Sure but if the argument is that human greed is innate and bad why pick the system, Capitalism, that maximizes and rewards it?
Ok, Capitalism is Spiraling Out of Control Right?
- Thread starter BWoog
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Sure but if the argument is that human greed is innate and bad why pick the system, Capitalism, that maximizes and rewards it?
Yes, of course. But those people fighting for workers' rights weren't fighting the system. They were fighting for the system to work better for them. Which it did, for a little while.
I think one of the understated recent problems is that capitalism only works if all the major players (governments, huge companies, billionaires, etc) agree that there will be a future. That's the basic nature of capital, right? Put in an investment up front, leave it there and collect dividends.
But a lot of society power players has moved into doomsday prepping and no longer agree there will be a future, so they're cashing out their investments. The best example is austerity cuts. Like, why fund public education when that takes 30-40 years to pay off, when you don't expect the current world to even exist I'm 40 years? Cut taxes and build a shelter or island or something.
But a lot of society power players has moved into doomsday prepping and no longer agree there will be a future, so they're cashing out their investments. The best example is austerity cuts. Like, why fund public education when that takes 30-40 years to pay off, when you don't expect the current world to even exist I'm 40 years? Cut taxes and build a shelter or island or something.
Also this. The gall to say "you work less now than you did before capitalism because of capitalism."
First of all, that's not true. Feudal peasants didn't work 8+ hours every day. Work day length increased with capitalism because capitalists want infinite money, which necessitates producing as much crap as possible, which means we work beyond our productive capacity and even what automation should entail.
Second, the rights we have today, rights which are slowly being stripped today, were won from people literally fighting capitalists to the death.
They absolutely were fighting the system. The system produced the conditions of a 50-million hour workday. It's like saying slavery doesn't lead to slave revolts. Like, what????
The argument is that if you let the people benefitting the most from the system keep messing with the rules, don't be surprised to see them benefit ever more and eventually break the system.
No. They were fighting the system itself.
The ones who benefit most make the rules. No one should be surprised by this. Folks have been talking about this for centuries.
I understand that any institution must replicate itself through creating it's own defenders, but watching it actually is a different story.
Capitalism has been brutal from its inception. It's only gotten better for westerners because social pressure pushed most of the brutality onto other parts of the globe. Many of the practices that are carried out around the world today are just as bad if not worse than those original conditions.
Capitalism has been brutal from its inception. It's only gotten better for westerners because social pressure pushed most of the brutality onto other parts of the globe. Many of the practices that are carried out around the world today are just as bad if not worse than those original conditions.
Living is so unbelievably expensive this past couple years.
Thankfully I have a good job as a software engineer for a relatively big company, somewhere in the 7th percentile in terms of gross income but I still save almost nothing after rent, food, utility bills, car costs etc.
Back when I was a high schooler I thought with a salary like today I could live very nicely but it's pretty sad how this is almost the bare minimum required to live without compromises.
If I had a family with kids I'd probably go broke
Thankfully I have a good job as a software engineer for a relatively big company, somewhere in the 7th percentile in terms of gross income but I still save almost nothing after rent, food, utility bills, car costs etc.
Back when I was a high schooler I thought with a salary like today I could live very nicely but it's pretty sad how this is almost the bare minimum required to live without compromises.
If I had a family with kids I'd probably go broke
Good quality shit has become all but unaffordable. Like, try looking for a newly-produced, old-fashioned solid piece of wood furniture that will last you multiple lifetimes- a dining table, an armoir, something. Time how long it takes you to give up and go to IKEA instead.
I'm pretty sure there were a bunch of rules that have been implemented that made things better for you instead of letting the powerful do whatever they wanted, but I don't know who you are and where you are living, so, I might be mistaken, just going from the fact that you're posting on a forum on the Internet...
Ngl that hurts. Most people don't even hate the Global South, they just don't think about it at all
1. Capitalism is inherently exploitative. There is nothing you can do to reform that away.
2. When the state steps in to supposedly curtail certain activities of the capitlist class in order to avoid open local revolt, those activities are simply exported to other more vulnerable regions using the power of the state.
I don't think that is the point people make when they say that.
My interpretation is when people say things like "you have less free time than medieval peasants" as a critique of capitalism it gets ridiculed not because capitalism is wonderful but because it is comes across like a child's view of history that makes it out that pre-capitalism things were easier and rosy.
