You're right that I don't see the conditions in the third world every day. But I do get to see a lot of people that the supposed first world system rejects: The mentally ill, those addicted to drugs, those so ill in various ailments that they can't work and I get to see children grow up in abject poverty way more often then I'd like. Don't think that I don't understand just how fucked up global capitalism is or that I don't want to change it.
Good that you understand at least that.
The solution to one house being on fire is not to set all the other houses on the street on fire and making everyone homeless.
Is it not absurd that under the current conditions the only way I have to shut off the fire is to burn everything down?
Is it not absurd that there's more people in my situation than in yours?
This is literally my entire point. I am not trying to defend capitalism, global "free markets" or all the bad shit it is doing to both humanity and the very planet we live on. My point is that tearing it down without knowing what to replace it with will be worse for everyone. We need to come up with something new (and very fast), but until that thing is in place and has a popular movement behind it, it is folly to fuck over the US stock market for the lulz or start an armed revolution and thinking it will do anything but get a bunch of armed thugs into power instead (or even more likely: just get a lot of people killed for no gain at all).
The problem with your point is that it requires the majority to suffer for the good of a minority which is fundamentally absurd, as for a revolution, sure that's what happened in México las time we tried one, fighting for basically Anarchy but the USA's puppets fucked us over and ceased power, that's precisely why I say it needs to be global this time, as for death, we're dying anyway at least it's better to die trying to do something than just lay down and wait for it which is what your asking us to do anyway, I don't think you understand that we don't really have anything to lose, we already have nothing.
Capitalism at many times has delivered. The postwar period 1945-1970 was probably one of the greatest periods of advancement and social progress ever experienced. Whilst it is dubious we could simply reintroduce those policies (circumstances of the world have changed, and policy must reflect that) clearly capitalism can work to the greater benefit of the masses far more than it does now.
Sure it was better that what came before it, but that doesn't mean we should settle for it, under the current circumstances there are zero ways of making it work for the people, to think otherwise is nothing but naive, it's literally leading us to environmental annihilation and as long as it's more profitable to ignore it, there's no way of stopping that, it helped us progress in the past isn't really a good argument when it's holding us back now.
The other thing I would simply ask is what anyone proposes replacing it with. The track record of capitalism's known alternatives all have substantially worse records. I find it hard to believe that a functional successor to capitalism will not be based on the same principles of private ownership and profit (as economies from the dawn of time have generally been). What it seems we don't want is the same rapacious capitalist class we do now: overpowerful billionaires and financial industry, exploitation (human and enviromental), gross wealth imbalance.
I'm not an economist, not am I really educated so I don't know that much about history either, what I do have is at least basic common sense, the track record of Capitalism is abysmal all claims of anything else are propaganda, more people have died under it than under any other economic system in history, but it's really funny how it only matters when it's other economic systems, as if many of the people that died under socialism or communism didn't do so because they were directly being invaded by capitalist pigs who were actively killing them but somehow that counts as a victim of socialism rather than a victim of capitalism, because you know that makes fucking sense.
According to some economic information Socialist economies provide a better quality of life than capitalist economies at the same level of development, of course we focus on the socialist defects while we ignore the suffering capitalist economies, which sounds awfully convenient when making this argument.
Like I said I don't really know, I'm not an expert on the subject, what I do know is that every day things get worse under the current system and we're refusing to do something about it because the people that are making things worse say the alternatives would be far worse, and you know what, things are pretty close to rock bottom for me anyway so fuck it I'd rather gamble it all on something different than keep doing the same bullshit we've been doing for now over a century which just seems to make things worse and worse.
