and just like in biology, you need a system to fight the cancer, you can’t just wish it away.
since we’ve refused to maintain such an immune system, we’re now going to have to go through a miserable period of chemo treatment to rid ourselves of the tumors.
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Sorry. We’re stage 4. It’s terminal.
I thought the chemo treatment was WW1.
Are we really gonna pretend killing a bunch of people is better than doing business with them?
WW1? I;m curious as to why your mind went there? I assumed they were referring to WW2, and having to fight against fascism AGAIN. Fascism is the malignant tumor.
The rich will eventually pay with their blood. Probably too late, but it’ll happen.
I’m a fan of capitalism with tight regulations and checks on corruption, personally
The very nature of capitalism facilitates concentrations of power, which will utilize that power to accumulate even more in any conceivable way. The system is fundamentally flawed and needs to be replaced if we care at all for basic human rights and a future for this species.
I’m a fan of Communism with tight regulations and checks on corruption, personally.
Of the two, one is still far more realistic than the other.
Which one, and why, structurally? What about Communism or Capitalism works for or against democratic measures being put in place?
I’ll bite. Until we have machines doing most things, communism is unlikely to work, especially in post agrarian societies. We need to first fully realize not just post scarcity, but post work. In theory it seems like things like anarcho syndicalism and basic communism should work, but I don’t think they really function at a large scale. Socialized democracy and worker owned cooperatives within a capitalism system gets the closest to solving the problems imo. I like the idea of anarcho syndicalism the most, but I just don’t see how it can survive in todays world.
With all systems the same problems crop up. Powerful people seek to exploit ANY system to their benefit, and unmotivated people seek to do the least to get by. Who cleans toilets in a equitable communist country, who picks up the trash? Do we force people into job roles to fill the need? Without economic incentives I don’t see how the system stays healthy. Removing class barriers to some jobs does not always make them desirable enough to fill the need. Capitalisms structure inherently results in people that are strongly incentivized into those roles, because the wage will usually rise to meet the demand for employees. (Low educated citizens seeing opportunity in jobs that make a living wage.)
Currently the biggest problem we have, imo, is really that people with power expend tremendous resources on controlling the flow of information, and that has left a lot of people very misinformed. No matter the system, those same people will be fooled into voting for things that benefit the powerful to the detriment of the rest of us. That’s not so much a capitalism problem, but an information problem. That’s a problem we have no solution for. It has been an issue with humans since civilization has existed. We can’t individually know everything, so we rely on others to fill in the gaps in our thinking and assumptions, and many of those people have a motive to only give you the information that benefits them, or worse off just lie. A lot of peoples anger towards capitalism, is a result of unbridled capitalism in a world where most people have incomplete information to make good decisions at the voting booth. We only have unbridled capitalism because of misinformation, not because capitalism is inherently bad.
Basic Communism is the preceding step to advanced Communism, yes. Marx makes this exceptionally clear. What specifically do you think people are advocating for that cannot work?
There are numerous solutions to the “undesirable jobs” questions. For background, Marx makes it very clear that intense labor is condensed unskilled labor, sake with skilled labor. In lower Communism by which skilled labor is still a requirement, and thus labor takes on different characters, pay would likely be represented in different manners depending on intensity and complexity. Feel free to ask any questions if this is confusing.
I agree that misinformation is a huge problem, but I disagree that your conclusion is that it causes the issues with Capitalism, rather than Capitalism itself. Capitalism structurally has issues with power imbalance, and issues like the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall that must be overcome via Socialism.
Overall, I think you would be served immensely by reading some Marx. I know that’s a very typical leftist response, but I do believe much of your issues come from assuming Communists want to jump straight to end-stage Communism now, rather than building it over time and adjusting with the change in Material conditions.
I AM left wing, have read about many social theories in my life all over the spectrum. There isn’t much one can do to distill that down to one post. Not one of the solutions to communisms problems I’ve seen in my lifetime are ever very fair or realistic. It comes with all of the same problems as capitalism as it pertains to power and it is infinitely less agile than capitalism. You can get to nearly the same place that communism wants to get, by adapting socialist ideals into capitalism while keeping capitalisms agility in the marketplace of needs.
