No, the competitive nature of capitalism definitely incentivizes people to do very shitty things to each other for personal gain. Or have you not heard of the Gilded Age? Or our current climate crisis? Or strike breaking? Or the incredible wealth inequality we are seeing today?
[edit] The Irish Potato Famine? The Bengal Famine? Belgium in the Congo? Sweatshop labour? Coups in South America for the benefit of fruit companies? Wars in the Middle East for the sake of oil? Clear-cutting of the Amazon? Any of this ringing a bell?
Can you prove capitalism is the source of any of those problems vs just plain human greed?
If we want to attribute every negative event to it, well what about the positive events? Did it cause the light bulb to be invented, the telegraph, the computer, the printing press, satellites, etc, or was it just the economic system at the time?
Capitalism doesn’t make people greedy, lots of people just are.
Beyond that, you can beat on capitalism all you want but until someone comes up with a viable alternative, it’s what we’ve got.
Literally the point of capitalism is to utilize greed and enlightened self-interest to (supposedly) drive innovation and expand production. Greed is central to the whole ideology. “Greed is good”. You are making a false distinction. How can you support an economic system you don’t even understand?
Edit: Using a movie clip as if it’s some kind of enlightened source is just absurd. There’s no part of capitalism that says greed is good. Capitalism is a system not an ideology, let alone an ideology that can be captured by a freaking movie clip.
Guess what, still no better system proposed, still no answer for whether the good things get credit or just the bad.
There are many better proposals. Communism, anarchism, socialism, etc. What i personally think is best is some form of democratic socialism, where literally everything is controlled democratically. Companies/firms all fully employee controlled, democratic government obviously, etc. Nownininow you’re gonna say “oh but socialism and communism have already been tried and failed look at xyz countries” and to that: every instance of socialism or communism has either been authoritarian and therefore always going to be bad or got fucked over by outside influences, or sometimes internal ones. Probably the best historical example that was good was the Soviet union in the very beginning in the first few weeks or months when worker control flourished, but then Lenin fucked over everything and became authoritarian.
If you think anarchism is viable I literally don’t know how we could ever in a million years agree. That is a ridiculous proposal to me beyond words, up there and equivalent to free speech absolutism.
Ignoring that, explain to me how you’re going to keep democratic socialism from going off the rails if we can’t even keep democratic capitalism from going off the rails?
Edit: In capitalism at least greedy people have an outlet that isn’t the government. In a socialist society, the only way to be greedy is to control the government. I don’t think it’s coincidence that every socialist society has turned into an authoritarian state, I think it’s an inevitability.
That doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn from socialism or anarchism, but they are firmly non-viable strategies by themselves.
So does any other economic model.
That is an absolutely meaningless statement.
As is capitalism incentivizing people to be scumbags, as trendy as that perspective is.
No, the competitive nature of capitalism definitely incentivizes people to do very shitty things to each other for personal gain. Or have you not heard of the Gilded Age? Or our current climate crisis? Or strike breaking? Or the incredible wealth inequality we are seeing today?
[edit] The Irish Potato Famine? The Bengal Famine? Belgium in the Congo? Sweatshop labour? Coups in South America for the benefit of fruit companies? Wars in the Middle East for the sake of oil? Clear-cutting of the Amazon? Any of this ringing a bell?
Can you prove capitalism is the source of any of those problems vs just plain human greed?
If we want to attribute every negative event to it, well what about the positive events? Did it cause the light bulb to be invented, the telegraph, the computer, the printing press, satellites, etc, or was it just the economic system at the time?
Capitalism doesn’t make people greedy, lots of people just are.
Beyond that, you can beat on capitalism all you want but until someone comes up with a viable alternative, it’s what we’ve got.
Literally the point of capitalism is to utilize greed and enlightened self-interest to (supposedly) drive innovation and expand production. Greed is central to the whole ideology. “Greed is good”. You are making a false distinction. How can you support an economic system you don’t even understand?
I’m just going to block you…
Edit: Using a movie clip as if it’s some kind of enlightened source is just absurd. There’s no part of capitalism that says greed is good. Capitalism is a system not an ideology, let alone an ideology that can be captured by a freaking movie clip.
Guess what, still no better system proposed, still no answer for whether the good things get credit or just the bad.
By all means.
There are many better proposals. Communism, anarchism, socialism, etc. What i personally think is best is some form of democratic socialism, where literally everything is controlled democratically. Companies/firms all fully employee controlled, democratic government obviously, etc. Nownininow you’re gonna say “oh but socialism and communism have already been tried and failed look at xyz countries” and to that: every instance of socialism or communism has either been authoritarian and therefore always going to be bad or got fucked over by outside influences, or sometimes internal ones. Probably the best historical example that was good was the Soviet union in the very beginning in the first few weeks or months when worker control flourished, but then Lenin fucked over everything and became authoritarian.
If you think anarchism is viable I literally don’t know how we could ever in a million years agree. That is a ridiculous proposal to me beyond words, up there and equivalent to free speech absolutism.
Ignoring that, explain to me how you’re going to keep democratic socialism from going off the rails if we can’t even keep democratic capitalism from going off the rails?
Edit: In capitalism at least greedy people have an outlet that isn’t the government. In a socialist society, the only way to be greedy is to control the government. I don’t think it’s coincidence that every socialist society has turned into an authoritarian state, I think it’s an inevitability.
That doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn from socialism or anarchism, but they are firmly non-viable strategies by themselves.