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.
The rich will eventually pay with their blood. Probably too late, but it'll happen.
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.
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
Casinos have to have rules.
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.
Good take. I think you could apply that logic to a lot of things, that accepting only extreme change is a recipe for nothing getting done.
You're a fan of exploitation of the working class?
I am a fan of using ignored and undervalued resources, the unemployed (aka exploitation) in order to give people employment and a stepping stone into better jobs while also providing cheaper products for the 'working class'.
You aren't?
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?
If this post gets 100 upvotes then capitalism will fail and everyone will get sex.
You should pursue a career in sales.
I've so far taken part in revolution by upvoting and by gardening. Capitalism as good as dead
It's worth a shot.
Wait what if I am already getting sex? Is this zero sum? Do I lose my sex?
I tried to updoot but it says I already completed that quest
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.
Hey, it works in Tropico!
That's called inflation.
Not really. Eventually just counting those huge numbers uses so much energy it fries the planet with waste heat.
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?
Brutal action.
Oh there's a benefit. Me me me. That's the core issue with Greed. Selfishness. In the end, that's what drives the greedy.
Sure there are examples of them sharing their wealth in ways (usually minimally) but at no point like it be at a major expense to themselves.
Time for degrowth
I'm all for an individual decreasing their own consumption for the environment. I try to do that. But decreasing someone else's quality of life is where it gets dicy. You can very easily get discrimination.
Put a high upper limit only. Don't touch the bottomline.
For example, no more than 4 cars per person: Average Joe won't even know this rule exists but it will still reduce mineral mining due to people who collect cars.
Possible problems with my shitty example: Now a car is a controlled substance. Who decides the limit and how? What if there is a mental disease (with a better example this would make more sense) which requires a person to have 20 cars?
Yeah, those billionaires will have a hard time to be only allowed millions instead. /s
Buh degrowth is genocide 😅🤣
Literally what some ignoramus on Facebook said when I suggested this.
Easy to say when you live in the first world.
There is no first world since 1991
I'm 14 and this is so deep.
It's really not that deep lol
I think that's the point. It seems deep to 14 year olds, but it's really just a shallow observation if you really think about it.
When you grow up, you’ll see that it’s not.
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."
Edward Abbey
Specifically for neoliberal capitalism, it's a fitting metaphor. The lack of tying capital to any concrete resources, constraints or externalities, with a supposition that infinite capital growth is possible, would actually lead to... the 20th century. Though nobody really buys this anymore, and is clearly just a justification to do horrible things in the name of making money. While greed has and will always destroy lives, communities and environments, the real damage of neoliberal capitalism is that it's ahistorical. Removing people from the philosophical and social context in which the system was born and operates, makes it hard to see and hard to question for most people.
Not that I'm capitalism's greatest fan, but this sounds about as clever as, "evolution is impossible because the second law of thermodynamics says chaos always increases, and the sun doesn't exist."
Evolution and the stars reside in a local entropy minimum but they speed up the increase of entropy by converting a lot of energy. So low entropy and the global increase aren't contradicting each other. But yes, I agree equating cancer and capitalism isn't very useful. Especially when the main problem with capitalism is distribution and not scarcity.
I had an argument with someone about the nature of motivation within a capitalist system. Specifically related to people who find their motivations in non-monetary ends such as personal pride, the greater good, morality, etc. He said that those people were rubes, but I countered that surely those people were suckers. We still haven't resolved...
“evolution is impossible because the second law of thermodynamics says chaos always increases, and the sun doesn’t exist.”
The second law only applies to closed system systems. Neither earth nor sun are closed systems (they interact with each other) and if they were there your statement would probably be true but not for the reason you suggested.
Things like apps, media, or art can be more valuable without taking any more resources. Plus through greater efficiency, the same resources go much further. But it's often easier to grow by just consuming more, so companies to that since they don't really care. The sad thing is, I think we can have limitless growth if it's slow and deliberate and conscious of it's impact to the planet. But the current system doesn't incentive that, instead everyone is flooring the growth pedal to catastrophic effect.
Things like apps, media, or art can be more valuable without taking any more resources.
They take energy and memory on the local devices and in the cloud. Uploading and downloading also does. Better software often needs better (new) hardware. The developers take office space and hardware and energy. Do you want me to go on?
The bigger question for my is why growth is supposed to be a good thing. With all the technology, we could work less but on the whole, we work more.