I’m sorry, but you’ve made a number of blanket statements here with nothing to back it up, combined with a failure to address the very fact that your point on bullshit jobs was already thoroughly debunked by Marx.
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If you’ve read Marx, why do you think people are advocating paying sewage workers the same as office workers? There are even methods that suggest working fewer hours for the same pay with regards to how strenuous it is.
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How can you consider yourself left wing if you reject Socialism in favor of Capitalism? That’s just a centrist or right-winger.
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How does Communism “come with all of the same power problems as Capitalism” if Communism is fundamentally democratic, and Capitalism fundamentally anti-democratic?
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How is Capitalism more agile than Communism?
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How can you say Capitalism can nearly get to a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society when it depends on all 3 to exist?
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How can you “adapt Socialist ideas into Capitalism” when Capitalism and Socialism are mutually exclusive Modes of Production?
All in all, very dumbfounded at this comment.
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One was implemented and is actively ruining the planet.
The other was only used as a façade by dictators that didn’t feel like labeling themselves as right-wing.
Stalin was both bad and left-wing. Leftism isn’t a synonym for good, even if I’m a leftist and don’t support Stalin.
You can’t learn from historical examples and prevent the issues of the past by turning a blind eye.
You can’t tell me the Great Purge is something a left-wing person would do. He thought Hitler was “a great man”.
I’m far from an expert in political history, but if we were to look at controversial figures on the left, Guevara and Castro are probably the “worst” I can think of that still clearly had left-wing ideals in mind.
Leftism isn’t synonymous with being a good person. As for Hitler, many Americans called Hitler a great man as well, it wasn’t until wartime that anyone went against Hitler meaningfully.
Stalin and Mao were both leftists, and both pretty damn brutal. Read anything Stalin has written, and it’s clear that he certainly believed himself to be a leftist, and a student of Marx and Lenin, no matter how horrible his actions.
Wish we’d see that someday
Get into anarcho-syndicalism. Form and join existing anarcho-communist worker’s associations. The only sustainable way for us to end capitalism is if we start collectively associating and operating outside the framework of capitalism today.
Exactly. No revolution occurred because everyone wished really hard it would happen but still played by the oppressor’s rules.
Same here! For now, I try to focus on implementing self-sufficiency and communal practices, even if the bulk of my life is engaged with Capitalist systems.
Human nature is a mf though
Sure, that’s why we need Socialism and eventually Communism, rather than Capitalism.
I’m a fan of pragmatism: real solutions to real problems.
So am I!
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Yeah, but I don’t think communism is a bulletproof solution either. Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses.
The real issue is that people think the disparity in wealth should grow instead of shrink.
Maybe there’s a sweet spot in between Capitalism and Communism. They are basically the 2 extremes of the political spectrum after all. Surely there’s a spot on the spectrum that embraces worker’s rights while also incentivising commercial enterprise. Checks and balances are always necessary, even in a utopia.
Who literally says that? Capitalism is the only system that allows people to dig themselves out of that hole. Know any Cubans? Socialism works awesome…says nobody crushed by it.
I think you’re projecting your tribalistic tendencies onto literally everyone else on the planet.
Sure…sure…
Can you explain the structural issues you belive Socialism to necessarily have? Can you explain why they are inevitable in Socialism, and moreso than Capitalism?
This is the essence, corruption.
Yep, that’s why more democratic Modes of Production such as Communism are more resistant to corruption than antidemocratic Capitalistic Modes of Productuon.
I think many of the socialist states of Asia and Eastern Europe are or were ridiculously corrupt. How democratic those were is of course questionable.
The same could be said of Capitalism. The difference is that the very structure of Socialism is based on democratic principles.
I meant that it wasn’t really very resistant to corruption.
It’s still structurally more resistant to corruption than Capitalism, which is my point. It’s not immune, nothing is.
There was never socialism in Asia or Eastern Europe. At no point have the workers seized the means of production and had a dictatorship of the proletariat.
You can apply this No True Scotsman logic to capitalism, too. Its biggest fans say True capitalism has never been tried, either.
Not a fan of the genocide though
I’m a fan of monogamy with multiple sexual partners.
Casinos have to have rules.
