General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPeople know I hate capitalism
One reason is it encourages sociopath behavior via the profit motive,it uses people as expendable capital,not as human beings.
Another reason is the profit motive and the growth imperative.
Capitalism leads to monopolies that lead to ogliarchy and disaster capitalism,vulture capitalism and the fact it's unsustainable on a finite planet.
These videos explain much better than I could as to why.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/433394-ocasio-cortez-capitalism-is-irredeemable
Hugh_Lebowski
(33,643 posts)To get my beet, potato, vodka, and sugar rations, living in a closed society with soldiers and secret police everywhere, that sounds way better.
Personally I think the fact there's no cap on GREED that's much more the problem than capitalism as a system.
jimfields33
(15,793 posts)Ill keep what we have even with warts.
I_UndergroundPanther
(12,463 posts)That your rights as a worker are going away?
Right to a safe workplace?
Right to not be worked to death?
Profit overrides human need it's happened before will happen again unless people question why capitalism has failed humanity as a system.
That greed driven overide of human rights is happening right now in America to farmworkers at big agriculture.
How long until that greed and the court capitalists bought affects you?
Than will you say capitalism sucks?
Or are you of the I got mine fuck everyone else capitalism is great!
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,437 posts)That your rights as a worker are going away?
Right to a safe workplace?
Right to not be worked to death?
Cite, please.
brush
(53,776 posts)can lead to all the cruel things you mentioned but here in the US we go back and forth between the republicans getting in and voting down the regulations the Democrats put in to regulate capitalism when they were in power. And back and forth, rinse and repeat.
Ok, that happens here. What is your solutionsocial democracies like in Europe (actually capitalist countries with robust, social safety nets), or a straight socialist economy where the people own the means of production?
And btw, please cite a nation where a socialist economy has been successful and is still extant.
IMO it's pretty obvious that successful economies combine aspects of both capitalism and socialism.
Amishman
(5,557 posts)unregulated free market capitalism is like a nuclear reactor with no control rods, lots of power but will inevitably melt down leaving a big mess.
controlled capitalism is the best system.
alphafemale
(18,497 posts)I think forced labor camps are pretty common.
Humans thrived for 40,000 years and more in environments where money itself didn't exist.
Personally I think money was a stupid invention that will ultimately cause the extreme suffering and death of billions of people within a very short time period.
I look forward to some kind of "Star Trek TNG" future where all the basic human necessities, especially happiness, are all free.
Anyone who is bored by that can join Star Fleet. But not the incurable psychopaths and sociopaths. We can deport all of them to Fight World, where they will be strictly supervised...
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,437 posts)hunter
(38,311 posts)With internet access and everything.
Dial H For Hero
(2,971 posts)Both portray humanity roughly 3 centuries in the future. But Star Trek is a post-scarcity society. Quoting Captain Picard: "The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity."
In contrast, Babylon 5 shows us a 23rd Century in which the people of Earth are still mostly religious, drenched in politics, corporations are pervasive, crushing poverty still exists, leaders are assassinated, there are labor strikes, and people complain about high taxes.
Star Trek may be a nicer place to live (utopias have an advantage in that respect) but Babylon 5 feels a lot more real.
*Silly science and aliens in both series aside.
former9thward
(32,003 posts)Unless you have your own defintion for "thrive". Human life was short and brutal.
RANDYWILDMAN
(2,672 posts)We have a rep democracy that works to well for the $$$$$donor class and not so well for individuals.
If the democracy represented the majority of people better, capitalism would not be as much of a problem.
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,437 posts)the hardware and software have been developed by companies operating in capitalist countries.
GoodRaisin
(8,922 posts)Of course we don't have that right now, but getting there would serve us well.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)lunatica
(53,410 posts)Faux pas
(14,672 posts)with you! Capitalism and religion, both deadly
Wounded Bear
(58,649 posts)Faux pas
(14,672 posts)DemocratSinceBirth
(99,710 posts)marie999
(3,334 posts)brush
(53,776 posts)there has never been a successful,sustained country where straight socialism has worked. Communism, a form of socialism, was a disaster in the USSR and China has moved away from it too. Cuba is in upheaval as we speak today.
It's pretty obvious a combination of capitalism and socialism works best (see the nordic countries, much of Europe, us too to to a lesser extent because republicans keep voting out the economic regulations the Dems vote in).
11 Bravo
(23,926 posts)cachukis
(2,238 posts)Capitalism is the system of humanity. Like everything, it has goods and bads. We have good parents and not so good parents. Good parents have to be the example for bad parent's children.