Interestingly, better computer hardware is often actually less physical matter. What's valuable about computers isn't the amount of material, it's the arrangement of matter. That applies to both hardware and software. A phone and that same phone smashed have the same number of atoms. That phone and an equivalent from 10 years earlier are pretty close in number of atoms. My monitors and TVs today are a tenth as many atoms as the ones I had years ago.
By definition limitless growth is impossible. It just doesn't work.
I wouldn't say capitalism is based on the notion of infinite growth, but it is an inevitability of there being no limits on capital accumulation. The notion that humans have endless desire for more, always needing a stronger hit to maintain personal satisfaction, is more psychological than something inherent to private ownership itself. Capitalism feeds the natural animal reward system to disastrous effect, but it isn't required for capitalism to work. In fact, insatiable desires are the reason capitalism doesn't work, because if people could be satisfied with a reasonable amount of resources, never trying to acquire more than they need, capitalism would be a fairly decent system.
Living 100% sustainably on this planet is counterintuitive to what it means to be human. We don't need a political revolution, we need a psychological one.
Exactly. Democratic systems serve society better than non democratic ones, but a strong democracy can only be as good as its people. If the voters lack the wisdom to limit their consumption, both for sustainability and their own satisfaction, they're doomed to make things worse.
Someone with fewer resources can be much happier than someone with a ton of them. Philosophers have long recognized that certain pleasures only grow more demanding when you feed them, while having sustainable consumption and gratitude is much more stable. As you consume something like meth or opiates, your brain gets used to it, requiring larger and larger doses to get the same effect. With pleasures that are similar drugs, this will eventually harm your happiness and well-being. Our brains cannot remain in a perpetually euphoric state, so we must limit these pleasures.
Certain drugs or pleasures are so euphoria inducing that there is no moderate consumption. Some people have a harder time moderately consuming pleasures that others can tolerate, resulting in addiction disorders.
With the wealthy, their greed is dangerous and addictive, but because it often doesn't directly harm them and they warped society to accommodate it, it should be handled as more of a criminal condition than a clinical disorder. They get hit after hit from opulent excess, but they always try to get more, and will never satisfy their desire. We must criminalize excessive consumption from individual wealthy people.
Average people also overconsume finite resources, but that is better addressed by taxes, regulations, and incentives for alternatives. Law will be used, but not in the same way as when dealing with the rich.
I would disagree, most people want a more sustainable life, be it economical or ecological, people actually vote for that. But we are never given what we vote for, because of pressure on government given by the big corps, we're always given some half-assed version of what we actually want.
Agreed. Assuming such a thing is playing with the meaning behind words more than understanding the purpose and function of the dogma itself.
I think there's one important distinction.
Capitalism is a "rich-get-richer" system.
In any finite economy, this is immoral, because one person (or small group) wins, and everybody else loses. By definition. And once you're a loser, you're sunk.
So capitalist apologists rely on the illusion/dream of limitless growth because it means they get to pretend that when they steal from you they are somehow "creating value".
This is a popular take that is just completely wrong. Capitalism as a system does not require growth. Capitalism is a system in which the factors of production are owned by private parties and can be freely traded. The capitalists believe is that markets will allocate those factors of production to the owners that can best exploit them. This can result in growth, but it isn’t necessary for the system to function.
There are literally a thousand issues with the system ranging from inequality to environmental concerns to market concentration (all of which capitalists tend to ignore). I really do not understand why people pick this one to quibble over.
Because shareholders demand almost always increasing growth despite the factual impossibility to provide that. The gaming sector is a good showcase where trust, release quality & creativity and monetization practices continually degrade the overall experience until the company starts to sink in its entirety. Ubisoft comes to mind. I have been burned so bad by them, started to refuse their products and certainly I seem to not be the only person.
Adding to this, "limitless" growth just refers to the idea that it's very hard to reach all limits in our present universe.
I agree that there are more important problems with capitalism than if we've reached a limit or not.
Threads like this make me miss the sort by controversial. Oh well. If you have chores, or something else to do, maybe go do that instead of reading this thread. It's mostly shit slinging and people straw manning one another.
If anyone else came here to just talk about stuff, I'm willing to talk about how great cats and dogs are. Also open to hearing you out if you don't like cats or dogs, but I want you to know that I strongly disagree with your opinion.
