Political Memes

If a socio-economic system incentives greed to the point where a person who is not greedy is literally unable to succeed, can you really say that greed is human nature?

It’s self interest that fuels capitalism. The reason it has succeeded is that it takes advantage of this primal instinct. But obviously selfishness, while very motivating for an individual, does not magically add up to collective good. So you have to also have a plan for that, ideally funded by all the self interested wealth-getting. But if all you have is that collective good, and no offering for the instinct to serve self-interest, then all you have is a bunch of people standing around looking at each other, wondering who’s going to make it happen.

a fundamental change in human nature, where we no longer feel greed.

What's your alternative system?

almost nobody's interest to work

Except that doesn't really add up in reality. People do want to contribute. People do want to feel useful.

A lot of today's most important functions are done by people who do it out of a love for the field, not because they're paid well to do it. I'm thinking teachers. I'm thinking academics. I'm thinking people in certain medical fields such as nursing. A lot of these jobs frankly suck compared to other ones, and the list isn't limited to these.

Hell, I work at the place I do because I like the idea of working with what I do than just going private, even though I'm literally losing out on lots of money doing so.

And then you got stuff like the wealth of Free And Open Source software that people develop because they like to contribute. You got wikipedia. You got so many things people do just because they want to contribute, the list is almost endless.

Humans are wired to be pro-social. We could absolutely make it work. If anything, capitalism stands in the way of this goodness!

In a capitalist economy or capitalist-like economy, everyone’s individual self-interest aligns with the collective self-interest a good percentage of the time, so relatively little state intervention is needed to keep it working well

This is only true if you live in a fairy tale.

As soon as greed is introduced, any notion of "collective self-interest" goes out the window (in any system, not just capitalism).

The problem with alternative economic systems is that it is in almost nobody’s interest to work for the common good, either because of a collective action problem (in communist or communist-like systems) or other reasons

Socialism assumes that everybody has a "enough to survive" baseline, but if you want bells and whistles you need to actually work yourself. I feel like that's incentive enough.

Communism would - most probably - face the exact same problems as capitalism, where greed just completely turns the system around and breaks it. But we don't know since nobody has tried it yet.

They have to do so in order to maintain their system when it is in nobody’s interest to do so on their own.

Most Scandinavian countries are very heavy on socialism, and yet that isn't a problem.

the difference between capitalism and communism is that the former works by assuming the worst of everyone and the latter works by assuming the best of everyone

They actually both assume the same - the best - about everyone. The entire premise of "trickle down economy" is based on "when you're rich enough, you will want to help the poorer people out and uplift your community". As we now know - that's not the case (because greed).

Communism does the exact same thing, but flipped on its head - "centrally managed economy will work because people will want to help out other people" forgetting about the greed factor.

You believe that capitalism can only be unrestrained.

I believe that the modern proponents of capitalism are fighting tooth and nail against any kind of restraint and that they are winning. I believe that the inherent premise of capitalism - that private ownership of capital and self interest will lead to market forces creating competition and the optimisation of the economy - are naive and false.

Yes, Europe has caged the leopard of capitalism with regulation and social welfare programs. It's just silly to me that so many sing the praises of a leopard when it must be kept caged at all times and watched constantly. Still in this form, it occasionally manages to devour a face or two before it's shoved back in its cage and the bars are repaired. Orbit gets out and rampages for a while, like is happening in the US. Clearly, powering your economy via caged leopard only way to do things.

There’s no one concept which makes for a good system in a totally undiluted form. Pure centralized economy: disaster. Pure capitalism, disaster.

If you think socialism necessarily means a centrally planned economy then you understand socialist movements about as well as you understand the superiority of capitalism.

It's honestly just a flipping of the premises of capitalism. That public ownership of capital and a focus on collective welfare and democracy rather than self interest is a better central pillar for an economy. The premise is that private ownership of capital driven by self interest will always gain a disproportionate amount of power and work against the public good.

What's really frustrating is that the disproportionate power granted to capitalists under capitalism has allowed them to undermined any attempts to try anything else. Every single time any government has turned to socialist values, whether by coup or peaceful elections, capitalists have used every power at their disposal to sabotage it. It reminds me of places like Haiti - the slaves overthrew their masters and the world made their lives hell for it... for generations.

If the capitalists don't manage to outright overthrow the government of the socialist state, the capitalists band together against it to such an extent that the socialist state often turns to authoritarian tactics to try and keep it's ideals. I'm not here to defend those tactics, just lament that the capitalist forces are so capable of preventing any real experimentation with socialism. It's a plague to them because it threatens their power. Seriously - look up any socialist state and I'm positive you'll find capitalist powers trying to overthrow or sabotage them.

Yes, there are also self proclaimed communist/socialist states that are closer to dictatorships. The Nazis also claimed to be socialists in order to get the support of the people. Clearly an unfortunate circumstance that muddies the water. No true Scotsman and all that.

