Originally Posted by stormcrow
Yes recently in America capitalism has been somewhat merged with elements of socialism which I don't think is inherently a negative thing. Why do you believe that socialism and communism lead to corruption?
The timeline of the departure from any sort of notion of free-market capitalism in the U.S. stretches quite a bit longer than "recently."
I don't care about whether socialism and communism lead to corruption. What I care about is how they're inherently unstable (an attribute usually given to capitalism) and doomed to fail. Socialistic and communistic economies cannot rationally distribute resources, and so all they lead to is a poor, starving, and pissed off population.
I for one am skeptical of the idea that any form of government can cater to all the peoples needs.
They can't. Central planners lack the knowledge necessary cater to everyone's needs. Only the cooperation (even if people don't know each other personally) of individuals can do this.
Capitalism has tried really hard to sculpt peoples desires toward unnecessary things in order to fulfill them producing the illusion of a high standard of living.
This is rather subjective, don't you think? What you deem unnecessary others deem important.
Materialism is a form of social repression. I believe this to be only one of the factors responsible for (American) apathy towards politics, as long as we are fat and happy with our ipod and starfucks we have no reason to complain right? Sorry bout the rant.
Again, very subjective. Some people bask in their material objects and are content, while others relinquish all but a few worldly items.
I think it would be great if people shared and helped each other out towards a common goal of benefiting all, but often times we are only motivated to enrich ourselves not our community, no matter whose teeth we have to kick in to get to the top, an attitude which capitalism breeds. Not to mention capitalism is destructive to the earth as well as destructive to our relations to each other(see Marx's theory of alienation) and perpetuates inequality.
A very utopian ideal. Unless you plan on kick-starting a real-life experiment based on Brave New World and condition people from birth to have a common goal in mind in other to achieve some sort of "new economic man," I don't see such a system working.
The thing about capitalism (and for clarification purposes, I do not mean the mercantilistic/Keynesian system the U.S. has at the moment) is that you don't need everyone working toward a common goal. Billions of people across the globe work in their own self-interests, without knowing each other, probably never having the chance to meet each other, who share vastly difference political and religious beliefs, and amazingly, as Bastiat noted, "Paris gets fed."
Regarding the environment, that is a fairly complex issue. It has a lot to do with who-owns-what-land, and the tragedy of the commons tends to play a large role. Saying "capitalism destroys the environment" glosses over the issue, IMO.
I agree about the idea that a form of self-governance(hopefully a stateless, classless society) would be ideal but I do not think this goal is compatible with capitalism.
I know why you think this, and I obviously disagree, but is it possible in any other system?
If a form of self-government (lets drop the political correctness and just call it anarchism) is achieved, human history would have completed a circle and ended like it began.
Why?
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