16th December 2023, 11:17 PM
(This post was last modified: 21st December 2023, 10:14 PM by A Black Falcon.)
Sure, capitalism has faults, but I don't think the world is going to go back to mercantilism or feudalism or slave societies or anything like that. So what are the options? Capitalism, communism, or some socialist mix of the two, pretty much.
And of those, communism is the clear worst, by far. Communist nations are dictatorships with zero freedom, individualism is crushed, tens of millions died in the 20th century because of communism (more than died from any other -ism that century), etc; I think communism's crippling faults are well known. Marx didn't understand people and it shows, communism totally fails to account for human nature. Capitalism certainly has serious problems, but it is built around human nature. It's a very dramatically better system than communism, near-infinitely better.
Socialist mixes are much better than communism, where nations have a system that is mostly capitalist but with some socialism mixed in. Pretty much all nations do this to some greater or lesser extent. America has less socialism than the poster child of this kind of government, those of Scandinavia, but those are relatively small and homogeneous nations; would their government systems work on a large, diverse nation? Perhaps, but changes would be required.
And, supermarkets in Scandinavia for example are dramatically smaller than those in the US. They have less access to the insane variety of products than we do. Because they spend so much on health care and other social services, they have less spending money than Americans. Do they get benefits we don't in terms of health care and such, yes, but it's not like the US doesn't have advantages over Scandinavia, it does. It just depends on what subject you are focusing on.
As for the concept of infinite growth, I agree that that is impossible. Being stable in a market should be good enough, yes, I agree about that. "If you are not growing you are dying" is a flawed philosophy. The world is finite, its resources are finite, and not everything can grow. And yeah what the WB is doing with not releasing movies is disgusting and needs to be stopped. But even so, no other system does as well overall at creating strong economies than capitalism does, and it isn't close.
And of those, communism is the clear worst, by far. Communist nations are dictatorships with zero freedom, individualism is crushed, tens of millions died in the 20th century because of communism (more than died from any other -ism that century), etc; I think communism's crippling faults are well known. Marx didn't understand people and it shows, communism totally fails to account for human nature. Capitalism certainly has serious problems, but it is built around human nature. It's a very dramatically better system than communism, near-infinitely better.
Socialist mixes are much better than communism, where nations have a system that is mostly capitalist but with some socialism mixed in. Pretty much all nations do this to some greater or lesser extent. America has less socialism than the poster child of this kind of government, those of Scandinavia, but those are relatively small and homogeneous nations; would their government systems work on a large, diverse nation? Perhaps, but changes would be required.
And, supermarkets in Scandinavia for example are dramatically smaller than those in the US. They have less access to the insane variety of products than we do. Because they spend so much on health care and other social services, they have less spending money than Americans. Do they get benefits we don't in terms of health care and such, yes, but it's not like the US doesn't have advantages over Scandinavia, it does. It just depends on what subject you are focusing on.
As for the concept of infinite growth, I agree that that is impossible. Being stable in a market should be good enough, yes, I agree about that. "If you are not growing you are dying" is a flawed philosophy. The world is finite, its resources are finite, and not everything can grow. And yeah what the WB is doing with not releasing movies is disgusting and needs to be stopped. But even so, no other system does as well overall at creating strong economies than capitalism does, and it isn't close.