-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Are you ready to consider that capitalism is the real problem?
- Thread starter Lime
- Start date
The current model of capitalism allows for checks and balances. That's how it works.
Automation naturally works with the profit motive.
The problem, of course, is this means a new paradigm: stop linking survival value to an incredibly limited arena of "real work" which we label as jobs.
The problem isn't automation, for they help negate costs and increase production. The problem is jobs cults which assert human life must stay as the epicenter to production. This is where a decoupling is forming, and this is before we get into problems of how labor no longer pays but rentierism does.
Bony Manifesto
Member
We're open to suggestions! The problem is that most people proposing alternate solutions tend to be just be proposing a variation of communism with human nature hand-waved away. Or they go straight to the utopic end game, where everyone just lives without want or need in perfect harmony (once again failing to consider human nature).
My point basically boils down to, you cannot say what system is better until all the bills are paid and we haven't paid them yet. I read you as saying that capitalism is definitely better. Thus, nope nope nope. Need more data.
That said, capitalism coupled with strong democracy seems to be the most stable, the most moral, and the fairest so far.
This is going waaay off topic, but I find myself wondering how well tgese systems work in the absence of a uniform system of morality that supplements the law. I am an atheist, but I do wonder if the relative benevolence of corporations towards workers and citizens (child labour and slavery though) is dependent on some sense of morality and if we have coasted on cultural legacy so far. It wasn't unusual for large firms to build housing, schools, and community centers for the communities in which they were based as recently as 25 years ago. And that was without plastering their name on it. Anyway, off topic, but I always wonder about that when discussions of capitalism and industrialism come up.
Automation is a fun thing
Before we were like "robots will do all our work we will live in eternal vacation" and now we are "technology allows us to work from everywhere anytime it is hell"
The basic theory of capitalism can be adapted within whatever confines a society decides on.
I guess I am referring more to capitalist systems as they exist today. Which are repurposed versions of what we had in the 19th century. The current checks and balances are not enough given the rapid change in technology we are seeing currently, and most governments are hesitant to do anything about it.
That's more a failing with democracy, which allows idiots to take charge. No solution to that.
Serpens007
Member
But that IS the point. Profit is more important than protecting their own employees, the very people is giving them prosperity. I get the "I'm making less money", but it is not because of being an unviable business, or the market disregarding them, is because they are investing in a vital part of the business, and that is their own people. That is terrible.
And yeah, I don't know if we can just say it is part of the system itself, or the people running it, but as it is it just can't be. It is cultural, but capitalism is central in our culture (hell, even for the ideology itself, it's part of human nature so we should be fucked lol).
TL;DR is: stop treating people as less important than profit.
I'm a commie who routinely proposes and defends state-owned monopolies, but this shit is disingenous.
Yeah.
This shit, linked as "By some measures" is the intellectual equivalent of writing "By some measures, the global temperature has fallen"
Yeah.
This shit, linked as "By some measures" is the intellectual equivalent of writing "By some measures, the global temperature has fallen"
Crayon
Member
Humans by nature a greedy short-sighted and destructive. But transglobal coporations are made of sugar and spice and everything nice.
Herr Schwarz
Banned
All systems are flawed due to the corruption of man. You could probably have a great Communist society, if man wasn't inherently prone to corruption.
The best one can do, is build failsafes and avoid power concentration. Most modern first world countries do that, to varying sucess and democractic structures themselves are often there to prevent power contentration on one person/party long term.
I completely understand why people were uncomfortable with "too big to fail" banks during the last big crysis or why some Megacorporations that own key infrastructure or technologies are met with sceptisism. They should be and we possibly need changes there.
But that's not a problem inherent to one particular economic system. And dilluting power too much has it's own drawbacks, especially regarding large scale projects and descision time.
Considering that it routinely survives people that were democratically voted into office that are trying to do the very enslaving you're talking about, it's not nearly as delicate as you're making it out to be. If the very same people were democratically elected to a more powerful government I can only imagine the results.
This is all true. And I agree that there are problems with diluting power. In an ideal world a dictatorship would be the best form of government as a perfect dictator working for the people would be able to quickly and efficiently solve problems. Not really how it works out, though.
Capitalism should never be standing alone, you need to pair it for example with Socialism. A big government by the people for the people, carrying a really fucking huge legal stick to beat the shit out of rich people whenever they get out of line.
*SCHWACK*
"No, you can't dump toxic waste in the waterways you stupid fuck! Now pay your goddamn taxes so I can build a proper detoxification facility to handle that crap and fund local schools and other important infrastructure!"
*SCHWACK*
"No, you may NOT trample over the rights of the local people so you can build a second fucking garage to fill with environmentally polluting cars. Also, the bigger you build your fucking house, the more tax I am gonna have to make you pay for the fucking privilege of even having a giant ass house you don't need! What do you even need such a fucking big house for!?"
"To put all my stuff in?"
