Marie Monday

Show those graphs to all the starving people and tell them not to worry.

A few microsoft excel graphs saying that people are becoming less poor doesn't mean that that's thanks to capitalism, or that the state of things is acceptable.
And sometimes a system is rotten enough that it does need to be done away with entirely. Whether that's true for capitalism I don't claim to know.

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Frownland

The Koch-funded Cato Institute says capitalism good? Well I guess that settles it.

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Anteater

The point is that capitalism is just a framework. The only way to shift it into something better for even more people than the way it is now is to change the way that people approach things like scarcity, which would require a robot slave caste for all forms of low-level labor, affordable lab-based food production and a host of other things that are probably a decade away or so from being easily accessible or usable by regular people. If you want those things faster, tell all of our political representatives to throw down the cash and get that stuff out into the marketplace faster.

Guess so Sherlock. https://www.amazon.com/Progress-Reas.../dp/1780749503

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Marie Monday

I don't speak managerish so I have no clue what you mean by 'framework'. But there are definitely tons of urgent problems with capitalism, especially in America, which could be solved a LOT sooner and easier than by waiting for robot slaves. Wealth redistribution and free healthcare and education would be a good start.

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Anteater

I don't disagree with that at all actually. They don't solve the underlying problems, but they aren't bad at all.

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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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