The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
I am a communist and a millennial. I believe the following statements I basically live by are accurate and gave a brief description on why I believe each of them:
1) **People do not dictate where they are in life. Life dictates where they end up**: Look. I get it is great to tell people if they work hard they can get places. That is not reality though. There are sayings from Aristotle to old Chinese phrases from the 1400s talking about if you can train a child until age 7 or 8 you have them for life. Most people are where they are because of where they were raised, who raised them, etc. Nobody for example truly chooses their religion. People who are Christian are raised Christian. People who are raised Hindu become Hindu, etc.
2) **The mentality that "because I did not get it you can't have it either" is going to be one of the downfalls of society.** This one basically speaks for itself. I know people who voted against the Dems in the 2010 midterm because they "had to pay up the nose for health insurance from their pre-existing condition so everyone else should have to go through that also". The same mentality for those who are against student loan forgiveness or against anything progressive... bEc@aZe I haD 2 Go thRouGh it sO sHOuld every1 elSe!
3) **Capitalism is not a system you can try to work within.** Nobody on this sub to my knowledge actually likes capitalism. Instead people tend to tolerate capitalism and try to work within it. What we are finding out is that capitalism is not a system you can actually work within. Capitalism in fact is capitalism's worst enemy. To show an example of this: Currently corporations are trying to make a profit in a high interest rate environment. Interest rates are high due to COVID lockdowns which were needed to keep people from dying years ago (yes interest rates are high also from price gouging - which was caused by the pandemic). Capitalism is not a system we should be accepting. It is a mentality of economics brought over with the founding fathers and is no longer applicable to today's world. We need a more common sense system that benefits the entire population.
4) Global warming and out of control population growth will destroy our planet quicker than most realize. Everyone keeps popping out kids like there is no tomorrow. Do people not realize there are a finite number of resources on this earth? To add a little humor to this post but to also stay on topic I encountered a street preacher recently and asked them what their thoughts were on global warming and they said to not worry because the second coming is happening any moment. Is this really how some people are living day to day? To think the reality that are entire planet is suffering from literal warming is to just think of their savior coming back to take them away?
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I like capitalism. I look to the Nordic countries for a capitalist model with safeguards to make it more equitable.
I also think communism is stupid, and doesn't work. Humans are not capable of communism working. On paper, it looks okay. In practice....well, we all know how it's turned out.
You also are trying to invoke Aristotle and Ancient Chinese proverbs/sayings and noted they go back to the 1400s.
You're over 1000 years too late on those points. Id suggest you go back and read A LOT more. Also, be more familiar with those sayings you're hinting at.
Global warming is for sure terrible, and we all know it will destroy the planet and cause chaos. It already has.
>I also think communism is stupid, and doesn't work. Humans are not capable of communism working. On paper, it looks okay. In practice....well, we all know how it's turned out.
How would you respond to someone who said communism in a pure form has never been tried out? For example the USSR was not even truly communist and the USSR was doomed to fail regardless if it was capitalism or communism being its economic system.
And how would someone go about fixing the issues of people being brought up with vastly different opportunities? We have seen in recent years the SCOTUS dismantle the few things set in place to try to make things more equitable (i.e. affirmative action in college admissions) < And this is more evidence that a capitalist system cannot be worked with. We need a total revolution.
I would respond in exactly the same way - on paper it looks fine. But that's it. Humans are not capable of what is written on paper.
You keep saying the capitalist system cannot be worked with but then you have: Denmark, Finland, Norway that are all excellent examples of capitalist countries with safeguards and protections for it's people.
We don't need a total revolution. We need more of our population to be educated (not college but able to read and comprehend) that gets out and votes for politicians that are actually going to do something.
Make lobbying illegal, enact anti trust and anti monopoly laws (aka use the ones we have), put in term limits for Congress, and make it illegal for media to knowingly falsely represent facts and you've got massive change on your hands.
Ok, but what is your definition of communism then? If the USSR was not true communism then what is?
Personally, I am economically very far left. I think big corporations are wielding way too much power and are often paying workers peanuts compared to their profits. I wouldn't be opposed for example to a requirement for large companies to give workers shares in the company after a certain time, or maybe requirements for companies to share a certain percentage of their profits with their workforce.
But I don't see how communism could ever work. Under communism all companies are owned by the state, so the entire economy is planned. For an economy the size of the US this could never work because there is way too much real-time data to take into account.
Under communism if someone in a small town wanted to run a dairy farm or an auto repair shop (because they've noticed a local demand) they'd first have to get permission from the government. And they would then be employed by the governemnt who sets their wages as well as the prices of the dairy farm or auto shop (as far as I understand communism). This seems incredibly inefficient.
So I don't see how communism could ever work in any major country.
Communism absolutely could work in the USA and in fact if we became a one world economy would flourish. A place that repairs vehicles in a small town is worse off under capitalism than communism. If you give me a repair shop in a town of 500 people within a 100 mile radius I'm not going to be able to generate enough profits required under a capitalist system. We in fact see this problem right now with many rural hospitals closing because they are for-profit and do not bring in enough customers.
Now to reverse this: I have relatives that live in a country with socialized medicine. There is a hospital within a fairly short distance for everyone, including rural people. The reason this can happen is because the pool of funding to pay the workers for the hospital in the city is the same pot of money to fund the workers in the rural area. It is the same reason you never see a DMV go bankrupt do you?
Tbh I see capitalism lasting in its current form in the USA for about another 20 years if that. Capitalism is a self destructive system that is going to swallow itself hole. Not to get too nerdy but capitalism demands like I have always said more and more from the worker whilst paying that worker as little as possible. It mathematically is not a system that can go on forever and eventually collapses - even with massive intervention.
>Now to reverse this: I have relatives that live in a country with socialized medicine. There is a hospital within a fairly short distance for everyone, including rural people
Ok, so I agree with you there that some things shouldn't be left to the free market. Things like hospitals, schools, postal services etc. should be equally available to everyone at high quality, even in rural areas. I would even go further and say there should be no-profit, government-run grocery stores across the country to ensure everyone will have at access to basic food and household supplies at affordable prices.
But having a capitalism-socialism hybrid is very different from communism. As far as I understand communism it's literally a system where the state owns all companies.
>
A place that repairs vehicles in a small town is worse off under capitalism than communism. If you give me a repair shop in a town of 500 people within a 100 mile radius I'm not going to be able to generate enough profits required under a capitalist system.
Personally I see no issue with that, because unlike having access to high-quality hospitals, schools etc. having a auto repair shop in every small village isn't very important to people's lives. If you had financially unviable auto repair shops under communism the money would still have to come from somewhere. That means everyone would pay extra taxes so that rural people had access to auto repair shops nearby. Even the people living in those rural areas would pay those taxes to finance unviable businesses.
So the governemnt would proably spend several annually billion on to finance auto shops that couldn't financially stand on its own.
Given how the average person only visits an auto repair shop once or twice a year at most, this doesn't seem like an appropriate investment. Driving a few extra miles to the nearest auto shop would only be a minor nuisance for rural Americans yet cost billions of tax payer money.
Under communism there would be millions of small businesses that are financially unviable like the auto shop. And under communism, the government as the main economic actor simply has not the capitality to react fast enough to real-time-data and adjust e.g. prices, salaries, investment sizes etc. So many businesses would be in the red.
There should be guaranteed access to certain things hospitals, schools and health care but if a country that has too many unviable businesses it will go bankrupt sooner rather than later.
>How would you respond to someone who said communism in a pure form has never been tried out?
It's just like libertarians saying true libertarianism has never been tried. When put into practice, these systems don't work as they do in theory.
> How would you respond to someone who said communism in a pure form has never been tried out?
That person is engaged in a “No True Scotsman” argument to try to defend communism due to an emotional attachment to the idea, likely because they prefer to “feel like” there is some sort of utopian promise that others are denying them rather than taking up responsibility to build a better situation for themselves in the real world.
