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and just like in biology, you need a system to fight the cancer, you can’t just wish it away.
since we’ve refused to maintain such an immune system, we’re now going to have to go through a miserable period of chemo treatment to rid ourselves of the tumors.
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Sorry. We’re stage 4. It’s terminal.
I thought the chemo treatment was WW1.
Are we really gonna pretend killing a bunch of people is better than doing business with them?
WW1? I;m curious as to why your mind went there? I assumed they were referring to WW2, and having to fight against fascism AGAIN. Fascism is the malignant tumor.
The rich will eventually pay with their blood. Probably too late, but it’ll happen.
I’m a fan of capitalism with tight regulations and checks on corruption, personally
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I’m a fan of pragmatism: real solutions to real problems.
Wish we’d see that someday
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Human nature is a mf though
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I mean im Canadian and it sure keeps going that way anyway
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This is the essence, corruption.
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I think many of the socialist states of Asia and Eastern Europe are or were ridiculously corrupt. How democratic those were is of course questionable.
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I meant that it wasn’t really very resistant to corruption.
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Of the two, one is still far more realistic than the other.
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Casinos have to have rules.
Honestly I think capitalism works so long as you can make sure greedy people can only satisfy their greed through productivity rather than insider trading and buying companies that are competitive or implementing micro transactions into fully priced games infact that’s the reason why I’ve been against stock markets just like how are these people improving life for others
The very nature of capitalism facilitates concentrations of power, which will utilize that power to accumulate even more in any conceivable way. The system is fundamentally flawed and needs to be replaced if we care at all for basic human rights and a future for this species.
What is your proposed alternative? I struggle to think of any system that doesn’t inevitably result in concentrations of power
Social Democracy. Commerce is key to strong economies, not capitalistic wealth hoarding.
Is there a country that you’d consider a good example of this?
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Why did you think a well thought out thought would get you upvotes? I mean, it did. But that’s not normal! 🤣
They currently have 9 upvotes and 1 downvote…
I literally said, ‘It did’
I’m 14 and this is so deep.
It’s really not that deep lol
I think that’s the point. It seems deep to 14 year olds, but it’s really just a shallow observation if you really think about it.
When you grow up, you’ll see that it’s not.
Not that I’m capitalism’s greatest fan, but this sounds about as clever as, “evolution is impossible because the second law of thermodynamics says chaos always increases, and the sun doesn’t exist.”
“evolution is impossible because the second law of thermodynamics says chaos always increases, and the sun doesn’t exist.”
The second law only applies to closed system systems. Neither earth nor sun are closed systems (they interact with each other) and if they were there your statement would probably be true but not for the reason you suggested.
Evolution and the stars reside in a local entropy minimum but they speed up the increase of entropy by converting a lot of energy. So low entropy and the global increase aren’t contradicting each other. But yes, I agree equating cancer and capitalism isn’t very useful. Especially when the main problem with capitalism is distribution and not scarcity.
I had an argument with someone about the nature of motivation within a capitalist system. Specifically related to people who find their motivations in non-monetary ends such as personal pride, the greater good, morality, etc. He said that those people were rubes, but I countered that surely those people were suckers. We still haven’t resolved…
You are trying to resolve whether to call them rubes or suckers?
Yep. Hard to tell from a pure capitalist point of view. I’m firmly in the “suckers” camp.
I don’t think greed is necessary. I’d argue markets exist to cater to human wants and needs. If someone is using an inherently fucky system (as all non-voluntary systems are to some extent) to find happiness, then it’s working at least a little.
Okay you don’t think it sounds clever. Does it sound wrong?
I think their point is that it sounds clever but it’s wrong.
Yeah no shit that’s their point. My point is they have no substance.
You said they thought it didn’t sound clever.
Holy shit this is boring. Can you get to a point if you have one already? Why are you talking to me?
If this post gets 100 upvotes then capitalism will fail and everyone will get sex.
You should pursue a career in sales.
I’ve so far taken part in revolution by upvoting and by gardening. Capitalism as good as dead
It’s worth a shot.
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
Edward Abbey
Specifically for neoliberal capitalism, it’s a fitting metaphor. The lack of tying capital to any concrete resources, constraints or externalities, with a supposition that infinite capital growth is possible, would actually lead to… the 20th century. Though nobody really buys this anymore, and is clearly just a justification to do horrible things in the name of making money. While greed has and will always destroy lives, communities and environments, the real damage of neoliberal capitalism is that it’s ahistorical. Removing people from the philosophical and social context in which the system was born and operates, makes it hard to see and hard to question for most people.
🔝 Communists centralized economy.
What party of “worker ownership of the means of production” is too complex for you?
The genocide part.
Ohhh - you believe an obvious authoritarian regime when they said they’re communist. I suppose you’ll defend the DPRK as a robust democracy for the same big brain reason.
I’m not sure what any of this has to do with economics, but you’ve made your irrelevant, dumb, definitionally wrong point - I hope it brought you some brief satisfaction.