The medieval peasant who spent all day breaking his back for peanuts from his social superiors didn't just clock out and go home to put his feet up. He had to do the exact same agricultural work and industrial work for his own stomach and to feed his own family with far less in resources to spread around anyway than who he fed through work. In other words their free time was the same as their work time. Today in the first world to use the phrase, because of capitalism and because of automation those kind of jobs have been shipped overseas firstly and secondly it meant the world of work transitioned into industry then finance and now information.
The Capitalist class are the reason why things needed to be made better. The working class bleeding and dying to fight against the system gave us these rights. The Capitalists then go exploit the Global South instead.
You want me to be happy the Capitalist class threw some scraps at us so they can continue to make more and more while increasing their power?
The access I have to the internet isn't because some benevolence from the Capitalist class. It's so they can extract more wealth from me. They don't give me access to the internet for free and they sell my information then use that information to give me ads to get me to buy things they think I will like.
And you have products like Instant Pot, that were too "good", so everyone person who had one, got one and didn't need another because it worked great and never broke, so the company eventually went out of business.
The system punishes successes.
As much of a bastard as Ford was he did fundamentally understand that slash and burn looting capitalisim is a long run destructive force that would ultimately destroy the market for his product. The difference I think today is that people like him are even more nihilistic than any working class person accused of doomerisim is. Ford saw a future, one where his prosperity was symbiotically tied to the the large workforces his factories required and the propserity that the movment of money they were paid would drive. Todays billionaires faced with late stage captialism and untethered from phyical realites that heavy industry titans of the past had to deal with don't see any future other than extrating as much wealth as quick as possible before the whole system comes crashing down and hope that it will protect them from whatever comes after the fall. If that means starving the state through tax avoidance or driving wages to below subsistance so be it.
Without a positive vision for a future there is no pressure from their peers to act differently and with the state having abdicated any responsibilty for moulding a future where does that leave us?
Exactly. Working to put up rules and regulations made things better. Allowing the people in Power to just do as they please, didn't.
You think replacing the whole system with some other will make it right, maybe, I think it's the "working to put up rules and regulations" that does it, whatever system you might be in, because I don't believe in a perfect system.
They worked to get rid of the system, not to get rules and regulations. Those in power still do what they please, they just do it in this country and other countries now.
Even when things are better, as you put it, the concentration of wealth and power didn't change. The rules are still made by the Capitalist class. This will allows happen under Capitalism. It is how the system fundamentally works. If you want that, fine. But I don't.
Alright, I'm going to break this down for you since you seem to keep coming close to getting the point before retreating to "COMMUNISM!" Note, I'm not going to advocate for any other system, I'm just pointing out the fundamental concept of capitalism and the great inequality it creates.
Let's just start with the very basic concept that Capitalism is a system based on exploitation. Every single worker is exploited under capitalism. EVERY worker. This is because workers that produce a product do not own a share of the product in proportion to their labor. Rather, the capitalists own both the means of the production and the end product through their ownership of the capital used to create the enterprise. The capitalists reap the majority of the profit and then renumerate the workers an inequal share, typically as small as possible, to keep them able to continue producing said product.
Now, you in the comfortable West will say, "big deal, I already know that. So long as the exploited worker can live comfortably on their wage, it's fine that profits are not shared equal to the labor produced." Yes, this would be the case for a worker such as a Software Engineer working at Google. They help create a product that makes the company billions while they in turn are treated to a six-figure salary which allows them to afford, presumably, a nice house and car. While they are exploited, they are able to live a comfortable life, what's wrong?
Well, my good friend, the exploitation does not stop with the Google Engineer making six figures, the exploitation is GLOBAL. You are not accounting for all aspects of the market which produces the good, because then you will see that the majority of workers exploited are actually NOT living a comfortable life. Because that exploitation extends outside of the West and into the Global South. You see, while EVERY worker is exploited under capitalism, not all workers are exploited equally. You enjoy a cheap cell phone because children in Africa die mining that sweet cobalt needed as a critical component. Workers in S. America and elsewhere develop lifelong health issues mining lithium to power that battery in your laptop. Children in Vietnam help produce those cheap shoes you enjoy wearing. Etc. Etc.
This is not a bug of capitalism. There is no guard rail you can ever put in place to prevent this because the system only works by exploiting the working class and draining resources for profit. The more "guard rails" you put in place in one area, just means greater exploitation of others in another area. You complain about the rising cost of goods, but those costs rise when capitalists are forced to improve conditions of workers; because capitalists will not eat those costs and ensure a smaller profit. They must be passed on to the consumer. As such, capitalists will always look to reduce such costs by finding a new segment of workers to exploit. This is why once worker conditions improved in America, manufacturing very quickly shifted overseas where such protections do not exist and labor costs are cheaper.