The idea that you only get to choose between either predatory Capitalism or corrupt Communism as your society is pretty pathetic. Truly we have some of the minds of all time in this thread.
"It's raining cats and dogs - poodlellujah!"
Reminds me of this article: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist
Wow, such a… deep comparison
It is centralization that is killing the planet as the bigger the organization, the more power it has to control and become corrupt. Capitalism would work fine if it actually broke down organizations that got too big and also completely insulated themselves from bribes and influence. For some reason we have allowed corporations to run the show more and more which ironically is not only bad for the planet, but ultimately bad even for them in the long run. We have simply lost control and need to reign it in, but because humans are in the mix and can be bought or often coerced, there is little hope other than war resetting or AI taking over. My money is on AI taking over and while that scares many, humanity’s track record scares me more.
Regulatory capture is inevitable in capitalism. There is no reigning it in. Any small imbalance in wealth can be leveraged into a much larger imbalance. If politicians start glancing their way, then they will setup institutions to protect their wealth--anything from super PACs to Fox News.
This is not a Len exclusive capitalism thing though as centralization in any political or financial is always a risk of getting too big as you pointed out. But it can and has to be managed. History has lots of examples, but it seems to come and go in waves as it is hard to clamp down when the times are good.
And here I thought the problem was releasing carbon. What a fool was I. Corruption! Once again you've ruined a perfect system!
And of course the solution is to not have any centrally organized response. That way leads to corruption!
Not to be that guy, but animals of certain size are seemingly unaffected by cancer. I think Kurzkezadt (or however you spell it lol) did a video on why whales don't die from cancer.
Oversimplification: Their cancers get so big their cancers get cancer and die before harming the animal
Unfortunately in real life the cancers form a cancer Monopoly and the immune system prefers to protect the cancer over normal cells
Kurzgesagt
Kurzkezadt
Are you thinking of Kurzgesagt?
(Bonus info: the word is German and means "shortly said")
It's been a while since I read about this, but as I recall, most animals (might just be mammals) won't die of cancer without genetic modification. They have immune system factors that humans are currently considered not to have. (Either that or we eat too much food for it to work, depending where the research is going these days, lol.)
Best way to deal with late stage cancer is radiation.
Soo, nuke it is then
From orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Can't fucking wait
Spot on analogy.
Capitalism is a cancer
COMUNISM is based on the fact that people are nice and honest and won't abuse power.
Shamefully, this has no correlation with real life.
ANY AND ALL COMMUNIST LEADERS ARE DICTATORS
Okay, you made your point.
Now let's talk about democratic socialism.
Yesss! That works fine if your lefties are balanced with righties in a multinparty system in a modern healthy economy in a wester country. (e.g. EUROPE). it Shamefully does not work in ECUADOR, VENEZUELA ARGENTINA COLOMBIA PERÚ BRASIL And That's Just the ones I know of.
Let disregard us of a(holes). They don't have politics, just LOBBYists
Careful now, these are tankie-infested waters we sail teehee
A classic deepity
Or a planetary infestation.
The base of the economic problem is how to divide finite resources to an infinite need.
I got bad news, we are the cancer
People don't necessarily have infinite needs. Consumerism convinces people they "need" far more than they actually do, that's the entire reason the fast fashion industry exists.
Dude open an economy or macroeconomics book. It's the first thing they say
I have never really understood this meme at all, it just seems like a cynical nothing-burger cry. No substance.
Capitalism isn't really based on theoretically infinite growth. Maybe the idea is that monopoly is assumed, in capitalist ideology, to not exist, in the same way that people talk with ancaps, and they (ancaps) wish away monopolization with dogmatism to an unenforceable liberal brainrot NAP? I don't think any serious capitalist ideology discards monopoly. Not any worth engaging with, anyways. Oil barons know that the resource they peddle is finite, and everyone generally knows that every resource is theoretically a finite thing, and so is every market, and thus, all markets in sum. That's like, your basic supply and demand curve. It doesn't just go up and down linearly like the ones they use to explain to brainlets, actual supply and demand curves look fucked up because the market is weird, and they all totally plateau at either extreme end. If you charge a billion dollars for a single orange, you maybe will only get a buyer if you name the orange "X" and the buyer is [redacted]. Maybe the idea is that if you market a product enough, even if it's bullshit, then you could just charge a gazillion dollars for it and have it be over the natural or necessary amount, and I'd agree with that being capitalism but I don't really think that's like. limitless growth, that's just marketing, that's just bullshit.
