing historical applications of Marxism-Leninism, not on the actual structures of Communism, nor what Communists believe.
Many Democratic Socialists are simply Communists that think society can be meaningfully reformed into Socialism, rather than revolution. All suggested forms of Communism are democratic to their core, that’s the underlying philosophy behind Communism.
The nuances are in historical applications of Vanguard parties, which tended on the authoritarian side, with flawed implementations of Democratic Centralism. Throwing the entire baby out with the bathwater, rather than attempting to address the system of Democratic Centralism and other structural flaws present in the USSR for example, is flawed thinking.
Liberal Democracy, as is the usual form presented by Democratic Socialists, is less Democratic than forms such as Council Communism, for example. There’s legitimate discussion to be had, Liberal Democracy being a requirement for Democracy touches on the subject of Capitalist Realism, by which the presence of Capitalism entrenches a sense of permanence on those living in it, even if unfounded.
Do you have a structural point to make, or are you admitting that you don’t?
Would you have argued against Capitalism and Liberal Democracy in the years shortly following the French Revolution, knowing what you currently know?
Do you legitimately think that the very specific conditions surrounding the USSR resulting in their specific flaws cannot be learned from and properly accounted for? Ie, do you think Socialism and Communism are impossible to implement democratically?
Ok monkey, you’re talking about a system of governance that everyone would be a part of in the richest country on Earth. That country being filled with people who have all been taught that “fuck you I got mine” is the law of the world.
Magically, somehow, in every one of every Communist garbage essays I’ve seen on this site; you people fail to recognize the key factor that will absolutely cause communism to fail. People. “No no, control will go to the right people, you’ll see!”
Mald, cope, seethe, all you’ve done is prove that you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.
Do you think democracy is a bad thing? Why do you think authoritarian structures are good if its labeled Capitalism? Do you think Communism is when Mr. Bureaucrat sits down in his government chair and does a Communism? Lmao.
Is it brigading if people just think you have shit takes and downvote you without organizing or trying to brigade? Is that how fragile you and your worldview are?
This is a popular take that is just completely wrong. Capitalism as a system does not require growth. Capitalism is a system in which the factors of production are owned by private parties and can be freely traded. The capitalists believe is that markets will allocate those factors of production to the owners that can best exploit them. This can result in growth, but it isn’t necessary for the system to function.
There are literally a thousand issues with the system ranging from inequality to environmental concerns to market concentration (all of which capitalists tend to ignore). I really do not understand why people pick this one to quibble over.
Because shareholders demand almost always increasing growth despite the factual impossibility to provide that. The gaming sector is a good showcase where trust, release quality & creativity and monetization practices continually degrade the overall experience until the company starts to sink in its entirety. Ubisoft comes to mind. I have been burned so bad by them, started to refuse their products and certainly I seem to not be the only person.
the u.s. economy is measured in “growth” by average economy anylyst assholes since forever. it’s GPD per X. shitheads love that kind of metric.
There are literally a thousand issues with the system ranging from inequality to environmental concerns to market concentration (all of which capitalists tend to ignore). I really do not understand why people pick this one to quibble over.
so why are you yelling about tangential bullshit that other people are yelling about?
Things like apps, media, or art can be more valuable without taking any more resources. Plus through greater efficiency, the same resources go much further. But it’s often easier to grow by just consuming more, so companies to that since they don’t really care. The sad thing is, I think we can have limitless growth if it’s slow and deliberate and conscious of it’s impact to the planet. But the current system doesn’t incentive that, instead everyone is flooring the growth pedal to catastrophic effect.
It also consumes human labor when people absorb the marketing. This is an externality not accounted for in the cost of marketing, it is large, and it makes resources unavailable for more productive tasks.
Marketing is the distribution of information. Its value is not just a trick or something. You can argue we’re over valuing it, but it’s definitely extremely valuable.
I am saying the costs that are not accounted for, namely the effort spent by every not buying a product consuming an advertisement, is extremely high and outweighs the value of products sold. Moreover, there is no clear reason to think the persuasion of people in mass is good based just on selling more products. Finally, if a person is only persuaded to buy a different brand of product the value is effectively only the small marginal difference between brands.
Limitless growth of what? Limitless growth of time past is inevitable for example. Wealth can grow with increased comfort, so I guess to come to maximum wealth you’d need to achieve total human fulfillment. I hope you can agree we’ve got a long long way to go till that.
You think money can’t buy happiness? Somehow some rich people manage to still be miserable, but most poor people would be free to be much more happy with more money.
Infinite growth of what? Is infinite growth of happiness possible?
People need to meet their most basic needs, doesn’t have to be through money. We’ve just set up society to work that way.