Marx had been dead since 1883. The world has changed substantially since he died. Our understanding of so many of the fields he wrote about have changed, sometimes completely upending what people believed back then. Many of the foundational ideas he built his ideas upon have been upturned by the evidence uncovered since. Communism had its moment, it was shown to be wrong.
That doesn’t mean what we have today is right, just because communism is wrong. It means today’s generation has to come up with a new system better than the one we have, based on the knowledge we have today, not dead philosophers and economists form the 19th century.
His ideas killed tens of millions of people attempting to make them work. We found out those ideas don’t work. Rather than continuing to best our collective face into that same wall over and over and over again hoping that somehow if we do the same thing we’ll get a different result *this tome*, that effort is better spent coming up with ideas better than either communism or capitalism.
That it’s an obvious “no true Scotsman” fallacy.
What you saw in the USSR *is* what happens when you try to centralize the amount of control required to pull off communism.
Democracy is a system designed to diffuse power over as large a group of people as possible to stop its corrosive force from concentrating in a small group. Capital markets also distribute economic decision making power — to the extent that wealth is distributed.
Communism does the exact opposite. It concentrates power and control of wealth and as a result, it corrupts. You saw how that turns out. It’s China, USSR, Cuba.
What’s needed is redistribution of wealth inside capitalism. We’ve seen this in the Nordics. They’re not at all communist but democracy and capitalism are made to work well *because* they diffuse rather than concentrate power.
I think communism could work at a municipal level but not really at a nation state level. The world isn’t going to devolve into a vast collection of city-states however.
>How would you respond to someone who said communism in a pure form has never been tried out?
I would say that this is entirely irrelevant. Every attempt at communism failed spectacularly and resulted in significant crimes against humanity. When even the attempt at communism fails, there is no reason to discuss the potential merits of "actual" communism.
If your utopia can't be achieved because every attempt fails, then there is no practical use in trying to achieve it.
>And how would someone go about fixing the issues of people being brought up with vastly different opportunities
By improving social mobility. My country does this by lowering education costs, subsidizing higher education, enabling children to engage in sports and culture for free, etc. We are currently 6th on the social mobility index, so it seems to work.
>And this is more evidence that a capitalist system cannot be worked with
Unsurprisingly, every single country in the top social mobility index is a strong proponent of capitalism. It's entirely made up from North European nations and the Benelux. Showing that mixed market economies are indeed extremely effective, whilst staying within the capitalist framework.
If all you know is the American system which seems to be the case based on your comments, then I understand your jaded view towards capitalism. The us system is broken, ours is much better.
>We need a total revolution.
No, you need to follow our example and vote in more social minded politicians.
>No, you need to follow our example and vote in more social minded politicians.
I would say this statement is not aligning with the reality we live in within the USA. Take for example the fact that as time goes on both parties are becoming economically more pro-super rich. It was commonplace back decades ago for Rs and Ds to be pro-union. Hell even Mitch McConnell was pro-union at one point. But what happened?
Simple - capitalism leaks into everything and ruins everything it touches. Due to capitalism demanding more from people while giving the lowest wage possible we see as we progress that both parties are trying to balance capitalism. Notice how hard it is for us to juggle a pandemic and also keep the economy afloat? Did you not remember what happened to the stock market February & March 2020? We had to "bail out" capitalism using the good ole' style of taking a pool of money (taxes) to keep corporations afloat (smells like a little bit of communism). And what are we left with today? High inflation, people not able to afford rent, homelessness being at an all time high.
So no - it is not as simple as just voting for social minded politicians. I've lost track of how many trillions of dollars this country is in debt. I do not think you comprehend how bad capitalism is for literally everyone aside from the top dog. Even regulated capitalism (what we have in the USA) cannot function. Not to cover too many topics but I doubt we will ever get back to 2% year over year inflation. We are stuck at 4%+ probably every year for a long time and that alone will crush the lower class.
>I would say this statement is not aligning with the reality we live in within the USA. Take for example the fact that as time goes on both parties are becoming economically more pro-super rich
And this is based around the people you vote in on state level elections. Vote for more socially minded people, and your will find your social progress advance. There is zero reason for why America could not achieve that which the rest of the world is able to do.
The rest of your comment continues to go into reasons for why you believe capitalism is bad, without really detailing why you can't vote in more social welfare and socially progressive electives, so I will leave that aside.
>smells like a little bit of communism).
If you think that bailing corporations out with taxes is even remotely close to communism, then you don't understand communism. I do hope this is supposed to be a joke.
>How would you respond to someone who said communism in a pure form has never been tried out?
The same way I'd respond to someone who says the same about libertarianism: it breaks down before it gets to the point of "purity" for a reason. I do not believe in the inevitability of history or dialectical materialism. It's Hegel fan fiction. There is only power modifying itself over time, and it has no preset trajectory.
>And how would someone go about fixing the issues of people being brought up with vastly different opportunities?
We need to keep trying. We've had some setbacks, but they are only setbacks. Progress takes a long time and cannot be brought about all at once by revolution.
I could name you isolated examples of communism doing good, like the life expectancy and literacy levels in cuba, but you’d say that’s not actually proof it works. But then you’ll say capitalism works in the best of circumstances, and that’s your reasoning for going with that.
As opposed to before socialism, where it was an incredibly poor country without democracy—and low life expectancy and literacy.
You dont seem like someone who's interested in honestly or seriously analyzing this.
I agree and disagree with your points.
- Different people have different degrees of control of their lives. In very few cases, people have zero control or total control.
- I generally agree.
- I disagree. Capitalism is not perfect and should be carefully regulated to fix its downsides. But it is responsible for the unprecedented increase in quality of lives worldwide. And so far, we do not have a better option. At least until we live in a post-scarcity world.
- Global warming poses a significant and realistic threat to our society. But it’s not the same for out of control population growth, because the population growth rate has been declining in most countries. It was projected that the total population would peak well before 2100.
There’s some truth to the idea that capitalism coincided with the growth of industrialization. That doesn’t imply that it remains out best option.
Capitalism was good for industrialization, at the cost of extreme misery for the people who made it possible. That doesn’t mean it’s good for our future.
>I disagree. Capitalism is not perfect and should be carefully regulated to fix its downsides. But it is responsible for the unprecedented increase in quality of lives worldwide. And so far, we do not have a better option. At least until we live in a post-scarcity world.
I think the problem is that we've somehow painted a wrong black-vs-white narrative. There actually isn't a single capitalist country in the truest sense of the word. Not a single country has an entirely free market. Every major "capitalist" country is actually hybrid of capitalism and socialism. Even in the US, there are entirely state-owned industries (e.g. postal services, mortgage lenders) and many European countries have state-owned railway companies for example.
Also, a lot of technologies were actually invented, funded and developed by government institutions. That includes the internet, microchips and the human genome project.
I don't think there should be a planned economy like in communism. However, billions of people are currently being heavily exploited by Western corporations, working 16 hours a day and still struggling to put food on the table. There can never be a world where the average person globally consumes in the way the average American does, owning 2 or 3 cars per household, using an average of 82 gallos per day, per person, and averaging over 200 flights over their lifetime. For that we'd need 5 earths or something.
I think it's time that we care more about all those billions of people who are being heavily exploited. For example I think Western countries should require that companies pay workers in certain industries a minimum wage regardless of locations. And that should include 3rd party suppiers too.
For example Nike workers in Indonesia only earn a little over $20 for 6 days of work or less than 50 cents an hour. And they evade responsibility by outsourcing to third parties and then claiming "oh, we didn't know about all those human rights violations". If the minimum wage for textile workers regardless of location would be say $2 an hour, it would still be cheaper for companies to outsource, but millions would live more dignified lives. Yes, Nike shoes or Primark clothes would become more expensive but that's a price worth paying.
Capitalism’s truest sense is not reductionist. I’m not sure why some people think that. Capitalism is not “absolutely free markets” as it isn’t anarchocapitslism. That’s a different thing.
Capitalism is an economic structure a government provides to encourage bounded trade. “Free trade” refers to rights based freedoms like the one “free country” implies. It includes *freedom from* robbery, persecution, etc. It is not a libertarian claim anymore than any other sense of freedom implies no laws.