Capitalists often use this assumed finity to price gouge, maximize profit, that's why you dump oranges in the desert to keep up the prices of oranges or whatever. Maybe that's like, oh, they're assuming the oranges to be infinite, but that's because oranges are recyclable. You can grow more oranges, and if we scaled back orange production massively, making it more efficient, we'd still have enough oranges for everyone (Degrowth, I guess? It can be even more efficient if you grow local flora instead of oranges but ech). Maybe you can't have infinite oranges if some other sector of the economy is dumping massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, but for like, 10,000 years of human history, you can grow more oranges, and you can grow more oranges until the sun expands and burns the earth in like 2 billion years.
If I read this meme in a different way, the fucked up thing about this meme is that it's not real. We're not like, at the end of civilization just by some natural factor of luck, or something, or you know, suddenly all the human creativity has petered out. That would almost be better, in a way. The human creativity is actively being suppressed, underfunded, bought out and scraped for parts, because it's easier to sell people actual bullshit year over year, in a cartel that you basically control all of, than introduce something new.
At my least graceful reading of this post, it kind of almost becomes malthusian, or something. Limitless growth! Grow the market limitlessly! Of course that means we must have a limitless population! And if someone's getting mad at that fake bullshit, then what they probably really believe is that there will be/there is too many people. But then that's all instance number 700 of getting mad at a spook.
But it's also like, how are you tracking growth? Cause if growth is just entropy, I think it probably is limitless.
Let me tell you my experience with communism centralized economy as the alternative.
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Planned economy = produce as much as possible, more you produce more you are rewarded. It doesn't matter if you make 100x more then it's needed than trow it away. Inefficiency doesn't matter.
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Ecology ? Foreign westerner propaganda. That there are no fish, animals, half of the plants spiecies disappeared is westerners fault. Emissions ? Nothing can stand in our plan.
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We produce more than anyone yet people's wellbeing is still behind west? That's not true, there are fascist to the west and it's just western propaganda. BTW if you mention it, you won't see outside for quite while.
Now let me tell you what happened after end of communism.
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Nature almost recovered because crazy amount of efforts put into it's protection despite it being expensive.
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If anyone produces more than people need, they ususally go bankrupt or at least are not rewarded for loss. Thus everyone tries to go as efficient as possible.
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Wellbeing went up 10fold.
I don't know about OP but capitalism seems kinda best option to me ATM
So extreme communism is bad? And extreme capitalism is good? And we can't pick an inbetween?
We do pick an in-between. The people complaining about capitalism just don't realise we live in the in-between.
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Is there any evidence socialism can actually work at scale? What if capitalism is the best we got?
You're being self defeating if you think democratically deciding what to use society's productive forces will always be worse than Elon Musk using his government contract money to buy twitter so they stop making fun of him. Every example of socialism being applied at scale is evidence that it works. In the 20th century the greatest reduction of poverty in the world happened in the USSR. In the 21st century the same thing but China. Even against the headwinds of the largest and most powerful empire in human history having a genocidal desire to destroy them.
I think the fact that the USSR is not around is evidence that perhaps socialism does not work at scale. If its unable to last how can you consider that working? People in the USSR had a very hard life due to the downfall of socialism. Can you provide me any example of socialism currently that works at scale in a multiethnic country that does not rely on others for military protection?
It's funny how you are praising China right now despite it's heavy capitalistic nature. I bet if china collapsed you would say that wasn't real socialism either.
I believe that socialism doesn't work at scale, but it doesn't need to. I'm all for making smaller communities. Then socialism does work.
so would you be against making the USA a socialist country?
so... capitalism doesn't exist in a world with infinite growth potential. fiat currencies do and when tied in with capitalism, "infinite growth" is a goal. nuance is hard but not too difficult
What forms of profit-making are you proposing that can grow infinitely without consuming any resources?
none, infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. the nuance is that the goal of infinite growth can only be possible in fiat or debt based currencies. can't just print more seashells to intice capitalists into an "infinite growth falacy"
Ok. With what do we replace it?
You don't. The planet will be fine
Perhaps, but we'd all like it if it were still habitable for us. That it would survive without us isn't all that comforting.
