General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 70

i am constantly amazed at the insistence that capitalism is the only possible way to structure a society, as if thousands of years didnt precede the 1800s lol.

 

I don't necessarily agree with most people, but I imagine most people mean society as we know it today. AKA they see the way civilizations lived before The Enlightment and/or the Industrial Revolution and don't understand how we could keep the high standard of living without capitalism.

 

Ya, it really comes down to your personal philosophy of standard of living. Would your standard of living go down if we were in a socialist world? In a capitalist sense, for people in developed countries, yes. In a spiritual sense, no (although it's still just a theory, we haven't seen how a world economy would work or socialism in action. But if everything goes right, that should be true)

 

It is such a narrow-minded perspective. For whom is the standard of living higher? Usually, people mean in the global north. Even in countries in the global south, where standards have been, we simultaneously see a simultaneous increase in ethnic violence according to where productive sectors are located, i.e., in the Sudan, for example, ethnic tensions were fostered by colonial projects that placed production in the north as opposed to the south, so wealth was unequally distributed. This is not out of the norm. We similarly see a higher stratification of wealth in those societies. TLDR: People see their iphones and don't want to lose them. They don't think about what their lifestyle costs others.

 

Plus, no one cared if they had an Iphone before it existed, capitalism creates what people think they need. I feel like I'm starting to catch your drift on a lot of this stuff. Although, you have to wonder at what pace we would have innovated without competition between people/countries.

 

'
For all their rhetoric touting the “magic of the marketplace,” those in the Reagan administration recognized market failure when they saw it. They began to offer federal and publicly funded university laboratories various carrots and sticks to undertake long-term R&D for US capital.

New programs were created to provide start-ups with resources to develop innovations prior to the “proof of concept” required by venture capitalists. Under Reagan, the Small Business Innovation Development Act even mandated that federal agencies set aside a percentage of their R&D budget to fund research by small firms. These and other forms of public-private partnership have granted US capital enormous competitive advantages in the world market.

It’s no surprise that Apple’s tremendously successful line of products — iPads, iPhones, and iPods — incorporate twelve key innovations. All twelve (central processing units, dynamic random-access memory, hard-drive disks, liquid-crystal displays, batteries, digital single processing, the Internet, the HTTP and HTML languages, cellular networks, GPS system, and voice-user AI programs) were developed by publicly funded research and development projects."

Red Innovation | Jacobin

 

Well, in theory, technically the idea would be that standards of living wouldn't actually go down. People would still grow a lot of food, make innovations in technology, become doctors, etc. all for the idea that they want to do for others because doing for others satisfies them. And since the rest of society operates that way, they'd be provided for with the necessities for living and wouldn't have to worry about how much they are 'compensated' for their 'harder' job. They'd still get the food and water they needed, still have a place to live, etc.

How you go about creating such a society is where I tend to break off from the socialists and what not, which is also why I tend to come to the conclusion that such a society isn't really possible. I mean, it is possible, but I don't see how you get there without wholesale destruction of current society as a whole and, consequently, a lotttttt of death. That isn't to say the advent of capitalism and, really, colonialism didn't result in a lotttttt of death, but war and revolution tends to take the heaviest toll on those with the least amount of resources, and we'd basically be counting on leaders of the revolution to make sure socialism on a global scale is implemented in a way that stays true to actual socialism and not the perverted versions of it we've seen in history and I, frankly, don't have that much faith in people to do the right thing. So I'd be fearful we'd destroy millions upon millions of lives, the majority of which aren't the ones who benefit from today's world, and never actually rebuild their lives in the way true socialism theoretically would/could.

I know Dom and Saka will throw things at me for that post but I'm just kind of thinking out loud about it. It's interesting to think about, even if I do have it all wrong in the eyes of our resident socialists.

 

Again, no expert here, but I think the idea is that innovation would still happen 'naturally' because the impetus would now be the motivation to do so for society and for others, instead of for personal gain. It sounds 'impossible' because we've been sort of conditioned to think things must be done for gain and all that.

I was also going to point out how much innovation is shaped and, indeed, forced by government action and funding rather than by market forces, but Dom covered that pretty well. And now market forces are the very things holding innovation back, as the incentive is now to concentrate on short term gains instead of long term worth. Time's cover story was an excellent look at how fucked up the incentives are in capitalism right now, it's definitely worth a read, especially for someone like you who seems more interested in fixing capitalism moreso than seeking revolution.

