| There is no other, better, more humane form of capitalism. Capitalism's only concern is the generation and control of capital by the capitalist class. It isn't that capitalists want to destroy the environment, it's that they don't care about the environment beyond it being a resource to be exploited and consumed. "Better capitalism" just means doing more of that exploitation faster and more efficiently. I don't know what you love and call capitalism but I suspect you've been convinced that as a system it has some inherently moral dimension. It does not, and cannot. It's a paperclip maximizer, that's all. |
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| ▲ | triceratops a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > I don't know what you love and call capitalism Private property and competitive free markets. I just don't like where they end up. I think they need a firm hand to keep from turning into a paperclip maximizer. Maybe that's impossible, but we can't know until we really try. It's not like other systems have a better track record on environmental protection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea | | |
| ▲ | krapp a day ago | parent [-] | | >It's not like other systems have a better track record on environmental protection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea Socialism is the firm hand keeping capitalism at bay. Environmental laws, labor laws and the abolition of child labor, the 8 hour workday, weekends, minimum wage and overtime, disability rights and social welfare (such as it exists in the US) are all due to socialist activism in spite of the free market. The Black Panthers are the reason American schools have free lunches. | | |
| ▲ | triceratops a day ago | parent [-] | | Well great let's have more of that without losing private property or instituting central planning. | | |
| ▲ | lrvick 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | While it is a view that seems to piss off most, I am becoming convinced capitalism and socialism are both equally doomed paths if taken to their unchecked extremes. An endless game of tug-of-war between the two is the best we can do, and right now it is pulled way way too far in the capitalist direction and needs to be yanked back hard. | | |
| ▲ | triceratops 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Right? This Cold War era mentality of "If you say anything bad about capitalism, you're a dirty commie"/"If you say anything bad about socialism, you're an imperialist pig" is fucking exhausting and pointless. I don't give a shit whether something is capitalist or communist or socialist. I care about results: prosperity, freedom, happiness, sustainability. Do whatever makes it happen. |
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| ▲ | dragonwriter a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Exactly. To the extent that a politico-economic system is concerned with anything other than how the capitalist class can maintain control of society through control of the means of production, it is not capitalism. Of course, platonically pure capitalism is rare, and even relatively pure capitalism is mostly a thing of the past since most of the places it was present replaced it with mixed economies in the mid-20th Century, but that's not "kinder capitalism", but simply less capitalism. |
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