Lemmino

Lemmino , 1 year ago to showerthoughts in Capitalism is the paywall of life

There is still a power incentive. In the proposed system we would likely factions rapidly forming to gather the most power and resources as quickly as possible. It would probably be quite bloody. (What you are describing is effectively the tribe system, which rarely ended well for most tribes.)

Lemmino , 1 year ago to showerthoughts in Capitalism is the paywall of life

Government regulation is the route to go for the edge cases where capitalism incentivizes dark patterns. For cases where an endeavor is unprofitable, government investment is typically the way to go, and seems to work rather well (eg NASA and the many inventions that came out of it, that form the basis of our modern life.)

I am not calling for unfettered capitalism, but I do think we have struck a somewhat happy medium today compared to almost any other point in human history. I think it can be improved further, but I see no evidence, historical or otherwise, that communism could fare better.

Lemmino , 1 year ago to showerthoughts in Capitalism is the paywall of life

Capitalism, well-regulated, has worked - it’s not some dangerous idea that will result in our self-destruction (at least, there is no historical basis for this.) On the other hand, history shows we are much more likely to see communism self-destruct (into authoritarianism/totalitarianism.)

I agree that the generational wealth aspect is the worst aspect of capitalism and I wish that could be reformed.

A note - technology does not progress exponentially. In fact, it rarely has. We have had dark ages lasting between hundreds and tens of thousands of years between incremental advancements. The progress of technology is in no way guaranteed, your society needs to encourage continued R&D into technology, which regulated competition/profit motive does especially well.

I anticipate that at some point in the future we can abandon capitalism entirely, as we will have technologically advanced to the point where we don’t need it anymore.

Lemmino , 1 year ago to showerthoughts in Capitalism is the paywall of life

I agree it works at village-scale, but in my opinion what we have seen is a failure of communism to scale to a nation with tens or hundreds of millions of people, and survive for decades at that.

Lemmino , 1 year ago to showerthoughts in Capitalism is the paywall of life

It is disingenuous to say that communism has never been tried. It’s been tried over 30 times, but it’s never been able to live up to the ideal of “true” communism.

If your system falls apart as soon as people become greedy or power hungry, it’s not a practical or stable system. You can’t expect people to ignore those emotions and you definitely cannot bake that expectation into a system that needs to be resilient enough to sustain a society for centuries.

Lemmino , 1 year ago to showerthoughts in Capitalism is the paywall of life

The issue is that greed is an aspect of human nature. You’ll never be able to eliminate it. Any system that relies on greed, corruption, and selfishness not existing, will ultimately fail, because that system relies on humans pretending that certain emotions don’t exist.

Capitalism is deeply flawed, but it’s stability as a system is not predicated on humans trying (and inevitably failing) to delete fundamental human emotions.

Lemmino , 1 year ago to showerthoughts in Capitalism is the paywall of life

What are those options? Have they been trialed and errored?

If not, how do we actually know they will work in practice? For instance, communism was ideal on paper and fell apart in practice - no country was able to ever “truly” implement it. What other ideologies exist that could practically work? It’s a bit premature in my opinion to call any of them “better than capitalism” when none have been tried.

Lemmino , 1 year ago to showerthoughts in Capitalism is the paywall of life

Science doesn’t exist in a vacuum. With capitalism, you’re directly incentivized to invest in R&D because you can come out with a better product that people will want, thus advancing science. Everything from the lightbulb to HVAC machines started as capitalistic endeavors as opposed to purely academic ones.

Lemmino , 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago) to showerthoughts in Capitalism is the paywall of life

All systems dealing with human nature will inherently be flawed and require workarounds and bandaids.

There is no perfect system, but throughout human history, capitalism seems to have consistently resulted in technological growth and improved outcomes in terms of health, lifespan, creature-comforts, etc.

We tried communism - over 30 countries did - and the only ones left are China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos. Interestingly, current and previous communist states got a lot closer to “regulating breathing” than anything we have today. It’s not a good look as far as stable and free systems go.

Lemmino , 1 year ago to showerthoughts in Capitalism is the paywall of life

Any system dealing with human nature will always be inherently flawed. The fact is, in over 250,000 years of our species existing, our technological prowess only really exploded once the concepts of money and trade were invented. Regulate these properly, and you have an incredibly powerful industrial machine that will improve everyone’s lives.

Lemmino , 1 year ago to showerthoughts in Capitalism is the paywall of life

Well-regulated capitalism on the other hand has resulted in an explosion of technological advancement like no other era in human history.

The key is regulation. Not too little, but not too much either. Some things, like minimum wage, are clearly under regulated. Other things, like mandating USB-C, are honestly better left to the free market (and I fucking love USB-C.)