Example: I believe that IP is a direct contradiction of nature, sacrificing the advancement of humanity and the world for selfish gain, and therefore is sinful.
Edit: pls do not downvote the comments this is a constructive discussion
Edit2: IP= intellectal property
Edit3: sort by controversal
That capitalism is good. There is no economic system more efficient at progress
It’s government that’s the failure. It’s Governments responsibility to shape the markets so capitalism benefits society and they have failed miserably
Doesn’t this rely on the premise that the goal of capitalism is the only possible goal?
Do we need to progress at auch a rapid rate? Isn’t rapid progress what got us into the place we are now?
Capitalism has fueled the growth of industry, which has accelerated global warming, the destruction of flora and fauna that are essential to life as we know it. It has created billionaires who only care about being richer and planted the belief in billions of peoples heads that they need to strive to this goal as well.
You can blame governments all you want. But i think thats too simplistic of a view of where the corruption started. They didnt bribe themselves into allowing people to become billionaires. It was a slow process with many moving parts and the greed, fueled by capitalists is why we are in this state.
Just blaming the government is ignoring so many factors.
I personally would prefer to live in a world that only develops things it needs, including leisure items/products but not in excess and never in the name of profit. We shouldn’t bankrupt half the world to sit on our IP thrones and call it good.
Its bullshit.
No, the goal of capitalism is to use a profit goal to harness the human base emotions of greed and lust for power. It has no other goal, no right or wrong, but is merely a tool. It should be a tool. Capitalism serves merely short term profit.
Government creates the market, issues regulations to establish competition, fairness, transparency, contracts, currency, legal frameworks. Government expects to last longer than a contemporary CEO: is it too much to ask that they regulate the market with a long term perspective? Government is elected by the voters: is it too much to ask that they regulate the market for the good of those voters whom they desire to re-elect them ?
Our system of checks and balances seeks to harness similar base emotions to prevent fascism and other abuses of authority by giving each politician a realm where they wield the most power. No matter how unscrupulous a politician.their lust for power drives them to placate voters sufficiently to get re-elected, drives them to limit the ther branches of government from encroaching on their prerogative. No matter how egocentric a politician, no matter how much he holds himself above others and above the law, he is driven to prevent others from cheating more than himself. How craven and spineless must you be that even this isn’t enough to make the power hungry stand up for their own greed? Isn’t enough for the corruptible to use the force of law to bring down the other corrupted?
But somehow capitalism bought government. The most egocentric bowed to a personality cult. The power hungry found it easier to manipulate voters than to placate them. The corruptible commit their grift in public
You say that like capitalism doesn’t encourage and incentivize capitalist to warp the government and those markets to their benefit. You can’t separate capitalist government from capitalism, they’re inherently linked. From the very first emergence of capitalism that has been true. It’s a core tenet of the entire system.
I would say that capitalism does seem like paradise, but as soon as you think even slightly deeper it’s terrible. Sure it’s great for everyone to be able to choose where to work or not work, and to have many different options on what to buy, but it falls apart rather quick. People often don’t have much of a choice of where to work and they are forced to participate in capitalism to survive, which means abusive employers run rampant. And as far as product choice, it seems great, but with infinite growth we will run out of resources to continue.
Those are all excesses of capitalism, which don’t need to happen. Capitalism is only economic: we should be able to expect the self-interest of the political realm, the cumulative self-interest of voters/consumers to check unfettered capitalism. It usually does, but this balance has been tipping over time
I wouldn’t say capitalism is good, but the alternatives we’ve discovered so far are either unworkable or worse.
Capitalism emerged at a time when Feudalism / Manorialism was the norm. In a Feudalist society, lords owned the land, and serfs belonged to the land. Workers were required to work on the land allocated to them for their entire lives, and their children were bound to the same land. There was no incentive for anyone to innovate or improve efficiency because there was no competition.