Ya done yet? Fuck off commie.
You’re trying to insult me with a word you’ve just proven you don’t understand, and you expect that to sting rather than look pathetic?
I’d tell you to just grab a dictionary, but with your tongue buried that deep in the arsehole of the billionaires that are robbing you blind, that’ll be a bit much to ask - maybe take a step back, eh? Sort your life out.
You’re too stupid for there to be any sport in this, and too ideologically chucked to learn - yeah - I’m done with you.
I wouldn’t say capitalism is based on the notion of infinite growth, but it is an inevitability of there being no limits on capital accumulation. The notion that humans have endless desire for more, always needing a stronger hit to maintain personal satisfaction, is more psychological than something inherent to private ownership itself. Capitalism feeds the natural animal reward system to disastrous effect, but it isn’t required for capitalism to work. In fact, insatiable desires are the reason capitalism doesn’t work, because if people could be satisfied with a reasonable amount of resources, never trying to acquire more than they need, capitalism would be a fairly decent system.
Living 100% sustainably on this planet is counterintuitive to what it means to be human. We don’t need a political revolution, we need a psychological one.
Exactly. Democratic systems serve society better than non democratic ones, but a strong democracy can only be as good as its people. If the voters lack the wisdom to limit their consumption, both for sustainability and their own satisfaction, they’re doomed to make things worse.
Someone with fewer resources can be much happier than someone with a ton of them. Philosophers have long recognized that certain pleasures only grow more demanding when you feed them, while having sustainable consumption and gratitude is much more stable. As you consume something like meth or opiates, your brain gets used to it, requiring larger and larger doses to get the same effect. With pleasures that are similar drugs, this will eventually harm your happiness and well-being. Our brains cannot remain in a perpetually euphoric state, so we must limit these pleasures.
Certain drugs or pleasures are so euphoria inducing that there is no moderate consumption. Some people have a harder time moderately consuming pleasures that others can tolerate, resulting in addiction disorders.
With the wealthy, their greed is dangerous and addictive, but because it often doesn’t directly harm them and they warped society to accommodate it, it should be handled as more of a criminal condition than a clinical disorder. They get hit after hit from opulent excess, but they always try to get more, and will never satisfy their desire. We must criminalize excessive consumption from individual wealthy people.
Average people also overconsume finite resources, but that is better addressed by taxes, regulations, and incentives for alternatives. Law will be used, but not in the same way as when dealing with the rich.
I would disagree, most people want a more sustainable life, be it economical or ecological, people actually vote for that. But we are never given what we vote for, because of pressure on government given by the big corps, we’re always given some half-assed version of what we actually want.
I think there’s one important distinction.
Capitalism is a “rich-get-richer” system.
In any finite economy, this is immoral, because one person (or small group) wins, and everybody else loses. By definition. And once you’re a loser, you’re sunk.
So capitalist apologists rely on the illusion/dream of limitless growth because it means they get to pretend that when they steal from you they are somehow “creating value”.
Just because the rich get richer doesn’t mean the poor get poorer. Look at the data.
… The data that shows that as worker productivity increases, worker income doesn’t increase proportionally?
Wow, such a… deep comparison
Reminds me of this article: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist
Not to be that guy, but animals of certain size are seemingly unaffected by cancer. I think Kurzkezadt (or however you spell it lol) did a video on why whales don’t die from cancer.
Oversimplification: Their cancers get so big their cancers get cancer and die before harming the animal
Unfortunately in real life the cancers form a cancer Monopoly and the immune system prefers to protect the cancer over normal cells
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Kurzkezadt
Are you thinking of Kurzgesagt?
(Bonus info: the word is German and means “shortly said”)
It’s been a while since I read about this, but as I recall, most animals (might just be mammals) won’t die of cancer without genetic modification. They have immune system factors that humans are currently considered not to have. (Either that or we eat too much food for it to work, depending where the research is going these days, lol.)
But if you measure growth in made up numbers, you can just keep rolling them up indefinitely.
Not really. Eventually just counting those huge numbers uses so much energy it fries the planet with waste heat.
It is centralization that is killing the planet as the bigger the organization, the more power it has to control and become corrupt. Capitalism would work fine if it actually broke down organizations that got too big and also completely insulated themselves from bribes and influence. For some reason we have allowed corporations to run the show more and more which ironically is not only bad for the planet, but ultimately bad even for them in the long run. We have simply lost control and need to reign it in, but because humans are in the mix and can be bought or often coerced, there is little hope other than war resetting or AI taking over. My money is on AI taking over and while that scares many, humanity’s track record scares me more.
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And here I thought the problem was releasing carbon. What a fool was I. Corruption! Once again you’ve ruined a perfect system!
And of course the solution is to not have any centrally organized response. That way leads to corruption!
Spot on analogy.
Capitalism is a cancer
Best way to deal with late stage cancer is radiation.
Soo, nuke it is then
Can’t fucking wait
From orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