Treefrog
(4,170 posts)That is one damn capitalistic place lol.
I_UndergroundPanther
(12,463 posts)Like I went to Disneyland are not the point.
My problem is the profit motive,growth imperative,zero sum thinking and a fucking finite planet.
And the way capitalism degrades into fucking ogliarchy because it carries the seeds of it's own destruction within it
What part of that do you not get?
Treefrog
(4,170 posts)Ok.
USALiberal
(10,877 posts)Response to Treefrog (Reply #20)
BannonsLiver This message was self-deleted by its author.
Treefrog
(4,170 posts)JI7
(89,249 posts)betsuni
(25,498 posts)Keeping track of where and when the berries and fruits and plants are ripening, sometimes fighting with angry wild animals who were there first. Believe me, that's no picnic. Constantly bending over gathering things, lugging them back to camp. My back! The drying and smoking and preserving. It really never ends. And the hunting. Don't get me started on the hunting. There's really no time for philosophy or anything like that, too busy obsessing about food. I just don't care for it.
mvd
(65,173 posts)Capitalism definitely needs its excesses tempered down for a healthy populace.
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)I can't wait to hear Wolff explain how Nazis and Socialists and Communists are all the same thing and how the terms can be used interchangeably.
DFW
(54,370 posts)Last edited Mon Jul 19, 2021, 10:56 AM - Edit history (1)
Many of my friends are from the former Warsaw Pact countries, and many of those are from the "realexistierender Sozialismus (true existing socialism) " of East Germany. None of them wants to return to their socialist past.
Theirs is not a monolithic point of view, however. It should be noted that there IS a small party in Germany, where I live, that advocates a return to socialism: Die Linken, or "The Leftists." Some of their leaders used to be up and coming members of the old East German elite. They enjoyed comfortable bourgeois lifestyles and travel privileges--something denied to their population. Thus was the true existing socialism, and that is why it was rejected--not by the 1% who lived comfortably and could travel when and where they wanted, but by the 99% who risked jail or death if they demanded it for themselves.
It should also be noted that not everyone adjusted immediately to their new lives. An East German family taking their first vacation in the west, in one famous recorded incident, asked at the hotel reception, for example, when breakfast was. They were told from 7:AM to 10:00 AM. They said, OK, but when was THEIR breakfast? The reception repeated between 7 and 10. Neither understood the other's problem. In the socialist East, you were assigned the exact hour at which you were to take your breakfast. Individuals making decisions for themselves was a concept that made the rulers nervous. In the west, you went to breakfast when you were hungry. In the East, public gatherings at cafés and restaurants of more than four people were forbidden (ideas and other dangerous things like that might get discussed). In the west, it was limited to the number of chairs you could borrow and squeeze in at a table.
The argument can easily be made that all that was never what socialism is about. The argument can also be made that when it is imposed, that is what socialism ultimately always devolves into. I've seen it, with its goose-stepping soldiers and useless propaganda banners all over the capital city. There is a reason that the people I know who grew up there don't want it any more. Those who were part of their privileged ruling elites obviously see things differently.
*edited for clarity-I just had breakfast (when I wanted )
hunter
(38,311 posts)Where the left meets right there's a strong man and his toadies telling everyone what to do, punishing those who do not comply.
Authoritarian governments and religions are all rotten. It doesn't matter which gods or political philosophies they claim as their own.
Humans seem to function best in a mixed economy of well regulated free markets, socialism, and some degree of unauthorized-graffiti-on-the-walls-and-protesters-in-the-streets-peaceful-anarchy.
Pure capitalism values the accumulation of wealth and profit over the individual. Pure socialism values the group as a whole over the individual. A mix such as Democratic Socialism could work well. I dont mind some people making more money as much as I do the forgetting of the middle class and poor.
brooklynite
(94,535 posts)DemocratSinceBirth
(99,710 posts)It is because people have different skills that society puts a premium on and it takes incentives to motivate them to use them. IMHO the test of a society is how it treats those at the bottom of the hierarchy
Happy Hoosier
(7,305 posts)We cannot expect (nor should we) equal outcomes. But we should make sure there is equal opportunity and ensure that the basic life needs of all people are met.
I have no idea why that is controversial for some folks.
Happy Hoosier
(7,305 posts)IMHO, markets are valuable in that they encourage variety and innovation.
They need to be regulated to protect the interests of consumers and employees.
Raine
(30,540 posts)it would be hell with no capitalism whatsoever.