I don't think anything new has happened from capitalism.
The last 14 years of so the economy has really grown tremendously by a lot of metrics. But only the top X % has been able to take advantage of that. Their wealth grew tremendously.
However things are objectively harder and worse for the middle and lower income people in that same period.
The biggest issue is definitely from the housing crisis. This is not the first time there was wealth building that only benefited wealth people (its been going on for 50+ years at this point). That has happened several times before. But now the difference is that basic items are becoming difficult for a larger segment of American people. That has happened in America and other counties before, but not in living memory of most people alive.
I see other countries suffering from economic problems and they seem to be able to better deal with it than the US because they seem to have governments that are much more effective at trying to help people and stronger communities. The solution to the housing crisis is obviously build a ton of new housing and regulate renting and other industries that are profiteering on the shortage of inventory. But our government sucks and seems entirely incapable of actually doing anything. Our solution to everything seems to be get more money instead of coming up with solutions so that basic necessities are available to more people.
The last 14 years of so the economy has really grown tremendously by a lot of metrics. But only the top X % has been able to take advantage of that. Their wealth grew tremendously.
However things are objectively harder and worse for the middle and lower income people in that same period.
The biggest issue is definitely from the housing crisis. This is not the first time there was wealth building that only benefited wealth people (its been going on for 50+ years at this point). That has happened several times before. But now the difference is that basic items are becoming difficult for a larger segment of American people. That has happened in America and other counties before, but not in living memory of most people alive.
I see other countries suffering from economic problems and they seem to be able to better deal with it than the US because they seem to have governments that are much more effective at trying to help people and stronger communities. The solution to the housing crisis is obviously build a ton of new housing and regulate renting and other industries that are profiteering on the shortage of inventory. But our government sucks and seems entirely incapable of actually doing anything. Our solution to everything seems to be get more money instead of coming up with solutions so that basic necessities are available to more people.
It's literally destroying the planet, it started spiralling out of control about 5 minutes after it was conceived
I honestly don't blame small businesses at all because I know the price of basic goods such as cooking oil have gone up dramatically. It is the bigger players trying to squeeze as much money as possible that I blame.
This is super disingenuous because we know, and have all seen firsthand, how it isn't about the average citizen. We have had ownership stripped of us from just about every good you can imagine, and "life as a service" means it matters little if you earn $1000 or $10000: life is still untenable if you're not the one profiting, because ir order to earn $10000 you must spend $9500 every month. Except we can't all profit because then the system breaks. We have also seen this happen time and again.
Coming? We are in it. In perpetual motion. We've seen it. The endgame of capitalism is just authoritarianism and, then, fascism. It breaks, civil rights are curtailed so that people rally behind what security exploiting the next enemy or most vulnerable minority will give. It's Metternich. It's World War II. It's Reagan. It's Hitler. It's Thatcher. It's dictatorships in Latin America. It's Chung-hee. It's post-9/11 state of exception. It's Trump. It's Tories. It's Le Pen. It's AfD. It's how the Arab Spring turned out. It's everywhere.
You seem to be under the impression I don't think Capitalism is exploitative. This is a mistaken impression.
I'm just not at all convinced that there exists a system that would be all that better, at least if history is any indication.
Honestly, it's been obnoxious. I am so sick of getting nickel and dime by everyone. I mean, we have to pay for fucking paper bags when going food shopping or CVS. Ads everywhere too.
Please, calm down and apply a little logic. Slaves revolting are trying to get out of slavery, ie. not be slaves. That is fighting the system. Workers fighting for better conditions are not trying to stop being workers. They want a better deal, within the system.
Fighting the system would mean taking over the company, or dismantling it.
We're trained not to think about them outside of UNICEF commercials and news reports of natural disasters. That is also by design.
Yes, I'm aware of that. Just as well though, I think we look at pre-capitalism and post-capitalism in terms of a very narrow Western lens, and also without regard for looking at human development internationally as a broad comparison. English Feudalism isn't the same as African feudalism which isn't the same as Japanese feudalism, and indeed, many Indigenous societies didn't even engage in feudalism at all. Communalism and communalist tendencies tended to pervade Indigenous and African societies which allowed for a more dignified existence than European peasantry experienced considering the general technological advancement of the world at the time. Indeed, it's already been posted here by someone else, I think Thordinson, but abject poverty was relatively rare in pre-capitalist societies, and subsequently were the individualist attitudes that come with capitalism.
