Also, just to be clear, is the Teachers Union an embarrassment to democracy? Auto workers? Environmental groups? Or are there some forms of lobbying you're okay with as long as your ox isn't gored?
Success is hard of course, but you have the freedom to try.
And in the states, I think people would be very surprised by the kind of impact they can have on local politics - which also happen to be the politics that have the most direct impact on their lives.
Citation needed.
False. An excellent example is the vTaiwan / pol.is platform. It incorporates the interests of all stakeholders:
government, business, AND citizens
[0]: I'm not saying they should be, since that's what political representatives are for.
I don't get this "voting every 4-6 years" story in most past of the world. This leads either to the political apathy or to the riots, like it is now in France and in Belgium.
We have to have a habit of voting in order to be efficient at it. For the same reason, my spam filters are relaxed and every day I read a few spam messages that slip though, to stay alert of what the spam is, and how it changes over time.
So it may be more accurate to say that "a capitalist system that creates an increasing gap of wealth inequality and defines money as speech is a system that inherently tends toward corruption" but that's a bit wordy for a headline
The situation is the same on the other side of the pond. Money, power and algorithmic manipulation power have concentrated enough, that the premise of democracy can be ditched.
Read Gil Duran's The Nerd Reich for an update on the current situation, where tech has replaced democracy.
Or search THN for The Nerd Reich or tech fascism topics and see that most of the topics are flagged here for no reason.
Before you answer, consider all the castles, pyramids and other relics of past dynasties and aristocracies ruled by divine kings living in opulence while peasants subsisted on scraps.
If you notice, I said capitalism creates increasing levels of inequality. I did not however, make a claim as to what level that inequality is at, objectively or in relation to any other system. So your "Compared to what?" response is inane and irrelevant.
Nobody here is saying we should dispose of capitalism in favor of feudalism. Well as long as Musk or Altman isn't in the thread...
If you have your own actual point, feel free to make it.
If 99% of people are naked and starving, and one person has a granola bar and a loincloth, that's still massive inequality, even worse than what we have now.
And if there's one thing we know about people, it's that someone is going to hoard the granola bar.
I think a better summary is that capitalism creates more opportunities for all. Not equal, just more.
It creates more food, more clothes, more libraries, symphony orchestras, skateboard parks, cars, ships, planes, particle accelerators and space telescopes than any other system we have come up with, which means more opportunities for people wanting to be pilots, captains, skateboarders, scientists or violinists.
Whenever someone has tried to remove the inequality aspect of this, it has resulted in a loss in opportunities for all. Including the opportunity to have food every day.
(You've sufficiently established your personal opinion that capitalism > communism but that's kind of irrelevant to the actual claims you were making)
What assertion are you lacking citation for? The hubble and webb telescopes vs the ??? communist space telescopes? Tony Hawk vs the ??? communist skater? John Carmack vs the ??? communist game developer? VW and Toyotas 20 million cars per year vs Trabant?
Maybe you could provide some examples of how communism has provided opportunities to all in a way that capitalism hasn't?
You even get an instant all-inclusive free-trade agreement with the entire United States! All you need to be able to do is produce enough within your society to pay your land tax. By contrast try to start a little capitalist society within a 'social' economic system, and it'd be off to the gulags with you.
This freedom makes it quite difficult to take the hyperbolic claims against capitalism seriously. Obviously it has lots of problems, especially in the current crony capitalist system we have, but if the solutions were as simple as e.g. 'go be socialist instead' then people could prove it even within the system itself.
Money or economy is a social construct. The laws of physics and nature are, ehm kinda constant.
Eternal growth on a finite planet isn't exactly feasible and the planet is getting a mild fever as we speak. It'll recover, but it'll remove the symbiotic beings once they've turned into parasites.
And freedom in America is kinda joke these days at least anywhere else in the world : - )
This statement assumes that there exist a solution to this problem, a system that doesn't create inequality. As they say here, "Citation Needed".
AFAIK, failed experiments at such systems so far demonstrate that capitalism remains the only system capable of improving living conditions of the whole population over time, but I stand to be enlightened with the proof to the contrary.
Simply google the question, plenty of sources.
That’s a situation ripe for corruption.
There’s also no union for “the public” which is a little unfortunate since that should basically just be the government.
So yes, TLDR, first restore democracy and then we can talk about whether we need unions anymore. Until that time however, they are the only mechanism the public has to try to wield some degree of influence comparable to that of capital.
In other words, yes, big oil lobbying bad and auto workers union good.