I don’t hate the human race. But I cannot stop pointing to our flaws. Not understanding our flaws, will lead to keep having them and the problems they carry.
On the other hand, what you are saying will be valid in any system. How do you propose to have a completely egalitarian society? It’s nearly impossible, there will always be people wanting more than they have and won’t care about the consequences of it.
Don’t blame capitalism for something that’s at the core of any political system: Greed destroys it. Greed and humans are intertwined. It’s not capitalism’s fault. The same happened across history even when and where capitalism didn’t exist: the Egyptian empire, the Roman Empire, the Soviet block and even in China now. Greedy people that can be bought will exist everywhere. The wish for power is not inherent of capitalism, is inherent of human nature. Failing to see that will lead to the same issue over and over again, in democratic or autocratic regimes.
Yes and no. Capitalism without regulations may bring this kind of issues. But capitalism with regulations shouldn’t. The issue is that the required regulations are not being applied or do not exist.
We should not blame or put the weight of the issue in capitalism, when we clearly know we don’t live in a perfect capitalistic world, and very few markets are like that. The issue is with politicians.
No, that’s an effect of collusion and cartelization of the economy. It’s because you have very few actors supplying the product and the barriers of creating a similar product are too high, so new competitors cannot access the market. Then the current suppliers can sit on the product and wait for it to be at the right price, as long as it doesn’t go to waste.
As you can see, all of this screens about real estate:
This is the time when governments should intervene and come up with a proposal to solve the cartelization.
Actually, I didn’t! Thanks a ton. I was going through All. This actually explains a lot.
Oof! Somebody took Karl’s kool-aid.
So, first off, it’s not the capitalist system that is at fault for the miners not having a back-up plan after the coal mine dries or coal is not marketable anymore. It’s due to corrupt politicians and lack of foresight from the constituents, that’s at fault there. But that’s to be expected. Most people are unable to plan their life with more than 5 years ahead, imagine a whole town working for commodities company where they don’t have enough education to understand the complexities of the market. It’s simply nearly impossible. The only place that I know that did something like this is Norway, where they have a trust fund coming from all the oil money, so when their oil dries up, they can still live out of that money for a while.
And as you can see from my previous paragraph, that’s not something that communism or socialism can change. That’s human nature. Cuba is not a shit hole because the US embargo, it is because Castro wanted its own SimCity. The same goes for Russia during the Soviet era, or China even now. Corruption is endemic of the politicians. And that’s a fact. No system survives corruption.
Finally, addressing the whole “history is a class struggle”. That’s to say a lot. You could say that human history has inherent class struggle, and that’s fine. But in reality, history is not defined by class struggle, more than could be defined by change of ethos, power dynamics or even whimsical change of heart. It’s too simplistic to say that everything has been a class struggle, because it simplifies human emotions and desires to materialistic possessions.
So I’ll add the video to my list of TODOs. But I must admit that this discussion seems to be very USA centric. Here in Spain at least, lots of politicians and media do talk about which classes are affected by each policy and why. The same used to happen when I lived in Argentina.
Of course there are a lot of places where there is no middle ground. But there are a lot of places where there is. Do we abolish private property? I don’t think there’s a middle ground there. Do we privatize the education system completely? Lots of middle ground.
It’s as naive (and dangerous I might add) to think that there is no middle ground anywhere as to think there is a middle ground everywhere. Because again, both postures are extremes, and extremes are never good nor right.
Being a centrist doesn’t mean that you have to compromise on everything or you are a conservative in disguise. In fact, I consider myself a centrist and I have very strong lines I won’t cross.
In my case it means that you are not torn into extremes, and that you prefer a way that respects most people rights without sacrificing basic rights or certain ethic values.
And the image there is quite low effort. It’s trying to convey a message that either you are pro civil rights, or you want to kill black people. I don’t think there’s even a middle ground there, or a fair comparison.
See? That’s where I get confused and I end up with the “that can’t happen” attitude in my head.
If you abolish private property, then who has that property? Someone will always have some of that, at least. Let’s imagine that it’s seized, by whom? How? And why wouldn’t that be thievery in the eyes of those who don’t want it? Because if I want it to happen, then it would be relinquishing, but if I don’t it would be coercive, because I cannot pay anything to that person, otherwise it would become a “haver” against all of those “havenotters” that gave their property for nothing but good will.
And then there’s the redistribution fact, of how to do that? Equitable? By some principle? Depending on who you are and are not, you get X o Y amount of “property”? And then it’s the issue of how do you measure that “property”? Because two cups of sugar can be of similar value, but not two houses. It’s not the same to live in downtown Manhattan than in the middle of Saskatchewan.
Finally, who does that? We? And who is “we”? Who organises “we”? How is “we” not anarchist? And if it’s anarchist, how do we ensure it’s just?