this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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As is capitalism incentivizing people to be scumbags, as trendy as that perspective is.
No, the competitive nature of capitalism definitely incentivizes people to do very shitty things to each other for personal gain. Or have you not heard of the Gilded Age? Or our current climate crisis? Or strike breaking? Or the incredible wealth inequality we are seeing today?
[edit] The Irish Potato Famine? The Bengal Famine? Belgium in the Congo? Sweatshop labour? Coups in South America for the benefit of fruit companies? Wars in the Middle East for the sake of oil? Clear-cutting of the Amazon? Any of this ringing a bell?
Can you prove capitalism is the source of any of those problems vs just plain human greed?
If we want to attribute every negative event to it, well what about the positive events? Did it cause the light bulb to be invented, the telegraph, the computer, the printing press, satellites, etc, or was it just the economic system at the time?
Capitalism doesn't make people greedy, lots of people just are.
Beyond that, you can beat on capitalism all you want but until someone comes up with a viable alternative, it's what we've got.
Literally the point of capitalism is to utilize greed and enlightened self-interest to (supposedly) drive innovation and expand production. Greed is central to the whole ideology. "Greed is good". You are making a false distinction. How can you support an economic system you don't even understand?
I'm just going to block you...
Edit: Using a movie clip as if it's some kind of enlightened source is just absurd. There's no part of capitalism that says greed is good. Capitalism is a system not an ideology, let alone an ideology that can be captured by a freaking movie clip.
Guess what, still no better system proposed, still no answer for whether the good things get credit or just the bad.
There are many better proposals. Communism, anarchism, socialism, etc. What i personally think is best is some form of democratic socialism, where literally everything is controlled democratically. Companies/firms all fully employee controlled, democratic government obviously, etc. Nownininow you're gonna say "oh but socialism and communism have already been tried and failed look at xyz countries" and to that: every instance of socialism or communism has either been authoritarian and therefore always going to be bad or got fucked over by outside influences, or sometimes internal ones. Probably the best historical example that was good was the Soviet union in the very beginning in the first few weeks or months when worker control flourished, but then Lenin fucked over everything and became authoritarian.
If you think anarchism is viable I literally don't know how we could ever in a million years agree. That is a ridiculous proposal to me beyond words, up there and equivalent to free speech absolutism.
Ignoring that, explain to me how you're going to keep democratic socialism from going off the rails if we can't even keep democratic capitalism from going off the rails?
Edit: In capitalism at least greedy people have an outlet that isn't the government. In a socialist society, the only way to be greedy is to control the government. I don't think it's coincidence that every socialist society has turned into an authoritarian state, I think it's an inevitability.
That doesn't mean there's nothing to learn from socialism or anarchism, but they are firmly non-viable strategies by themselves.
I don't personally, but it is another proposal, that's why I mentioned it. There are some parts that seek decent but I have not read up on full explanations enough to understand the theory behind it.
The question was very open and there's a lot to explain, so sorry for the text wall I ended up making
As for keeping stuff "on the rails," more or less just more of the stuff we should be doing to try keep capitalism on the rails. Regulations and regulatory agencies and government bodies, and better electoral and government systems. And on top of that, the workers being in control will eliminate a lot of the motivations for businesses to do 'bad' things. Treatment of workers and profit distribution most obviously, but also things like quality of product or service, because the workers are also likely either direct consumers of it as well or more closely linked to direct consumers.
As for government and democratic improvements, since I'm assuming we are comparing against the US, we have a pretty shitty democratic structure and even governmental structure to some extent. First and foremost, the two party system and first past the post voting. Systems like ranked choice allow for a much broader set of parties and corresponding values to be expressed in governance. Other things like how shit of an institution the Supreme Court is, the electoral college, etc. A more European democratic model is much better. Also, a great example of how Europe has an much better control on capitalism is to look at how a lot of tech and internet protections and regulation is almost exclusively European. Things like requiring all devices to have USB-C, all of the GDPR which is the giant data privacy regulation that requires things like letting users obtain a copy of all their data, and also delete it among many other things. Also something I've seen recently is that by in think it was 2027 all smartphones will have to have removable batteries which is amazing.
Basically democratic socialism would be taking all the good stuff Europe does and cranking it up to 11, plus a few other things.
Edit to respond to your edit: perhaps, but how does a greedy person then get elected? The whole point of democracy is that you elect people who represent you, and also have checks and balances in place to limit any given individual or group from overstepping their power, a can be removed if they are causing harm.
You literally claimed there are "many better" proposals, and listed two... One of which you yourself don't agree with, but only listed because "it's another proposal"? That's not a proposed better system, that's a red herring.
The same way they always have? They run for office and people vote them in? Do you think anyone in Ohio actually thought this guy was going to take 60 million in bribes?
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdoh/pr/former-ohio-house-speaker-sentenced-20-years-prison-leading-racketeering-conspiracy
Why aren't people removed currently when a majority of the country seems to agree a lot of politicians that are in Washington shouldn't be?
Sure, but these same improvements could be made to our current system; why can't we even get that done?
[needs citation]; genuinely not to be rude, but this is literally the same spiel everyone that's anti-capitalist gives. It's nothing of substance, it's entirely unproven. Even assuming it's true, you must assumes that you'll even be able to put and then keep the workers in power. Also, which workers, all the workers? Representatives for the workers? etc. That's a lot to take for granted.
By all means.