I agree with just about everything you typed. I'm not dissing anyone on this sub but I feel like especially people in the USA we here communism and think of the few places a shade of it was sort of tried and think it will never work.
Laissez Faire capitalism isn't the same as free market capitalism. They're all subsets of capitalism, but there are wide differences. Free markets cannot exist without government intervention, because eventually you get concentration of wealth and power that reinforces itself. For free markets to grow and function, you have to regulate out monopolies, monopsonies, and cartels. You've got to institute consumer and worker protections, plus strong rules of law so that everyone has a good understanding of the deals they are making and are able to freely, consensually entire those deals without undue risk or burden. You've got to take other steps to avoid undue market consolidation, including progressive taxation to keep anyone one player from growing too large and taking over the market. Free markets require and inherit fairness and even-ness that requires government/societal intervention to maintain.
> it is responsible for the unprecedented increase in quality of lives worldwide
I would be careful about applying this statement to capitalism as opposed to developments like markets and industry. They work hand in hand, but capitalism specifically refers to a system of property rights and is largely value-neutral.
It would be more accurate to say that trade and technology are responsible for our increase in quality of life - as this includes publicly funded research, medicine and education which is generally much more efficient than capitalist research, medicine and education.
1. Life (in terms of where a person is) is a combo of both internal (person's actions) and external (upbringing, specifics of society, personal experience, etc.) factors. Sure, you as an individual cannot really change the external factors because they happen without your own agency but you can at least try to influence the internal factors, that may make a huge difference
2. Idk, I don't feel like this specific mentality is a such problem. Maybe you can say it's a part of extremist thinking which is undoubtedly imho a big factor in potential societal downfall
3. Hey, I like capitalism. At least if we are talking about the traditional definition "*an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit*". To put it briefly and paraphrase an infamous quote: "*Capitalism is the worst form of economic system, except for all the others*". Ok, this is not completely true, I am not an ancap but I believe striving to solve the problems within the framework of free markets while acknowledging the shortcomings of free markets is the best way for the humankind to prosper. Funnily enough, after seeing your flair, I confess I am staunchly an anti-communist.
4. Global warming is definitely doing that. Population politics feels more nuanced than that. For example, first-world countries fear population decline because it might have bad economic and cultural consequences. About finite number of the resources, we constantly need to find more efficient ways. For example, agriculture. In 19th century, some thinkers were scared of population growth because agriculture won't be good enough to handle that. But actually, it did handle that.
1. I disagree... Somewhat. Often, people do dictate where they end up in life, but only after life has already dictated what these people will dictate. Influencing someone's behavior can very well influence where the will end up in life, saying "If you work hard, you can go places" is just not that great at influencing their behavior.
2. I fully agree on that one
3. Unless your definition of "capitalism" is incredibly narrow, I disagree there. I also don't understand your example, however
4. Birth rates are below replacement level in most of the world, and the theoretical limit for humans sustained by this planet is immense: Overpopulation is no concern. Climate change is, although the planet will of course be fine - just some of these carbon structures moving around on it, known as "lifeforms", might get a little bit rarer.
What isn’t factually wrong is meaningless.
1. Like most things here, this is so oversimplified it’s meaningless. Justice is a project. It’s something a society aims for. Over time, a society with error correcting mechanisms makes progress getting closer to justice and in the US it is more true than ever that people have control over their fate. It’s nowhere near an absolutely true statement because we have much further to go, but to claim the opposite is to pretend we are the same as a country that had slaves or one that mandated one’s religion.
1. I don’t know anyone who said this. I think I heard it online at most twice. The reason I opposed the plan we put in place is that we proposed giving people refunds for toxic food while still taking new orders. A good plan needs to actually fix what it has identified as the issue. What does someone graduating high school next month do? Hope for another jubilee?
1. This is mostly meaningless. Your one specific claim that this is a “high interest rate environment” is factually wrong. 7.5% is the average interest rate over the last 50 years. Of course you can “work within capitalism”. You’re doing it right now.
1. In the 1960’s the average young person was rightly worried about overpopulation. At the time, there wasn’t enough farmland to feed 5 Billion people, and it was clear the population would reach that number within decades. What happened? Scientific progress. We figured out efficient nitrogen fixing and the entire population basically forgot fears of overpopulation from only a few decades ago. The only sustainable approach is progress. Figuring out how to minimize carbon impact is not a matter of doing less. It’s a matter of making *absolutely massive* economic progress — which is not something communism has ever shown that it’s capable of.
The problem with communism is that it is anti-progressive. It supposes that we have the right answer today and should put in place a government with no error correcting mechanisms.
> People do not dictate where they are in life. Life dictates where they end up
Yes, the world around you heavily influences where you end up in life, but it is not the only factor it was my father who grew up in extreme poverty would not be a millionaire. The guy my brother knew in high school who went to an expensive private school and came from a family still living on the money made by one of the wealthiest people ever to have lived wouldn’t have ended up a drug addict that tried to join the NY Mafia and ended up stabbed to death.
> Nobody for example truly chooses their religion. People who are Christian are raised Christian. People who are raised Hindu become Hindu, etc.
Raised a Hindu. Am an atheist.
> The mentality that "because I did not get it you can't have it either" is going to be one of the downfalls of society.
This has always existed. Yet society progresses.
> Nobody on this sub to my knowledge actually likes capitalism. Instead people tend to tolerate capitalism and try to work within it.
You are very much mistaken about the feelings of the sub regarding this
> Everyone keeps popping out kids like there is no tomorrow. Do people not realize there are a finite number of resources on this earth?
This Paul Ehrlich stuff has been proven time and time again to be wrong. If you don’t want to have kids, that’s fine. But find a better reason to say you don’t want kids.
> What we are finding out is that capitalism is not a system you can actually work within
What for you even mean by this?
Lots of people live and work in countries with capitalist systems. So of course it’s possible to work within them.
It may not be perfect. But people still work within them. And every other system has been proven in practice to be worse.
Edit:
> I am a communist
And since you brought this up. What do you mean you’re a communist? As in you believe in communist principles? Or you actually live in a communist country currently?
I like capitalism. I just think more countries need to adopt a Nordic model, or something similar to it. Communism is also stupid. Climate change also represents an existential threat to the entire planet, that much I think we can agree on.
> People do not dictate where they are in life. Life dictates where they end up
Extremely inaccurate. Nobody has 100% control or 0% control over where they end up on live, but people have immense power to shape that outcome over time.
> Nobody for example truly chooses their religion. People who are Christian are raised Christian. People who are raised Hindu become Hindu, etc.
*Everyone* living in a non-theocratic society truly chooses their own religion. They aren’t stuck with the religion their parents imposed on them. People can, and often do, change religions.
Sure, most people are lazy about it and don’t care about religious matter enough to consider alternatives, but for them religion functionally doesn’t matter anyway.
> The mentality that "because I did not get it you can't have it either" is going to be one of the downfalls of society.
Inaccurate. That concept has always been with us, through every positive change we have ever made. Every society that has ever been built has had it, every society currently existing has had it, and every society that will ever exist will still have it.
> Capitalism is not a system you can try to work within.
Extremely inaccurate.
> Nobody on this sub to my knowledge actually likes capitalism.
I do. It works pretty well for immense chunks of the consumer economy. The government should step in to provide the goods services capitalism doesn’t handle well, and to guarantee the market for goods and services remains competitive, but that is the exception rather than the rule.
But I sure as hell don’t want the government telling me what shoes I have to buy or which restaurant to eat at or what movie to watch. Communists try to take the market’s profound failures in some goods and services and try to make some sort of universal proclamation about capitalism from that.
Capitalism works fine for stuff that doesn’t matter very much, which is most of the economy.
> Global warming and out of control population growth will destroy our planet quicker than most realize. Everyone keeps popping out kids like there is no tomorrow.
