Ideally, there should be a simple formula for achieving some baseline level of success (such as in your case) with a large social safety net in place so that people are insured from circumstance that are oftentimes outside their control.
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fuck capitalism
- Thread starter Surface of Me
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No type of society is without problems. Capitalism has corporate greed and socialism has it's lack of reward for hard work. Pick one and complain it's not the other.
On the flip side I've seen a lot of people complaining about being in debt while they walk around with their iPhones and wearing wireless earbuds. It may not be the OP but they are out there. Entitlement runs strong now days no matter your political party!
On the flip side I've seen a lot of people complaining about being in debt while they walk around with their iPhones and wearing wireless earbuds. It may not be the OP but they are out there. Entitlement runs strong now days no matter your political party!
And my point is capitalism and these socialist ideals are not inherently antithetical. If the US passed regulations on large corporations mandating 50% of the board be workers, or if UBI is enacted, is the US suddenly not capitalist? If health care becomes a right and education becomes free, is the inherent society as a whole not capitalist?
Social Democracy is demonstrably the best system we have yet seen which provides the necessities of its populace while still providing the individual freedoms people inherently desire.
This is such a huge question with many different theories on how to answer it. You need to really start however, with identifying that pure academics have an intrinsic value, and don't need to be situated in society to specifically pump out people who will make money for defense contractors and CEO's to be valuable.
User banned (3 days): inflammatory generalizations over multiple posts; classism
I was lucky enough? Money just fell into my lap? That's fucking rich.
Poor stay poor because they refuse to live within their means. Watched my family and most of my community do it. Most still do. Tax returns go towards frivolous things. Hell, even my dad and stepmom live outside their means and they're lower middle class.
And there it is, bigotry and bullshit pulled out Ayn Rand's arse.
I was very lucky not to fall for the bullshit of getting credit cards and taking out loans. Thanks to my history teacher in High School showing me how to hustle in the real world. Capitalism is great. It depends on you on how to use it.
Completely wrong. Poor people stay poor because the system is stacked against them. It's harder to go see the doctor so they hold off on doctor appointments until it gets too serious. They try to save money by buying cheaper things that don't last as long which means they have to buy that thing again sooner rather than later. It's hard for poor people to save since most of their money is going to necessities.
I didn't say it did, did I? I said the biggest problem was corporate greed.
Real Ben Carson hours
Is it a drug?
"It depends on how you use it" is such a weird thing to say when referencing how great Capitalism is.
Is it a drug?
Corporate greed is a feature, not a bug. It's literally designed that way. And the lack of reward is in addition to that.
"Capitalism is great," he says while capitalism is burning the world down.
Why can't the poor simply not buy their way out of poverty?
It's not a "gotcha", it's a clarification that what you stated for one is also true of the other. Which makes capitalism, in your form of summation, worse.
The capitalist structure which remains intact in a Social Democracy will work with all it's ability to undermine the social safety nets in place because all it will see is an area ripe for exploitation which is not being exploited. What you're doing at this point is constantly balancing between the antagonisms of the working class and capitalist class. It is a step in the right direction, but if we can work toward removing the threat of exploitation from the system so as to not be under constant siege, then we should.
Right now in the Nordic countries and other social democracy leaning societies in Europe, we are seeing the capitalist class utilizing the influx of refugees (created by western imperialism) as an excuse to fuel rising racism and anti-immigrant sentiment against the champions of social democracy to de-legitimize them and tear down social safety structures when they get even the smallest piece of power to do so. This is also not to even bring up that western imperialism is a necessary factor in maintaining the economic climate that Social Democracies depend on. Ie: the exploitation may be lessened domestically, but is ignored or even emboldened globally, largely against the global south.
There are people who would agree with you. There are still others that consider Social Democracy still vulnerable to the inherent issues in capitalism. For example, it would still create class divisions - those who sell their labor vs. those who accrue wealth through ownership of capital and property, who's interests are fundamentally at odds. From a Marxist perspective, profit is surplus labor that's funneled upward to the company rather than to the workers themselves, which would still be present under Social Democracy.
Man this is a really, really bad take. "It's your fault you are poor", fuck out of here with that. Majority of people in this country live paycheck to paycheck. That's not 'living outside your means' it's called barely having the means to live.
Well, yes. They're glad that you're honest about your intentions. For better or worse.
You're just clueless about the plight of the poor.
And by what right does anyone have to tell someone else what means they are obligated to live within? By whose standards and why? Yours? If capitalism is so obsessed with personal sovereignty, then why do so many people who love it find that they have to also make wild judgement values about other people?
I can't tell you how many times I've heard people talk about "which bills they're paying this month" while still eating out and buying shit they don't need. That's living outside of their means. It's not an insane concept.