Limitless growth because competition and technology are supposed to grow with it. It worked really well till big tech showed up and gained a monopoly on everything
worked really well till big tech showed up and gained a monopoly on everything
Were there any monopolies before big tech? idk maybe oil, steel and trains
At least the government stepped in then
Where did this meme of "capitalism requires infinite growth, therefore it's impossible and bad" come from? Capitalism doesn't require infinite growth, the universe has basically infinite resources, modernity which is largely but not exclusively caused by capitalism has allowed us to do so much more with fewer resources than generations previous, and as societies get richer in material wealth they produce fewer children and have the luxury to pay attention to things like the environment and their impact on it.
the universe has basically infinite resources
Sci-fi is fictional, Clyde - not prophecy.
allowed us to do so much more with fewer resources than generations previous
Riiight... that's why we're the most destructive agent on the planet since the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs - because we "do more with less." Wtf?
and as societies get richer in material wealth
Which societies, Clyde? The ones that capitalism has impoverished so that a small minority can pretend their privileged lives are (somehow) "normal?"
they produce fewer children
And that's a good thing, is it? You know we could just achieve that easily by giving women reproductive rights, don't you? As in... no capitalism required at all?
Sci-fi is fictional, Clyde - not prophecy.
They're just referring to the fact that the universe we live in is no "finite system" per the meme
Riiight... that's why we're the most destructive agent on the planet since the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs - because we "do more with less." Wtf?
Yes exactly! They're not saying that's a good thing but that's exactly why!
Which societies, Clyde? The ones that capitalism has impoverished so that a small minority can pretend their privileged lives are (somehow) "normal?"
Regardless if the distribution of that wealth is acceptable, growth has made the overall society richer in material wealth. The distribution of that wealth is an entirely different question.
And that's a good thing, is it? You know we could just achieve that easily by giving women reproductive rights, don't you? As in... no capitalism required at all?
You have any proof for that statement?
90% of the stuff you encounter day to day would have been considered science fiction only a few decades ago. That doesn't answer whether capitalism actually requires growth, which it doesn't, or where the meme came from.
Our production efficiency, production per inputs, is larger now than in the past. That's doing more with less.
Which societies
These countries tend to be the most capitalist, meaning private ownership of the means and subsequent free exchange of goods and services, and they also tend to be the most wealthy with low poverty. That distribution matches fertility fairly closely. Link
that's a good thing, is it?
It is if the thing you're worried about is the impact of the human species on the rest of the planet. Fewer people means less impact with the same per person impact.
we could just achieve that easily by giving women reproductive rights
The capitalist west is the most abortion permitting part of the world. Legal rights are a luxury good, unfortunately. Kinda seems like capitalism is in fact required.
It's not a meme, its both the theory and practice to require constant unending increase in profit. That is the central point that eliminates all of your points except for the one about the universe having infinite resources - my dude we do not have access to the UNIVERSE, all we have is this one planet, and due to the distances involved, space opera is bunk and every stellar system is going to have just that stellar system. Do you think that a trade route that takes 400 years to travel is going to be of practical use over a lifetime?
the universe has basically infinite resources
then why are humans only living on this planet and not mars?
yes, there are other planets, but we don't know of a single one that can support life other than earth right now
billionaires are fucking over the environment and overworking and underpaying their workers for a bit of extra cash
All organizations fail eventually. Companies lose focus at the top (management), become like a cancer, over extend, and then die off. The remaining assets are picked off. Same thing with governments. Same with unions. Hell, the same happened with boy scouts. Same thing with churches.
What is described is a human condition, not a problem specific to capitalism. Greed cannot be organized out, legislated against, nor fought with fists.
this is literally capitalist propaganda, human nature is the exact opposite, we're an absurdly generous and non-greedy species due to how social we are, just like how ants don't hoard food.
a few select humans who most likely have a number of mental illnesses are greedy, and they have for thousands of years now managed to convince everyone else that they for some reason deserve special treatment to the detriment of the rest of society.
this is literally capitalist propaganda, human nature is the exact opposite, we’re an absurdly generous and non-greedy species due to how social we are, just like how ants don’t hoard food.
Pretty cool universe you live in. How can I join? Mine sucks.
But I have to make bad analogies barely thought out to dunk on a perceived enemy without actually exploring the issue and root cause in full
It isn't a bad analogy we are quite literally killing our planet and its ecosystems we need to survive because it is profitable. Capitalism and the greed it fosters isn't the status quo for humanity regardless of what Capitalist propaganda has tricked you into believing.