Capitalism in particular, is an incredibly stubborn idea that’s difficult to throw away. And we’ve rigged the system to make it difficult (almost impossible) to give up.
Hell, the U.S. is notorious for trying to overthrow governments around the world who don’t subscribe to capitalism, and the U.S. governments way of thinking.
Oh yeah, you could distribute resources differently. Money is just very effecent at matching supply to demand. Something like a UBI could retain that while decreasing inequality inherent to the increased efficiency.
At the scale of mankind, the universe is effectively infinite. The sun has another billion year to go and outputs so much energy it’s virtually infinite to us.
No, that’s literally the definition of growth (the variation of GDP from one year to the next, the GDP itself is defined as the sum of gross value added). We can make growth out of thin air if we want, it’s a purely accounting metric.
I sell you a pebble for a $1000 and you sell it back to me and we created $2000 of growth without anything physically happening.
You missed the point. Everything you are describing is hypothetical. Cash and dollars are physical, but “value” and “growth” that you have described are hypothetical.
I’m not sure what you mean by “hypothetical”, these aren’t hypothesis, these are their definition. And their definition means they are limitless, just as the definition of “beauty” or “numbers” make them limitless. They aren’t bound by the physical world.
(also dollars are equally abstract, currencies exists as human convention, having $1 billion more in your bank account is just a few bits flipped in a database)
Things like apps, media, or art can be more valuable without taking any more resources.
They take energy and memory on the local devices and in the cloud. Uploading and downloading also does. Better software often needs better (new) hardware. The developers take office space and hardware and energy. Do you want me to go on?
The bigger question for my is why growth is supposed to be a good thing. With all the technology, we could work less but on the whole, we work more.
R&D resources are usually small compared to the efficacy improvements they allow. You don’t need advertisement. Though to achieve sustanability , you’d also need a very long life on products and almost complete recycling.
The topic is growth. There is no growth in sustainability. For your company to grow, you need new features, new customers, … People say this is achievable without resources, I doubt it. That’s what I’m saying.
Games, but games can also just be better and more optimized on the same hardware. It’s just easier to throw more silicon at the problem, and we don’t incentive caring about the planet enough.
I try to use my phones as long as I can and I ran into situations where I couldn’t update or install apps because my phone didn’t meet the requirements
Interestingly, better computer hardware is often actually less physical matter. What’s valuable about computers isn’t the amount of material, it’s the arrangement of matter. That applies to both hardware and software. A phone and that same phone smashed have the same number of atoms. That phone and an equivalent from 10 years earlier are pretty close in number of atoms. My monitors and TVs today are a tenth as many atoms as the ones I had years ago.
Buying a phone every year is still about five times the matter of buying a phone every five years. Also: it is quite cynical to count atoms while children work in cobalt mines. The question of resources is more complex.
Ohhh - you believe an obvious authoritarian regime when they said they’re communist. I suppose you’ll defend the DPRK as a robust democracy for the same big brain reason.
I’m not sure what any of this has to do with economics, but you’ve made your irrelevant, dumb, definitionally wrong point - I hope it brought you some brief satisfaction.
Specifically for neoliberal capitalism, it’s a fitting metaphor. The lack of tying capital to any concrete resources, constraints or externalities, with a supposition that infinite capital growth is possible, would actually lead to… the 20th century. Though nobody really buys this anymore, and is clearly just a justification to do horrible things in the name of making money. While greed has and will always destroy lives, communities and environments, the real damage of neoliberal capitalism is that it’s ahistorical. Removing people from the philosophical and social context in which the system was born and operates, makes it hard to see and hard to question for most people.
I wouldn’t say capitalism is based on the notion of infinite growth, but it is an inevitability of there being no limits on capital accumulation. The notion that humans have endless desire for more, always needing a stronger hit to maintain personal satisfaction, is more psychological than something inherent to private ownership itself. Capitalism feeds the natural animal reward system to disastrous effect, but it isn’t required for capitalism to work. In fact, insatiable desires are the reason capitalism doesn’t work, because if people could be satisfied with a reasonable amount of resources, never trying to acquire more than they need, capitalism would be a fairly decent system.
Living 100% sustainably on this planet is counterintuitive to what it means to be human. We don’t need a political revolution, we need a psychological one.
Exactly. Democratic systems serve society better than non democratic ones, but a strong democracy can only be as good as its people. If the voters lack the wisdom to limit their consumption, both for sustainability and their own satisfaction, they’re doomed to make things worse.
Someone with fewer resources can be much happier than someone with a ton of them. Philosophers have long recognized that certain pleasures only grow more demanding when you feed them, while having sustainable consumption and gratitude is much more stable. As you consume something like meth or opiates, your brain gets used to it, requiring larger and larger doses to get the same effect. With pleasures that are similar drugs, this will eventually harm your happiness and well-being. Our brains cannot remain in a perpetually euphoric state, so we must limit these pleasures.