"THEN STOP BUYING SO MUCH FUCKING STUFF YOU TWAT! Get some quality shit that you only need 1 of, leave the "Memorial to my life's best wanks"-room out of the blueprint and donate the rest to some charity that can help others!"
Regulations, control, whatever is necessary, never let Capitalism run amok on it's own. The USA is my prime example of why we should never have a system that focuses solely on it. It maybe is human nature, but Capitalism on its own only serves to amplify the worst of it.
*SCHWACK*
"No, you can't dump toxic waste in the waterways you stupid fuck! Now pay your goddamn taxes so I can build a proper detoxification facility to handle that crap and fund local schools and other important infrastructure!"
*SCHWACK*
"No, you may NOT trample over the rights of the local people so you can build a second fucking garage to fill with environmentally polluting cars. Also, the bigger you build your fucking house, the more tax I am gonna have to make you pay for the fucking privilege of even having a giant ass house you don't need! What do you even need such a fucking big house for!?"
"To put all my stuff in?"
"THEN STOP BUYING SO MUCH FUCKING STUFF YOU TWAT! Get some quality shit that you only need 1 of, leave the "Memorial to my life's best wanks"-room out of the blueprint and donate the rest to some charity that can help others!"
Regulations, control, whatever is necessary, never let Capitalism run amok on it's own. The USA is my prime example of why we should never have a system that focuses solely on it. It maybe is human nature, but Capitalism on its own only serves to amplify the worst of it.
Do you think that the robot overlords will decide that the rational way to proceed is to waste resources on the people that are not providing anything useful anymore to the society?
There is no system that doesn't need constant tweaking to keep things going. Power and wealth distribution as well as the environment (society and nature) are in constant flux. Nothing can be built for eternity.
Adam_Vania
Banned
"human nature screws everything" is typical capitalist propaganda. scientists/sociologists/theorists funded and promoted by a capitalist system will naturally produce conclusions supportive of that system. there is nothing logical or rational about this conclusion.
it's like when you read Lord of the Flies and they tell you "see, anarchism will never work" when the whole problem w their society was they ran away from anarchy and fully embraced an authority-based hierarchy.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Its been on my mind lately that our one window for socialism before the last few decades was probably pre-industrialization. As soon as people left the fields and food scarcity became a problem of access instead of a problem of yield it was probably going to be impossible to turn back the clock. But now we've reached a point where food access logistics are entirely solvable without putting 40% of the population back on the farms so yeah, I think we can do better
"capitalism historically works better than anything else!"
i wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that the capitalist nations of the world have done everything possible to destabilize leftist governments in the last century? proxy wars, funding right wing terrorists, invading directly, nothing is off the imperialist table.
i wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that the capitalist nations of the world have done everything possible to destabilize leftist governments in the last century? proxy wars, funding right wing terrorists, invading directly, nothing is off the imperialist table.
The website for my airline wasn't letting me check in online or print my boarding pass today, which just so happens to be the day of my flight. Now I've got to pay to check in and get my boarding pass printed at the airport, resulting in a nice bit of profit for the airline. I'm not saying it was definitely an intentional malfunction of the website, maybe the server was just busy today or something, dunno. But it wouldn't hugely surprise me if the website was programmed in such a way that 5/10% of customers who want to check in online on the day of their flight will encounter an error message. That would be a small enough percentage that it could be waved off as an honest and technical problem. But it would also be a high enough percentage that the airline would make a tidy little profit.
A better example would be the way airlines tend to overbook flights intentionally, just to make a profit. It really does make the company more money and you could argue that anticipation of people missing their flights improves fuel efficiency which is good for the environment or something. But when some guy gets beat up because of it then it's poor customer service. Though if someone has to leave but gets $$$ compensation then it's alright maybe.
Capitalism is definitely problematic for a number of reasons though. I suspect the first generation on PS3s may have had some planned obsolescence going on. If 5/10% of products fail after xyz amount of time then that might not really affect sales at all if the company has a good reputation. It could actually increase sales, because when the product fails the customer will go on to buy a replacement. Maybe that's tinfoil shit but it really wouldn't surprise me, terrible customer service if it's true though. Whatever system replaces capitalism, it needs to be something which recognises the intrinsic value of high quality goods and services. The replacement system also needs to recognise that greed for the almighty dollar is not the highest good, not everything is about making money
A better example would be the way airlines tend to overbook flights intentionally, just to make a profit. It really does make the company more money and you could argue that anticipation of people missing their flights improves fuel efficiency which is good for the environment or something. But when some guy gets beat up because of it then it's poor customer service. Though if someone has to leave but gets $$$ compensation then it's alright maybe.
Capitalism is definitely problematic for a number of reasons though. I suspect the first generation on PS3s may have had some planned obsolescence going on. If 5/10% of products fail after xyz amount of time then that might not really affect sales at all if the company has a good reputation. It could actually increase sales, because when the product fails the customer will go on to buy a replacement. Maybe that's tinfoil shit but it really wouldn't surprise me, terrible customer service if it's true though. Whatever system replaces capitalism, it needs to be something which recognises the intrinsic value of high quality goods and services. The replacement system also needs to recognise that greed for the almighty dollar is not the highest good, not everything is about making money
deep learning and AI are fun buzzwords these days but when we train something to think we instill our own biases. robot overlords would still be racist, sexist etc because we would literally be their parents.