American Capitalism’s Great Crisis and How to Fix It

 

I think my point was more the motivation around it all. Our government funded these projects for defense, in the socialism being talked about here, you wouldn't really need defense. You not competing with other countries. So I think common good research like medicine and what not would be innovated, but who knows if people ever find the need to invent an Ipod. Plus it doesn't really make sense, as they would be too costly to produce to bring value to society. Would we have internet in this world? I really have no idea, depends if the need came up. And yes, I agree this society is not something that would happen without the world crumbling on it's own, or being forced to.

 

Also look at this news
Trump: I'll debate Sanders for $10 million for women's health issues

 

I hope Sanders insists all 10 mil go to Planned Parenthood.

 

Lol nice one.

 

Another Dumb one from Trump.
Trump calls for ‘complete American energy independence’

This is some fuck the rest of the world type shit. Just sounds good to his uneducated supporters that he loves.

 

I don't understand. If resources were allocated to advancement in a sustainable way that makes people lives better, both in terms of consumer products or necessities, why would that require competition? The fact that it was defense spending is beside the point, many of these companies received public funds and were able to create amazing things. Of course we would have the Internet. It is both useful and integral to the society functioning. It isn't like it would go away once capitalism disappears.

 

Wow, that's just ridiculous. Basic translation for this is "fuck the world and fuck the environment"

 

Hey sorry man we went in different directions there. I meant more in like an alternate universe type of sense, where capitalism was never invented. I think we would innovate more on societal needs. It's impossible to say if the internet or any modern tech would have been invented. So my point about the technology being based on competition makes more sense in that context.

 

I said Bernie would destroy Trump in the debate and this is what someone told me: "Why on earth would you think Bernie would 'destroy' Trump? Trump has won every debate, even though the moderators, and all the other republicans joined forces to defeat him. Like him or not, he will make Bernie seem foolish when he calls him on how he will actually pay for what he is promising."

1. Saying Trump won every debate is an opinion, and not a good one. Not sure what he was watching but the ones that I saw was just Trump insulting the others, occasionally talking policy, while getting roasted by the other candidates about the flawed candidate he is.

2. Bernie has outlined how he plans to pay for all of his plans, so no that would not make Bernie look foolish

 

You're the 19 year-old, yes? It's possible that i have made this observation before, but you are astoundingly intelligent, or, rather, knowledgeable, for your age.

I was "speakhandsforme."

Also, don't let my username mislead you: I am not nearly as far left as you and Wharf Rat, nor am I as fluent in leftist theory-- I have for years self-identified as a democratic socialist, but I am for all intents and purposes a social democrat. I just read a great deal of socialist works and The Revolution Betrayed happened to be within view when I made my account.

 

ohhhh that makes a lot of sense actually yeah

and lol well i can repeat jargon pretty well at least! but thank you haha

 

dont let it go to your head ben, youll always be one mistake away from microwaving your balls in my book

 

and mine honestly

 

O'Reilly said some more racist shit last night about BLM. Apparently they are "Costing Americans their lives" and other more racist stuff.

 

Also, in the pro-vote against Trump side, here is yet another very real, tangible difference between Hillary Moderate Clinton and the current psycho that is the head of the GOP....and hell, just the GOP in general at this point.

And, considering how much has been done on climate through EA/EO, Trump doesn't need Congress to role back a lot of shit.

 

Well I mean you can't really "win" a debate for the reason you mentioned, it's an opinion. I think at the end of the day the person who "wins" is the person who gets the votes, and Trump did. Bernie supporters will think he won by a landslide and vice versa. It's actually pretty pointless for them to debate. Like I've said I think Trump will win in the sense that it prob won't be good for Hillary. I don't think Bernie actually cares if Trump becomes president. He wanted to get the younger generation to not view socialism as scary. I think he has the view the same as a lot of the socialists here, both of them are terrible, and we need the country to get much worse before we can make it better.

 

Trump basically is proving he wants us to be isolationists. He will run the company like a business and view the other countries as competition. He only cares about making America rich, even if the rest of the world starves. Also he would punish women that get abortions, which is so fucked up.