It's ok to be angry about capitalism
- Thread starter XsjadoBlaydette
- Start date
You need a lot of money to be a hermit in the UK, price of land etc,
I've got enough stuff to be a hoarder but none if it is worth enough for me to be a hermit.
I know a few places you can get cheap land... but, uh, how do you feel about deserts?
Not if whatever you're angry at doesn't deserve that anger, or worse, the reasons you're angry at that thing are factually false. Not trying to say Capitalism doesn't deserve it but I'm pointing out that there are reasons why it can not be okay to be angry at something.
Exactly. If something exists, from a grain of sand to whole economic systems to entire countries, human beings will find a way to exploit it to their own benefit and if that happens to screw over everyone else? Well, they deserve it for not coming up with the way to exploit X first. Or so the mentality of such people goes.
Humans are inherently a very selfish self centered species. The vast majority of us care about ourselves first, our families second, and our communities third if at all, and we give less and less of a damn the more wide it becomes. Some people switch the orders of those things around, but they're a minority. The purpose of the government is to curtail this by using laws and regulations to keep the exploitation down to a minimum, but the government itself is just as vulnerable to being exploited as anything else.
Nearly all the flaws in capitalism could be very easily solved by simply putting up very obvious laws and regulations designed to patch the holes in it. However, since people who are in power are the rich corporate fatcats and people who are being bribed and otherwise controlled by the rich corporate fatcats, there's no way in hell those laws and regulations could pass. In fact, the only reason that the Capitalism we have now has any laws and regulations at all is because the rich corporate fatcats are just as interested in screwing each other over and creating as high a barrier of entry to small businesses out as they are in screwing over the common man. Ultimately what really keeps exploitation down is the endless battle for supremacy among the rich and powerful and that trickles down to protections for the common man.
Things now are really not that much different from the days of kingdoms and serfs where royalty had all the power and rights while the peasants only got whatever scraps the rich bothered to give them to keep them working. It's just cloaked in a bunch of nonsense designed to make the common man think they have the power to change their destinies, which keeps them from rising up and in this day and age they couldn't rise up even if they wanted to.
Not inherently, I don't think; we've just been convinced that an economic system that's less than 300 years old is the natural state of a ~2 million year old species. Somehow.
I'm not sure that the ownership of the means of production being in a few managerial hands could be fixed by a few regulations. Seems like that needs a bit more of a root-and-stem solution.
The cruel, greedy, and selfish among us have a vested interest in convincing us that being cruel, greedy, and selfish is the nature of humanity. I think it says a lot that kids don't have these "natural" tendencies until it gets metaphorically beaten into them. It takes a lot for a society to turn cruel and people resist it every step of the way.
Those are features, not bugs. The very concept there exists some platonic form of capitalism in which these social, economic, and political outcomes do not or cannot happen is in itself a lie. Neo-feudalism is as much the endgame of capitalism, as fascism is the endgame of western liberal democracy; not that the two aren't so interconnected they may as well be treated synonymously by an educated, ethical, actor.
I can think of one user that posts here occasionally.
It's not OK to be angry at me.
I wouldn't go so far as saying human are naturally cruel, greedy, and selfish, but kid 100% have these tendency and need quite a lot of training to stop and recognize that being horrible asshole is not a good way to live. There's a reason "stop hitting your sibling" is a frequent refrain of childhood and that kindergarten/kid show need to constantly drum "sharing is caring" stuff. You can also see it in chimps, human closest relative, that are capable of incredible cruelty, unless you believe that the cruel, greedy, and selfish human are spending time convincing chimps for some reason, its pretty clear that these aspect are naturally part of people. But so are compassion and generosity, people are complex, diverse and change over time, sometime for the best, sometime not. Ultimately any system that doesn't take into account the possibility of greedy human getting their hand on power will fail because it'll inevitably happens.
Capitalism account for this possibility (probably not by design) by diluting power, ie in capitalism the total "power" of a society is split between all of the "capital", while it is possible for someone to gather all the capital, they'll inevitably have to spend that capital (ie power) therefore diluting their share and empowering others. Other systems tend to gather power in position (ie the king has power because he's the king) which is indivisible and can therefore be spent freely without losing their value and can also be transferred to another generation without losing value, it also does not have mechanism like inflation to dilute already existing power with infusion of new power.
No, it's absolutely okay to be angry at literally anything at all. The not being okay part of anger can arise in how an individual chooses to process and express that anger.
if by 'efficient', you mean "lets anyone and anything it can't immediately figure a way to exploit simply wither and die".
- Apr 1, 2009
- 15,186
- 4,045
- 118
- Gender
- Whatever, just wash your hands.
No, I mean under capitalism you will tend to get more efficient markets as people identify segments that can be better served and create goods/move resources to serve those segments.
Like crypto farms, subprime mortgages, and starving renewables for coal.
No it's not. If one doesn't have good reason to be angry one is just being a dick. The idea that it's okay to be angry at anything even if it doesn't deserve it is the source of a lot of problems today.
The behaviour of a species at immature stage of development is not an indication of the fundamental nature of that species.
- Apr 1, 2009
- 15,186
- 4,045
- 118
- Gender
- Whatever, just wash your hands.
Not really, those are things that happen when you end up with under regulated/policed markets. Well, aside from crypto, which is its own weird thing.