Just look at any internet thread about Communism today, haha. It's a very compelling fantasy
> Just look at any internet thread about Communism today, haha. It's a very compelling fantasy
Yep, everyone is rich. That's reality, that is. No doubt about it.
Communism now, those guys are all living a fantasy.
I think the thing is with smartphones that they're clever but they're not that expensive. A lot of what makes them special is just derived from sand one way or the other. Compared to renting an apartment, your phone barely registers on your finances, it's usually at least an order of magnitude out even if you're in a cheap place and have an expensive phone.
Yet housing is the real necessity, why hasn't capitalism made that cheap yet? It feels like a case of bad incentives. Which is not to say that communism would do any better, I'm well aware of its pitfalls. But I think the idea that capitalism makes everyone rich is also a bit absurd.
So capitalists technology enriched poor people in ways the communism never would, via technology advancement. The smartphone comprises extreme technology infrastructure, from chips, to wireless, to software... immense industrial coordination.
Right now communists want to build multi-family homes like we all live in NYC, and claim we should do this on ideological grounds (environment, etc). Housing needs notwithstanding (and exaggerated imho), communist housing would not enrich even a middle class family who has a house in the burbs. The ideology of communist housing actually plays right into capitalist factoria.
What communists don't understand is that communism IS capitalism. I think this is what Marxism was trying to elucidate about capital, but then folks of a certain persuasion asked Marx to write a manifesto for communism which they spread the world over for ideological purposes.
Communism and capitalism are the same coin. So communist fight the wrong fight. They fight to create conditions favorable to capitalism in the name of taking the factory they never seem to get. Crowded housing and population equals commodity labor (cheap, fungible). You can't run a giant factory without nearby workers, and they can't afford houses, so you pack them in "multi family housing". Now you need to convince them this is actually the morally right thing, so communism says its better for the environment (which is not even a core concern of communism, so that proves the ideologues are just shifty, shifty to the left as needed).
It has, but only in Japan where they actually have a free market: https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e...
So I'd argue it's more of a social market than a free market as such. Although I can see how you'd consider it more of a free market than in the US with its zealous zoning rules.
But if you ignore that, then obesity is a problem I guess.
edit: this sibling comment explains things a lot more eloquently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34523261
They are when compared to alternative paths. The differences in financial fortitude may be large but the "poor" in most capitalist nations are far richer than the true poor elsewhere. Life expectancy is higher as well which is not surprising given the relation between having access to basic needs - which most people in capitalist (and pseudo- or state-capitalist like China) societies are - and life expectancy. The number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide declined by 80 percent from 1970 to 2006 either under capitalism or Chinese state-capitalism under Deng Xiaoping. Poverty worldwide included 94 percent of the world’s population in 1820. In 2011, it was 17 percent. Mortality rates for children under the age of five declined by 49 percent from 1990 to 2013 (WHO).
The other side of the coin is just as clear, Communism pulls down everyone but the anointed party members down into poverty. Taking Venezuela as a recent example Chavez and his cronies managed to turn the richest country in south America into a basket case in a measly 15 years.
So, is capitalism pure good and communism pure evil? It depends on the scale at which they are applied. In my family we live like communists where everyone gets according to their needs while partaking in the upkeep of our facilities according to their abilities. Most families work like this I think? Yay, communism works... at this scale. At a national scale it does not as has been shown countless times. Capitalism is the other way around, at the smallest scale - family, extended family, neighbourhood - it tends to lead to unappealing results while it shines at a larger scale - at least when the excesses are kept in check. Just like communism it lends itself to concentrations of power in the hands of a few but unlike communism it can be kept in check without falling apart at the seams.