Late Stage Capitalism

You’re attempting to hand-wave away examples on how capitalism is worse than the systems of exploitation that came before it.

that's literally not the argument here, you're just arguing against a strawman right now. I don't disagree that capitalism is explorative. I just think that all of human society is to some degree built on an exploitative system. It's extremely difficult to establish a consistent means of defining what "exploitation" is throughout human society as well, mostly because history is really fucking hard.

my argument was that humans are innately exploitative of other humans given the means to exploit them, which seems to be supported throughout human history. And therefore, i don't believe this is a problem specifically bound within the jurisdiction of capitalism, but merely an extension of the outside want to exploit, being pushed forward IN capitalism. Capitalism doesn't do anything to stop this (yes it does) nor does it do anything to make it easier (you could probably argue it does, but you're grasping at straws there) in fact it's very easy to argument that it is the government overseeing the bounds of capitalism, that allows and in some cases, encourages exploitation of it's labor pool.

This is entirely reductive and sets you up for a head-in-the-sand defense of capitalism, where you don’t have to engage with evidence because golly gee, people are just gonna always be evil and if you sorta squint at history, you can just smear a whole bunch stuff together and pretend that it’s basically the same.

i mean, unless you're going to demonstrate this, have fun with that strawman.

I suspect it is your pessimism for humanity that is the problem in your understanding.

perhaps my pessimism is problematic, but being optimistic about the outlook of humanity doesn't have any known effect on the exploitation of people, arguably the opposite in fact.

I’m sure there are lots of estimates and comparisons on body counts for both isms, but I also think that a number like “hundreds of millions” should have a little more evidence to support it other than vibes.

look at any of the wars the soviet union was involved in, especially under the leadership of stalin, not only did stalin have a penchant for murdering his own people for convenience reasons, he also did it on mass throughout ww2. The famines are notable, especially with how much exporting of grain they did, although there are arguments against this (it may be more economical to export grain, and then import other food)

100's of millions is definitely quite a significant claim, it's known that there is somewhere between 10-20 million for sure. From what i can recall, we don't really have any good data on this unfortunately. 100's of millions may have been a fat finger typo, it may not have, but it's most definitely a bit unserious.

I don’t think you know enough specifics to speak on this issue. When you bring numbers into a discussion they need to be grounded in something other than your feelings.

in my defense, i didn't list a specific number for that reason, i would've done so otherwise.