Capitalism was an improvement on that system. At least under capitalism, workers could move to another capitalist’s factory. At least there was competition so there were incentives to improve efficiency, and maybe sometimes to improve working conditions so that workers were more willing to work in that factory. Also, at least in theory, people weren’t assigned “factory owner” and “worker” titles at birth. It was difficult, but at least possible for a worker (or group of workers) to start a new factory. And, a badly run factory could result in a factory owner becoming just a worker.
Capitalism is better than feudalism, and better than the systems that came before feudalism which were mostly slavery-based and/or violence-based (obviously there’s a lot of overlap there).
Then, there are theoretical alternatives to capitalism which don’t actually seem to work in the real world, at least on a large scale. Collectivist things sound great in theory, but in practice almost always seem to result in oligarchs or dictators taking over. Also, because economic systems and political systems are intertwined, collectivist systems without centralized decision making power are vulnerable to being invaded by neighbours who are centralized and organized. AFAIK, we’ve never seen a collectivist system able to fend off invasions and keep operating in a collectivist way.
As a result, capitalism is the best solution we’ve been able to come up with so far that takes human nature into account and is stable over hundreds of years. But, the best capitalist systems are heavily regulated ones where the accompanying political system is constantly working to reduce the power of the people who get rich via capitalism. The capitalists hate that, and want a system where they get all the power, without realizing that effectively transforms the system into a dictatorship / oligarchy, which isn’t a good system even for the capitalists. But, oh well.
How are you defining capitalism?
There is indeed a wide range of systems of capitalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
I fall more on the side of:
Ah, so capitalism = markets.
There’s also the classical Marxist definition which includes many non-market systems and doesn’t include some proposed market systems, and the “capitalism is when the government doesn’t do stuff” definition. Probably others too, so I thought I’d ask for clarification.
It’s just an evolutionary selective pressure, but applied to organizations of people rather than organisms. Currency rather than calorie. And like any evolutionary system, it settles into the first pattern that just happens to work.
Sort of like those early photosynthetic bacteria that oxygenated the atmosphere – and eventually suffocated on the stuff. Killed by the very process that kept them going day to day. Of course, those bacteria were genetically predetermined for it. Nothing they could do to prevent it. We don’t have such a convenient excuse.
I do like that analogy of republicans as the early photosynthetic microorganisms drowning in their own filth. It leaves us room to hope that evolution will build a worthy successor that thrives in clean air and bright sun
CO2 carbon dioxide im talking about climate change not republicans, we’re all drowning
Tell me you have a high school grade understanding of macroeconomics without telling me you have a high school grade understanding of macroeconomics.
do you actually think people are in control of this system? even the most powerful capitalist is still just exercising a privilege, to be stripped away and replaced should they ever push against the profit motive
Oh son…
At least tell me where your undeserved arrogance comes from…
when was the last time a bug hit your windsheild? we’re destroying the ecological foundation we’re living in, and we know we’re doing it, yet it still continues at pace. the sum decides what the parts do, what other conclusion can I draw?
Something that will make your confusion less: The rich can live quite a long time without any ecology at all, and they have paid very skilled think tanks to provide them with all the necessary plans and manpower.
For the last decade survival estates for the ultra wealthy have cropped up everywhere.
The wealthy could choose to cease their exploitation at any moment but that means less for them to hunker down with. They know about ecologic and economic collapse just as they loudly shout it it’s possible and they are exploiting even harder to get the last dregs before the mass riots.
So yes, there are people controlling it. Just that there is no motivation on heaven and earth to convince them not to destroy the world for their own luxurious survival. And they will pay our brothers and sisters to hold us down as they do it.
I agree there are conscious people exercising power, but I’m arguing that the system they’re enmeshed within constrains the actions they’re able to make. Rather than choosing maximal extraction as a means to the goal of survivalist bunkers, they’re locked into maximal extraction. The more thoughtful may not like it, may try to break out of it, but the logic of capital will only select for someone else who has no qualms keeping the machine at full tilt.
Survival bunkers are just one way of resolving that internal contradiction; “I’m supposed to have all this power, all this agency; yet I can’t overcome the momentum of this system without jeopardizing my place at the top of it”. So they invent a goal to fit the means they’re pre-committed to. A way of rationalizing it.