I’m not a fan of any overarching system, however capitalism is the one I, and I suspect most of the people reading this, live in. Therefore the best way of addressing the problems our society faces is to do so using the tools that our capitalistic system provides (such as regulation and oversight) rather than twiddle our thumbs waiting for some grand revolution to fix everything.
Claiming that the only way to improve our situation is to completely overturn the system does nothing but promote inaction.
You’re a fan of exploitation of the working class?
Honestly I think capitalism works so long as you can make sure greedy people can only satisfy their greed through productivity rather than insider trading and buying companies that are competitive or implementing micro transactions into fully priced games infact that’s the reason why I’ve been against stock markets just like how are these people improving life for others
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Well you’re wrong then.
You can’t have it. It simply does not work like that. We saw what happens when you try that and it’s the world we’re living in. And when I say ‘the world we’re living in’ I mean exclusively the west. This kind of thing gets you and your entire town killed if you try it where the US is allowed to set off bombs.
So is anybody that’s actually sane. I love all the make believe “links” made with the anti-capitalism crowd. Keep in mind those are the same ones that are highly educated, went to good schools, worked their way up the corporate ladder so they could have their big house and nice cars… but against Capitalism LOL. It’s all talk.
Why did you think a well thought out thought would get you upvotes? I mean, it did. But that’s not normal! 🤣
They’re sharing an opinion. Upvotes don’t matter.
I’m joking. Replies don’t matter either.
Actually, very little that we do is important.
But still, just try and laugh when you can (to compensate crying at night)
You’re not joking. You’re saying “I agree with you” in the most obnoxious smarmy way possible.
Thanks man for the compliment! It really means something to me :) And I’m not even being sarcastic. Just lack of attention & human affection I guess.
They currently have 9 upvotes and 1 downvote…
I literally said, ‘It did’
If this post gets 100 upvotes then capitalism will fail and everyone will get sex.
But if you measure growth in made up numbers, you can just keep rolling them up indefinitely.
If we lived in a made up number world where people are resources can just be pulled out of thin air without consequence that would work I suppose.
Hey, it works in Tropico!
That’s called inflation.
Not really. Eventually just counting those huge numbers uses so much energy it fries the planet with waste heat.
Greed seems to be the inevitable outcome, at the expense of other humans and animals around us all. It’s disturbing and has no real end-game of benefit now that we have automation. The question is how do we take back control from the authoritarians?
Time for degrowth
I’m all for an individual decreasing their own consumption for the environment. I try to do that. But decreasing someone else’s quality of life is where it gets dicy. You can very easily get discrimination.
Put a high upper limit only. Don’t touch the bottomline.
For example, no more than 4 cars per person: Average Joe won’t even know this rule exists but it will still reduce mineral mining due to people who collect cars.
Possible problems with my shitty example: Now a car is a controlled substance. Who decides the limit and how? What if there is a mental disease (with a better example this would make more sense) which requires a person to have 20 cars?
I believe that’s called Clarkson’s Disease and mostly affects lovable assholes.
I think a better solution is to give everyone less reasons to need and use cars, that a ban becomes unnecessary. But if we’re putting limits on things to reduce their consumption, that’s what excise taxes are for, most places already do it for fuel.
And of course there could always be taxation relative to a person or company’s environmental impact. People get angry at this one.
Hell yeah, 100% tax over certain net worth.
NO JAY LENO NOOOOO WE CAN’T SEND JAY LENO TO THE GULAG NOOOO
Cars already have defined limits. You already have to have insurance, for example. They are already registered in a person’s name. This could be actually easily implemented.
degrowth doesn’t mean worse quality of life, in many instances it very much increases quality of life.
would you not prefer to work half as much as you do? we can have that with degrowth.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding degrowth. Is it trying to decrease GDP? How does it do that? Or is it moreso increased worker rights and protections with decreased GDP growth as a byproduct? Because I’m all for the second version.
IMO Degrowth would have to start with finding better, less destructive metrics than GDP to measure and plan economic prosperity with
There is an abundance of other methods and actual economists use those other methods.