Capitalism is inherently about vice exploutation and getting around rukes, though. You can't say 'capitalism but virtuous'; that's nonsense. 'Capitalism but restrained' translates to reality as 'caputalism but only fir the first five minutes before breaking everything'.

Modern neoliberal capitalism is mostly based on Friedrich Hayek who thought that any regulation to the market is harmful. Smith is long overdue.

During a party meeting, Margareth Thetcher literally pulled out a book of Hayek out of her handbag, slammed it on the table and declared "This is what we believe".

Adam Smith, the father of capitalism

Adam Smith is long dead and so is whatever he defined his ideal capitalism. The rich, the powerful, the most diehard proponents of capitalism... They are all pushing for less regulation, fewer social safety nets, lower taxes, lower labor cost. They absolutely don't give a flying fuck about their workers 'ability to provide for their families.

That's the end result of profit and greed being the driving force of the economy and markets. We're just back to a new flavor of feudalism.

Yes, they've somewhat tamed their capitalism with a lot of social safety nets and regulation, for now.

Don't get me wrong - I'm in favor of moving in that direction in the US. I want more regulation and stronger social safety nets. I just don't believe that a core of Capitalism is a requirement or even the ideal starting point. I also don't believe it deserves the reverence it gets.

As someone living in Scandinavian countries, it's not as pretty as it seems on the surface

Abolish capitalism

So the best way to do capitalism is to have less of it than other nations

But it doesn't do that. It motivates people to exploit, and we only get stuff as a side effect of scams. As the scams get more efficient, less stuff is produced, and all of it sucks more. It's a system that literally runs on vice, but needs moral safeguards to function; it has a limited life even if you're completely charitable to the idea.

Also, an attack on ((a straw man of) centralist authoritarian) communism is not a defense of capitalism.

Its not good at that though.

I want good cheap internet service. But our society values ownership, and people of value agree: that should be illegal. I want a (name a thing) app that won't spy on me. There is literally nothing i can buy. I want a dumb tv-there's one company im not sure they're still in business and it's impossible to get one; the factories just can't keep up. I want a car that doesn't spy on me ajy more than legally required (i don't actually, fuck cars, but every driver i know does). Nearly every product i buy, there are simple popular (combinations of) features i want that do not exist on the market.

It diesnt even do that. 'Windows isn't done 'til lotus won't run' platformism, old fashioned cartelism/bribery/blackmail, and the modern information economy completely completely negate that

Okay, yes, point; very good at that. Do we want that? Is it wkrtg the cost if we do?

It's odd to acknowledge the long history of sabotage against socialist countries--by the most powerful country in the history of the Earth--while also implying that socialist countries would fail on their own. If they would fail, then there's no reason to sabotage them. But if you'd like examples, look at the achievements in Cuba, Asia, and, yes, the U.S.S.R.

From Micheal Parentti's Blackshirts and Reds:

E.g 1: "Today, Cuba is a different place. For all its mistakes and abuses, the Cuban Revolution brought sanitation, schools, health clinics, jobs, housing, and human services to a level not found throughout most of the Third World and in many parts of the First World. Infant mortality in Cuba has dropped from 60 per 1000 in 1960 to 9.7 per 1000 by 1991, while life expectancy rose from 55 to 75 in that same period. Smallpox, malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid, polio, and numerous other diseases have been wiped out by improved living standards and public health programs. Cuba has enjoyed a level of literacy higher than in the United States and a life expectancy that compares well with advanced industrial nations."

E.g 2: "Consider Kerala, a state in India where the actions of popular organizations and mass movements have won important victories over the last forty years against politico-economic oppression, generating a level of social development considerably better than that found in most of the Third World, and accomplished without outside investment. Kerala has mass literacy, a lower birth rate and lower death rate than the rest of India, better public health services, fewer child workers, higher nutritional levels (thanks to a publicly subsidized food rationing system), more enlightened legal support and educational programs for women, and some social security protections for working people and for the destitute and physically handicapped. In addition, the people of Kerala radically altered a complex and exploitative system of agrarian relations and won important victories against the more horrid forms of caste oppression. Though Kerala has no special sources of wealth, it has had decades of communist organizing and political struggle that reached and moved large numbers of people and breathed life into the states democracy."

E.g 3: "During the years of Stalins reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism doesn't work" is to overlook the fact that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history."

In each of these cases, we see socialist policies lead to desirable outcomes despite serious economic barriers. Many capitalist developing nations cannot say the same. We conveniently seem to forget the exploited, overworked, and underpaid millions who suffer and die under the yoke of capitalism. Land, labor, and resources are stripped away and systematically funneled to the world's richest; and somehow we repeat the propaganda that this is the best system we can hope to achieve.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I have been to local protests (and the use of the word rioting suggests you might be of a different persuasion than me, and that’s ok). And for the record, I didn’t disagree with you. I grew up under capitalism and knew a brief period where capitalism wasn’t completely fucking over the lower and middle classes but that was before the US came out of the fascist closet.