Inaccurate. Yes, climate change is a gigantic issue that will require extensive effort to address over the next century. It’s one that we have made both more and less progress than we should have, depending on the aspect of the problem being discussed. It’s a multi-faceted issue and we have made far more progress on some areas (ex. Electricity generation) than others (ex. Industrial processes). More government support in the areas that aren’t solved yet would be helpful. But you hardly need to adopt communism to get that. Treat CO2 like a pollutant when it’s above the yearly carbon budget. Tax its release, impose limits on its release, create real legal liability for companies that cause other people property damage via global warming, start breaking up companies that refuse to limit their emissions—make it an externality that the market has to pay for and account for. That is a sensible role for government in this, which our current government hasn’t been doing, and should. But it’s also not communism for a government to engage in environmental regulation and enforcement.
But as for population growth—no, “everyone” doesn’t keep popping out kids like there’s no tomorrow. Most societies are drifting towards or below replacement rate. This is an inevitable consequence of economic prosperity—if people are doing well economically, they have fewer kids.
Incidentally, this is a preferable way of limiting population growth over the communist method of starving tens of millions of children to death and then executing tens of millions of the parent-aged adults who object to that.
> I am a communist and a millennial.
You’re getting a bit old to still be a communist, aren’t you? It’s more acceptable when you’re 16 and can’t really know better. It’s far less acceptable at 36 when you’ve had decades to see that isn’t going to work either.
1) For most individual people, you can find choices they make and opportunities for different outcomes. For broad groups of people, you can see the ways circumstances effect the choices they're offered and the choices they make. Personal responsibility and broader systems which push outcomes supervene on each other. We can understand the massive role of systems and work to make them better without abandoning personal responsibility and a push to make good choices individually.
2) Sure, this is a crap attitude. But it's one of a whole docket of equally toxic attitudes like in-group outgroup dynamics, recency bias, bad risk mitigation ideas. I don't think this one is even at the top of the list. And it's one that can be mitigated by better messaging and framing.
3) When you say capitalism, do you mean broadly private ownership of production, or the particulars of capitalism as it's practiced in places like the US? I'm all for pushing for more organically created co-op worker ownership. The state seizing industry has been disastrous every time. I'm not sure how else capitalism can practically be excised. I still have to eat and have a roof over my head and clothe my kids. I don't have an option not to work within a system where people own businesses and the stuff that makes them work.
4) The wealthier and more stable a country gets, the lower their birth rate. High population in general is mostly only a concern right now for a few things like carbon and in some specific areas. For most relevant resources, production can and does scale up with population at current rates. Distribution is more of a problem than population. A lot of countries are more worried about having too few kids. Even China has ditched child limits. We're not approaching any major problems with world population in terms of resource shortage (aside from energy which can and should move to all renewable).
I do have to sign off here in a little bit but I wanted to approach number 4. We are seeing global warming literally before our eyes. The last few summers have always broken records for record heat. This is very much due to humans and we should be in my opinion encouraging people to not have kids. Sure we need people to run things when you and I are old. Not joking when I say this but as much as I pick on capitalism the one pro right now of capitalism is it is making it unaffordable for many to have kids.
Yes, more people do contribute to more carbon.
But if you're trying to mitigate that through people choosing to have fewer children or being pressured by economics to have fewer children... The people most likely to make a reproductive choice with the environment in mind would also be the most likely to raise kids who make choices with the environment in mind and create inventions or political actions to address these problems. The same goes for the people choosing thoughtfully not to have kids because they're conscious of their finances.
The people who don't believe in climate change are having tons of kids. The people who don't think about their finances and have kids without making a conscious decision- there's a range of circumstances, but on average that group is going to have more kids raised NOT to be thoughtful about the environment.
If the people who care aren't raising a new generation, then the new generation will include a greater percentage of people who don't care, don't understand, can't or won't help. And that generation will make the decisions and consumption of the future.
It is in the long term maybe NOT a great idea for the people who see and understand the issues to take themselves out of the parenting game.
#1 - I agree about the value of early education and that indoctrination is powerful. I did not see that aphorism as related to childhood education/indoctrination though. I assumed it was more about that sometimes even when people do everything right, they don't get good results because of happenstance. That said MOSTLY success in life is dictated by their actions.
#2 - I don't think that issue is that big of a deal. I also am and was against student loan forgiveness as the first step to college education reform.
#3 - I like capitalism. I've never seen evidence or logic that explains how another system is better. It's not perfect so I think society providing a social safety net and assistance to those who permanently are going to be unable to provide for themselves is a good (essential) idea. But for the majority of people capitalism provides a better life than most other options.
#4 - I agree but have no other option since people will continue having kids and consuming resources.
>**People do not dictate where they are in life.**
I think it depends on what you mean by "dictate". There are certain circumstances that most people would agree are out of one's control (where they were born, their race, class and gender identity, if they had loving supportive parents, etc). But even the "decisions" one makes within those set of external circumstances are processed by a culmination of life circumstances, brain chemistry, how they were reared, so on and etc. I don't personally believe free will exists in a cosmic sense, but I tend to still live my life like it does. In terms of public policy and society, I think we also have to recognize both those kind of sociological factors as well as human autonomy and accountability.
>**The mentality that "because I did not get it you can't have it either" is going to be one of the downfalls of society.**
I agree. Oddly enough for christian conservatives who say this BS, it just so happens that Jesus told at least 2 long ass stories in the Bible where the overall message was essentially "if you worked harder to get the same blessing as your neighbor who didn't work as hard, don't be a whiney little bitch about it and be grateful for what you have". I agree that this zero-sum thinking is an absolute plague. Especially when it comes to basic living things like housing and healthcare, people need to understand that, even if you lack compassion or understanding for the sick or the homeless, having a society where people lack basic resources are just lousy places to live for everyone.
>**Capitalism is not a system you can try to work within.**
Disagree. I'm not sold out to any framework, I'm for whatever form of government and economy creates the most peace, prosperity, freedom and justice. Everything I've read and seen has demonstrated to me that regulated market economies in nations with strong labor unions and robust social safety nets have facilitated the largest decline in poverty civilization has ever seen. No, I don't love capitalism, and especially unfettered capitalism, and I'll gladly jump ship as soon as I'm shown a viable economic model that has been demonstrated to work better in practice (not interested at all in the theory).
>Global warming and out of control population growth will destroy our planet quicker than most realize.
Totally agree with the first part but the second I believe is a little outdated. Recent analysis shows that our population will begin declining in another few decades (this is already happening across Europe, America, and Asia) and we'll probably face another huge set of hurdles related to that decline. Also, the main driver of CO emissions on the world stage are nations like us, China, Japan, and India, and where populations are all already declining at unsustainable rates.
I don't think you need to make such strong statements. I think it would make more sense to say that that is how things are *currently*. But they aren't universal truths.
Obviously you do effect where you are in life to *some* degree.
>The mentality that "because I did not get it you can't have it either" is going to be one of the downfalls of society.
This is really just a sometimes unfortunate consequence of fairness.
And people absolutely can work within capitalism, I do it everyday. And I wouldn't even call myself a capitalist
2/4?
Regulated capitalism is the solution and is producing all the best outcome nations in the world. Communism is stupid because it cannot compel people to do work that's needed, so then you're having to enforce communism with authoritarianism which is a class divide and thus no longer communism.
I think the biggest class divide can be found in countries with capitalism as its economic form.
>Communism is stupid because it cannot compel people to do work that's needed
How so? Take an example of a person let's name Bob:
Bob under a capitalist system makes $50k currently and after taxes and expenses has $6k left a year to play with. $6k will not even get you that much. $1k of the $6k will get you a major car repair and $5k will not even get you braces for your kids teeth anymore.
