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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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Wealth and capitalism is anti-democratic. And this is a prime example.
Not directly and not necessarily.
Being a little rich isn't a problem. Being very to insanely to disturbingly rich, that is a big problem and should be removed as a possibility by governments. Tax the shit out of people until their riches reach acceptable levels
Capitalism is only anti democratic if left unchecked. It needs to be much MUCH more limited than it currently is. But you don't want to remove it, capitalism is -unfortunately- the most successful way of running societies. Again, you want to limit the crap out of it and right now it's just running in stampede mode which indeed will destroy democracies
Disagree. The more disparity in wealth there is, the more anti-democratic. There are many small towns in the U.S. that are captured by a single large employer (who I guess is a "little rich") through threats to move or lay-off workers, campaigning, "donations," or just straight-up kickbacks to judges and law enforcement.
Capitalism is inherently anti-democratic. It creates an owner class and a worker class, and the owner class has a very large amount of power over the worker class. Something like a worker cooperative is inherently democratic (workers own and control their workplace/means-of-production, democratically).
As for "successful," I suppose that depends on what metrics you use. I'd bet there have been other societies that were on a whole happier than capitalist industrial societies. I think we can do better than capitalism, and I think the survival of the human species depends on it. Capitalism requires unending growth to function, and I don't think that's sustainable on a planet with finite resources and a finite atmosphere that can only take so much greenhouse gasses being dumped in it before it causes a reduction in other resources, such as arable land.
No its not. At its core, capitalism is about allowing people to directly trade and find the most efficient solutions. This has led to the success of the west.
Does it? I've been a worker. I've been a company owner (well, technically still am). So?! If you want to own something, you buy it.
How about the metric of the largest super power in the world? How about the most advanced power in the world? How about the richest country in the world? Trust me, I'm not trying to woo the USA, it is VERY flawed with a shit tonne of problems, but it is BY FAR the most successful country in the world coming up with "yeah what metric" is bullshit. Ask a poor homeless person in the USA if they would perfer to extrange their lives with somebody in say, Niger, and I think I can be pretty sure they will say "HELLS NO" because as shitty as their lives are, its still a mile better than the alternative. The USA does not have famines.
Yeah this is just plain naive. This is looking at the problems that our current societies have, and without knowing anything about the alternatives, saying "well the alternatives must be SO MUCH BETTER!" Yes, our capitalist system needs MUCH more checks and balances, we need to tax the shit out of the rich, we need less focus on material things and money and more focus on just being happy, we need universal and free healthcare, we need free education.. So many problems we need to resolve...
But its NOTHING compared to how life was only a hundred years ago where people still got 12 kids because they knew that on average, 4 of them would not even reach adulthood because of diseases, famines, war and whatnot.
Say what you want about the US, and it has done some fucked up shit, but its been a pretty stabilizing force in the world. Without the US, the communist USSR would have overrun Europe and we'd all be enjoying the funs of famines, state terror (read about the chekists!) and just general misery.
There are no other countries that match the successes of capitalism, period...
Now, you want to talk on really how to improve societies?
Try north European countries. Socialist countries that use their capitalist systems to fund their socialist ways. THAT, I believe, is the solution. Control wealth with taxes, but let people free to do what they want. Educate people, have a shared political power system (and not the winner-takes-all shit like everywhere in the Americas) so that you have political stability, use the power from limited and capped capitalism to fund things like free healthcare, free education, a strong army for defense (unfortunately still required).. That will make hte world a better place.
No, that's the idea of free-markets. You can have free-markets without capitalism, and you can have capitalism without free-markets (such as State Capitalism). Capitalism is about using wealth (capital) to acquire the means-of-production (capital assets), and hiring and paying workers less than the value of their labor to make profit. It is inherently anti-democratic because the workers have little-to-no say on what labor they do within the company, how their labor should be used, who should manage the various parts of the company, etc.
The West has been very "successful" before capitalism. I'm more in favor of the hypotheses from Guns, Germs, and Steel (for the most part, geography, climate, and natural resources has determined the fate of the nations). There are many very poor capitalist nations after all. Most the wealth of those nations seems to be funneled into the hands of the owning class in rich nations.
Yes, it does. When you make money from the labor of others, you are in the owning class. I am also, personally, in the owning class. I suppose there is some gray area with 401ks and stock options, but those amounts of ownership are often very low compared to outside investors, founders, executives, so they have virtually no voting power.
