Does BookWyrm have an app?

Sort of non-tech. Working as an RF Engineer with my Physics degree

For me personally, I’m not necessarily anti-capitalist as a whole; I think it has its place. I think people incorrectly place how old capitalism actually is. Sure in the Medieval Period, people bought and sold goods like how we think of markets, and they even had currency to exchange for it, but it was still much more of a bartering based system. Capitalism itself is also a very cultural phenomenon, only emerging out of Europe (in India for example, capitalist thinking was anathema to the cultural norms and took many years to take hold once the British invaded). In reality, there was a period of time in which all of a sudden, resources in Western Europe and the Americas become suddenly abundant and a system had to be put in place to handle that, and the system was capitalism. Here’s some of the main problems, some of which have been pointed out by others:

1. Capitalism is based off of a system which inherently assumes infinite growth which is not possible

2. Free markets require easy and free access to information to govern things like price setting, but that information is almost impossible to obtain accurately

3. Capitalism even in its purest form is not a complete enough theory for governing an entire economy. Capitalism only has mechanisms for providing resources (money) to workers and capitalists (owners) which leaves out a full third of the population. That last third are non-workers, primarily made up of the old, the disabled, children, students, home caregivers, and temporarily unemployed

4. Capitalism enforces power imbalances in a population that make capitalism less effective. For a market to work most effectively, all parties involved (buyers and sellers) should be on equal footing, but they never are and never can be

5. Less of a functionality point, but I personally believe that there are some things that morally shouldn’t be governed by a market structure such as healthcare or food access

As parting thoughts, I would say that capitalism is not a bad thing in the short term. It’s effective at getting a country going to the point where they can become socialistic in the future. Karl Marx himself based his theories in “The Communist Manifesto” and “Das Kapital” on Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations”. He also said that “capitalism is pregnant with socialism”. Capitalism is a tool to get to an end goal, it isn’t the end all be all system it’s made out to be though, and it’s also not the only tool that can get you there (see the economic theory of developmentalism).

Sorry for the long post, but I thought the detail was necessary.

TL;DR: Not a bad thing in and of itself, but a flawed system it’s time to move on from

But I don’t understand, like I said above, how capitalism is causing it and how not-capitalism would solve it.

But I don’t see that any capitalism alternative has a good answer either, so still I don’t see how capitalism is the “bad guy”.

A couple notes on this. Firstly, just as an argument perspective, this is a burden of proof fallacy. Just because “not-capitalism” may not have a good answer, doesn’t mean capitalism has a good one or even just a better one. I could be mischaracterising your argument, if so my bad, this is just how it reads to me. Secondly, I personally believe that socialism offers a better answer and a good one at that, which all revolves around incentives. A collective-ownership structure has more incentive for social well being, such as avoiding climate disaster, than a purely capitalist structure does.

As a side-note, I also think you’re mischaracterising capitalism by including governing bodies, but you’re doing it in a manner that’s only one logical step away from socialism. By a government placing restrictions on a market or producer, say by defining a carbon emission cap, the market is no longer operating at true efficiency. While not fully capitalist anymore, that’s still okay though as it’s serving a social purpose. Zoom out a little and you can see other markets in which the government should set limits in. Now the whole economy isn’t operating as a true free market. In this case, the government is defining what the social good is, and (at least in democratic nations), the government defines that based on the voice of the people. The problem with this is that it’s reactive. I can pass as many laws as I want saying you can’t emit carbon above a certain level, but I can only enforce it after you’ve gone over that cap at which point the damage is done, and some may make the economic calculation that it’s worth it if you get more profits (fines are in essence “legal for a price” after all). If the government owns the industry, this can be prevented before happening.

Also free markets can exist without capitalism. I think another person somewhere on this thread mentioned worker co-ops, which are not a capitalist institution.

As a parting thought, I would also point out that one of if not the most efficient energy companies in the United States (in terms of energy produced per dollar input) is the TVA, a state-owned enterprise.

As others have said, the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson is a great one (has other main characters though) as well as the Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss. It’s also encourage branching out past the male 18 year old main character though! The Broken Earth Trilogy by NK Jemisin is one of my favorite series and one of the better written I’ve read as well

Not sure if this qualifies, but the Church of Scientology. Not cause I think it’s got some good points or that I vibe with any of their ideas, I just think everything about the structure to the Bridge to the mind of LRH is super fascinating

Briefly scanning through the feed and I saw the words “trade” and “LA Galaxy” and the picture was Mbappe, thought this trade was an even bigger splash

Currently: None. I guess you could swing a semi-benefit that it gives more power to smaller states so they don’t “get overrun” by the big boys, but the way most states decide their electors, this happens anyways and would probably be better without the EC. Unfortunately to get rid of it requires a Constitutional Amendment which is very hard to do in this country (only 27 times in 230 years under the Constitution, 11 of which were proposed with the Constitution). There are a couple sneaky ways states are trying to get around this. I think CGP Grey has a video or two all about the Electoral College if you’re interested

Historically: Actually more than people think. It was difficult to spread information around the nation cause it was really big for the technology at the time. The optimistic idea behind it was that a state could hold their elections, the electors would then be informed what the desires of their electorate would be, then they would spend a month moseying up to the Capital (originally NYC, then Philadelphia, then DC) and once they got there they could then vote for the President using not only the desires of their electorate, but the most up to date political information. The cynical view is that this allowed the wealthy and powerful to elect other wealthy and powerful men to be President. Real history probably places the true reason somewhere in between

Someone who lives in California not originally from here chiming in. For me personally, I hate it because of the weather. I live in SoCal, which people claim to have good weather, but to me it’s hell. It never rains, the sun is always shining, and it’s always hot while most apartments don’t have AC. This may sound lovely to you, in which case more power to you. I’m the kind of person where the sun saps all energy out of my body and I prefer being cold to warm, so this sucks. Other main downside is housing cost. My 650 square foot one bed apartment in suburban LA costs over $2000 a month and it’s cheap for the size and area. Maybe Northern California is nicer, but SoCal ain’t it

Depends a lot on your interests! Some good ones I’ve aggregated over the years:

• Pluralistic by Cory Doctorow: Daily links for reading by a very pro-decentralization and free web person
• A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry: History and Pop Culture, usually one post per week on Friday
• Pedestrian Observations: Public transportation and urban design
• People’s Policy Project: RSS feed for articles from the only crowd funded think tank (Lefty if you’re interested)
• Bartosz Ciechanowski: Great blog with interesting animations, all very well researched. Only downside is that you usually have to use the RSS feed as a method of knowing when the article is posted and following the link to the website, plus he usually only posts one every 3 months or so
• xkcd: Old guard web comics, always fun to read

There are a lot of great RSS feeds out there though! I encourage you to see if your favorite blogs or news sites or things like that also have RSS feeds and suggest consuming them on there (for example I read CBC and Radio Canada exclusively through RSS) as it usually streamlines the whole reading experience.

If you use Apple’s Ecosystem, I would also suggest using MacStories’ Find RSS Feed Shortcut which will grab any available feeds from any website you feed it and let you copy the link to your clipboard to add to your favorite app. Enjoy!