I believe that the intent is to shift focus away from material goods, since we have long passed the point of diminishing returns on increasing material wealth increasing individual well-being, and focusing on things that actually do improve it, which our system overall neglects. That would be things like meaningful work, community, art, leisure, et cetera. In short, the things that make us happy, but which GDP doesn’t measure.
That makes sense. Those activities are still adding value, but not usually taken into account in economic metrics.
at least to my understanding degrowth is about not doing things that are ultimately not actually productive for our quality of life, the prime example being the clothing industry which churns out more clothes than we would ever need every year and literally just throws it in the garbage, going so far as cutting things up just so people won’t fish it out of the container and wear it without paying.
There are a ton of things like that, which basically only serve to enrich the already wealthy, and if we stop doing that shit and just give people what they need to live regardless of if they have an employment, we can all enjoy life more while also being more sustainable.
The solarpunk movement shows one take on what degrowth can look like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solarpunk
Yeah, but if everyone decreases work, you get less production and less stuff, and then increased poverty. It’s easy to say more stuff isn’t always better from the comfort of the Internet, but the truth is that abundance of material production is responsible for the relative extreme wealth we do have today.
you get less production and less stuff
Not really.
then increased poverty.
You mean the poverty we already have thanks to capitalism?
Yes, really.
And poverty is many many times lower today than it was a few hundred years ago before capitalism. Even entertaining the idea that it’s not is completely insane. Capitalism correlates extremely strongly with low poverty country to country within a single time period, as well. 2023, for example.
No. Not really.
And poverty is many many times lower
Did you come up with this galaxy-brained tripe before or after considering the crushing 3rd world poverty that sustains global capitalism?
Capitalism correlates
According to whom, Clyde? Capitalists?
If your argument is basically just conspiracy theory, than I don’t know what to tell you.
decreasing someone else’s quality of life
Who said anything about decreasing quality of life?
Decreasing someones consumption will likely decrease their quality of life. Assuming they wanted to maximize their quality of life, they would consume what would do that. Though there are exceptions, like limiting addiction or short range fights.
Lemme give you a very small concrete example where reduced consumption will not alter the quality of life.
Take a small neighbourhood, maybe 10ish families there. Everybody in that neighbourhood has basic tools that they use maybe once a month or less. Hammers, screwdrivers, spanners, etc. Instead of each family having those tools, have a tool library where you have 2-3 of each tool. Anyone in the neighbourhood can borrow the tools they need when they need them and give them back when done. Congratulations, you’ve reduced tool consumption by 70-80% with no downsides.
This is just one small example, but there are methods for more efficiently allocating resources within communities.
Nothing about capitalism prevents you from doing this. I just looked online and there are multiple apps that let you do this. It’s just a hammer is a relatively inconsequential purchase and fairly cheap. It might take $5 in gas and $20 in lost wages just to save the materials in a $10 tool. Not too mention the administration required to maintain this system. Car sharing though and parking share have become popular though.
You decrease quality of life by increasing travel time and resistance to getting the tools, plus rarely not being able to use a tool because it’s in use. But it is an efficiency improvement. Same idea with gymns, everyone can share one place instead of duplicating resources. But then you need to make sure everything gets put away and you need to keep the lights on, so you need to charge for it. All that works under normal markets. It’s just not as good as ideal because people take advantage of each other. We need more oversight to minimize that, but I don’t think it means throwing out the system.
I don’t think walking 1 minute to a library inside your immediate vicinity qualifies as a reduction in QoL. Fair point on the potential very unlikely case of 5 people all needing a screwdriver at the same time, but that can be solved by buying 1-2 extra screwdrivers.
I went to this example specifically because I thought it was not controversial and low-hanging fruit. Nobody is talking about throwing out the system. Book libraries exist, and they haven’t caused the downfall of modern civilization. All I’m trying to say here is that even in the context of our modern capitalist reality, there are ways of reducing consumption without any aggreived parties that we’re just not doing.
I have seen what other people do to communal tools. I bought my own tools because I know they will function and actually exist every time I need them.
I will not stop you from sharing tools, don’t stop me from using the fruits of my labor to buy my own tools.
I have seen what other people do to communal tools.
Could you elaborate a bit on that? I used to be part of a maker space and the tools were generally well cared for, and members normally donated anything we were missing
The biggest thing is tools just going missing. Joe brings it home to work on whatever and never brings it back. It’s pretty common with hand tools if people are allowed to bring them to their homes.
