dude, you're so deep into it you can't get your thoughts out of it, that's insane. You don't get half of what I'm saying. It's getting late I'll try to make it short but I fear I won't be able to D:
I also feel the need to point out that you are unable to provide an alternative to capitalism so this whole debate is rather useless because all you do is point out flaws and provide no comparison with a “better” system.
I'm not unable to provide alternative solutions, I just don't feel writting pages at this stage of the discussion, it's not useful yet if you can't get your eyes off of capitalism. Plus, you could just google around if you wanted, you'll have plenty models to think about (not communism, not socialism, new models taking into account actual technology and knowledge)
People working for less money surely is a great act of enslavement. >_>
That's actually an insult to people who are forced to work for nothing through means of violence.
Erh... how to explain this... It's not just about working for less money. It's about how capitalism stops democracy, about how much time we spend working jobs we do not particulary like during our whole short life, about how we became "slaves" of a system we created as a tool instead of controlling it.
Capitalism doesn't create slavery, a poorly regulated free market system does. If you look at well regulated countries in Europe and America you'll find good working conditions.
If you look at poorly regulated countries like India or Kongo you'll find bad working conditions. You cannot blame capitalism for lack of regulations.
The world wide capitalist system (because politic is now worldwide, we can't just manage country in autarky now, those are old obsolete ideas) is VERY POORLY regulated. speculation on primary ressources and needs, dubious stock exchange, "offshoring" in poor countries to exploit their poor regulation etc... Talk about good working conditions to german peeps, they have no minimum wage, it's one of the most "competitive" country of EU but still it's the country in which "the poor people are the poorest" (in EU), way to go Capitalism ! Tell this to Greek peeps as well, they're fucked to the bones.
And poorly regulated countries like India or Kongo will stay poorly regulated because that's what give them jobs, companies from richer countries offshoring to theirs because the labour is cheaper and they will work for almost nothing to subsist.
Evidence of the social-calculation problem occurring also has empirical evidence. Massive famines and starvation has occurred in North Korea, China , and the Soviet Union . People waited in long lines just to get bread .While China remains more capitalistic, it still has communist elements to it.
Kudos, people starve under dictatorship ! Fackin revelation of the night. And you'll have to point what are the communist elements still left in china because appart from the name I really can't see any. It actually never have been, like ex-URSS and north korea, those were just self-cult "communist" dictatorship applied on a world wide capitalist system. It's non sense.
Gross domestic production is a net benefit to society because it causes a lot of positive results that benefit society.
Thank you.
People that live in wealthier nations tend to be happier . Life expectancy increase as gdp increases, since people have access to healthcare and nutrition . Higher gdp also correlates with a decrease in murders.
Of course they tend to be happier than people starving to death and eating some earth galette to fill their stomach. But please explain why approximatively 25% of the people living in developped countries are using anti-depressant (25% of the whole population, so like 50% of the active working people).
You may think that alternatives need to be implemented. You cannot even provide an alternative, let alone any empirical evidence that said alternatives can work. Speculation is likely to be wrong since it is difficult to predict how human motives will interact with one another in a complex world and there are more ways to be right then to be wrong. In order for his system to work, all assumptions and predictions would have to work out, which is unlikely to be the case. Now we know that the system of capitalism has improved the lives of billions. Therefore, a priori we should accept capitalism as the better alternative to utopic ideas.
I have to say I'm almost speach-less because your conception of "happiness" and life are miles away from mine. Your explainations sound absurd to me, you have your head in a box and you're scared of changes because you actually live a comfortable life and you don't give a damn shit about the rest.
And I'm not the only one thinking alternatives need to be implemented... It becomes pretty obvious for a large part of people since our planet and our organisms won't be able to take it for much longer, we live longer but sick and depressed. hurray.
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Speculation is likely to be wrong since it is difficult to predict how human motives will interact with one another in a complex world"
This was right before any system change, before capitalism too, and here we are. If this was a valid point we would still have emperors.
The system we live in today is the result past suffering and experimentation throughout thousands of years of social engineering.
Systems -in economics, politics, physics, biology or anything you want- are never right from the start. People try, modify, fail, learn and apply. That's how life works.
You sound like we have reached The Peak of our civilization, but you're just stuck in a morbid paralysis.
This system sure is the result of past suffering and experimentation, everything is. That doesn't legitimate the fact that we shouldn't change it. All the future systems will be the result of past suffering and experimention. The next system will be the result of present suffering and experimentations. This is evolution, we adapt.
Tho your graphics made me laugh, thank you.
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Edit : I'll copy-paste this here because it was an edit on another post and you may have missed it
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a little exemple of the relation between evolution of our mind and our (political) environment, that I like to use in those kind of discussions :
A tribe of south-america called the Zo'e; they never had the need to make a currency or put mercantile values on their surrounding. Sharing is natural to them, to the point they don't have any word or expression in their language to say "Thank you", because giving to the rest of the group is just logic, like WE find logic the fact to work shitty jobs to earn paper to buy food and useless crap. And they're pretty, probably more than the average worker of the "developped" world. No income, no GPD, max happiness, where would that go in your graphics ;o
Do you understand the point ? There's no "one truth" or "one way of living", there's only adaptation and extrapolation of our past choices and crucial events through time."
Last edited by deprav; Jun 14, 2013 at 12:47 PM.