this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Not everyone on my side of the political Spectrum thinks the same way. But if you are pro capitalist. You simply aren't thinking. Capital, markets, and currency. All existed before capitalism. The only thing capitalism did was justify the wealth and power of the wealthy and Powerful Beyond being simply born to wealthy powerful people. Now you get to be a wealthy powerful person by having capital. Which ironically just so happens to be most common among people born too powerful people. New boss same as the old boss. Funny how that works.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I hate capitalism, I just don't know of a better alternative. Nordic socialism is just capitalism with a big government. Soviet socialism failed miserably (it turns out, it is very hard to plan an economy). I have never heard a solid plan for communism that works on a national scale, never mind a plan for transitioning to such a society.

On the other hand, capitalism works reasonably well most of the time and we can just fix issues with it when they crop up (and we have a big backlog of issues to fix).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Capitalism does not work reasonably well most the time. Unchecked it leads to countless busts and Booms that leave the average person destitute. You really should look into the history of the early 20th century. The only reason we even still have capitalism. Is because of two massive world wars. Slaughtering and grinding up many tens of millions of people. As well as passage of basic Social Security nets. We've largely at least abandoned the spirit of. If if not in practice as well.

Capitalism has been a failure at every level. Constantly. That isn't a justification or Praise of leninism. There's a lot of other ideologies on the Socialist side Beyond leninism. And they don't require large National level government. Look into them sometime.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Is there any system that is more fair and/or gives you more freedom? I havent found any.

On a hypothetically completely free capitalist market, I can sell and buy whatever I wish and the value that I get when selling directly correlates to the value I'm bringing to the buyer. If I generated a lot of value, I have more capital so I can also buy more value using that capital. Sounds fantastic in theory.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In an unregulated free market, you could buy milk, drink it and fucking die because it had poison in it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah of course thats why there are regulations in place. Nobldy would trust that milj seller again though, so for cases that are not as bad as a human life being ended, the system would still work...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Regulations?? No way. I said free market.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Whats your point then? That a completely free market is bad? Yeah, thats why we dont have one.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

Of course not! Free markets are great, they allow me to make money however I please. But if you're gonna regulate my business, at least leave me the opportunity to exploit my workers to some extent. I won't be made obsolete by some stoner beatniks who think they can run my business better than I can in some high-falutin' democracy. I own this place. It's mine. I bought it with my own bank account.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Democratic socialism, Social democracy, original libertarianism of the non Rothbard variety, even pragmatic anarchocommunism. As long as they aren't dogmatic ideologues.

A completely free market has never, and will never exist. Further markets, and currency existed before capitalism. Capitalism didn't make them possible. Finally capitalism demands you sell for as much as the market can bare, not what is fair for the value you added. Of which capitalists generally add none. Without labor nothing gets done.

Under capitalism people that generate most of the value get the least of the capital. It's just a more abstract way of defining and justifying oligarchy. Other than Divine Birthright.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for rewarding people who come up with new processes and ideas to increase efficiency etc. That's not really what capitalism does.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Would you mind elaborating on the "original libertarianism"? What doed that mean exactly? Could really find much...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It's more commonly referred to as left libertarian these days. However it far predates right wing libertarianism. And for myself at least. I personally feel that calling original libertarianism left libertarianism, and right wing libertarianism right wing libertarianism gives right wing libertarianism far too much legitimacy.

Libertarianism is and always has been a left-wing ideology. These so-called right wing Libertarians(neo-libertarians) have much more in common with liberalism than libertarianism. And equally ironic. Those that we call liberals{neo liberals) in the United States for instance. Often have more in common with actual Libertarians than "right-wing" Libertarians do in many instances. Though there's still a good dosage of capitalist and even fascists under the moniker of the Democrats too.

The whole situation is super complex and wildly cloudy due to bottomless pockets for propagandists unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Soviet socialism failed miserably (it turns out, it is very hard to plan an economy).

