There are no answers, not capitalism, kot socialism, not hunter-gather society, only ad hoc expedients which at best prove temporary. After some 5,000 years of recorded human history, we can find examples of every type of human society that proves successful for a time, and ultimately all of them fail, whether as a result of external enemies who are stronger and more ruthless, or internal corruption and contradiction.
This is because power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats, and sociopaths will corrupt any system, because sociopaths are precisely the humans who will do whatever it takes to get power. However, humans who see every interaction as a zero-sum no-holds-barred winner-take-all game rarely build anything that lasts for long, because the sociopath is loyal to nothing other than himself, he will either betray or be betrayed by another sociopath. Note how european dynasties rarely lasted for long.
Even turning one's back on power doesn't work. That power is still there, and even if you do not use it, others will. And you may not like what they do with that power.
At the same time, power continually increases with humans' technical knowledge. Feats that would have been too loopy for science fiction are now unremarkable. This is why, with all due respect to MLK, the arc of history does not bend towards justice. It bends towards power.
“The essence of oligarchical rule is the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living.” George Orwell
Power in the 21st century is bleak I’ll give you that FF. Retain some room for optimism though. There are way more of us good people than the current crop of power brokers. Who knows, some huge paradigm shift may come.
There always are more normies than sociopaths, just as there usually are more sheep than shepherds.
The human problem is simple and repeatedly results in our current condition: Good people are only willing to do good things to try and stop bad people. Bad people are quite capable of enduring all the good things good people do to try and stop them.
And bad people are quite willing to do bad things in order to get whatever they want. Good people are not willing to do the bad things that are necessary to stop bad people from doing bad things to them.
So bad people end up ruling over good people who only do good things to try and stop them. This will remain a fact of life until good people are willing to do the bad things that are necessary to stop bad people.
Some societies collapse faster than others. Maybe, instead of turning backs on power, it might be more useful to educate people differently. We are all educated to believe that if we work hard and follow the rules we will get what we need and what we want. Maybe that needs to change. Maybe we need to be educated to understand that constantly attaining more money and power is not a positive. Societies in and of themselves are not failures. It is the money grubbers entering the picture that causes the failure.
What is needed in the Educational system is: schools and kids helping in their neighbourhoods. The kids would learn more about life than sitting in a classroom all week learning next to nothing.
We are not going to find a complete solution right away. We need to start somewhere. Just saying nothing will work may be correct, but for me, we need to try. Nothing will change, for sure, if we don't try to educate ourselves, if we don't look further into the situation. You have let them get to you feral. You have drank the kool aid.
The search for justice never ends! The Hind Rajab Foundation is tracking down Israeli criminals, and bringing them to justic. This is vital in the effort to hold Israel accountable. May they also turn their sights on the criminal leaders of the countries of the west who are co-perpetrators of these crimes.
This isn't unique to Capitalism, but Western Eurocentrism generally.
This video helps explain why Western Socialism, Marxism, Communism, etc has the same problem, and we need to be looking at the source for information (and not the version filtered through White Supremacy) to understand alternatives for the future.
Capitalism builds Empires. Capitalism is like the Highlander maxim: "There can only be one."
"You are about to cross your own rubicon. You are about to walk down from the sterile, mahogany boardrooms of the Dulles brothers and step directly into the mass graves of Guatemala, the flooded villages of the Saamaka, the torture cells of Battalion 3-16, and the blood-mud of the Salvadoran mountains. We will not allow you to observe from the radar panopticon. We will force you to smell the white phosphorus. We will force you to read the exact ledgers where the CIA priced the slaughter of the innocent to fund the logistics of their cocaine pipelines.
"Once you turn this page, the anesthetic of the empire wears off permanently.
"While this series focuses on the so-called “Western Hemisphere,” you will know by its end what is happening around the globe, in Africa, Asia, the Pacific. You can no longer hide behind the polite fictions of the evening news. You can no longer claim that the violence was an anomaly, a bureaucratic misstep, or the tragic byproduct of a noble defense of democracy. You will see the machinery of death operating exactly as it was designed to operate. You will see the “Angel in Public” smiling for the cameras while signing the death warrants for the “Devil in Secret” to execute. You… will see You."
