I’m the chimney sweep now!
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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The point is that capitalism prioritizes profit, not the welfare of people. This is only not done anymore because of regulation, not because capitalism was fixed. It can't be fixed. The target goal of capitalism is wrong. Profit does not optimize for innovation, welfare, happiness, or anything else that could be called good. It will always exploit people as much as it can, and it just happens to not exploit children (in the western world (legally)) because we made it not allowed, and disobeying that law would be less profitable.
Seems like regulations are the fix.
Capitalism is unsustainable by design, there is no fix to that
shouldn't we come up with a system where the core values don't need regulation. it becomes unthinkable to exploit children not because of regulation and enforcement but because the system in itself denies power to exploiters.
Is there any system besides capitalism with regulations we have in developed countries without child labor? Child labor existed in the Soviet Union and in communist China. Historically the idea that children should not perform labor is very recent.
Are there any developed countries that have moved beyond Capitalism yet? Are you genuinely attributing Capitalism to removing child labor, instead of the workers that organized and fought against it? That's like giving the US government credit for the Civil Rights movement.
Is your claim that there will be some future utopia without capitalism and without child labor? Sure, that’s something to dream about.
If humanity has failed to move beyond Capitalism and child labor, then humanity lost to the climate crisis or nuked itself to death. The idea that Capitalism is sustainable is Utopian and foolish.
Well that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
An opinion based off of analyzing data and coming to logical conclusions. I can't know the future, but I can certainly say that the sun will rise tomorrow morning.
I analyzed data logically and came to different conclusions.
Then talk about them or don't, not sure what just saying "that's your opinion" and walking away like it's some revelation does.
You never supported your statement with any facts either, you just presented it as one. I merely pointed out that it was one persons opinion and not some settled issue.
What, specifically, do you take issue with?
you stated that capitalism is human nature and based on reality. none of those statements are true. my job here is done.
I said no such thing! That’s a ludicrous statement.
Lol i almost think he's a bot from that.
i support direct democracy. i think the economical system should be maintained by democracies sustained by a lot more direct democracy processes. even if that economic system is capitalism it should be restrained by a lot more people voting directly on regulation and less on representation.
i hope i answered your question and i'm sorry for the confusion.
Sure would be nice, but such a system seems to be fundamentally incompatible with human nature and reality.
as if human nature is set in stone but i love the reality argument, as if capitalism is somehow a realistic functioning system. for sure a dreamed up notion of capital is 100% real and not the machinations of generations of trial and error(still on going btw).
Seems to be? On what grounds? Do you think humans have a built-in mystical flaw that turns them evil if they share tools?
Thinking that there could be a system that doesn't require regulations that have to be enforced is just very naive.
Yes and no. Capitalism requires huge amounts of regulation to not destroy itself, and a system with considerably less regulation could exist if the Workers could represent themselves via ownership.
Profit motive and greed are stronger. https://www.npr.org/2023/02/26/1157368469/child-labor-violations-increase-states-loosen-rules
Capitalism is insanely efficient in allocating capital and setting prices – two things incredibly difficult to do otherwise. At the same time it has the problem of protecting the weakest. But that can be tackled by regulation – which has been pretty effective in the EU for example.
What kind of system would you prefer?
Capitalism is moderately efficient in allocating Capital and setting prices for the purpose of generating profits. Capitalism is pretty terrible when it comes to actually improving society, and the EU still sees massive problems.
Worker Ownership of the Means of Production is a better alternative, whether that be along the lines of Anarcho-Syndicalism, Market Socialism, Democratic Socialism, Marxism, Council Communism, or so forth.
I think these sort of things need to be taken in context of the rest of the world. Massive problems, but also, not sure who else is doing better.
According to all data we have, the living standard in democratic, capilistic states is significantly higher than in any other market order. If you consider the social capitalism like in Nordic countries, they easily rank the number 1 in all metrics. Meanwhile communist states like the DDR or UDSSR collapsed after their economy was ruined.
This argument always comes up, and it's such a bad one when actually considered. The US was the largest world power, right? They also influenced all other western and/or capitalist nations, either through cooperation or threat of cutting them off from the market.
OK, so consider which communist/socialist countries failed. Did they fail in a vacuum? No. They failed with the "democratic" (often less democratic than the opposition, but this was their messaging) nations opposing them. For example, in Guatemala they elected a leftist president who introduced a minimum wage, increased democratic participation in elections, and the next president introduced land reforms to redistribute land to give it to the peasants.
