The free market harnesses greed to make everyone else better off. We live in a golden age, all the result of greed.
No other economic system has come close to that.
No other economic system has come close to that.
Yes, I'm glad you live at the top of the pyramid in a comfortable American existence (a lifestyle which if everybody on the planet led we'd already be extinct), but don't forget the billions who aren't reaping those benefits.
Quoting old ideologies is getting wearying. From screeds about 'labor' (its becoming extinct; what about Marxism then?) to imperialism (the majority of countries in the world are democracies) to blaming the rich for success.
We have achieved better living standards over the years despite capitalism, not because of it.
Meanwhile inequality grows, democracies are backsliding across the globe, and inexhaustible "growth capitalism" has us facing a climate crisis which it continues to refuse to tackle. Inequality of wealth and income means necessities such as housing are ever more expensive, pushing ever more people into virtual "debt bondage" towards the landed class. Inequality of wealth also means inequality of opportunities, as the rich are afforded endless cheap credit and the poor cannot afford homes and cannot afford to start businesses.
But all that's okay, because we get 1001 new models of phones every year and TVs are cheaper than ever.
This is my opinion of course.
> Quoting old ideologies
The myth that Marxism is "old and irrelevant" is what's getting wearing :) On the contrary, it's frightening how relevant it still is, and how much Marxist criticism and analysis applies to 21st century capitalism.
Read his major points (and not just what other people tell you his major points are) and you'll be surprised.
> labour becoming extinct
I don't get it.
> most countries in the world are beautiful democracies
There's only really one country in the world, as far as I'm aware, that truly deserves the label "democracy", and that's Switzerland, with high levels of political participation, a free press, well-functioning institutions, etc. Maybe the autonomous municipalities in Chiapas too :)
All the rest are the bare minimum to keep the people from rebelling.
> imperialism
Imperialism is a major feature of global capitalism. Quick example: the market logic (a weasel-word for violent coercion by powerful countries) dictates that Ethiopia faces famines at the same time that it exports massive amounts of food.
What happens to Marxism when the workers can't own the means of production, because there aren't any workers in the plant? That's already true in many, many operations. Automation has been explosive in the last 20 years. Production is off-shore when Chinese hand-work is cheaper then retooling for automation. When a factory 'comes back' from overseas, its because volume has increased to the point its effective to automate. No jobs come back (ok 2 or 3 automation Engineers but not 100 workers).
Today America's largest buyer of automation equipment is ... China. They're 20 years behind us but catching up fast. Imagine another Billion workers put out of a job.
The writing is on the wall. Workers are going to be irrelevant, and not that far in the future. Going on about what the workers are owed is going to be moot. Fast becoming so.
What works then? Not capitalism, I admit, because owning a factory that produces goods quits returning profit when there's few that have the money to buy the goods. The whole system is circling the drain.
But no just keep on about Marxism or workers rights or whatever, irrespective of how that group is dwindling and will soon be gone and the world is no longer an 1800's industrial society.
Oh and that mark about "No True Democracies" is an old, old, tired trope called "No True Scotsman". There's no point in addressing that at all.
It's ridiculous — and frankly reeking of inane SV bubble/echo chamber — that you make the absurd claim that "labour is a thing of the past". Plus dismissing concern about exploitation as being "workers rights or whatever".
2. Socialism is (broadly speaking) about social ownership of capital / means of production. Corporations being worker-owned is only one way of implementing a fairer and more efficient ownership model. In a future hypothetical world with replicators, post-scarcity and post-labour, if it ever comes, socialism will only become more of a necessity. Everybody will have to own a stake in the replicators, the mechanism of private and absolute control over capital will be absurd.
I don't dismiss workers' rights; but when there are fewer and fewer workers needed in society, workers' rights become less and less the focus.
Automation means most non-professionals will stop being employed. Except in make-work personal services. No road-building gangs; no fields of farm workers; no rows of checkout clerks or bank tellers. All going away. One person in 100 is needed to keep the electronics factory going. Workers will have no place. Even in China; most of your 3B will be out of a job. Not in the far future, but probably in your lifetime.
Folks love to point out every shit job somebody is resorting to as 'employed' and put the god of employment above any other measure. Putting pumping gas on a par with owning your own business, counting them both equally as 'employment'. The old Protestant work ethic writ large - the point of human existence is to be employed, at all cost.
Back in the '50s we read stories of the day robots would take the burden of labor from our shoulders so we could live better lives. Now that it's happening we read of nothing but panic and desperate moves to toward 'full employment'.
If Socialism will find a way to keep the high-tech machinery of society going with technical folks in charge and making the decisions, well I'll be flabbergasted. Because putting former shoe-makers in charge of a silicon plant seems doomed. Just look at existing experiments in Socialism to see the disasters - Venezuela springs to mind.
It'll be something like Capitalism or Socialism but adapted to the new reality, that keeps the machinery running. Not old 1800's papers about a bygone age.
If worker collectives are more efficient, why are they unable to compete with shareholder corporations?