I used to think exactly this way. I grew up thinking this way. I struggled, then eventually came good, through determination, hard work and using my skills cleverly. I got to be 'okay', not wealthy. I survived, am surviving, and that's enough for me. 20 years ago I couldn't understand why, if I managed it, others couldn't. Then I woke up.
I think most people end up thinking that way. It’s the mass propaganda system’s aim, after all. Some of us grow out of it. Others, not so much. Same with religion, or the royal family.
My first role, when I passed out of training, was troop commander in Northern Ireland. Maggie was PM. I went, expecting catholics to have cloven feet and pointed tails. The shock of them being, well, normal was my wake up call. However, most of my unit didn’t have the same experience. Even today most of them live in the same paradigm. It’s very sad.
That is sad. You obviously had an open mind and a normal empathy gene.
The start of my wake up was Maggie with the poll tax in Scotland and her subsequent descent into obvious madness. It continued steadily through Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya to Syria, then along with most people, all remaining remnants of illusion died with Gaza.
I can't even engage with anything Gaza-related. It is just too distressing. But some good news - one of my regular gaming buddies has been a true believer in our great capitalist endeavour for the 20 years I have known him. He has started sharing some fairly strongly anti-establishment memes recently so there may be hope for us yet. Or he may just have bumped his head.
Let's hope it's the former...and hang onto that glimmer of hope. The next generation seems to be around 50/50 divided between stuck on their phones shopping for false eyelashes on Amazon, and very switched on.
The concepts "justice" and "fairness' have about as much relevance to the Capitalist as they do to a card sharp about to bluff his way to winning a big pot with a pair of deuces.
Capitalism has never been more than a fever dream conjured by David Urquhart and his cut-out Karl Marx. The term does not match the canard that is the crypto-oligarchy we find ourselves in. Start there. False dichotomies are so last century.
Capitalism is the worst economic system ever. Except for all the others. Your analysis, while sounding educated and correct misses an important point. In any “system” there will be winners and losers unless of course everyone is a loser (except for the leaders who rule over their subjects). This capitalist system which you so dislike has raised more people out of the grinding poverty you wish to eliminate than any “system” devised by man and there are reasons for it not the least of which is the freedom it is based upon. You are correct in assuming that I am one of the winners because I favor the market economy that gave me the opportunity to succeed or fail.
The problem is that socialists want to give more power to the government. The same government that is thoroughly corrupted to the core. Where is the plan to give power back to the people? Reduce the size of government and allow entrepreneurs to flourish? Its either fascism (which you confuse with capitalism) or socialism (government controlled economy). If you were advocating for reducing the government criminal class vs increasing their power, I would support you.
We need to be careful of terms. Money evolves naturally from the advantages of division of labor and the inefficiencies of using barter at large scales. So is the use of money “capitalism”, or is capitalism something else? If I pay my neighbor to paint my house, am I a “capitalist”? So, is a free market “capitalism”?
its rather self-evident that issues arise when greed comes together with power or nepotism to create monopolies, or to misuse or privatise public resources, when nepotism or market manipulation or immoral incentives/disincentives or blackmail are engineered to create unfair advantage and disadvantage
you carry on painting your neighbour's house, you're alright
Ignoring the systems and pointing fingers towards individual humans is individualism, itself a Western European "Enlightenment" ideology that has been spread through settler-colonialism and Empire. -- Systems!
Far too few people examine the social programming they have existed within their entire lives, with Western European individualism, universalism and linear time being like putting on blindfolds and blocking ones ears.
Within 3D reality there exists scarcity. Greed fosters scarcity. Within 3D reality natural law is in play, applies to everything and everyone, and cannot be changed. The more aligned a system is with natural law, the better. Natural law is not subject to western / eastern / left / right thinking. Be productive and share, or perish.
Except, contrary to Western European ideology, even what is considered "natural law" is not universal.
Ask an Anglosphere, French, German,etc loyalists what "natural law" means compared to what a Dish With One Spoon territory nationality means (Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, etc), and you get very different things.
I disagree that there is anything "natural" about what Western Europeans call "natural law".
Obvious example: is Western style property "natural"? Anthropocentrism? Androcentrism? There is so much of Western European "Enligenment" ideology that is unique to that region and in my evaluation unnatural.
