"So you want to live in North Korea???". No, I don't. What I want is a system where we can get quality products that are not manufactured by slaves on the other side of the world, and that didn't require burning 3 bathtubs of gasoline. And our system definitely ain't it.
Sure you could imagine something better. But such a system could very easily have fatal flaws you didn't imagine. In fact, North Korea started as just such a utopian ideal.
You could also argue that we used to have a system that was better than this. But if that system ultimately became this one, than reverting to the previous state would likely at some point result in the current state occurring again.
So in a sense "Do you want to live in North Korea?" is the only valid question.
You're right in that reverting to a previous system will always be a temporary solution, but I don't believe there is any perfect system able to endure until the end of times.
"Do you want to live in North Korea?" should never be used as an argument against any kind of reforms deemed "socialist" by the Right.
As a start, would it be so bad to implement a carbon tax? Tighter control of human rights on foreign imports? Stronger social nets? The list goes on...
It seems to me, the main reason is that representatives won't vote for them. Why not? Mainly because their financial and political incentives are structured in such a way that they can't. Why are these incentives like this? You can keep peeling back layers of the onion like this forever, but as some point you realize it's just due to structures of the system that will recreate themselves in any similar system. Like how wings evolved separately in different evolutionary branches but all conform to a similar structure. Any capitalist economic system will have methods for vested interests to inhibit many types of positive change.
I want to believe we can have a better economic system, not necessarily capitalistic, maybe one where resource allocation is achieved more democratically.
Capitalism, with all its flaws, was still an improvement over feudalism. I refuse to believe it can't get any better.
Wow, you're spending $420 on shipping? How far away are they keeping those slaves?
Of course the cost in greenhouse gasses is astronomical, which is a big part of the problem.
China had the fastest growing middle class in the world, so much so, that as a buying market they’re absorbing the entire stock of many categories of high quality or luxury goods that are preferred by the middle class.
The Chinese worker making my phone may hate their job for similar or different reasons than the investment banker, both who famously have jumped from buildings due to work stress, both famously faces of capitalism. But, that Chinese worker is now able to provide for their family including their education and onward advancement in a way that wasn’t possible before.
Since the 1980s China has been speed running the Industrial Revolution, with massive cities forming of people who were almost entirely in rural areas previously in abject poverty and doing subsistence agriculture, all of whom now work jobs that have elevated them out of that poverty.
You can say a lot of truthful negative things about capitalism but pointing to manufacturing jobs in China is completely missing the thread.
Below is a link to a news coverage of a study that claims to have shown that while poverty (as defined by the world bank) dropped spectacularly in 1980s China, the inability to afford essential commodities skyrocketed in the early 1990s, and didn't recover fully since.
https://theconversation.com/chinas-capitalist-reforms-are-sa...
I believe there are more effective ways of lifting populations out of poverty.
I think you may be right. Unfortunately, what I have observed is that every attempt otherwise so far has failed. I think any approach which requires strong social and philosophical alignment will fail within a few generations, because the intrinsic motivation of humans includes an element of greed that seems impossible to stamp out. Systems that acknowledges and harnesses this fact of humanity show significantly more progress, even as they too have downsides.
As for other ways to get out of poverty, we could compare China with South Korea, for example. The latter implemented rather protectionist standards on exports, and as a result was able to focus its economy on improving the country. As it stands now, a lot of Chinese citizens are still dirt poor while South Koreans can almost (economically) rival with citizens of the global North.