cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/35986695
this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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Redirecting blame attributable to human foibles to an abstract concept like “capitalism” is shortsighted and self-defeating. Analogously, the problem over the last 10,000 years hasn’t been slavery (the concept); the problem has been slavers (their ignorance, psychopathy, and greed).
There’s no period in human history when people weren’t unfathomably stupid, because people are literally just animals (and many would happily end the world in order to get access to cheeseburgers). They make bad choices because the average person is not capable of moral deliberation. All hyperbole aside, this is an actual empirical fact.
Capitalism is slavery with PR and programming to convince us to be helpless to change anything for the better and to look at various distractions instead of the reality.
I am not just talking about first-world exploitation, I am talking about literal slavery and child slavery, which our economies rely on — which we unknowingly rely on for many of our goods.
If you factor in 40% (or more) of US agricultural workers being undocumented immigrants, you don't really have to look hard to see that slavery is literally everywhere. It may not be the chattel slavery of past, but it's still modern slavery.
Almost all employment revolves around exploitation, hard hours, asking you to give more than you have for the sake of the business, and so forth, all the while many participating individuals are unable to afford health care or housing. I still liken that dynamic to be modern slavery, even if the individuals reside in the first-world.
We can rise above this, but we must identify what is blocking or stagnating progress to be able to change — such as accepting the reality at hand instead of turning our gaze away.
Doesn't mean we have to play the blame game or reduce nuanced issues down to word-play and labels. A new system is likely the best solution.
I agree. And any plan to move forward has to confront the fact that humans are obstreperous ignoramuses. So, what do we do? One strategy is to leverage democracy, which has already led to unbelievable moral progress over the last century. Another option is to leverage a populist outreach. Any other ideas?
There's a reason people are chronically misinformed or uninformed - here's a comment I wrote the other day:
https://slrpnk.net/post/21939259/15608857
So, besides an entirely new system, human rights for all, and direct democracy, I'm calling for a rise decentralized media (like the fediverse) and holding "news" organizations accountable for their propaganda, misinformation, suppression of opposing/critical perspectives, and omission of key facts. If they mess up too much, they can no longer peddle themselves as a news organization.
When we are misinformed or uninformed to this degree and are simultaneously subjected to this level of propaganda and tribalism, we inevitably become very polarized against each other. We stop making sense. We aren't focusing on anything productive. We can resort to hate and violence. The key is to recognizing this manipulation and recognizing the kind of world we want to live in.
Do you want to hate or fear your neighbor? Do you want to live in a community or country that is disconnected, where many are dehumanized and suffering to extreme degrees? Do you want to be oppressed or tolerate the oppression of others? Or do you want the opposite?
That clarity and focus is the light at the end of the tunnel. What kind of world do we want to live in?
I want to live in a kind world, that has human rights, freedom, and a system that works for human benefit - instead of against it. I want to focus on solutions and help others to do the same. I want to thrive and to thrive alongside the planet and every living being on it!
There are games that don’t cause brain damage in students and there is American Football.
if the structure of society is set up in such a way that practically every action I need to take to keep myself fed and sheltered ultimately contributes to climate change, then it's fucking inane to say it is the fault of individuals being stupid.
Humans are selfish, and that’s precisely why we need an alternative to capitalism. Because if we don’t force people to act intelligently they’ll act like the animals they are and obliterate their environment until they are living on mountains of shit and corpses. This has happened throughout history over and over and over again, long before the advent of any economic ideologies.
Global warming can be fixed tomorrow if people stopped eating meat and stopped buying giant pickup trucks and stopped worshipping celebrities, and so on.
And every armed conflict in the world would end if everyone put down their guns right this instant.
We're talking about structures that reach across the globe, with a momentum that existed before either of us were born, and with a trajectory that will be traced long after we are dead. You don't shift that trajectory by Wishing Upon a Star that everyone Becomes Better overnight. That's not a practical approach.
This is actually true. There’s an important lesson about human nature hidden somewhere in this sarcastic sentence.
The reason we need to get rid of capitalism is that it empowers people’s most horrible greedy impulses. However, that’s precisely because people are horrible and greedy. If people were saints, then capitalism wouldn’t matter because nobody would do dumb shit like buy pickup trucks or eat meat.
Again, long before the advent of any abstract “structures” and economic theories, before Hollywood and global communication networks, when humans were still living on random islands, they behaved like total and utter morons. They were not rational. Because 90% of humans are — and again, this is an empirical fact — incapable of moral deliberation.
That’s why we had slavery for 10,000 years. That’s why people torture billions of sentient animals to death in abattoirs every year to eat their carcasses. That’s why Donald Trump won the last election.
90% of humans. Really. Do you have a source for this claim?
Yes. Of course. But I get the sense that you guys are in this weird ideological-purity-testing mode right now. If you actually seriously want to engage with this fascinating research topic in good faith, feel free to message me.
I'll have you know I despise trump.
Oh, but since you brought up good faith. In response to simply asking for a source, you attacked my character, tried to gaslight me into thinking I'm in the wrong, and then tried to move the topic into private DMs so nobody else can see it and so you can look like the adult here. This wasn't even a real offer though, because nobody is going to politely DM you after getting their character attacked out of nowhere like that.
The fact that you're not willing to publicly show your source about the things you're claiming in bold are empirical facts tells me that you don't actually have a source, and are in fact the one not engaging in good faith.
This thread is so bad faith it’s not even funny. And you expect me to what, educate you on basic neuroscience and sociology? No.
Hello, I am not this entire thread. I am only two, now three, comments in this thread. Do not blame me for the things other people have said.
Literally all I did was ask you for a single source to your claim which sounded very exaggerated to me, and you have since called me uneducated, unreasonable, irrational, maga, and an animal. Meanwhile I haven't attacked you a single time.
Who's the one arguing in bad faith again? Be serious.
No, I expected you to give me literally a single source, which you said you have. That's it. Shouldn't be hard.
You took issue with the claim that 90% of people are bad at moral reasoning.
Ask yourself if your reaction would be the same if I had claimed that 90% of people are bad at mathematical reasoning.
I hope not, since that’s uncontroversial, despite the fact that the average person studies math for 12+ years (not counting college).
Now why on earth would we expect moral reasoning to be any different? We don’t. In fact, it’s much much worse. In mathematics, we get to operate within painstakingly established formal systems, such as number theory. By contrast, most people never even learn how to syllogize an ethical argument!
We don’t have ethics coursework in middle school (except for religious pseudo-bigotry) and most students never get to study basics like first-order logic. They get their morals from McDonalds commercials and Disney and parents and whatever random scraps of cultural information they encounter in the gutters of our society.
People are MUCH worse at moral reasoning than at mathematics, and 90% was an absurd understatement on my part.
funny you keep coming back to slavery when so much of it was justified by claiming huge chunks of people were, empirically factually, incapable of being fully human
standing in the middle of a system that incentivizes, necessitates even, that people act against our collective shared interest; a system that, half through deliberate intention and half through the selective pressure of market forces, makes sure they have just enough education to be profitable workers -- and to say, "We've always been this stupid. Just innate, innit?", well you're either missing the forest for the trees or for whatever reason you'd rather believe some people can just be written off altogether.
What progress do you get by blaming humanity instead?
Reality is always the best starting point.