Some systems facilitate greed more than others. Creating or finding a system that facilitates it the least is the objective. A perfect system is not possible. After that, we humans need to work on ourselves.
أحسنت النشر والقول – سلام غزة و القدس عليكم - العزة والنصر حليف محورالمقاومة وحلفاءها والذلة والعار لمحور الشر وجماعة أبستين (امريكا و بريطانيا وفرنسا وتركيا والسعودية وقطر والامارات و دول الناتو والنازية الجديدة والماسونية والصهيونية و أسرائيل) وحلفاءه
This problem has been called " the sincere false consciousness of the bourgeoisie ", which it has been suggested might be cured by expropriation providing the material conditions necessary for a change for the better. You might also get them to take in the contents of Robert Sapolski's "determinism", the truth of which could perhaps precipitate a revolution all by itself.
Looking at history though and the bourgeois love of Nazis, expect a serious fight.
I don't think any purist system is ideal, capitalist or communist. As has been said there are always the sociopaths that will find ways to abuse either system to their own advantage. That said, I think if we can lose the dogma and recognise that a mixed economy - where utilities and infrastructure are responsibilities of the state and consumer goods left to the market - might be the more sustainable system model.
There are no answers, not capitalism, kot socialism, not hunter-gather society, only ad hoc expedients which at best prove temporary. After some 5,000 years of recorded human history, we can find examples of every type of human society that proves successful for a time, and ultimately all of them fail, whether as a result of external enemies who are stronger and more ruthless, or internal corruption and contradiction.
This is because power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats, and sociopaths will corrupt any system, because sociopaths are precisely the humans who will do whatever it takes to get power. However, humans who see every interaction as a zero-sum no-holds-barred winner-take-all game rarely build anything that lasts for long, because the sociopath is loyal to nothing other than himself, he will either betray or be betrayed by another sociopath. Note how european dynasties rarely lasted for long.
Even turning one's back on power doesn't work. That power is still there, and even if you do not use it, others will. And you may not like what they do with that power.
At the same time, power continually increases with humans' technical knowledge. Feats that would have been too loopy for science fiction are now unremarkable. This is why, with all due respect to MLK, the arc of history does not bend towards justice. It bends towards power.
Learn well The Iron Law Of Oligarchy.
“The essence of oligarchical rule is the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living.” George Orwell
Your a great Cat!
Power in the 21st century is bleak I’ll give you that FF. Retain some room for optimism though. There are way more of us good people than the current crop of power brokers. Who knows, some huge paradigm shift may come.
There always are more normies than sociopaths, just as there usually are more sheep than shepherds.
The human problem is simple and repeatedly results in our current condition: Good people are only willing to do good things to try and stop bad people. Bad people are quite capable of enduring all the good things good people do to try and stop them.
And bad people are quite willing to do bad things in order to get whatever they want. Good people are not willing to do the bad things that are necessary to stop bad people from doing bad things to them.
So bad people end up ruling over good people who only do good things to try and stop them. This will remain a fact of life until good people are willing to do the bad things that are necessary to stop bad people.
And then we all go to heaven? :-)
Well, dumbass humans are always yammering about "karma" but the Hindus had to invent reincarnation, because there is no justice in this lifetime.
Some societies collapse faster than others. Maybe, instead of turning backs on power, it might be more useful to educate people differently. We are all educated to believe that if we work hard and follow the rules we will get what we need and what we want. Maybe that needs to change. Maybe we need to be educated to understand that constantly attaining more money and power is not a positive. Societies in and of themselves are not failures. It is the money grubbers entering the picture that causes the failure.
What is needed in the Educational system is: schools and kids helping in their neighbourhoods. The kids would learn more about life than sitting in a classroom all week learning next to nothing.
an educational start.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IIlpN67l6o
Education isn't much of a solution, either. All you get are more educated sociopaths. See, e.g., Renaissance Italy. Cesare Borgia was no dummy.
We are not going to find a complete solution right away. We need to start somewhere. Just saying nothing will work may be correct, but for me, we need to try. Nothing will change, for sure, if we don't try to educate ourselves, if we don't look further into the situation. You have let them get to you feral. You have drank the kool aid.
Humans should try, but keep in mind that anything they do is a temporary expedient at best.
Otherwise, don't presume to read my mind.