Other common problems are people not caring for stuff properly. Not changing the oil on lawn mowers, for example.
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Could you link?
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Or not going into store to buy a new knife every time previous one dulls and just sharpening it instead somehow decreases quality of life. TIL.
What a dumb oversimplification disguised as a gotcha
Decreasing someones consumption will likely decrease their quality of life.
Riiight… because the sugary sewage water sold by Coke and Pepsi is so vital for life, eh?
So you’re going to ban products that you personally don’t like? Or anything that isn’t strictly utilitarian? No flavour in our drinks, no snacks, no smoking, no anything else…
No flavour in our drinks
You barely have any flavor in your drinks right now. Do you even know what real orange juice tastes like?
Tell you what… after we get rid of all the class-enemies and collectivised everyone’s toothbrushes we’ll decriminalize cocaine, okay?
It won’t be communism… but everyone will be too high to care - which is close enough.
Are you suggesting I’ve never had oranges squeezed then drunk the juice? What an absolutely bizarre assumption.
I’m fascinated to be honest, like at some point you’ve had fresh orange juice and it was such a magical experience you can’t imagine anyone else living through it? Or you found a dusty shack in the woods where a wizened old man let you use the juicer hes been hiding ever since whatever dystopian hell you’re from banned them.
Fresh orange is pretty good, I very much recommend spending a day in a spanish orange grove, smoking weed, listening to miles Davis and drinking fresh orange over ice. The stuff in bottles is pretty much as good, in the US they do frozen concentrate which is really good because it’s frozen when fresh so you still get all the nutrition and taste plus it takes up less volume so easier to transport and better for the environment.
By almost as good I mean like good stuff is a tier, fresh off the tree on a sunny day is a tier
I would argue that a lot of consumption, at least in “developed” nations, is driven by artificial demand. Some examples: the tobacco industry, the invention of “halitosis,” bottled water, planned obsolescence. So much of what we produce doesn’t raise, and often lowers, quality of life. Having to meet these levels of demand is deleterious directly and indirectly; being overworked and living in a polluted environment also lowers quality of life.
But that’s not really the point. Viewing quality of life as identical to consumption is pathological and borderline offensive. If you want to increase your quality of life, spend more time with your friends, family, and neighbors. Create in ways that inspire you. Rest and relax. Spend more time in the moment. Go outside and visit nature. Volunteer and give back to others. There is so much more to being human than having the latest phone.
I absolutely agree about artificial demand, especially in situations of addiction or mental trickery. So I think those should be regulated.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, when you reduce someone else’s consumption, you’re saying you know better than them what is good for them. That can often be the case, like in gambling, scams, addiction, and a lot of marketing. But it can be dangerous if you don’t actually know better than them what’s best for them, but think you do.
I guess consumption is a bad word for it. Those activities you mention still have an opportunity cost associated with them, but you’re right, they shouldn’t really be called consumption. Let’s say allocating your effort? People usually know themselves better than someone else how they can allocate their effort for their own good. Limiting how they can do that should only be done when you’re pretty sure you know better than them what’s good for them.
Not necessarily in favor of degrowth, but consumption and consumerism doesn’t necessarily mean higher quality of life. Consumerism is purely fed by Capitalism, without advertising people generally “want” far less.
So if I consume 0 bullets with my body instead of 4 bullets will somehow decrease my quality of life?
bet you thought you wrote something smart
Yeah, those billionaires will have a hard time to be only allowed millions instead. /s
Buh degrowth is genocide 😅🤣
Literally what some ignoramus on Facebook said when I suggested this.
Objectively if we were to scale back enough, many people currently struggling would die. Excess is the only reason they’re still living. Think the rainforest and rain passing the canopy trees enough to still allow life below. Remove the mass amount of rain, that ecosystem suffers.
enough
I mean, yes, if we scaled back enough, people would die. But if we scaled up enough, people would also die. If you drink enough water it will kill you.
many people currently struggling would die
Many people currently struggling are dying because of how much consumption is taking place.
This is just trickle down economics. It doesn’t work.
