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If that's better than some having more money that they could possibly use, many having access to amazing amenities and luxuries, but a lot struggling to eat enough quality food and not being able to have a roof over their head is IMO a philosophical question. Do you prefer everyone (of course with some minor exceptions for higher ups) to be equally "not great, but not terrible" or do you prefer some to have amazing lives, but others to suffer?
Other than that, spot on though.
This isn't the choice. Socialism (actual socialism) repeatedly starves its populations. Capitalism repeatedly creates situations where new things are created that make everyone's lives better, and existing things get cheaper and better over time.
I.e. you can't just ignore the opportunity cost of innovation and prioritisation via a decentralised market. An innovation-focused dichotomy is: should we spend lots of effort trying to precisely spread around what we have today, while still having a privileged class based on politics, or should we encourage people to do things that raises the floor and the ceiling for everyone, and have a privileged class based on value they created?
> everyone's lives better
> things get cheaper and better over time.
Oh, fuck off with that bullshit. Capitalism may appear to thrive when living in a first-world country, but only does so through exploitation and cutting corners. More to the point, isn't it funny that despite capitalism being pretty much the de facto economic system of the world only a few countries are actually deemed worth living in? No, some abstract 'informed exchange of currency' didn't magically cause things to appear out of thin air. People make things, and they are almost certainly underpaid and overworked. Behind every AI model there are X poorly paid workers around the world that curated the data that it needs to function. Behind every piece of clothing there are Y poorly paid workers in Bangladesh that made it. And behind every rechargeable battery there are Z Congolese kids risking death inside a mine in search for cobalt. We might try to (and often do) look away, pretend that those are the unfortunate results of corporate blunders that seldom happen, but they're not. Invisible exploitation is what makes the kind of lifestyle that is available in first-world countries possible.
As for cutting corners, check out some videos on tofu dreg projects, it will enlighten you on corner cutting in a communist system.
I think this is a common and really fundamental misunderstanding. It works through signalling demand through pricing, rather than through bureaucrats guessing, giving anyone the chance to take a risk and keep the reward (mostly) if they manage to create value for other people, rather than how much they toe the party line. It definitely doesn't only work "through exploitation and cutting corners". Those things happen everywhere.
Just look at the monumental change in China due to the controlled (too controlled[0]) introduction of capitalism. If you let people create value for each other and get out of their way, you get stupendous results compared to thinking a centralised bureaucracy, slave-owner, monarch, or lord making the decisions.
> No, some abstract 'informed exchange of currency' didn't magically cause things to appear out of thin air
No one would say it did.
> People make things, and they are almost certainly underpaid and overworked. Behind every AI model there are X poorly paid workers around the world that curated the data that it needs to function. Behind every piece of clothing there are Y poorly paid workers in Bangladesh that made it. And behind every rechargeable battery there are Z Congolese kids risking death inside a mine in search for cobalt.
This isn't a capitalism thing. This is a poverty thing. It's lifted unequally globally, but it is lifted. The problem isn't capitalism; the problem is that doing these jobs is currently their best option. Similar or worse conditions were found in Britain under 100 years ago[1]. That's a very short timeframe for capitalism to have lifted the entire world out of poverty; too silly to take seriously as a criticism of an economic process.
> We might try to (and often do) look away, pretend that those are the unfortunate results of corporate blunders that seldom happen, but they're not. Invisible exploitation is what makes the kind of lifestyle that is available in first-world countries possible.
No, not just that. If we replaced those miners with robots we'd still have the lifestyle. Framing everything as exploitation is a dead end.
In theory. In practice, can you really say that existing things are getting cheaper and better, generally? Most of the Western world is seeing unprecedented price increases combined with record profits in multiple industries (so it's not just general inflation) combined with drastic quality and quantity decreases, combined with "enshitification" across multiple industries.