Yeah, the market isn't good at identifying or appreciating more abstract things. Reminds me a bit of how the market usually fails to account for environmental externalities due to the focus on the short term. A staunch capitalist would probably argue that those who are truly the best of their field have no trouble becoming PhDs or finding research/academic work.
I just can't sympathize with people who go into overcrowded, undervalued fields then complain about no one needing their services.
If this is about the valuable jobs thing, then what's the alternative? Make jobs for them? Get the government to hire them to do stuff? I think it's a dumb thing to complain about unless you got bamboozled by an unsustainable short-term bubble in your field.
it is going to burn regardless. By God or Man. History has proven that.
These people are likely buying small luxuries for themselves as a way to maintain some semblance of happiness, something capitalism ignores as having value. Without small things to look forward to, people are not living so much as surviving. The level at which people can cope with this lifestyle differs, and those small things may be necessary for even "surviving." This is why we are seeing a rise in diseases of despair that are killing people, such as the fentanyl crisis.
lmao
There is another family, whose grandparents came from nothing, they probably had many children, yet somehow after all of their hardwork, they're no where near being successful.
Anecdotes are just anecdotes, I'm afraid.
Yet we also have ample evidence that socialism and communism are just as susceptible to the exploitation of the worker class due to the consolidation of power inherent in representative beurocracy, and the corruption available and exploited when the means of production are nationalized. Arguably more so as free markets are inherently more resistant to the consolidation of power.
It's actually a little wack when u start to think about it and ask why things have to be this way.
I wasn't aware that I was arguing in favor of a USSR or China system. Wait, I'm not, but which you have chosen to describe anyway.
it's almost been a century since the great depression, this is historically not true.
So we want people to have their cake and eat it too? Be free of the consequences of their choices, i.e. no consequences for deciding not to pay their bills? If my bills are too much then I change my budget accordingly. If my monthly food budget was too high, I stop eating out and make inexpensive food at home. Eats into some of my free time but hey, I can make cooking enjoyable so it's not all bad. I can't afford FF7R, guess I'll wait until I can pick it up on sale.
Capitalism has no breaks sadly, look at how successful Disney+ is, people seem to be happy to buy into another fucking streaming service, got to consume more my lovelies & as long as that happens, Bob Iger is gonna get a big bonus & the problem doesn't go away.
The "no true Scottsman" arguments don't really work when the corruption of those systems now are the result of said socialist/communist ideas and how those ideas were implemented.
"Human greed isn't the issue, we just haven't managed to figure out a system in which human greed isn't the issue."
Sorry to burst your bubble...'hard work' (aka effort) shouldn't be rewarded. It's the results that matters, not the process. Why do anyone cares about how hard a painter did his art? If the end result is mediocre or average, who cares whether he put a billion hours on it? It's soul crushing but that's the objective reality we live in.
A tiger can spent an entire day chasing a deer, but that doesn't mean it should be rewarded for it's effort. A pack of hyenas could have just grab the exhausted deer at the end of the hunt from the tiger. You cannot say the hyenas are 'wrong'. It's all 'fair play' in the rules we called survival.
Those models also faced criticism when they were formed. There is no one more critical of leftists than other leftists. The use of state power as a means of facilitating a transition out of capitalism is hotly contested even today. And let's not forget that capitalism was not a natural occurrence - it was willed into being over centuries by powerful people acting in their own interests, and not always successfully.
Also, free markets do not inherently defend against consolidation of power. In the past, free markets lead to incredible concentrations of wealth and political clout in developed nations. Today, there is a concerted effort by capital holders to loosen government regulation to allow a greater concentration of wealth in fewer hands, some even seeing political freedoms as antithetical to "economic freedoms."
Maybe you should think about this again, because your two statements contradict each other.
Also, if everyone came out on top, everyone would be at the bottom. Inequality is a necessary condition for Capitalism, there is no way around it.
Except like, I didn't even self-identify as socialist or communist either. I'm anti-capitalist for sure, but also someone who doesn't think we know what a future with capitalism removed will look like yet. So keep beating that strawman I guess.
You are conflating your personal experiences than declaring that's how it always works. Again, what about those who literally can't afford the way past? Do they deserve to be poor?
How the hell did you get that from my statement that I am a climate denier? Stop with the assumptions and re-read what I wrote.
The world is burning at an accelerated pace because of capitalism. You saying it's going to happen either way feeds into the "it's a natural cycle" BS from deniers
Doomer speak, "It's going to burn regardless, one way or another" is often a rhetorical phrase used by deniers to imply we should just keep doing what we're doing and not worry about climate change (because they don't believe it's real). If you didn't mean to say this then, oops I guess, but it is a thing climate deniers do.