Don't get me wrong. I think Social Democracy, which northern European nations are close to, is preferable to the extremely weak regulatory and welfare state the U.S. has; but Democratic Socialism would further reduce exploitation, IMO.
I'm also no fan of the USSR or China, and do not even consider them to be leftist governments (the State owns much of the means of production, not the workers, which is antithetical to leftism). I consider them to be authoritarian State Capitalist nations.
The academic model of capitalism has safeguards in place to prevent the shitshow we're living in now. Leave it to us Americans to knock off those safeguards because we're greedy as hell.
Yes, so is individual freedom.
Not without grassroots movements and uprisings. Especially when it comes to stuff like labour laws and slavery. If factory owners got their way, we would still have worked 12 hour workdays 7 days a week. The wealth was not shared with the people, anything gained was taken by force in the form of unrest and movements. In many ways the French Revolution was the subtle threat to every nation unless they gave the people what they wanted.
Then not to mention stuff like women's rights and civil rights, which were not given thanks to wealth, but again due to grassroot movements and civil unrest. In many ways we still are facing tons of inequality today, due to the profit incentive of the people with wealth. See rising wealth inequality for example. If wealth and capitalism is what gave regular people political power, why do we not see this trend continue today?
If anything, I'd argue we got democracy and political power in spite of capitalism and concentration of wealth. Maybe it has more to do with the developed technology than with the economic system. Stuff like the printing press and easier access to knowledge. Requiring an educated populace to operate factories and producing more complex technological items. These kinds of stuff paving the way towards people getting "funny ideas" and thinking back on their position in the world, no longer accepting what was the status quo, but instead striving for something better.
I'd even argue that today's capitalism is a compromise, because the people in power tried their hardest to stay in power, but not the ideal that we could have had.
Rulers also knew that if they ended up behind other countries they would end up crushed by economics or times of war. Technology was vital long before democracy got its hold in the modern age. The industrial revolution happened under the British monarchy, after all. Did they block that development? The printing press was also created under the holy Roman empire, long before capitalism, and we can see how well that went with many monarchies trying to suppress it. Maybe they tried, but they failed.
Don't look at the answer starting from capitalism and working backwards. History is much more nuanced than "the system we have right now is the best and is what caused good things". It very well could be that the system itself is mostly coincidental, or due to parallell historical factors.
And technology would have been developed no matter the economic or political system. As it did, and as it does. As long as people researching new things get sufficient time and resources to do so. And they do, and did, because being more technologically advanced makes you stronger compared to others.
I mean, hell, saying capitalism is what solely incentivized development is completely ignoring how many resources state actors are pouring into science even today. From the US military to the global academic network. It wasn't very different back then, at the start of capitalism. Philosophy traces back to ancient Greece, after all, and exists everywhere in between.
My whole point is that saying that "capitalism gave us political power" is the too simple answer. And I argue against it, because it posits capitalism as this objective good that should stay when that is not certain. And it may well be what is actually standing in the way of democracy. Maybe political power would have been spread to the people quicker if it were not for capitalism, hard to say, because capitalism quickly entrenched itself in the whole world. But history can give us clues.
In the end, it's important to not necessarily attribute too much to capitalism, because, well, we live in, and have been, surrounded by capitalism our whole lives. With no part of the world really escaping it. We don't have anything else to compare to, as we only have one world. We are always looking from a capitalistic point of view by default. But maybe there is more to everything than just capitalism.
It wasn't capitalism. The Soviets had science, technology and progress without it. That doesn't excuse all the bad, oppressive, authoritarian things. Just blows holes in your claims.
The same could be said for China, ignoring their atrocities. And yeah you could even say that about the US too if you ignore their copious atrocities. So it isn't something endemic to capitalism
The hole is yours. I'm afraid I understand the reason perfectly well. It's largely the same reason that the United States is falling right now. And the fall China is cruising towards as well.
Let's pretend you were right about the Soviet Union. You'd still be wrong regardless. Social and scientific progress were everywhere even before capitalism was a twinkle in the eye of the fool that coined the term. It was happening in the renesance, under any number of monarchs and even the church. Capitalism accelerated and encouraged none of it realistically.
Capitalism didn't industrialize the United States either. The whole world was industrializing. It just happened in America DESPITE capitalism. Americas success in the 20th century has nothing to do with capitalism. It's more a function of being as far as geographically possible from 2 of the worst wars in human history so far. Combined with untold stolen natural resources.
Wealth and capitalism replaced one group of antidemocratic oligarchs with another. Nothing more nothing less.