George Takei: "When history looks back on this period, people will ask..."

[Silent3]

80. I suspect you're asking the other poster, but for me "work" means, and can only mean...

Last edited Mon Sep 21, 2020, 04:09 PM - Edit history (1)

...works for a time, given regulation and vigilance, and "works" as well as anything that's actually been tried that you can compare it to.

The Soviet Union, for example, produced some enormous ecological disasters - the Aral Sea, Chernobyl, etc. A lack of capitalism didn't save the environment there.

If the argument is that capitalism inevitably fails, that may well be true, but what is the proven alternative that's eternally self-sustaining, or at least longer lasting?

My gripe with people who rail against capitalism is that they don't have anything proven to be better as a replacement to offer us, and they fail to make a case the failings they attribute to capitalism aren't simply generic human failings merely being expressed through capitalism.

Ever since the pace of technological changes has picked up, governments, economies, and societies have changed faster and faster too. The only societies and human institutions which have been stable for centuries have been nearly unchanging in all ways for centuries. And just because they were stable doesn't mean they were good, either. I like antibiotics and the internet and knowing something about what the stars actually are when I look up at them -- there's no idealized golden age of the past I want to go back to.

Are there plenty of things we should try, at least on a small scale, see how they work, and then build on them if they work well? Certainly! But grousing about how evil capitalism supposedly is in the meantime doesn't get us anywhere.