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.
I thought the chemo treatment was WW1.
Are we really gonna pretend killing a bunch of people is better than doing business with them?
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’m a fan of capitalism with tight regulations and checks on corruption, personally
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.
What is your proposed alternative? I struggle to think of any system that doesn’t inevitably result in concentrations of power
Social Democracy. Commerce is key to strong economies, not capitalistic wealth hoarding.
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.
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
the private ownership of the means of production
You recognize how that itself is a concentration of power, right
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.
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.
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.
Silver lining, college is much less needed today than it was 10 years ago in many industries.
Just ignore all those times that regulation and oversight have happened and continue to happen in capitalist systems, right?
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
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.
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.
https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/
https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
Why did you think a well thought out thought would get you upvotes? I mean, it did. But that’s not normal! 🤣
I’m joking. Replies don’t matter either.
Actually, very little that we do is important.
But still, just try and laugh when you can (to compensate crying at night)
If this post gets 100 upvotes then capitalism will fail and everyone will get sex.
But if you measure growth in made up numbers, you can just keep rolling them up indefinitely.
If we lived in a made up number world where people are resources can just be pulled out of thin air without consequence that would work I suppose.
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?
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 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.