I don't need to read your mind. Unless, of course, what you say is just a front for something else.
In my line of work, anything other than realism is fatal.
The search for justice never ends! The Hind Rajab Foundation is tracking down Israeli criminals, and bringing them to justic. This is vital in the effort to hold Israel accountable. May they also turn their sights on the criminal leaders of the countries of the west who are co-perpetrators of these crimes.
Find out what they’re doing here:
https://www.hindrajabfoundation.org
The least we can do is donate to help them:
Support the Hind Rajab Foundation
https://donate.stripe.com/cN228hbY5g7jaM84gg
Rest In Power Hind Rajab
Capitalism and white supremacy are joined at the hip.
This isn't unique to Capitalism, but Western Eurocentrism generally.
This video helps explain why Western Socialism, Marxism, Communism, etc has the same problem, and we need to be looking at the source for information (and not the version filtered through White Supremacy) to understand alternatives for the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBFvxkvpi2w
Capitalism builds Empires. Capitalism is like the Highlander maxim: "There can only be one."
"You are about to cross your own rubicon. You are about to walk down from the sterile, mahogany boardrooms of the Dulles brothers and step directly into the mass graves of Guatemala, the flooded villages of the Saamaka, the torture cells of Battalion 3-16, and the blood-mud of the Salvadoran mountains. We will not allow you to observe from the radar panopticon. We will force you to smell the white phosphorus. We will force you to read the exact ledgers where the CIA priced the slaughter of the innocent to fund the logistics of their cocaine pipelines.
"Once you turn this page, the anesthetic of the empire wears off permanently.
"While this series focuses on the so-called “Western Hemisphere,” you will know by its end what is happening around the globe, in Africa, Asia, the Pacific. You can no longer hide behind the polite fictions of the evening news. You can no longer claim that the violence was an anomaly, a bureaucratic misstep, or the tragic byproduct of a noble defense of democracy. You will see the machinery of death operating exactly as it was designed to operate. You will see the “Angel in Public” smiling for the cameras while signing the death warrants for the “Devil in Secret” to execute. You… will see You."
https://griobhtha1.substack.com/p/hemisphere-of-plunder-foreward-or
I used to think exactly this way. I grew up thinking this way. I struggled, then eventually came good, through determination, hard work and using my skills cleverly. I got to be 'okay', not wealthy. I survived, am surviving, and that's enough for me. 20 years ago I couldn't understand why, if I managed it, others couldn't. Then I woke up.
I think most people end up thinking that way. It’s the mass propaganda system’s aim, after all. Some of us grow out of it. Others, not so much. Same with religion, or the royal family.
My first role, when I passed out of training, was troop commander in Northern Ireland. Maggie was PM. I went, expecting catholics to have cloven feet and pointed tails. The shock of them being, well, normal was my wake up call. However, most of my unit didn’t have the same experience. Even today most of them live in the same paradigm. It’s very sad.
That is sad. You obviously had an open mind and a normal empathy gene.
The start of my wake up was Maggie with the poll tax in Scotland and her subsequent descent into obvious madness. It continued steadily through Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya to Syria, then along with most people, all remaining remnants of illusion died with Gaza.
I can't even engage with anything Gaza-related. It is just too distressing. But some good news - one of my regular gaming buddies has been a true believer in our great capitalist endeavour for the 20 years I have known him. He has started sharing some fairly strongly anti-establishment memes recently so there may be hope for us yet. Or he may just have bumped his head.
Let's hope it's the former...and hang onto that glimmer of hope. The next generation seems to be around 50/50 divided between stuck on their phones shopping for false eyelashes on Amazon, and very switched on.
The concepts "justice" and "fairness' have about as much relevance to the Capitalist as they do to a card sharp about to bluff his way to winning a big pot with a pair of deuces.
It's all about The Benjamin$. Make Palestine Again. U$A and others are Zio Controlled. $hut It Down.
Capitalism has never been more than a fever dream conjured by David Urquhart and his cut-out Karl Marx. The term does not match the canard that is the crypto-oligarchy we find ourselves in. Start there. False dichotomies are so last century.
