Well its because the general idea of going to university, leaving with debt, getting a job to pay off those debts whilst borrowing more for that car, home and healthcare, etc is now seen today as the great scam highlighted by the pandemic.
It would require having multiple sources of revenue like having 3 jobs + going into youtube / twitch ad monetization, investing in stocks or crypto and your own business to increase your income.
Even if you have huge profits from this, you will still be taxed to death anyway (By being on the highest tax group).
He's been successful, given tremendous amount of money and support to the 3rd world, and VS Code wouldn't have existed without Microsoft :)
I don't like businesses focusing on profit so much either. I'm not sure if it's sustainable to focus on something else instead. Maybe when business ignore profit they crash and burn. I'm not sure because I don't like to think about profit, I'm a technician/specialist first, and find finances very boring. I would think small business could accomplish this, by staying small and focusing on the product and not growth. However the past year has definitely favored large corporations that could handle the lockdowns.
Why does it not fix these problems and instead propagate them?
I don't disagree about the rampant inequality at the global scale, but the solution is not clear and definitely not simple, especially when factoring different nations, different peoples and cultures and styles of living. Ultimately capitalism is solving some problems, and I'm not sure that the problems it is not solving, are the ones it is creating. In other words, maybe these problems exist despite capitalism, and we need systems on top of it, not a replacement.
Yet the whole world is suffering under capitalism.
Socialism and Communism were all about turning over all forms of ownership over to the government, and then allowing the government to decide who gets what and who is allowed to work where. In the end that puts all of the wealth and decision–making power into the hands of a single autocratic leader, no matter what the propaganda might claim.
Capitalism is simply about ownership. If you can start your own business, then you are a capitalist. If the government prohibits it, then you do not live in a free market. An owner can also be a worker, or else how could a new business get started?
Here’s a practical example: I get my hair cut at Dimaggio’s down the street from me, and the owner cuts hair right alongside his employees every day. He opened that shop decades ago, pays the bills, does the bookkeeping, opens the doors every morning, closes them at night. He is a capitalist, and he is a worker.
Obviously I’ve never looked at his books, but I imagine that he pays himself a salary and that the business has been saving most of what was left over after that, since it’s been a hard year and he hasn’t gone out of business. I think he might own the little building he’s in, and that he rents out the other half of it, but aside from that he hasn’t expanded the business.
https://www.thepoke.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/funny-e...
In reality, capitalism has produced more stuff for people to use and enjoy than any other system, ever. (I will admit that it may not do as well as we like at spreading that stuff around. But focus on fixing that, not on breaking the system that produces the stuff that so many of us live on.)
Harming yourself won't solve any problems.
Whatever problems you are facing are temporary. Things will get better.
It's just really how people my age feel looking at the world. We wanted things to be better and they aren't. War in Israel, pandemics where half the population can't even agree we are in one, political instability, the constant pressure to afford the life our parents had even though they had it easier. It's just a lot for our generation to deal with.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190111-seven-reasons-wh...
This is down to globalization and capatalism, which does sometimes feel like a race to the bottom but actually seems like it's working.
I'll agree that there is too much emphasis on profit at many companies at the moment. Food delivery companies aren't making the world a better place, they're making it worse with the increase in single use packaging. They're taking an outsized amount of money, forcing the restaurants to give up some of their profit, and as a result, the some restaurants just can't continue.
But there are also companies that are doing great things, and there are non-profits also doing great things.
Walk around your local grocery store, and realize that much of what is there exists because of capitalism. Do you have a favorite product or service? It probably exists because of capitalism.
Does that mean that everything needs to be done to maximize profit? No, that's just pure greed, and a major issue in society today. But though capitalism can feed into greed, it doesn't have to be that way. Perhaps it's an opportunity for you to find a tribe with the same beliefs as you and find a better way to have an impact.
For most of Time calories have been very expensive so we are conditioned to do the least amount of work possible for the most calories. Most economic systems involve some kind of force to get humans to work and work together. Capitalism seems to be the best we have developed. We like to think that we are happy to work for the betterment of humanity but the reality is that that only goes so far. Eventually work becomes a chore and we want to give up. Capitalism works because it hacks people's self interest to work for everyone.
Capitalism has problems but it's the best we have. The best we can do, for now, is to fix the problems that crop up and continue.
It’s a little on the long side, but I’ll quote from near the end of the introduction:
Towards evening, we finished the job. Everyone took delivery of
his final load of [fertilizer], but this time no one carried it
off to the river, but instead to his own kolkhoz. It was then
relayed to Moscow that everything was going well and that this
year's harvest would be a record, thanks to the Regional
Committee's First Secretary. Moscow promptly replied with a
congratulatory telegram to the First Secretary and to all workers
of the Region. And that was that.
Late that night, I delivered one and a half tons of the fertilizer
to the kolkhoz and reported to the Chairman that I had fulfilled
the task ahead of time. He thanked me but did not go into
detail. Everything had been clear to him from the very
beginning. He had long been accustomed to the fact that, whenever
the Communist Party issues instructions, these invariably end in a
way no one wishes to remember.
'Where shall I put this one and a half tons?' I asked.