Certain drugs or pleasures are so euphoria inducing that there is no moderate consumption. Some people have a harder time moderately consuming pleasures that others can tolerate, resulting in addiction disorders.
With the wealthy, their greed is dangerous and addictive, but because it often doesn’t directly harm them and they warped society to accommodate it, it should be handled as more of a criminal condition than a clinical disorder. They get hit after hit from opulent excess, but they always try to get more, and will never satisfy their desire. We must criminalize excessive consumption from individual wealthy people.
Average people also overconsume finite resources, but that is better addressed by taxes, regulations, and incentives for alternatives. Law will be used, but not in the same way as when dealing with the rich.
I would disagree, most people want a more sustainable life, be it economical or ecological, people actually vote for that. But we are never given what we vote for, because of pressure on government given by the big corps, we’re always given some half-assed version of what we actually want.
In any finite economy, this is immoral, because one person (or small group) wins, and everybody else loses. By definition. And once you’re a loser, you’re sunk.
So capitalist apologists rely on the illusion/dream of limitless growth because it means they get to pretend that when they steal from you they are somehow “creating value”.
All organizations fail eventually. Companies lose focus at the top (management), become like a cancer, over extend, and then die off. The remaining assets are picked off. Same thing with governments. Same with unions. Hell, the same happened with boy scouts. Same thing with churches.
What is described is a human condition, not a problem specific to capitalism. Greed cannot be organized out, legislated against, nor fought with fists.
this is literally capitalist propaganda, human nature is the exact opposite, we’re an absurdly generous and non-greedy species due to how social we are, just like how ants don’t hoard food.
a few select humans who most likely have a number of mental illnesses are greedy, and they have for thousands of years now managed to convince everyone else that they for some reason deserve special treatment to the detriment of the rest of society.
I don’t know about greed, but self interest is the least disorderly instinct a creature can have. Your genetic line will die off very quickly if you constantly sacrifice yourself for society, which would mean the self sacrificing instinct would never propagate. Of course humans are social, cooperative, and self sacrificing under some circumstances, and that’s good because we are often better off sacrificing occasionally. Maybe investing would be a better word. But some base level self interest is good. Kinda like how you’re supposed to put your own oxygen mask on first in a plane emergency. If you try to get someone else’s first, you’ll both go unconscious and then you’re both screwed.
Did you actually read their comment? Everyone wants to improve their own material conditions, but the specific idea that everyone wants to do so at the expense of others is wrong.
It’s also been shown to be true of society as a whole time immaterial. In disaster scenarios, it’s not madness and chaos, it’s everyone in the vicinity working together to save as many people as possible.
Hell, in a lot of countries that are far more agrarian that commercial, you see much, much stronger communities.
this is literally capitalist propaganda, human nature is the exact opposite, we’re an absurdly generous and non-greedy species due to how social we are, just like how ants don’t hoard food.
Pretty cool universe you live in. How can I join? Mine sucks.
We never had barbarians pillaging for millennia before the existence of capitalism? Not to mention monarchic governments, conqueror empires? Capitalism is like 400 years old. That other stuff predates it by tens of thousands of years.
yes i said as such in my comment, the majority of leaders in the past were the same as capitalists today, likely narcissists and/or psychopaths who didn’t care that they ruined lives for their own gain, as opposed to the other 99.999999999999% of humanity that is fundamentally programmed to cooperate
It isn’t a bad analogy we are quite literally killing our planet and its ecosystems we need to survive because it is profitable. Capitalism and the greed it fosters isn’t the status quo for humanity regardless of what Capitalist propaganda has tricked you into believing.
This is a comment thread, not a paper. China is the biggest and most successful communist country. They ravage the shit out of the environment and pollute to an extent that is unfathomable. The scams going on are mind blowing. The greed of people is the failure.
That doesn’t answer my question at all, lol. That same thing happens in Capitalism, see: Batista’s Cuba, Pinochet’s Chile, Hitler’s Germany, etc.
Assuming democratic measures are in place, why is a class-based system like Capitalism less susceptible to issues stemming from greed than Socialism or Communism?
Authoritarian systems with lots of power in few hands are risky. Can happen in capitalist systems aswell, but have there been any non authoritarian communist nations?
I agree, authoritarian systems with lots of power in few hands are indeed risky. Why is that necessary for Socialism or Communism, and why is it okay in Capitalism?
Depends. How do you define authoritarian? I’d argue all states are authoritarian, Capitalist or not, but get less so with development. Still, Capitalism remains a limiting factor, as it’s by structure authoritarian.
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