On the contrary, industrialization is a priori for socialism. Without industry, you have no workers. Without workers, you have no capitalism. Without capitalism, you have no socialism.
Explain Eastern Europe. If you even have any idea what you're talking about.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Then socialism was impossible before the last few decades. What I mean is that prior to the exodus from farming into industrial labor you could have organized society with ownership of labor and no scarcity of access to food without having to deal with the social inertia of trying to roll back other changes to lifestyle. But once people got used to things like "living in cities" and "access to manufactured goods" the problem of "okay now we need a huge chunk of you to return to food production to provide for all" was always going to be, well, not popular? Which is a problem if you want your socialism to be driven by the consensus of the people
All of this has changed recently, and so what we consider as capitalism is rapidly becoming a relic, but I think the problems of "why socialism never succeeded before" are more complicated than "because the capitalists kept killing it"
Vermillion
Banned
Just because we have amazing technology doesn't mean people don't ruin everything.
In fact, said devices have been used to ruin lives, too.
not sure what you mean unless you think that post somehow meant i think every variety of non-capitalist government would have succeeded if left alone, including stalinism.
some countries fail on their own, sure, but don't deny that the US and its allies have done everything they could to force the rest of the world to adopt capitalism.
rokkerkory
Member
No matter what system you have you always have people and some people will always game any system and make it shit
HarryHengst
Member
Yep, this also. There is not supposed to be an alternative to capitalism.
Considering the history of everything against them, Cuba is doing VERY good =P
HellforLeather
Member
"The government is horrible" is a pretty common sentiment I see in other threads.
"I want the government to control everything" is what I'm seeing here.
"I want the government to control everything" is what I'm seeing here.
RoninChaos
Member
Capitalism can be a great engine for innovation and can increase the livelyhoods of many people. The issue is control. If you don't have regulation to reign in the greed that can come with it, it can destroy everything. Look at the financial meltdown of 2008, we had mass deregulation that lead to banks treating the entire world economy like a casino.
Capitalism itself isn't the problem because there is no viable alternative that's been historically proven to work better. Raw capitalism needs to be controlled and framed with strong laws, which is the government's job. This is the part that's a little broken and difficult to figure out, to put it mildly. There's also the fact that human nature often tends to lead some people to act without a sense of morals, which is strange because the government is meant to protect and support people, whereas capitalism is meant to promote infinite growth without any regard for the human aspect... yet a lot of the time the government struggles to find balance between promoting that and protecting the people. Capitalism is both an ally and an enemy. The goal is to tip the scales in the ally direction as a collective whole (via the government), but society struggles to do it. Part of that is ignorance, part of that is greed or lack of morals. I tend to think ignorance does more bad than the greed aspect of human nature. As always, societal problems can only be fixed through stronger education, which is the basis of any society, and the single most important thing we have.
Bonen no Max'd
Banned
Capitalism is on track to murder most to all of humanity so I think it's about time we have up on it.
personally i think if we did some fundamental restructuring of the US system of government in order to fix problems of representation and voting we'd naturally see it become less corrupt and waaaaay further left
so it's almost as if those two statements are deeply intertwined
Capitalism is the only option that works because every other option ignores human nature.
The problems we're running into now are partially cyclical (deregulation/regulation seems to run this way) and partially evolutionary and structural as tech advances have radically altered the labor paradigm.
The problems we're running into now are partially cyclical (deregulation/regulation seems to run this way) and partially evolutionary and structural as tech advances have radically altered the labor paradigm.
You have way too much faith in voters and the thought that they actually think about the results of their votes as a whole. They'll follow whatever politician manages to talk a good game.
Yes but a society built on an incorrect view of the nature of man is doomed one
Ok, let's try the other way around. What socialist country do you consider a success story?
i mean considering the fact that america has had the biggest military for all of modern history and has made it very clear that we will not hesitate to use it against anyone who runs their own shit in a way we don't like i'm not sure that's a fair question.
the better way to look at it would be "what socialist policies do you consider successful?" and the answer from the entire developed world would be "most of them".
Every political and economic model has been used by imperialist nations.
Communist states like the UdSSR didn't fail because of evil capitalists. Pretending they did is an insult to the people that had to live under the regimes.
Adam_Vania
Banned
not an argument. humans do things that animals do. they also do things animals don't do. it takes zero intellectual effort to look at all the bad things that happen and shrug your shoulders and say "we are unable to change because in this one realm the power of the human mind is helpless to do anything and we can only be driven by instinct".
it's an intellectual dead end. the thought equivalent of giving up.
odd that nobody realizes maybe they think "it is human nature" because they are raised in a capitalist society that has told them that from day one.
Similar threads
- Locked