Did you actually check? Because based on a bunch of metrics I saw the USSR did pretty well compared to the feudalism that came before it and the capitalist "democracy" that came after its illegal and undemocratic dissolution.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know (and have discussed it with) plenty of people who lived in the former USSR. Everyone I spoke to agreed that it was a mess.

Of course, there is clear selection bias in who I spoke to (they are people I am friendly with and most of them reside outside of Eastern Europe) and all of them only experienced the Soviet system after it had gone through Stalin.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago

Here is an illustrative anecdote since we are trading those:

I miss free housing, social justice, positive constrictive ideology, bearable work relations (or would it be more proper to say conditions?).

Age is....far above 30.

I admit, I haven't encountered social justice or ideology in my very early ages, but I had opportunity to feel benefits of free housing (since my family got a nice 3bd-room flat in their possession), and...my parents worked much less than I do, and never worked at home.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskARussian/comments/sxdi3q/comment/hxtgsbd/

Here is data: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1128057/russia-opinion-on-dissolution-of-the-ussr-by-age/

Note that the people who were adults before its collapse overwhelmingly want it back, and that Russians only supported its continuation back in the 90s referendum at 55ish percent compared to much higher percentages in the non-Russian SSRs.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The data shows that economic freedom is associated with greater life satisfaction . That doesn’t mean that every billionaire is a good guy or that corporations don’t break the law.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There are three kinds of lies. Lies, Damned lies, and statistics. First you lose points by linking to a supposed study behind the paywall. Second you lose points by that study being conducted by The Fraser institute. A solidly right wing group. With a less than credible reputation.

I apologize for only attacking the messenger on this. Though that should be enough to dissuade anyone from trusting it. But you didn't link to anything that actually proves your point that we could read to argue against their flawed methodology, definitions, sampling, and data Gathering strategy. I'm sure we could attack and pick apart those endlessly. But I'm not going to pay 30 bucks to do it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is a study by an independent researcher from the University of North Dakota. The economic freedom index is published by the Fraser institute. There is no alternative index at this time. Here is a link beyond the paywall. Here’s a few others as well:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-015-9616-x

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11482-017-9543-6

You’re welcome to share your own studies on economic freedom and happiness btw. . I’m “not thinking” yet i am the only one sharing scientific literature.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

First their SSL certificate is misconfigured second my DNS here at work is blocking access to it for now.

Second. Economics psychology Etc are not any sort of hard science. They struggle to even show correlation sometimes. Let alone causation. And statistics is certainly not a science in and of it self. Making your confident claim of scientific literature adorably naive at best or wildly spacious at worst.

Combined with the fact that I have strong doubts that this study includes actual honest studies of socialist economic structures. Typically it's just "leninism bad hurt durr". Which I agree with. But Leninism=\=socialism. Did they actually go out and survey communes? Or honestly categorize social democracies? Most of these so-called BS scientific studies don't.

And honestly I could link you any number of studies showing the countries with strong support for labor and protections for labor have a much higher satisfaction than countries that don't. The problem is I don't believe you're being honest. And that that would be a waste of time. But you are welcome to go to Google and search if you're interested.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You seem to be really good at coming up with excuses why you can’t access the data or why the data isn’t admissible for this or that reason. And awfully good at coming up with reasons why you cannot produce any data. Too much so IMO for someone that makes the claim of others of being intellectually dishonest and that they cannot think for themselves.

But it’s okay. Why don’t we just agree to disagree? That was my original point. Some people have centrists views on the economy where they believe in socially progressive causes, free markets and strong institutions. That this view is both rational and supported by data. That disagreements are based not on misinterpretation of facts but on differences in values.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Uh, no shit. Economic freedom means not being destitute. Of course that makes you happier than not. What are you trying to prove, here? Do you think economic freedom is synonymous with capitalism, or only possible through it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The way they measure economic freedom is based on how free you are to start a business and things like that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

So, freedom to exploit?