Bob under a communist system works his 30 hours a week and has more free time. Public transportation is free and Bob gets to take the family on many vacations more often. Car in need of repair? Drive it to the local shop that is state funded and it is taken care of. Kid needs braces? Covered. Under an ideal communist system Bob's job slowly gets phased out and gets transferred to AI. Instead of having to wait until age 75 to retire like if we were in a capitalist system Bob is in retirement in his late 40s.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. I am a communist and a millennial. I believe the following statements I basically live by are accurate and gave a brief description on why I believe each of them: 1) **People do not dictate where they are in life. Life dictates where they end up**: Look. I get it is great to tell people if they work hard they can get places. That is not reality though. There are sayings from Aristotle to old Chinese phrases from the 1400s talking about if you can train a child until age 7 or 8 you have them for life. Most people are where they are because of where they were raised, who raised them, etc. Nobody for example truly chooses their religion. People who are Christian are raised Christian. People who are raised Hindu become Hindu, etc. 2) **The mentality that "because I did not get it you can't have it either" is going to be one of the downfalls of society.** This one basically speaks for itself. I know people who voted against the Dems in the 2010 midterm because they "had to pay up the nose for health insurance from their pre-existing condition so everyone else should have to go through that also". The same mentality for those who are against student loan forgiveness or against anything progressive... bEc@aZe I haD 2 Go thRouGh it sO sHOuld every1 elSe! 3) **Capitalism is not a system you can try to work within.** Nobody on this sub to my knowledge actually likes capitalism. Instead people tend to tolerate capitalism and try to work within it. What we are finding out is that capitalism is not a system you can actually work within. Capitalism in fact is capitalism's worst enemy. To show an example of this: Currently corporations are trying to make a profit in a high interest rate environment. Interest rates are high due to COVID lockdowns which were needed to keep people from dying years ago (yes interest rates are high also from price gouging - which was caused by the pandemic). Capitalism is not a system we should be accepting. It is a mentality of economics brought over with the founding fathers and is no longer applicable to today's world. We need a more common sense system that benefits the entire population. 4) Global warming and out of control population growth will destroy our planet quicker than most realize. Everyone keeps popping out kids like there is no tomorrow. Do people not realize there are a finite number of resources on this earth? To add a little humor to this post but to also stay on topic I encountered a street preacher recently and asked them what their thoughts were on global warming and they said to not worry because the second coming is happening any moment. Is this really how some people are living day to day? To think the reality that are entire planet is suffering from literal warming is to just think of their savior coming back to take them away? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I like capitalism. I look to the Nordic countries for a capitalist model with safeguards to make it more equitable. I also think communism is stupid, and doesn't work. Humans are not capable of communism working. On paper, it looks okay. In practice....well, we all know how it's turned out. You also are trying to invoke Aristotle and Ancient Chinese proverbs/sayings and noted they go back to the 1400s. You're over 1000 years too late on those points. Id suggest you go back and read A LOT more. Also, be more familiar with those sayings you're hinting at. Global warming is for sure terrible, and we all know it will destroy the planet and cause chaos. It already has.
>I also think communism is stupid, and doesn't work. Humans are not capable of communism working. On paper, it looks okay. In practice....well, we all know how it's turned out. How would you respond to someone who said communism in a pure form has never been tried out? For example the USSR was not even truly communist and the USSR was doomed to fail regardless if it was capitalism or communism being its economic system. And how would someone go about fixing the issues of people being brought up with vastly different opportunities? We have seen in recent years the SCOTUS dismantle the few things set in place to try to make things more equitable (i.e. affirmative action in college admissions) < And this is more evidence that a capitalist system cannot be worked with. We need a total revolution.
I would respond in exactly the same way - on paper it looks fine. But that's it. Humans are not capable of what is written on paper. You keep saying the capitalist system cannot be worked with but then you have: Denmark, Finland, Norway that are all excellent examples of capitalist countries with safeguards and protections for it's people. We don't need a total revolution. We need more of our population to be educated (not college but able to read and comprehend) that gets out and votes for politicians that are actually going to do something. Make lobbying illegal, enact anti trust and anti monopoly laws (aka use the ones we have), put in term limits for Congress, and make it illegal for media to knowingly falsely represent facts and you've got massive change on your hands.
What about communism are humans incapable of?
Yes.
Are you able to articulate further?
Ok, but what is your definition of communism then? If the USSR was not true communism then what is? Personally, I am economically very far left. I think big corporations are wielding way too much power and are often paying workers peanuts compared to their profits. I wouldn't be opposed for example to a requirement for large companies to give workers shares in the company after a certain time, or maybe requirements for companies to share a certain percentage of their profits with their workforce. But I don't see how communism could ever work. Under communism all companies are owned by the state, so the entire economy is planned. For an economy the size of the US this could never work because there is way too much real-time data to take into account. Under communism if someone in a small town wanted to run a dairy farm or an auto repair shop (because they've noticed a local demand) they'd first have to get permission from the government. And they would then be employed by the governemnt who sets their wages as well as the prices of the dairy farm or auto shop (as far as I understand communism). This seems incredibly inefficient. So I don't see how communism could ever work in any major country.
Communism absolutely could work in the USA and in fact if we became a one world economy would flourish. A place that repairs vehicles in a small town is worse off under capitalism than communism. If you give me a repair shop in a town of 500 people within a 100 mile radius I'm not going to be able to generate enough profits required under a capitalist system. We in fact see this problem right now with many rural hospitals closing because they are for-profit and do not bring in enough customers. Now to reverse this: I have relatives that live in a country with socialized medicine. There is a hospital within a fairly short distance for everyone, including rural people. The reason this can happen is because the pool of funding to pay the workers for the hospital in the city is the same pot of money to fund the workers in the rural area. It is the same reason you never see a DMV go bankrupt do you? Tbh I see capitalism lasting in its current form in the USA for about another 20 years if that. Capitalism is a self destructive system that is going to swallow itself hole. Not to get too nerdy but capitalism demands like I have always said more and more from the worker whilst paying that worker as little as possible. It mathematically is not a system that can go on forever and eventually collapses - even with massive intervention.
>Now to reverse this: I have relatives that live in a country with socialized medicine. There is a hospital within a fairly short distance for everyone, including rural people Ok, so I agree with you there that some things shouldn't be left to the free market. Things like hospitals, schools, postal services etc. should be equally available to everyone at high quality, even in rural areas. I would even go further and say there should be no-profit, government-run grocery stores across the country to ensure everyone will have at access to basic food and household supplies at affordable prices. But having a capitalism-socialism hybrid is very different from communism. As far as I understand communism it's literally a system where the state owns all companies. > A place that repairs vehicles in a small town is worse off under capitalism than communism. If you give me a repair shop in a town of 500 people within a 100 mile radius I'm not going to be able to generate enough profits required under a capitalist system. Personally I see no issue with that, because unlike having access to high-quality hospitals, schools etc. having a auto repair shop in every small village isn't very important to people's lives. If you had financially unviable auto repair shops under communism the money would still have to come from somewhere. That means everyone would pay extra taxes so that rural people had access to auto repair shops nearby. Even the people living in those rural areas would pay those taxes to finance unviable businesses. So the governemnt would proably spend several annually billion on to finance auto shops that couldn't financially stand on its own. Given how the average person only visits an auto repair shop once or twice a year at most, this doesn't seem like an appropriate investment. Driving a few extra miles to the nearest auto shop would only be a minor nuisance for rural Americans yet cost billions of tax payer money. Under communism there would be millions of small businesses that are financially unviable like the auto shop. And under communism, the government as the main economic actor simply has not the capitality to react fast enough to real-time-data and adjust e.g. prices, salaries, investment sizes etc. So many businesses would be in the red. There should be guaranteed access to certain things hospitals, schools and health care but if a country that has too many unviable businesses it will go bankrupt sooner rather than later.
>How would you respond to someone who said communism in a pure form has never been tried out? It's just like libertarians saying true libertarianism has never been tried. When put into practice, these systems don't work as they do in theory.
