cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/35986695
this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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People often conflate capitalism with greed because the core of capitalism depends on people acting selfishly. But other systems can also reward the greedy.
I think it even goes beyond that. e.g. the sowjet union genuinely had issues with food security, but they still fucked up when they dried out the aral sea because they were acting shortsightedly.
Supporters of socialism/communism/anarchism/whatever-ism don't believe that their system will never make mistakes or that it prevents all bad people from having power. But it lessens it, hopefully. If a capitalist nation were in charge during the time the aral sea disappeared, you can bet your sweet ass it would have just the same or faster.
There are a lot of people who do believe that these systems could do no wrong or repeat the narcissist's prayer to justify any wrong doing.
True. But I suppose I should have clarified it as "intelligent, thoughtful supporters of those ideas"
It's true that capitalistic societies don't do any better for the environment (which was the point of my comment, they're BOTH bad in this aspect), but at least in capitalist Europe the common people got relative wealth out of it. In the soviet union, people were oppressed by the state, poor, and got their environment destroyed.
And now that is happening in capitalist societies.
We have many decades to go until our common people are as poor as they were in the soviet union (at least in countries that were on the capitalistic side of the iron curtain), though that does seem to be the general trajectory. But soviet poverty went beyond not being wealthy - there was always a very distinct risk that the local store was out of basic necessities, and I really don't think this is going to be common in most western european countries in this century.
"in this century"
That's where you're wrong. It's coming for us fast. Especially in the USA. Water availability is becoming a serious problem
I do hope many writing in this thread are not American, because if you are and this is your attitude, you are scheduled for bad wake up call. Please, study fascism and authoritarianism in depth. Hanna Arendt is a good start.
Note how I wrote "most western european countries". The USA is on a pretty bad trajectory, but there are 27 countries in the EU and only one country in the USA. In fact, the USA are not western european at all.