Guatemala was being used by the United Fruit Company (Chiquita now) for their banana empire. These changes hurt their ability to exploit the people and create more profits, so they lobbied the US to overthrow their government. This led to the formation of a dictatorship and reversal of labor reforms. The dictatorship went on to genocide the native populace.
Communism "always fails" because the most powerful nations in the world are afraid of it, so they do everything in their power to ensure it fails. The few that have been able to survive are dictatorships, because they can better withstand pressure from the outside. (This isn't to say dictatorships are good, just that they're more stable when attacked.) They also generally had or enforced cultural hegemony, for the same reason. It's survivorship bias.
We have no idea how well a leftist government would do if not attacked, because it's always attacked out of fear. If it's destined to fail, why are they afraid of it succeeding?
Maybe communist countries always fail (UDSSR, DDR) or transition to capitalism (China), not because of outside forces, but because its a flawed system?
It could be, but we can't know as it is now. Marx said the same for capitalism, and he may still be proven right. He said that capitalism will always lead to communism because it's a flawed system.
Again, if it's destined to fail, why have capitalist countries had to put so much effort into destroying them? If they actually believed they were destined to fail, like they like to say in propoganda, then they wouldn't bother with forcing them to fail.
As an example of a moderate success, Cuba has done pretty well for itself despite being entirely cut off from nearly all outside trade. They have a near 100% literacy rate. compared to the US's 86%. They also have world class Healthcare, again despite being cut off from the rest of the world.
The US has put so much effort into ensuring Cuba fails, yet it's still doing better than the US on many of the metrics that actually matter to the average person. How can this be true if communism is so fundamentally flawed?
Still, 88 % live in extreme poverty (though it can be argued that it is due to sanctions – which should be abolished). More severe are human right violations – no democracy, no freedom of the press, no independent judges.
And at the same time Cuba is moving towards capitalism since 2010– since it worked so well in China and Vietnam.
I agree democracy is good, and it should include the workplace. That is, I think, what the first priority should be. If democracy is good, then democracy is good in the workplace too as well as government.
That is the critical difference between leftist ideals and capitalist ideals. Capitalists are often accepting of democracy (when it's beneficial) in governments, but are always opposed with workplaces.
Leftists generally want more democracy everywhere. Authoritarianism is the issue with all nations, not capitalism or communism or whatever else. Capitalism just opposes democracy, and destroys and other non-capitalist government because it prevents their exploitation.
Again though, there are almost exclusively non-democratic leftist governments because anything else was destroyed because it couldn't maintain control when the capitalists got involved. Cuba is moving towards capitalism likely, or at least in part, because the US won't let them reach their potential if they don't play ball with US capitalist demands.
Edit: Also, what good is a poverty rate in a situation like Cuba? They have essentially zero outside trading partners and nearly everyone is equally impoverished. The US would have nearly a 100% poverty rate compared to the Dederation of Planets of Star Trek. It's useful for some statistics, but equality is probably a better measure for how they're doing internally. Poverty implies a certain standard created by an external source, which again can be useful but also misleading.
I'll break this down sentence by sentence.
-According to all data we have, the living standard in developed countries is higher than in developing countries. Additionally, Capitalism is less democratic than Socialism, as Capitalism is a market of competing mini-dictators, rather than democratically run industry.
-Social Democracies a la the Nordic Countries ruthlessly exploit the third world and see rising disparity as Capitalists erode social safety nets. Mass Unionization slows this process, but Social Democracies serve as a good example of why living standards are higher when Workers have more control, and why Unionization alone isn't enough, Capitalism itself remains the problem.
-The USSR is not the only form of Socialism, and additionally it collapsed after it liberalized. It wasn't a Communist state either, as it never achieved Communism, ie it was not a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society.
All in all, very flawed takes on your part. Attributing quality of life to Capitalism, when it was due to development, is false. Additionally, you falsely assume development only comes from Capitalism, which relies on the absurd logic that believes humans are incapable of developing democratically, and goes against this very website itself.
Capital and price are imaginary. Why are you evaluating a system by random concepts that don't correspond to anything real?
Maybe use a metric with actual real meaning like fraction of people with basic necessities covered.
And if you consider that metric capitalism with social guidelines implemented – like in Nordic countries – comes out far ahead of any other known market order.
What if we incentivized the kids to work using tokens on their iPad games? They would do the work basically for free and we could use it as a labor cost saving measure. Like the gig economy but now with a whole new section of laborers to choose from.
What if we could store the children in a kind of acid to leech their life force more efficiently with the added benefit of being able to store their potential energy for longer durations 🧐
Now we're talking.
Turn kindergartens to bot farms!
So...... Roblox