The “general super-intelligent AI” investor hype is just another way of rationalizing the same contradiction. “Yes, we’re destroying the ecosystem, but it’s alright, 'cus digital God is gonna end our dependence on human labor and provide us magic solutions to all the problems before we’re completely fucked.”
and...
…really, the bunker stuff is just a slightly more grounded delusion than the AI pipe-dream. Assuming they actually make it to the bunker, having divined the right moment to step away, it’ll have bought them a few decades at the very most. But nothing more.
And anyway, people are gonna know where they are. Someone had to build the estate. Someone had to fly the airplane, captain the boat, or manage whatever sort of logistics was needed to get from there to here. Someone had to do the heavy lifting, loading up the store room.
And how the hell are they supposed to know when it is Time? This isn’t gonna be like a market crash, where there’s an obvious delineation between yesterday and today. What if it the inflection point isn’t reached in one lifetime? Junior gonna inherit the keys to the canned good kingdom?
What if there is no inflection point? Just a graduated slope between us and a distant horizon without mammals?
Frankly, it sounds like the secular version of eagerly awaiting the rapture.
A lot of your assumptions aren’t correct. I respect your enthusiasm though
Billionaires aren’t ‘enmeshed’ in the system, they are literally the free-est and least constrained people on the planet. They DICTATE the system and there is none of the ‘locked in’ feeling you are going on about in the billionaire club. The only exception may be the Muskrat’s recent nazi speedrun, I think he’s regretting that now
Survival bunkers aren’t to resolve an inner contradiction at all, they are literally what they say on the package: A last holdout when things go off the cliff. And this isn’t a new thing
I have no idea what the fuck you are going on about with AI and the ecosystem
Ok it’s pretty clear you don’t actually know what you are talking about. This conversation is over
Once a business enterprise reaches a size where it can afford to influence government policy to benefit said enterprise at the expense of its competitors, it’s in that business’ best interest to do so. A business which plays by the rules and behaves ethically will be usurped by one that’s willing to bend the rules into its favor.
Once things reach this point, the line between government and corporation blurs, and you get a state that will prioritize private gains of its corporate lobbies and bribes instead of the gains of its people and the health of society as a whole.
Therefore, ruthless and totalitarian antitrust of private enterprise must be incorporated to ensure a fair market with competition and choice can flourish, should you wish to go that route. Your business makes up so much as 1% of your industry’s domestic output? That business needs to be broken up into like 4 pieces.
I also think that well-regulated capitalism with social programs is the way to go. It’s so fucked that the US ruled on shit like Citizens United and moved away from that.
There is no system under capitalism where money doesn’t change the rules to help money. Even in well regulated systems the advantage always goes to the wealthy, and they use it to cheat as well.
How do you mean there is no system? What’s your basis?
history, game theory and psychology.
A system that rewards you with a thing that can break the system results in a broken system as the most competitive will be the most unscrupulous
It doesn’t matter where you start the regulation, the ability to leverage wealth against greed for corporate capture guarantees that corruption will always favor the most unethical actors.
Capitalism and government have always been works in progress. It’s useless to categorically praise one and condemn the other without acknowledging that they both have strengths and weaknesses. It’s pretty clear that completely unrestrained capitalism is neither the cackling villain nor the golden hand of prosperity many people see in it, and likewise government isn’t by definition tyranny either. We just haven’t found the right combination yet.
I was with you until “unrestrained capitalism is neither a cackling villain…”.
Unrestrained anything tends to become a cackling villain.
We probably outlived the neanderthals primarily because of our capacity for advanced social order through rules.
None of us individually care for rules, but rules are our secret to success.
We need to rediscover our passion for nuance and tuning and obeying our rules.
Capitalism is fairly well understood, as is its excesses. If we use it for the good of society we all benefit. However if we use it for the good of only a few or if we let it use us, we end up in the current dystopia
Capitalism sucks, but it’s the best we have so far.
Its resource distribution is terribly inefficient, but it’s miles better than the “trust me, bro”-approach pushed by those heavily into alternative systems.