But of course, this is all happening in a time before automation and air conditioning and Amazon and shit. The conditions thousands of years ago were worse in spite of the economic systems in play just as a matter of the fact that we hadn't developed the knowledge and technology yet to stave off the worst that the material world throws at us. Yes, if you ask me if I would ever want to give up having water pipes or garbage disposal, then no, but I would also argue that I don't think the existence of pipes was inevitable only by way of capitalism. As I said, humans develop whether we like it or not, and I would be optimistic and argue we would develop more if we were less hamstrung by the demands of capitalism. How much sheer human potential has been lost off the African continent alone since the Slave Trade? We probably could've been living like the Jetsons by now.
If your system needs people to die to slightly make it better, it's a bad system.
True capitalism has never been tried. Also all the things that make our system not true capitalism are actually just true capitalism.
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I am not obligated to be calm in a thread where people are going "Sure, slavery was bad, but..."
Also, general ownership over the means of production has literally been a fight for as long as capitalism has existed. Indigenous folks have died and- most importantly- still are dying today for the fight to own the land that was stolen by whites. The coups in places like Burkina Faso right now are also fights over land and political ownership. People have literally been fighting the existence of capitalism today in some form or another, whether it's fixing the rules or trying to literally get rid of it as a matter of life and death.
And when people try to stop them, you get folks coming out of the woodworks saying they're being unfair to the companies/defending them.
Its insane.
They don't want a better deal. They want a better system.
Or, you know, burning down factories and literally having shootouts with police and company security. That's exactly what they did.
That would make sense if unions didn't have to be perpetual resistance cells in order not to be a) destroyed, sometimes physically b) corrupted an co-opted into fascist organizations. It's not a coincidence that they are where anarchist and communist parties survive: these rights are constantly under threat, and without the ideological fuel, the fight simply extinguishes.
Thought-terminating cliche' that doesn't address anything.
The argument now being posed by some folks here in light of the fact that shit is starting to suck even for the rich Westerners is whether or not capitalism is a bad system. You don't get to slip out of the argument by going "but other systems too!" We're not talking about other systems. Capitalism is the one in the hot seat now because it is the current world order, ergo you all are the ones that need to ethically justify the centuries of human suffering that are still going on today.
I guess you never seen a sieze the means of production placard at a strike rally? Most labour movments were born directly from marxist and cooperative philosophy. Both espouse collective ownership.
Yes, Capitalism is a bad system, I'm just a "Refactor over starting from scratch" guy, but you do you.
How do you "refactor" the fact that the only reason this system still works is because The West is forcibly economically and politically dispossessing the Global South? What "reformations" do you have to fix what I consider to be an inherently moral flaw?
Not exactly.
It's more along the lines where people don't think of them but also want them to stay in their lane, which is essentially second class in all aspects.
The hate will come if the people they perceived beneath them having any kind of audacity to challenge their narratives or beliefs or simply not aligned with them.
Thank you for taking the time to spell this all out. Well said.
Make it so the same laws that govern labor in the countries that buy the products are in force in the place that makes / extracts the resources for them, including similar pay.
Fat chance, I know.
The system will fail because then even the comfortable West couldn't afford anything.
The Capitalists have no reason to want this and will fight tooth and nail to stop that.
Congrats, you've destroyed capitalism. Glad you're on board, Comrade.
They went out of business because they expanded to other fields and couldn't compete there and lost to their own stupid bet. It wasn't due to intant pots being indestructible. It was because they wanted ever more profits and expansion.
I think it's more ironic that all these very big companies and lobbies are on war with each other on who's getting the most subsidies and tax breaks to get their complete broken piece of trash or extreme ressource heavy bullshit to the folks as they couldn't compete with new (or older) and better tech and products. Just like in the Soviet Union.
Here's two reasons why this is fundamentally unworkable:
a) It takes one country to say "hey, these rules don't apply to us! Come give us your strong currency!" for this to crumble and, when none are present, elites in the "buyer" side will implement a goverrnment that's favorable to them.
b) It needs the kind of global coordination that goes against the concept of "comparative advantages", a core tenet of capitalist production, and which global chains of production will go out of their way to ensure. Like you can't have capitalism without exploiting comparative advantages. It's an oxymoron.