this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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The memes of the climate
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Better as in what though?
We've used every economic system by itself, and the only really successful version is a combination of them with proper regulation. What else do you do?
Well there was a guy with a funny beard who wrote about what happens when capitalism produces more goods and services than could ever be reasonably consumed by the populace of the world. He wrote about how there were basically 2 coutcomes. Either the the rising supply just keeps pushing prices down until the only issue comes down to a logistics and distribution problem and money functionally becomes pointless and state power doesnt have any heirarchy to enforce. Or the people with money and power enforce artificial scarcity, through tactics like letting crops die in the fields, or only release so many diamonds into the market and promiting it as a good thing, to protect their wealth and power.
That seems more like a jab at capitalism than anything I said in that previous question.
Better as in what? What else hasn't been tried?
Consider this: modern capitalism was pretty much inconceivable to people living in the feudal era. In the same way, it is possible that the system we need is inconceivable to us at the moment. Critiquing capitalism and advocating for a move away from it is still useful.
There are plenty of things that haven't been tried aside from small-scale examples:
Okay, fair enough.
It is a jab at capitalism. But the theory as the funny beard man stated it would be an evolution of capitalism. Capitalism was very good at making technological progress, advancing productive capacity immensely. His critique is that all that progress wasn't used to make people's lives better.
The major iterations of communism that everyone points to didn't start with fully industrialized societies. They were predominantly agrarian societies coming out of a monarchy, that were pushed through industrialization very rapidly and were left extremely unstable and subject to extreme authoritarianism.
Socialism is probably the most realistic solution that's been "half tried" (and yes there's a difference between socialism and communism, the right just doesn't want people to know it because they might start thinking there's a viable alternative)... State run non profit corporations for all essential needs, capitalism for things that aren't essential. We went as far as creating some state run corporations, some of them non profit, but we never moved far enough in that direction to truly see how beneficial it can be for the masses to not have to enrich investors when buying food or clothing or renting an apartment...
I like how someone writing something 100 years ago makes it true
Cool, we still use Socratic Dialogue as an instructional tool and that has existed for 2500 years. Something being old doesn't make it useless.
I didn't say the problem is the age
You literally did say that.
No? I said the fact that he said it 100 years ago isn't evidence what he said is true.
Cool and yet his descriptions of how the wealthy class would rather artificially limit production rather than give up the power that money has are accurate.
People often- although not always follow incentives. The wealthy aren't unique in that- and that isn't surprising.
Which is why it's important to critically examine the systems that we live within and change them when the incentives put forward by said system cause harm to more and more people.
So the artificial scarcity doesn't ring true to you?
They did give you two options. They didn't say those are the only two options.
Oh the guy who only complained and made effective criticisms with no realistic alternative, yeah sounds like a modern communist to me.
Because a few hundred years with constantly changing technology is an exhaustive test of every possible version of organizing society. Pack up folks, it's all been tried and only one thing works or will ever work.