If you take Technology and Space into consideration there's an infinite amount of growth.
If wages stagnate with respect to productivity, why does it matter?
Because for some reason people are driven to do things and people will people follow to do those things,
The soviet union was so great for the environment
Just because someone is advocating against capitalism, that doesn't mean they are advocating for the Soviet Union / any modern dictatorship that claims to be communist. Please stop the binary thinking
Free Market Capitalism is based on the infinite human ability to create and innovate.
Communism refuses to acknowledge individuals and their skills, incentivastion and has no ability to allocate limited resources successfully.
If only there were a middle ground...
Free Market Capitalism is based on the infinite human ability to create and innovate.
No it isn't. It's based on the infinite human ability to exploit others for personal gain, and its functioning for those who benefit from it is predicated on the existence of a working class that produces more in value than they are allowed to benefit from.
Socialism is not communism. It is based on the idea that workers should have ownership over their work, and it has been put into practice in the form of worker-owned cooperatives, like the Mondragon Corporation in Spain, as well as many that aren't the size of entire small cities. My argument is that an economy organized predominantly by that model would work much better for everybody.
I like how people like you immediately default to communism as if there's absolutely no other option available...
in biology normal cells are controlled by nucleus and it's hereditory... so it is nepotism and zero rights for others so it's also bad thing like communism
I don't understand how nepotism and zero rights for others automaticaly imply communism.
so it is nepotism
Donald Trump is a communist?
Grayox with the communist propoganda 8.5/10
Btw, capitalism doesnt mean infinite expansion any more than a socialist or marxist state could. Except if I point to anything, you guys scream "its not real socialism!" Until you are blue in the face.
Capitalism is telling people that the Earth is a finite system.
How is earth NOT a finite system?
Because we get energy from the sun?
Because we lose atmosphere into space?
Because interstellar space believe it or not it's not empty so we also get mass from it?
My god even if we chopped all the trees and burned all the petroleum and bombed the whole Small part of the planet we live in with nuclear weapons, even if all humanity that ever lived in this planet was alive and lived their lives again for a million years, we'd still have about 50 thousand trillion trillions of atmosphere to go before we consume it all. And don't get me started on the water
And guess what, even making that effort it wouldn't be enough because life would continue.
That's right, we suck even when trying to destroy the planet
Umm, what? Dude, I want some of whatever the heck you're smoking. Cause you ain't making any sense at all...
Capitalism isn't killing our planet. Shits like Putin, Winnie Pooh, Kim Jong Un and Erdogan are.
Both are killing our planet, they are not mutually exclusive. Capitalism kills the planet through the destruction of the environment on a global scale for profit, the abuse and wage enslavement of the working class (and the rapidly decreasing standard of living for many because of this) and the hoarding of resources for a profit at the expense of those who actually need it. Homeless people starving to death outside of supermarkets, people losing their homes from skyrocketing rents and stagnant wages or never being able to afford one because greedy corporations buy up all the homes. How can you claim unchecked capitalism isn't a scourge on our society and a root of so many of our problems?
You don't need go be a genocidal dictator to kill the planet. All you need is greed, lack of empathy, and the means to hurt people for profit.
But wealth and resources aren't a closed, finite system. Wealth can be infinite. Food can be grown everyday. Water falls freely from the sky. Capitalism isn't the issue. Being dependent on somebody else over being self reliant is the issue.
Our Earth is limited.
Thinking you can grow infinite amounts of food forever on the same land is why we have desertification of our crop lands.
That myth has been debunked by a few sources. Here's one example.
Edit:spelling
how many things are you going to take for granted
I'm gonna go with none. Is there something about me you know that I don't?
This doesn't make any sense, since when earth became a closed system?
Also capitalism is a system. A human one. Its not biological in nature as it is an abstraction. As such it can change or disappear or be re used again and again and again.
There is no internal mechanism for human systems that say "hey create more of this system and then die at this point" or "hey build more of this system to fix this and that" or "hey created these new systems to evolve"
Humans do that, not the systems we create
Like it or not nobody wants to die, not even a tiny cancer cell. so it is in our best interests to expand into space to multiply our chances of survival.
And like it or not, it's gonna happen.
It's a closed system as far as resources go. We're not adding new material to the earth other than falling space debris and meteorites.
Earth is definitely a closed system. When you propose expanding to space, you are literally going out wide that system, but Earth is definitely limited
