RE: What is your opinion about Communism?
November 26, 2017 at 10:04 pm
(This post was last modified: November 26, 2017 at 10:49 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(November 26, 2017 at 8:00 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: No. The problem isn’t capitalism doesn’t fail or fail spectacularly, nor that it contains no glaring inequities. It is that, on the whole, capitalism seem to be able to offset its failures and inequities with enough persuasive successes such that when it is put before stakeholders in both capitalistic system and any alternatives that have been tried on a large scale, capitalism seem to gain more converts than its competitors on the strength of its track record of successes, despite it numerous failings.Sure, but people are hardly rational actors. The Horatio Alger myth is persuasive, but it's just that..a myth.
Quote:For all of capitalism’s failures in the developed world in the last 25 years or so that put perhaps 100 million of the 600 million denizens of the wealthy economies of the first world in moderate danger of a moderate reduction in their first world standards of living, during that very same period capitalism lifted well over 600 million people in just China and India alone from abject subsistence poverty to an infinitely higher, modern standard of living for the first time with cars, modern housing, foreign vacations, and leisure time and discretionary purchasing power approaching those of the first world countries.It sounds good until you try to work out the cost, and ofc it would only be a relevant metric for the success of the system itself if there were no other way to achieve the same. Crediting the global (or even just china and indias) increase in QOL to capitalism is propaganda, not a line item appraisal of what went into that increase. Capitalism at it;s finest and purest is best represented by the age of robber barons, not anything in modern experience...and not anything associated with incredible standards of living. We've been subverting the capitalist system for some time now with ideology and laws that free market fans just can't help but equate with communism, or socialism, or any other number of things to indicate that they are emphatically -not- pro-captialist initiatives.
These things, imo, even under a capitalist system..more accurately account for the rise in QOL if we're only discussing that segment of causation.
Quote:100 million first worlders facing reduced economic security, vs 600 million third world former subsistence farmers now within a stone’s throw of first world standards of living. I don’t think capitalism need worry over much about being undermined by more traitors in its own midst than amongst the ranks of its competitors.Capitalism needn't worry about bad actors, no..because bad actors often move capital more efficiently....but I'm looking at it as a tool, not a self referent religion. It's great for moving money and growing a market. It's not any good -at all- at efficiently using resources. Pretty much the opposite of that..and that's not at all limited to land use. Personally, I think that capitalism could only work to serve our ends for as long as there were new resources to explore and little resistance to their exploitation. The more people..and the greater the need that whatever resources there are be used efficiently..the less likely you're going to get that from capitalism..though it might make a hell of a lot of money wasting those resources and all of that labor..and if the people involved really aren;t up to much else at the time it would probably seem great while it lasted. Even if the laborers themselves aren't likely to see much of it (regardless of how strongly they wish to believe otherwise). They will, however, see the consequences of that profitable waste...as we're all seeing now...in a time where "first world standards of living" are a stones throw away from being a thing of the mythical past for everyone. A time where greater public ownership, enfranchisement, and oversight is necessary to securing whatever gains we've made by any and all means...to say nothing at all of shoring up those we've left behind in the process.
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