Thank You Caitlin
Capitalism is the worst economic system ever. Except for all the others. Your analysis, while sounding educated and correct misses an important point. In any “system” there will be winners and losers unless of course everyone is a loser (except for the leaders who rule over their subjects). This capitalist system which you so dislike has raised more people out of the grinding poverty you wish to eliminate than any “system” devised by man and there are reasons for it not the least of which is the freedom it is based upon. You are correct in assuming that I am one of the winners because I favor the market economy that gave me the opportunity to succeed or fail.
The problem is that socialists want to give more power to the government. The same government that is thoroughly corrupted to the core. Where is the plan to give power back to the people? Reduce the size of government and allow entrepreneurs to flourish? Its either fascism (which you confuse with capitalism) or socialism (government controlled economy). If you were advocating for reducing the government criminal class vs increasing their power, I would support you.
We need to be careful of terms. Money evolves naturally from the advantages of division of labor and the inefficiencies of using barter at large scales. So is the use of money “capitalism”, or is capitalism something else? If I pay my neighbor to paint my house, am I a “capitalist”? So, is a free market “capitalism”?
you're over-simplify a tad too much
its rather self-evident that issues arise when greed comes together with power or nepotism to create monopolies, or to misuse or privatise public resources, when nepotism or market manipulation or immoral incentives/disincentives or blackmail are engineered to create unfair advantage and disadvantage
you carry on painting your neighbour's house, you're alright
So the true issue is greed, yes? Don’t blame the system, blame the humans. Without greed any system would work.
Ignoring the systems and pointing fingers towards individual humans is individualism, itself a Western European "Enlightenment" ideology that has been spread through settler-colonialism and Empire. -- Systems!
Far too few people examine the social programming they have existed within their entire lives, with Western European individualism, universalism and linear time being like putting on blindfolds and blocking ones ears.
Within 3D reality there exists scarcity. Greed fosters scarcity. Within 3D reality natural law is in play, applies to everything and everyone, and cannot be changed. The more aligned a system is with natural law, the better. Natural law is not subject to western / eastern / left / right thinking. Be productive and share, or perish.
Except, contrary to Western European ideology, even what is considered "natural law" is not universal.
Ask an Anglosphere, French, German,etc loyalists what "natural law" means compared to what a Dish With One Spoon territory nationality means (Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, etc), and you get very different things.
I disagree that there is anything "natural" about what Western Europeans call "natural law".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law
Obvious example: is Western style property "natural"? Anthropocentrism? Androcentrism? There is so much of Western European "Enligenment" ideology that is unique to that region and in my evaluation unnatural.
Some systems facilitate greed more than others. Creating or finding a system that facilitates it the least is the objective. A perfect system is not possible. After that, we humans need to work on ourselves.
Isn't that the whole point that's being made? That the best pragmatic system would reflect equity and fairness, and caring for all?
What's the point you're trying to make? Is there a point?
Stop gazing at your navel, Mr. Clinton.
Ad hominem attacks are not helpful and lack class.
You masturbate in a comments section, with stuff like ‘don’t blame the system, blame humans’, you’re going to get called out. Deal with it.
As to class, I’m comfortable when compared to a capitalist system simp, as far as class status goes.
أحسنت النشر والقول – سلام غزة و القدس عليكم - العزة والنصر حليف محورالمقاومة وحلفاءها والذلة والعار لمحور الشر وجماعة أبستين (امريكا و بريطانيا وفرنسا وتركيا والسعودية وقطر والامارات و دول الناتو والنازية الجديدة والماسونية والصهيونية و أسرائيل) وحلفاءه
This problem has been called " the sincere false consciousness of the bourgeoisie ", which it has been suggested might be cured by expropriation providing the material conditions necessary for a change for the better. You might also get them to take in the contents of Robert Sapolski's "determinism", the truth of which could perhaps precipitate a revolution all by itself.
Looking at history though and the bourgeois love of Nazis, expect a serious fight.
Why is there a sudden influx of “Capitalism best! Socialism terrible!” trolls? Is this platform turning into Xitter, or something?
I don't think any purist system is ideal, capitalist or communist. As has been said there are always the sociopaths that will find ways to abuse either system to their own advantage. That said, I think if we can lose the dogma and recognise that a mixed economy - where utilities and infrastructure are responsibilities of the state and consumer goods left to the market - might be the more sustainable system model.