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Why are folks so anti-capitalist?
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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Asklemmy
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Because it's objectively unsustainable? I don't really get what it even means to be "pro capitalist" at this point. We know, for a fact, that capitalism will lead to disaster if we keep doing what we're doing. Do you disagree with that? Or do you not care?
What is your general plan for what we should do when we can see that something we currently do and rely on will have to stop in the near future? Not that we will have to choose to stop it, but that it will stop because of something being depleted or no longer possible.
If you imagine that we're trying to find the best long-term system for humanity, and that the possible solutions exist on a curve on an X/Y plane, and we want to find the lowest point on the function, capitalism is very clearly a local minima. It's not the lowest point, but it feels like one to the dumbass apes who came up with it. So much so that we're resistant to doing the work to find the actual minima before this local one kills literally everyone :)
Capitalism itself isn't really the problem though, a free market economy should work. The issue is that the owners, be they corporate or private, don't view their workforces the same way.
The greed of those at the top is crippling the very people that are driving the economy.
No, it absolutely should not work. I can't even imagine what you are imagining when you say that. HOW could it possibly work long term? Are you familiar with any game theory?
I mean... it has, hasn't it? It's worked pretty well for the last ~200 years. Even in China, the successful parts are the capitalist parts.
Yes, it's costing us in terms of environmental sustainability. This is an externality which can be (but hasn't been) addressed. A failure of government, not a failure of capitalism.
You should know that most Marxists believe capitalism is an economic engine unlike anything that came before it. That doesn’t mean we can’t build a more rational system. If we wanted to approach the problem scientifically we would study capitalism, understand how it works and came to be, form hypotheses for how to build something better, and then experiment.
I’d also add that the formation of the modern government, ie liberal democratic states, and the development of capitalism are one and the same. Our totalizing market economy can not exist without governments ensuring conditions are right for market exchange to operate smoothly. As such, I don’t think it’s possible to say a failure of governments are not a failure of capitalism. It’s a package deal so to speak.
It’s not a failure of government when the government effectively serves the ruling class (i.e capitalists). It’s a feature, not a bug.