It’s working great for those in power.
Handing out new rain to the trees in the canopy may or may not increase rain at the lower levels, but reducing rain at the canopy for sure reduces rain at lower levels.
Over explaining your analogy does not make it more correct.
Easy to say when you live in the first world.
There is no first world since 1991
I’m 14 and this is so deep.
Not that I’m capitalism’s greatest fan, but this sounds about as clever as, “evolution is impossible because the second law of thermodynamics says chaos always increases, and the sun doesn’t exist.”
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
Edward Abbey
Things like apps, media, or art can be more valuable without taking any more resources. Plus through greater efficiency, the same resources go much further. But it’s often easier to grow by just consuming more, so companies to that since they don’t really care. The sad thing is, I think we can have limitless growth if it’s slow and deliberate and conscious of it’s impact to the planet. But the current system doesn’t incentive that, instead everyone is flooring the growth pedal to catastrophic effect.
Things like apps, media, or art can be more valuable without taking any more resources.
They take energy and memory on the local devices and in the cloud. Uploading and downloading also does. Better software often needs better (new) hardware. The developers take office space and hardware and energy. Do you want me to go on?
The bigger question for my is why growth is supposed to be a good thing. With all the technology, we could work less but on the whole, we work more.
But better ones don’t require any more resources than worse ones. So you can increase value with the same resource consumption.
The development of better ones does and so does design, advertisement, …
R&D resources are usually small compared to the efficacy improvements they allow. You don’t need advertisement. Though to achieve sustanability , you’d also need a very long life on products and almost complete recycling.
The topic is growth. There is no growth in sustainability. For your company to grow, you need new features, new customers, … People say this is achievable without resources, I doubt it. That’s what I’m saying.
You don’t need more customers, you could deliver greater value to those customers
Better software often needs better (new) hardware.
Example?
I try to use my phones as long as I can and I ran into situations where I couldn’t update or install apps because my phone didn’t meet the requirements
Fuck vendors who do not publish kernel sources.
Games, but games can also just be better and more optimized on the same hardware. It’s just easier to throw more silicon at the problem, and we don’t incentive caring about the planet enough.
Interestingly, better computer hardware is often actually less physical matter. What’s valuable about computers isn’t the amount of material, it’s the arrangement of matter. That applies to both hardware and software. A phone and that same phone smashed have the same number of atoms. That phone and an equivalent from 10 years earlier are pretty close in number of atoms. My monitors and TVs today are a tenth as many atoms as the ones I had years ago.
Buying a phone every year is still about five times the matter of buying a phone every five years. Also: it is quite cynical to count atoms while children work in cobalt mines. The question of resources is more complex.
The matter from previous phones can just be recycled. We don’t really do it now because we’re nowhere near the growth limit OP was hypothesizing, but if it really came to it we’d mine our landfills instead of mountains.
Talking about children is changing the subject, important as that may be. We’re talking about finite materials.
By definition limitless growth is impossible. It just doesn’t work.
Limitless growth of what? Limitless growth of time past is inevitable for example. Wealth can grow with increased comfort, so I guess to come to maximum wealth you’d need to achieve total human fulfillment. I hope you can agree we’ve got a long long way to go till that.
Wealth can grow with increased comfort
That’s just another way of saying we should just keep on doing capitalism the way we are now.
to come to maximum wealth you’d need to achieve total human fulfillment.
Happiness, or human fulfillment, whatever you want to call it isn’t a state you just reach.
Exactly, that’s why you can always improve, which is usually reflected in increasing wealth.
You’re completely missing the point. Happiness, or whatever name you want to give it has very little to do with how much money you have.
But again, infinite growth is not a thing in a finite system. That is a fact, not an opinion.
You think money can’t buy happiness? Somehow some rich people manage to still be miserable, but most poor people would be free to be much more happy with more money.
Infinite growth of what? Is infinite growth of happiness possible?
People need to meet their most basic needs, doesn’t have to be through money. We’ve just set up society to work that way.
Capitalism in particular, is an incredibly stubborn idea that’s difficult to throw away. And we’ve rigged the system to make it difficult (almost impossible) to give up.