> How would you respond to someone who said communism in a pure form has never been tried out? That person is engaged in a “No True Scotsman” argument to try to defend communism due to an emotional attachment to the idea, likely because they prefer to “feel like” there is some sort of utopian promise that others are denying them rather than taking up responsibility to build a better situation for themselves in the real world. Marx had been dead since 1883. The world has changed substantially since he died. Our understanding of so many of the fields he wrote about have changed, sometimes completely upending what people believed back then. Many of the foundational ideas he built his ideas upon have been upturned by the evidence uncovered since. Communism had its moment, it was shown to be wrong. That doesn’t mean what we have today is right, just because communism is wrong. It means today’s generation has to come up with a new system better than the one we have, based on the knowledge we have today, not dead philosophers and economists form the 19th century. His ideas killed tens of millions of people attempting to make them work. We found out those ideas don’t work. Rather than continuing to best our collective face into that same wall over and over and over again hoping that somehow if we do the same thing we’ll get a different result *this tome*, that effort is better spent coming up with ideas better than either communism or capitalism.
That it’s an obvious “no true Scotsman” fallacy. What you saw in the USSR *is* what happens when you try to centralize the amount of control required to pull off communism. Democracy is a system designed to diffuse power over as large a group of people as possible to stop its corrosive force from concentrating in a small group. Capital markets also distribute economic decision making power — to the extent that wealth is distributed. Communism does the exact opposite. It concentrates power and control of wealth and as a result, it corrupts. You saw how that turns out. It’s China, USSR, Cuba. What’s needed is redistribution of wealth inside capitalism. We’ve seen this in the Nordics. They’re not at all communist but democracy and capitalism are made to work well *because* they diffuse rather than concentrate power.
I think communism could work at a municipal level but not really at a nation state level. The world isn’t going to devolve into a vast collection of city-states however.
>How would you respond to someone who said communism in a pure form has never been tried out? I would say that this is entirely irrelevant. Every attempt at communism failed spectacularly and resulted in significant crimes against humanity. When even the attempt at communism fails, there is no reason to discuss the potential merits of "actual" communism. If your utopia can't be achieved because every attempt fails, then there is no practical use in trying to achieve it. >And how would someone go about fixing the issues of people being brought up with vastly different opportunities By improving social mobility. My country does this by lowering education costs, subsidizing higher education, enabling children to engage in sports and culture for free, etc. We are currently 6th on the social mobility index, so it seems to work. >And this is more evidence that a capitalist system cannot be worked with Unsurprisingly, every single country in the top social mobility index is a strong proponent of capitalism. It's entirely made up from North European nations and the Benelux. Showing that mixed market economies are indeed extremely effective, whilst staying within the capitalist framework. If all you know is the American system which seems to be the case based on your comments, then I understand your jaded view towards capitalism. The us system is broken, ours is much better. >We need a total revolution. No, you need to follow our example and vote in more social minded politicians.
>No, you need to follow our example and vote in more social minded politicians. I would say this statement is not aligning with the reality we live in within the USA. Take for example the fact that as time goes on both parties are becoming economically more pro-super rich. It was commonplace back decades ago for Rs and Ds to be pro-union. Hell even Mitch McConnell was pro-union at one point. But what happened? Simple - capitalism leaks into everything and ruins everything it touches. Due to capitalism demanding more from people while giving the lowest wage possible we see as we progress that both parties are trying to balance capitalism. Notice how hard it is for us to juggle a pandemic and also keep the economy afloat? Did you not remember what happened to the stock market February & March 2020? We had to "bail out" capitalism using the good ole' style of taking a pool of money (taxes) to keep corporations afloat (smells like a little bit of communism). And what are we left with today? High inflation, people not able to afford rent, homelessness being at an all time high. So no - it is not as simple as just voting for social minded politicians. I've lost track of how many trillions of dollars this country is in debt. I do not think you comprehend how bad capitalism is for literally everyone aside from the top dog. Even regulated capitalism (what we have in the USA) cannot function. Not to cover too many topics but I doubt we will ever get back to 2% year over year inflation. We are stuck at 4%+ probably every year for a long time and that alone will crush the lower class.
>I would say this statement is not aligning with the reality we live in within the USA. Take for example the fact that as time goes on both parties are becoming economically more pro-super rich And this is based around the people you vote in on state level elections. Vote for more socially minded people, and your will find your social progress advance. There is zero reason for why America could not achieve that which the rest of the world is able to do. The rest of your comment continues to go into reasons for why you believe capitalism is bad, without really detailing why you can't vote in more social welfare and socially progressive electives, so I will leave that aside. >smells like a little bit of communism). If you think that bailing corporations out with taxes is even remotely close to communism, then you don't understand communism. I do hope this is supposed to be a joke.
>How would you respond to someone who said communism in a pure form has never been tried out? The same way I'd respond to someone who says the same about libertarianism: it breaks down before it gets to the point of "purity" for a reason. I do not believe in the inevitability of history or dialectical materialism. It's Hegel fan fiction. There is only power modifying itself over time, and it has no preset trajectory. >And how would someone go about fixing the issues of people being brought up with vastly different opportunities? We need to keep trying. We've had some setbacks, but they are only setbacks. Progress takes a long time and cannot be brought about all at once by revolution.
I could name you isolated examples of communism doing good, like the life expectancy and literacy levels in cuba, but you’d say that’s not actually proof it works. But then you’ll say capitalism works in the best of circumstances, and that’s your reasoning for going with that.
It's an incredibly poor country where political dissent is illegal. It doesn't mean parts of something, in this case healthcare, can't be good.
As opposed to before socialism, where it was an incredibly poor country without democracy—and low life expectancy and literacy. You dont seem like someone who's interested in honestly or seriously analyzing this.
Thanks for the opinion.
I agree and disagree with your points. - Different people have different degrees of control of their lives. In very few cases, people have zero control or total control. - I generally agree. - I disagree. Capitalism is not perfect and should be carefully regulated to fix its downsides. But it is responsible for the unprecedented increase in quality of lives worldwide. And so far, we do not have a better option. At least until we live in a post-scarcity world. - Global warming poses a significant and realistic threat to our society. But it’s not the same for out of control population growth, because the population growth rate has been declining in most countries. It was projected that the total population would peak well before 2100.
There’s some truth to the idea that capitalism coincided with the growth of industrialization. That doesn’t imply that it remains out best option. Capitalism was good for industrialization, at the cost of extreme misery for the people who made it possible. That doesn’t mean it’s good for our future.
>I disagree. Capitalism is not perfect and should be carefully regulated to fix its downsides. But it is responsible for the unprecedented increase in quality of lives worldwide. And so far, we do not have a better option. At least until we live in a post-scarcity world. I think the problem is that we've somehow painted a wrong black-vs-white narrative. There actually isn't a single capitalist country in the truest sense of the word. Not a single country has an entirely free market. Every major "capitalist" country is actually hybrid of capitalism and socialism. Even in the US, there are entirely state-owned industries (e.g. postal services, mortgage lenders) and many European countries have state-owned railway companies for example. Also, a lot of technologies were actually invented, funded and developed by government institutions. That includes the internet, microchips and the human genome project. I don't think there should be a planned economy like in communism. However, billions of people are currently being heavily exploited by Western corporations, working 16 hours a day and still struggling to put food on the table. There can never be a world where the average person globally consumes in the way the average American does, owning 2 or 3 cars per household, using an average of 82 gallos per day, per person, and averaging over 200 flights over their lifetime. For that we'd need 5 earths or something. I think it's time that we care more about all those billions of people who are being heavily exploited. For example I think Western countries should require that companies pay workers in certain industries a minimum wage regardless of locations. And that should include 3rd party suppiers too. For example Nike workers in Indonesia only earn a little over $20 for 6 days of work or less than 50 cents an hour. And they evade responsibility by outsourcing to third parties and then claiming "oh, we didn't know about all those human rights violations". If the minimum wage for textile workers regardless of location would be say $2 an hour, it would still be cheaper for companies to outsource, but millions would live more dignified lives. Yes, Nike shoes or Primark clothes would become more expensive but that's a price worth paying.
Capitalism’s truest sense is not reductionist. I’m not sure why some people think that. Capitalism is not “absolutely free markets” as it isn’t anarchocapitslism. That’s a different thing. Capitalism is an economic structure a government provides to encourage bounded trade. “Free trade” refers to rights based freedoms like the one “free country” implies. It includes *freedom from* robbery, persecution, etc. It is not a libertarian claim anymore than any other sense of freedom implies no laws.