'Keep them yourself! If necessary, I could produce record harvests
without fertilizers. But what's the point?'
And that was that. I poured the liquid over my own tiny private
plot. It proved an unpardonable mistake. Apparently, there was too
much fertilizer for my tiny area of ground and I applied it at the
wrong time. In May, when all the neighbouring kitchen gardens were
producing strong shoots mine was barren. I was horrified. What
would I eat during the winter? I was not going to become a soldier
until the following spring: so how was I to live until then? The
money I would receive for my work at the kolkhoz would be hardly
enough for two months of very frugal existence. The peasant's only
hope is his private plot which is not much bigger than the palm of
his hand. And if nothing grows on that - what then?
I had to make some urgent decisions. But what? I could not run
away from the kolkhoz: under socialism a peasant has no right to a
passport, although everybody else has an internal passport. As a
result of this simple restriction, a peasant cannot live in a
town, cannot marry a town girl or stay in a hotel. Travelling on a
plane is also forbidden. Who will let you board an aircraft
without a passport? Maybe you are a criminal?
Don't think it is just a Soviet communist caprice, either. It is a
vital necessity. If you are trying to establish material equality
among the inhabitants of any country, you must introduce similar
measures against the peasants. If you make all people equal, there
will be mass migration of peasants into towns, where the working
day is limited, where one need not work on rest days and holidays,
and where one can have a holiday in summer. But, if all the
peasants go to live in towns, your state of universal equality
will perish from hunger. And, in order to prevent that state of
affairs, you will be obliged to revert to the free market system,
that is to capitalism, or else keep the peasants in their villages
by force, by barbed wire, guard-dogs, threats and the introduction
of special anti-peasant legislation.
I was a convinced supporter of the material equality of all
mankind and therefore was prepared to spend all my life without an
internal passport, which means never flying in an aircraft, never
staying at an hotel and never marrying a town girl. But, in
compensation, we would have equality. There would be no
exploitation of man by man and we would have no rich and no poor!
That bloody fertilizer which ruined my harvest also ruined all my
plans and forced me to look for some new way of life. The choice
was not great: I could land up in jail, where the food is free, or
I could become an officer, where the food is also free. Taking
into consideration the fact that it is not difficult to land in
jail, I decided to exploit this possibility only if I did not
succeed in becoming an officer. And that didn't turn out to be
particularly simple!
In order to become an officer, I had to become a citizen of my
country, in other words somehow or other obtain a passport. They
say that, in the USSR, the acquisition of a passport for going
abroad is so difficult that it sometimes takes a man's whole life
to achieve. But, for anyone not entitled to receive one, to obtain
an internal passport is an altogether more difficult task. If you
have an internal passport and are trying to obtain one allowing
you to go abroad, theoretically the law is on your side. You can
protest, go on hunger-strike or write letters to Brezhnev. In the
end, if you persist, you may well be successful. But how to obtain
an internal passport if you are not entitled to one by law? If you
are just a Soviet peasant and if the law is against you and if you
live in a country but are not considered a citizen of that country
but only its peasant? If you have no right to any form of defense?
If you are born simply to work, simply as an integral part of the
agricultural work force, then what do you do? What can one do if
one does not represent a legal entity, just like for instance, a
horse or a pig, which also has no right to an internal passport
(let alone one for going abroad) and which is similarly forbidden
to stay in hotels or to travel by air?
To all intents I, like any other Soviet peasant, was an
outlaw. And yet, in spite of everything, I managed to get a
passport. It is a very long story indeed which I take no pleasure
in recalling. I had to blackmail the kolkhoz Chairman, deceive the
Chairman of the village Soviet, bribe a village Soviet Secretary
as well as an employee of the Military Commissariat: there was no
other way.
And, after all that, my passport was still not quite legal. At any
moment, it could have been proved that, even though I had been
born in the USSR of Soviet parents, whose ancestors down several
hundred years had never crossed any frontier or had any contact
whatsoever with foreigners, I had illegally appropriated the name
of a USSR citizen. So, as a matter of urgency, I had to change my
half-legal passport for another officially-issued document in my
name. And, to achieve that, I entered the Kharkov Guards Tank
Command School. They took my passport and I was given a new red
'military Card' in its place. Now nobody on earth could send me
back to the kolkhoz. There is no way back from the Soviet Army.
There are, of course, alternatives that don’t get brought up much these days. I believe that it is still possible to sell your belongings and join a monastery. By doing this you could free yourself from material concerns, and devote yourself to a lifetime of study, contemplation, and spiritual growth. Of course, monks must eat, so someone must peel the vegetables and clear the drains. Monks must bathe, so someone must clean the bathrooms. But at least you will be doing it for yourself, and for people you know and trust, rather than for a salary.
And yet, most people don’t bother to go to that extreme. There is far more “material equality” in America than there ever was in the Soviet Union. Farmers here do not lack televisions, telephones, or the freedom to fly in an airplane any time they choose. The civil engineers who maintain our sewer systems are rewarded well enough that they voluntarily enter that profession.
Maybe in the future we’ll have something better, but whatever it is it will definitely still reward people for their labor.