It's ok to be angry about capitalism
- Thread starter XsjadoBlaydette
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Setting new bench press records because the Greek nu and upsilon are so ludicrously similar.
Or it can simply not exist in the first place, which is shouldn't unless it has actual reason to exist.
Love? Joy? Despair? Should they also not exist?
They're emotions, they do exist and the best path is to teach people to understand, process and express those feelings in suitable ways.
Telling people they're assholes for feeling, and should just stop is exactly how we got to where the US is right now.
No, how we got where the US is right now is by being mindlessly angry at meaningless things we have no good reason to be angry at, all to distract us from being angry at the important things we should be angry at and aren't. It's pointless, destructive both to others and oneself, and doesn't accomplish anything.
Yeah, a person is being an asshole if they're angry at something or someone they have no good reason to be angry at. If there was one single universally accepted definition of what an asshole is, that would easily cover it.
As for Love, Despair, Joy? Quit strawmanning already. I never said any feelings shouldn't exist, but that they should have a good reason to exist. Not having a good reason to feel those things is the source of a lot of problems as well. Feelings are only helpful and constructive if they have an actual reason to exist. A big part of the purpose of our intelligence is to curtail such baseless feelings before we do something foolish due to feeling those things, that goes for both the positive and negative ones.
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You mean like how the ruling class continually pits people against each other (e.g. racism) so that we don't notice the elites picking our pockets?
Fucking lol. Emotions are the lenses that contextualize our reality. Yes, we can second-guess them, but that does not make them baseless.
I'm sorry, I'm opposed on principle to people telling me what is and is not OK to be upset about.
Yes, but there is no better system for creating economic growth. Degrowth is anti-growth and regressive, Communism, Stalinism, and Maoism are too authoritarian. Any time Communism fails to either defend itself or just continue as a form of government many left-wing people will state it's not communism, then point to fictional governments like Star Trek and say it's what they want.
Democratic socialism like Rojava is failing against Turkey a bigger authoritarian power, also it's never been tried in a country with over 100 million.
Social Democracy which has been tried by countries of over 100 million in Brazil, and India is growing due to capitalistic countries, and it remains to be how it will do in the age of AI, and space exploration if we don't die from climate change first created by capitalism. But given how poorly they paid European programmers and engineers vs the US I would argue either the Europeans are un-dynamic or social democracy is.
Arab socialism failed, and South American Pink Wave socialism is faltering.
Juche which is what NK has is failing, but it's unclear due to Korea's low amount of fertile soil.
But again we live in a US-dominated world if the US which was the sole superpower that controlled a soft power with half of the world's economy at various points in history first with Europe then with Democratic parts of Asia plus Europe; wanted you to fail, you will fail no matter what economic system you have.
Democratic socialism like Rojava is failing against Turkey a bigger authoritarian power, also it's never been tried in a country with over 100 million.
Social Democracy which has been tried by countries of over 100 million in Brazil, and India is growing due to capitalistic countries, and it remains to be how it will do in the age of AI, and space exploration if we don't die from climate change first created by capitalism. But given how poorly they paid European programmers and engineers vs the US I would argue either the Europeans are un-dynamic or social democracy is.
Arab socialism failed, and South American Pink Wave socialism is faltering.
Juche which is what NK has is failing, but it's unclear due to Korea's low amount of fertile soil.
But again we live in a US-dominated world if the US which was the sole superpower that controlled a soft power with half of the world's economy at various points in history first with Europe then with Democratic parts of Asia plus Europe; wanted you to fail, you will fail no matter what economic system you have.
Based on pay scales? Oooookay, if that's the metric you wanna use, go nuts. *shrugs*
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Unchecked capitalism is extremely authoritarian. The authority is in the hands of private interests instead of the state (which is in the hands of private interests), but it's a system of spectacular violence. The violence of power hierarchies and wealth inequalities, slums versus ultra-rich neighborhood, misery versus opulance, the differential of agencies, the brutality of an increasingly vicious police force keeping dissent and outrage in check, the control of slave-like workers by minimal wage providers, the control of media narratives by press group owners, and generally the might-is-right law that wealth difference enforces. It's a system of absolute control of the masses by an obscenely wealthy elite, which hold political, societal, ideological and physical power over them. It reduces the alternatives to obedience and self-humiliation as surely as any state-centered dictatorship, and, structurally and ideologically, has surprising levels of overlap with the most stalinist versions of communism, be it with its focus on gigantism and overproduction, its dehumanizing usage of the workforce (humans seen as a disposable material resource), its gatekeeping of alternative discourses, its instrumentation of the judiciary, its usage of physical coercion, its social control through scapegoat diversions and its false discourse on common good, meritocracy and social mobility. It's simply a different gang at the top, a different color, but the structures, discourses, values and outcomes are eerily similar.
Can't help but notice you're completely excluding... uhrm, stage of development, resources, history, geography, trade, and pretty much everything except a reductionist economic-system designation.
Not to mention that a large number of the countries you cited were relentlessly exploited by feudal or capitalist countries for centuries of their existence. Which is... going to have an effect on their performance.
And even then, countless under-regulated capitalist countries are performing inordinately worse than social democracies. Even the under-regulated capitalist countries with the higher growth and production, like the US, are dismally underperforming compared to social democracies where it matters most: pay, wellbeing, health.
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I saw a news story about African shoe manufacturers that were saying, "quit it!". That when we give millions of Africans shoes, we undermine their economy.
I read another story listing things we think we do that help but harm, including in the US donating good, old clothes as it does the same thing here.
But (other than the truly disabled) would people be naked or shoeless but for this aid?
Even kings didn't have AS much power as we like to portray. A king can't run things by themselves and so they need the support of others and by that token they must enrich those that work with them in some way. Ironically, if we look at history "right by birth" is a more moral system than we give it credit for because it gives the singular leader an amount of security in their position so that they less likely to become paranoid and start cutting the heads off of all the competent people around them that could possibly usurp their power.
Any system we criticize needs to be viewed together with what the people at the time were trying to deal with. And it seems clear that monarchy is an attempt to deal with situations like Alexander the Great's "to the strongest" will which resulted in huge wars and lots of deaths, not just of normal people living their lives but also the best and brightest who are killing each other to try and be top banana.
Consider what the fastest way to talk with someone miles and miles away was for most of human history. It was either send someone with a message, on foot, or send someone riding a horse, with large time gaps in between being sent and being received. Republics like in Athens and Rome, worked when they were smaller. When Rome expanded larger and larger, it outgrew what it's system could handle with their ability to communicate. Or to try and summarize, it's like the cut song from The Lorax movie about biggering triggering more biggering.
The term "monarchy" covers all sorts of very different systems. They may share certain similarities, but often there are massive differences.
Oh, I think I get it. The problem, or one of them, with the "right by birth" model is again, biggering. The longer a dynasty continues, the more people there are that can trace their bloodline to the first of the dynasty. Once you have enough people related to the sire in high positions of government you end up right back where you started where almost anyone can make a claim for the throne.
I mean more specifically the paranoia and punishing people for imagined transgressions. When a central authority holds supreme executive power with little to no accountability, it gives a perverse incentive to act on your worst impulses.