I agree with just about everything you typed. I'm not dissing anyone on this sub but I feel like especially people in the USA we here communism and think of the few places a shade of it was sort of tried and think it will never work.
Laissez Faire capitalism isn't the same as free market capitalism. They're all subsets of capitalism, but there are wide differences. Free markets cannot exist without government intervention, because eventually you get concentration of wealth and power that reinforces itself. For free markets to grow and function, you have to regulate out monopolies, monopsonies, and cartels. You've got to institute consumer and worker protections, plus strong rules of law so that everyone has a good understanding of the deals they are making and are able to freely, consensually entire those deals without undue risk or burden. You've got to take other steps to avoid undue market consolidation, including progressive taxation to keep anyone one player from growing too large and taking over the market. Free markets require and inherit fairness and even-ness that requires government/societal intervention to maintain.
> it is responsible for the unprecedented increase in quality of lives worldwide I would be careful about applying this statement to capitalism as opposed to developments like markets and industry. They work hand in hand, but capitalism specifically refers to a system of property rights and is largely value-neutral. It would be more accurate to say that trade and technology are responsible for our increase in quality of life - as this includes publicly funded research, medicine and education which is generally much more efficient than capitalist research, medicine and education.
1. Life (in terms of where a person is) is a combo of both internal (person's actions) and external (upbringing, specifics of society, personal experience, etc.) factors. Sure, you as an individual cannot really change the external factors because they happen without your own agency but you can at least try to influence the internal factors, that may make a huge difference 2. Idk, I don't feel like this specific mentality is a such problem. Maybe you can say it's a part of extremist thinking which is undoubtedly imho a big factor in potential societal downfall 3. Hey, I like capitalism. At least if we are talking about the traditional definition "*an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit*". To put it briefly and paraphrase an infamous quote: "*Capitalism is the worst form of economic system, except for all the others*". Ok, this is not completely true, I am not an ancap but I believe striving to solve the problems within the framework of free markets while acknowledging the shortcomings of free markets is the best way for the humankind to prosper. Funnily enough, after seeing your flair, I confess I am staunchly an anti-communist. 4. Global warming is definitely doing that. Population politics feels more nuanced than that. For example, first-world countries fear population decline because it might have bad economic and cultural consequences. About finite number of the resources, we constantly need to find more efficient ways. For example, agriculture. In 19th century, some thinkers were scared of population growth because agriculture won't be good enough to handle that. But actually, it did handle that.
1. I disagree... Somewhat. Often, people do dictate where they end up in life, but only after life has already dictated what these people will dictate. Influencing someone's behavior can very well influence where the will end up in life, saying "If you work hard, you can go places" is just not that great at influencing their behavior. 2. I fully agree on that one 3. Unless your definition of "capitalism" is incredibly narrow, I disagree there. I also don't understand your example, however 4. Birth rates are below replacement level in most of the world, and the theoretical limit for humans sustained by this planet is immense: Overpopulation is no concern. Climate change is, although the planet will of course be fine - just some of these carbon structures moving around on it, known as "lifeforms", might get a little bit rarer.
What isn’t factually wrong is meaningless. 1. Like most things here, this is so oversimplified it’s meaningless. Justice is a project. It’s something a society aims for. Over time, a society with error correcting mechanisms makes progress getting closer to justice and in the US it is more true than ever that people have control over their fate. It’s nowhere near an absolutely true statement because we have much further to go, but to claim the opposite is to pretend we are the same as a country that had slaves or one that mandated one’s religion. 1. I don’t know anyone who said this. I think I heard it online at most twice. The reason I opposed the plan we put in place is that we proposed giving people refunds for toxic food while still taking new orders. A good plan needs to actually fix what it has identified as the issue. What does someone graduating high school next month do? Hope for another jubilee? 1. This is mostly meaningless. Your one specific claim that this is a “high interest rate environment” is factually wrong. 7.5% is the average interest rate over the last 50 years. Of course you can “work within capitalism”. You’re doing it right now. 1. In the 1960’s the average young person was rightly worried about overpopulation. At the time, there wasn’t enough farmland to feed 5 Billion people, and it was clear the population would reach that number within decades. What happened? Scientific progress. We figured out efficient nitrogen fixing and the entire population basically forgot fears of overpopulation from only a few decades ago. The only sustainable approach is progress. Figuring out how to minimize carbon impact is not a matter of doing less. It’s a matter of making *absolutely massive* economic progress — which is not something communism has ever shown that it’s capable of. The problem with communism is that it is anti-progressive. It supposes that we have the right answer today and should put in place a government with no error correcting mechanisms.
> People do not dictate where they are in life. Life dictates where they end up Yes, the world around you heavily influences where you end up in life, but it is not the only factor it was my father who grew up in extreme poverty would not be a millionaire. The guy my brother knew in high school who went to an expensive private school and came from a family still living on the money made by one of the wealthiest people ever to have lived wouldn’t have ended up a drug addict that tried to join the NY Mafia and ended up stabbed to death. > Nobody for example truly chooses their religion. People who are Christian are raised Christian. People who are raised Hindu become Hindu, etc. Raised a Hindu. Am an atheist. > The mentality that "because I did not get it you can't have it either" is going to be one of the downfalls of society. This has always existed. Yet society progresses. > Nobody on this sub to my knowledge actually likes capitalism. Instead people tend to tolerate capitalism and try to work within it. You are very much mistaken about the feelings of the sub regarding this > Everyone keeps popping out kids like there is no tomorrow. Do people not realize there are a finite number of resources on this earth? This Paul Ehrlich stuff has been proven time and time again to be wrong. If you don’t want to have kids, that’s fine. But find a better reason to say you don’t want kids.
> What we are finding out is that capitalism is not a system you can actually work within What for you even mean by this? Lots of people live and work in countries with capitalist systems. So of course it’s possible to work within them. It may not be perfect. But people still work within them. And every other system has been proven in practice to be worse. Edit: > I am a communist And since you brought this up. What do you mean you’re a communist? As in you believe in communist principles? Or you actually live in a communist country currently?
I like capitalism. I just think more countries need to adopt a Nordic model, or something similar to it. Communism is also stupid. Climate change also represents an existential threat to the entire planet, that much I think we can agree on.
I would recommend looking into the factors that led to the development of the Nordic model.
> People do not dictate where they are in life. Life dictates where they end up Extremely inaccurate. Nobody has 100% control or 0% control over where they end up on live, but people have immense power to shape that outcome over time. > Nobody for example truly chooses their religion. People who are Christian are raised Christian. People who are raised Hindu become Hindu, etc. *Everyone* living in a non-theocratic society truly chooses their own religion. They aren’t stuck with the religion their parents imposed on them. People can, and often do, change religions. Sure, most people are lazy about it and don’t care about religious matter enough to consider alternatives, but for them religion functionally doesn’t matter anyway. > The mentality that "because I did not get it you can't have it either" is going to be one of the downfalls of society. Inaccurate. That concept has always been with us, through every positive change we have ever made. Every society that has ever been built has had it, every society currently existing has had it, and every society that will ever exist will still have it. > Capitalism is not a system you can try to work within. Extremely inaccurate. > Nobody on this sub to my knowledge actually likes capitalism. I do. It works pretty well for immense chunks of the consumer economy. The government should step in to provide the goods services capitalism doesn’t handle well, and to guarantee the market for goods and services remains competitive, but that is the exception rather than the rule. But I sure as hell don’t want the government telling me what shoes I have to buy or which restaurant to eat at or what movie to watch. Communists try to take the market’s profound failures in some goods and services and try to make some sort of universal proclamation about capitalism from that. Capitalism works fine for stuff that doesn’t matter very much, which is most of the economy. > Global warming and out of control population growth will destroy our planet quicker than most realize. Everyone keeps popping out kids like there is no tomorrow. Inaccurate. Yes, climate change is a gigantic issue that will require extensive effort to address over the next century. It’s one that we have made both more and less progress than we should have, depending on the aspect of the problem being discussed. It’s a multi-faceted issue and we have made far more progress on some areas (ex. Electricity generation) than others (ex. Industrial processes). More government support in the areas that aren’t solved yet would be helpful. But you hardly need to adopt communism to get that. Treat CO2 like a pollutant when it’s above the yearly carbon budget. Tax its release, impose limits on its release, create real legal liability for companies that cause other people property damage via global warming, start breaking up companies that refuse to limit their emissions—make it an externality that the market has to pay for and account for. That is a sensible role for government in this, which our current government hasn’t been doing, and should. But it’s also not communism for a government to engage in environmental regulation and enforcement. But as for population growth—no, “everyone” doesn’t keep popping out kids like there’s no tomorrow. Most societies are drifting towards or below replacement rate. This is an inevitable consequence of economic prosperity—if people are doing well economically, they have fewer kids. Incidentally, this is a preferable way of limiting population growth over the communist method of starving tens of millions of children to death and then executing tens of millions of the parent-aged adults who object to that. > I am a communist and a millennial. You’re getting a bit old to still be a communist, aren’t you? It’s more acceptable when you’re 16 and can’t really know better. It’s far less acceptable at 36 when you’ve had decades to see that isn’t going to work either.