Hell, the U.S. is notorious for trying to overthrow governments around the world who don’t subscribe to capitalism, and the U.S. governments way of thinking.
Economic growth is an accounting measure, and so it can definitely be limitless.
That’s a hypothetical
No, that’s literally the definition of growth (the variation of GDP from one year to the next, the GDP itself is defined as the sum of gross value added). We can make growth out of thin air if we want, it’s a purely accounting metric.
I sell you a pebble for a $1000 and you sell it back to me and we created $2000 of growth without anything physically happening.
You missed the point. Everything you are describing is hypothetical. Cash and dollars are physical, but “value” and “growth” that you have described are hypothetical.
I’m not sure what you mean by “hypothetical”, these aren’t hypothesis, these are their definition. And their definition means they are limitless, just as the definition of “beauty” or “numbers” make them limitless. They aren’t bound by the physical world.
(also dollars are equally abstract, currencies exists as human convention, having $1 billion more in your bank account is just a few bits flipped in a database)
If you have infinite supply of something, it ceases to be a scarce resource with any intrinsic value. Literally nothing in the universe is infinite.
At the scale of mankind, the universe is effectively infinite. The sun has another billion year to go and outputs so much energy it’s virtually infinite to us.
There was an argument that marketing is the ultimate example of creating value without using raw resources by making an existing item more valuable.
Marketing takes human labor at the bare minimum.
It also consumes human labor when people absorb the marketing. This is an externality not accounted for in the cost of marketing, it is large, and it makes resources unavailable for more productive tasks.
Marketing is the distribution of information. Its value is not just a trick or something. You can argue we’re over valuing it, but it’s definitely extremely valuable.
I am saying the costs that are not accounted for, namely the effort spent by every not buying a product consuming an advertisement, is extremely high and outweighs the value of products sold. Moreover, there is no clear reason to think the persuasion of people in mass is good based just on selling more products. Finally, if a person is only persuaded to buy a different brand of product the value is effectively only the small marginal difference between brands.
I wouldn’t say capitalism is based on the notion of infinite growth, but it is an inevitability of there being no limits on capital accumulation. The notion that humans have endless desire for more, always needing a stronger hit to maintain personal satisfaction, is more psychological than something inherent to private ownership itself. Capitalism feeds the natural animal reward system to disastrous effect, but it isn’t required for capitalism to work. In fact, insatiable desires are the reason capitalism doesn’t work, because if people could be satisfied with a reasonable amount of resources, never trying to acquire more than they need, capitalism would be a fairly decent system.
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Threads like this make me miss the sort by controversial. Oh well. If you have chores, or something else to do, maybe go do that instead of reading this thread. It’s mostly shit slinging and people straw manning one another.
If anyone else came here to just talk about stuff, I’m willing to talk about how great cats and dogs are. Also open to hearing you out if you don’t like cats or dogs, but I want you to know that I strongly disagree with your opinion.
This is a popular take that is just completely wrong. Capitalism as a system does not require growth. Capitalism is a system in which the factors of production are owned by private parties and can be freely traded. The capitalists believe is that markets will allocate those factors of production to the owners that can best exploit them. This can result in growth, but it isn’t necessary for the system to function.
There are literally a thousand issues with the system ranging from inequality to environmental concerns to market concentration (all of which capitalists tend to ignore). I really do not understand why people pick this one to quibble over.
Because shareholders demand almost always increasing growth despite the factual impossibility to provide that. The gaming sector is a good showcase where trust, release quality & creativity and monetization practices continually degrade the overall experience until the company starts to sink in its entirety. Ubisoft comes to mind. I have been burned so bad by them, started to refuse their products and certainly I seem to not be the only person.
Adding to this, “limitless” growth just refers to the idea that it’s very hard to reach all limits in our present universe.
I agree that there are more important problems with capitalism than if we’ve reached a limit or not.
the u.s. economy is measured in “growth” by average economy anylyst assholes since forever. it’s GPD per X. shitheads love that kind of metric.
There are literally a thousand issues with the system ranging from inequality to environmental concerns to market concentration (all of which capitalists tend to ignore). I really do not understand why people pick this one to quibble over.
so why are you yelling about tangential bullshit that other people are yelling about?
Reminds me of this article: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist