jwb

There is truth to what both of you are saying. Capitalism is a competitive system that rewards cut throat tactics and thus a lot of immoral action is driven by the capitalist system.

It's also true that capitalism has served a function in terms of industrialization and raising the standard of living. I know that's no consolation for the people suffering but the fact is there's more people suffering in part as a byproduct of us becoming more efficient at growing and supplying food. It's counter intuitive to think about it this way but before industrialization there were less starving people simply because there are more people now. They didn't have the capacity to have a population of billions of people prior to industrialization. That's why the population was so much lower back then.

I do think it is immoral to just settle on capitalism and not try to create a more equitable and sustainable system... But capitalism is a necessary stepping stone in order to provide the technology and infrastructure to be able to do so. So bringing up serfs who would rather stay in the farm than work in factories hundreds of years ago is a non starter for me because I don't think many of us would actually trade our current life for that of a serf.

jwb

I don't think conditions did improve gradually under slavery if you are referring to the antebellum south. And you're referring to the conditions of the slaves themselves. I think it actually got worse once the cotton gin was invented and the demand for slaves increased.

I'm not sure what you mean by "not a good argument." I see the improved conditions not as an argument but a trade off that we made and aren't necessarily willing to reverse.

I think the confusion here is whether you believe we would be better off if industrialization/capitalism never existed. If you take that position then you're actually not a Marxist. If you don't take that position then I don't know what you are arguing with specifically regarding the improved conditions.

Anteater

That's because they don't have an argument. They hate capitalism cause it means they have to work and they aren't creative enough to figure out how to work the system in their favor. It has nothing to do with the macro-morality of whether or not more people are starving or being exploited. If they gave a **** about exploitation, they would be agreeing with my solutions. You can't have exploitation when you replace the need to exploit people with intelligent tools who are a million times more efficient.

Also, the point about there being more people today because the world before couldn't handle billions is a good one, but it's less of a byproduct of industrialization and more about the fact that the average life expectancy for people has jumped wayyyyyyyyyyy up due to advances in the medical world over the last century or two.

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Marie Monday

That is such an egocentric thing to say. Many people don't have the advantages to be able to use their creativity and skills in their favour. If you have access to a job you don't hate you're lucky. You seem to be dismissing how much the odds can be stacked against people from birth in order to be able to pat yourself on the back.

Also, your solution is limited: robots would be a part of the solution but we'd need reform alongside, otherwise it'd mainly benefit the rich and the problems would remain.

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Anteater

That's why robots can't be something left up to the private sector initially. If they're implemented at all, they need to be regulated heavily from the very beginning.

Then people should be focusing their effort on education if that's a playing field that can be leveled fairly. You can legislate equality of opportunity to an extent, but you can't legislate equality of outcome.

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Marie Monday

sure, education and healthcare, which is why I focus on that

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jwb

i hate capitalism as well though. I just also acknowledge it's utility. Both I think that can only ever be a benefit as a temporary stepping stone, not the end of history. I think you go to the other extreme of being pro capitalism just because there is some utility to it. The was utility to the fuedal system as well. Like elph would say at some point yesterday's innovation becomes today's status quo and at that point if you don't challenge it's deficiencies in order to replace it with something better than your original innovation was for nothing.

I could be wrong but I think that impacts first world populations more than the global south. The increase in life expectancy is largely down to a decrease in infant mortality. But are the billions of people in the slums of Asia and Africa recurving much if any medical care at all?

Anteater

I don't fundamentally disagree here at all. That's why I think to fix humanity in a socioeconomic / macro sense, you can break it down in two tiers:

Shorter-term: Higher taxes on the top 1%, better healthcare / education, investment in infrastructure

Longer-term: Fix scarcity, implement labor automation via AI / robot work force, deal with existential / "spiritual-centric" issues, embrace biotech

Capitalism only exists now because you have these longer-term issues that need to be solved. Dealing with scarcity and labor would eliminate corporatism and would cause capitalism to be either dialed way back or it would no longer have any utility value as a means.


Probably not. Would you say that the decrease in infant mortality is the reason why those populations are so much larger in 2021 than ever before?

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jwb

Actually I think we might disagree because I'm not nearly as confident that we'll be saved by technology. I think it's just a likely technology will take us out. Or that the class system will continue to perpetuate just in a more high tech way. So I'm not about to wait around for robot slaves to save me. In my perception, the robots are actually competition. Not an ally.

I don't know what the answer is but if I had the means like these bill Gates and other philanthropists I would be setting up model societies to see what kind of constraints and problems have to be overcome. I think you learn a lot by experience and so I take the theoretical with a huge grain of salt.



it's possible, I don't really know what kind of medical care most of those people get when giving birth. I don't know if they have the same decrease in infant mortality that we do.

jwb

Actually I think there is an argument to be made that without stalinism the fascists might have won ww2 and we would be living in a very different world.

I'm not trying to deny or rebut the injustice of capitalism which might be why my argument failed to do so.