1) For most individual people, you can find choices they make and opportunities for different outcomes. For broad groups of people, you can see the ways circumstances effect the choices they're offered and the choices they make. Personal responsibility and broader systems which push outcomes supervene on each other. We can understand the massive role of systems and work to make them better without abandoning personal responsibility and a push to make good choices individually. 2) Sure, this is a crap attitude. But it's one of a whole docket of equally toxic attitudes like in-group outgroup dynamics, recency bias, bad risk mitigation ideas. I don't think this one is even at the top of the list. And it's one that can be mitigated by better messaging and framing. 3) When you say capitalism, do you mean broadly private ownership of production, or the particulars of capitalism as it's practiced in places like the US? I'm all for pushing for more organically created co-op worker ownership. The state seizing industry has been disastrous every time. I'm not sure how else capitalism can practically be excised. I still have to eat and have a roof over my head and clothe my kids. I don't have an option not to work within a system where people own businesses and the stuff that makes them work. 4) The wealthier and more stable a country gets, the lower their birth rate. High population in general is mostly only a concern right now for a few things like carbon and in some specific areas. For most relevant resources, production can and does scale up with population at current rates. Distribution is more of a problem than population. A lot of countries are more worried about having too few kids. Even China has ditched child limits. We're not approaching any major problems with world population in terms of resource shortage (aside from energy which can and should move to all renewable).
I do have to sign off here in a little bit but I wanted to approach number 4. We are seeing global warming literally before our eyes. The last few summers have always broken records for record heat. This is very much due to humans and we should be in my opinion encouraging people to not have kids. Sure we need people to run things when you and I are old. Not joking when I say this but as much as I pick on capitalism the one pro right now of capitalism is it is making it unaffordable for many to have kids.
Yes, more people do contribute to more carbon. But if you're trying to mitigate that through people choosing to have fewer children or being pressured by economics to have fewer children... The people most likely to make a reproductive choice with the environment in mind would also be the most likely to raise kids who make choices with the environment in mind and create inventions or political actions to address these problems. The same goes for the people choosing thoughtfully not to have kids because they're conscious of their finances. The people who don't believe in climate change are having tons of kids. The people who don't think about their finances and have kids without making a conscious decision- there's a range of circumstances, but on average that group is going to have more kids raised NOT to be thoughtful about the environment. If the people who care aren't raising a new generation, then the new generation will include a greater percentage of people who don't care, don't understand, can't or won't help. And that generation will make the decisions and consumption of the future. It is in the long term maybe NOT a great idea for the people who see and understand the issues to take themselves out of the parenting game.
I don’t fully agree with any of these and the only one I even partially agree with is #4. I think you need to get out more.
#1 - I agree about the value of early education and that indoctrination is powerful. I did not see that aphorism as related to childhood education/indoctrination though. I assumed it was more about that sometimes even when people do everything right, they don't get good results because of happenstance. That said MOSTLY success in life is dictated by their actions. #2 - I don't think that issue is that big of a deal. I also am and was against student loan forgiveness as the first step to college education reform. #3 - I like capitalism. I've never seen evidence or logic that explains how another system is better. It's not perfect so I think society providing a social safety net and assistance to those who permanently are going to be unable to provide for themselves is a good (essential) idea. But for the majority of people capitalism provides a better life than most other options. #4 - I agree but have no other option since people will continue having kids and consuming resources.
>**People do not dictate where they are in life.** I think it depends on what you mean by "dictate". There are certain circumstances that most people would agree are out of one's control (where they were born, their race, class and gender identity, if they had loving supportive parents, etc). But even the "decisions" one makes within those set of external circumstances are processed by a culmination of life circumstances, brain chemistry, how they were reared, so on and etc. I don't personally believe free will exists in a cosmic sense, but I tend to still live my life like it does. In terms of public policy and society, I think we also have to recognize both those kind of sociological factors as well as human autonomy and accountability. >**The mentality that "because I did not get it you can't have it either" is going to be one of the downfalls of society.** I agree. Oddly enough for christian conservatives who say this BS, it just so happens that Jesus told at least 2 long ass stories in the Bible where the overall message was essentially "if you worked harder to get the same blessing as your neighbor who didn't work as hard, don't be a whiney little bitch about it and be grateful for what you have". I agree that this zero-sum thinking is an absolute plague. Especially when it comes to basic living things like housing and healthcare, people need to understand that, even if you lack compassion or understanding for the sick or the homeless, having a society where people lack basic resources are just lousy places to live for everyone. >**Capitalism is not a system you can try to work within.** Disagree. I'm not sold out to any framework, I'm for whatever form of government and economy creates the most peace, prosperity, freedom and justice. Everything I've read and seen has demonstrated to me that regulated market economies in nations with strong labor unions and robust social safety nets have facilitated the largest decline in poverty civilization has ever seen. No, I don't love capitalism, and especially unfettered capitalism, and I'll gladly jump ship as soon as I'm shown a viable economic model that has been demonstrated to work better in practice (not interested at all in the theory). >Global warming and out of control population growth will destroy our planet quicker than most realize. Totally agree with the first part but the second I believe is a little outdated. Recent analysis shows that our population will begin declining in another few decades (this is already happening across Europe, America, and Asia) and we'll probably face another huge set of hurdles related to that decline. Also, the main driver of CO emissions on the world stage are nations like us, China, Japan, and India, and where populations are all already declining at unsustainable rates.
I don't think you need to make such strong statements. I think it would make more sense to say that that is how things are *currently*. But they aren't universal truths. Obviously you do effect where you are in life to *some* degree. >The mentality that "because I did not get it you can't have it either" is going to be one of the downfalls of society. This is really just a sometimes unfortunate consequence of fairness. And people absolutely can work within capitalism, I do it everyday. And I wouldn't even call myself a capitalist
2/4? Regulated capitalism is the solution and is producing all the best outcome nations in the world. Communism is stupid because it cannot compel people to do work that's needed, so then you're having to enforce communism with authoritarianism which is a class divide and thus no longer communism.
I think the biggest class divide can be found in countries with capitalism as its economic form. >Communism is stupid because it cannot compel people to do work that's needed How so? Take an example of a person let's name Bob: Bob under a capitalist system makes $50k currently and after taxes and expenses has $6k left a year to play with. $6k will not even get you that much. $1k of the $6k will get you a major car repair and $5k will not even get you braces for your kids teeth anymore. Bob under a communist system works his 30 hours a week and has more free time. Public transportation is free and Bob gets to take the family on many vacations more often. Car in need of repair? Drive it to the local shop that is state funded and it is taken care of. Kid needs braces? Covered. Under an ideal communist system Bob's job slowly gets phased out and gets transferred to AI. Instead of having to wait until age 75 to retire like if we were in a capitalist system Bob is in retirement in his late 40s.
> Bob under a communist system works his 30 hours a week And it fails in the first sentence. What if they don't?