Price increases are almost always unprecedented, unless they previously went down. They are now going up, but not because of capitalism. Because of Covid spending, fuel price increases, minimum wage increases, etc etc. Macroeconomic effects (that we can debate the goodness of somewhere else), but generally ones related to government rather than business. This is though a very recent view, though. Are car prices, for the same quality of car, really better now than 30 years ago? Or has a pretty relentless competitive market for car manufacturers made cars far better value than they once were?
I don't think there have been drastic quality reductions of any kind in many areas.
"Enshitification" is a very narrow view of I think online platforms, particularly VC-backed ones starting free and looking for a sustainability too late; definitely not generalisable to "capitalism".
[0] maybe not aesthetically
There's the argument that in a planned economy, things can be terrible for pretty much everyone, like in Venezuela or North Korea.
You also have to account for the central planners choosing to repress people for political purposes.
Maybe you can give us a specific example of a centrally planned society which worked OK according to you? Here's a compendium of case studies to get you started: https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Niemietz-Socia...
I many times suspect that people who yearn for communism/socialism just wish to be those who come out on top from the revolution such as the Castros, the Chavez, Maduro, Guevara, Ortega, etc.
Strangely one of those things that culturally, we can't get past. It's a false dichotomy at best, and completely ignores the costs of implementing capitalism.
Capitalism at least gives you the freedom to make your own choices. All the others (except anarchism) don't.
So I'd say that having a capitalist system is a requirement for also being a democracy. Moreover, the rapid fall of the fascist nations suggests that having a capitalist system is, in fact, also conducive to not having a dictatorship: economic freedom leads to people wanting political freedom as well.
The problem with capitalism is that people misunderstand it to mean that some billionaire owns 'everything' - whereas it really is YOUR freedom to choose how YOU lead your life. I'm all in favor of curbing predatory practices, but all too often 'taxing the rich' turns out to mean 'taxing the middle class'. The drive towards ever-heavier taxation, where tax rates only ever go up, and never down again, can only be fought by striving for more capitalism.
No True Scotsman in 3, 2...
I'm not sure why this is even a question, you could have thought of this yourself: "I think I'm not earning enough. Should I stick around in this job or find a better one?"
Your snide comment is also not a response to what I posted, but I guess presenting a counter argument is just too difficult.
What freedom does capitalism bring you? Freedom only exists under capitalism if you have enough capital to avoid the bottom rungs.
Free to work 8+ hours a day at a job I'll never get the full value out of? Free to work for a sociopathic POS that only sees workers as lines in a spreadsheet?
Get real. Capitalism cannot bring good to people's lives. We frame it that way because our societies literally cannot think of another way to do things.
Imagine saying 'sorry, unilateral exploitation is the only way'.
What intellectual rot.
No thanks, I’ll take the system that allows me to move up or down generally in correlation with my effort and work ethics.
People have multiple jobs and can't afford healthcare and are living paycheck to paycheck or don't have parental leave or paid sick leave or paid time off do that because they want to, right?
I've always seen this as the markets reflecting what we collectively actually prioritize. Sure we want to be safe and educated, but damn it if we don't really get enjoyment out of fancy new toys, vacations, and new cloths.
In this case capitalism doesn't seem to be holding down salaries of the careers you listed. Its noteworthy that most of those industries are unionized, but if the unions are worth anything at all they should be pushing salaries higher than the market would have otherwise paid.
There is still some level of market sentiment though, both in that we don't collectively prioritize politically pushing through higher wages and individuals are still willing to do the jobs for the current salary rates.
Nursing may actually get the triple whammy - unions, governments, and insurance monopolies all weigh heavily into hourly rates and salaries for medical professionals.
There is still some level of market sentiment though, both in that we don't collectively prioritize politically pushing through higher wages and individuals are still willing to do the jobs for the current salary rates.
Nursing may actually get the triple wammy - unions, governments, and insurance monopolies all weigh heavily into hourly rates and salaries for medical professionals.
That is not a sustainable solution for society.