•  fuklu   ( @fuklu@lemmy.fmhy.ml ) 
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    241 year ago

    It’s not a bug that capitalism is based on greed, it’s a feature. It works (relatively speaking) because it leverages humanity’s shittyness.

    Communism has failed to operate without corruption or authoritarianism, because it depends on people actually giving a shit about each other long term.

    •  TWeaK   ( @TWeaK@lemm.ee ) 
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      171 year ago

      They both fail, but the problem isn’t the system. The problem is people. People try to put themselves into positions of power, retain their position of power and exploit that position of power. Capitalism and communism are simply attempted solutions, however unfortunately they don’t adequately deal with the human problem.

      With capitalism, people exploit the value exchange. They lie about how much something costs to source or produce, then lie about how much someone else should pay for it, and also about how much a worker’s time is worth. Such that you end up with people doing a lot and getting nothing and people doing very little if anything but getting lots.

      With communism, people put themselves in positions of power to decide how things should be distributed, then vigorously quell and dissenting voices that ask whether things are being distributed fairly. The end result is more or less the same as capitalism - a small portion of people getting a large portion of wealth.

      Any solution must take into account human tendencies to abuse the system, and make efforts to prevent it. However quite often perfection ends up being the enemy of progress - we don’t try new things because they might be abused, and end up sticking with the current system which is definitely being abused. This only benefits the abusers. Rather, we should aggressively try new social systems, but also regularly review and either reverse or continue to improve upon them. If nothing else, the changing system will disrupt abusers, as they have to constantly develop new methods.

      •  fuklu   ( @fuklu@lemmy.fmhy.ml ) 
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        41 year ago

        Thanks for the thought provoking reply!

        My impression is that all systems fail long term and need to break down and be renewed after crisis. Once it becomes entrenched, I think odds are heavily against being able to try social systems.

        Have you seen a system like you describe, where a structure to continue change and experimentation is built in? To me capitalism with strong controls seems the most stable and successful (assuming your benchmark is population qualify of life not just GDP), e.g. some European systems.

        •  TWeaK   ( @TWeaK@lemm.ee ) 
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          31 year ago

          Arrrrg I wrote out a big reply, was about to post, then realised I’d accidentally downvoted you. When I changed that downvote to an upvote my reply was reset. #lemmybugs.

          Here’s take 2.

          My impression is that all systems fail long term and need to break down and be renewed after crisis. Once it becomes entrenched, I think odds are heavily against being able to try social systems.

          I’d agree with this, genreally. It feeds into the point in my last paragraph: we need a changing system to destabilise incumbant powers, such that they cannot abuse the system as effectively. These changes must be driven by objective improvemnents, democratically decided. Furthermore, I would say that total democracy is a win.

          People will point to Brexit as an example of the hazards of giving people a vote. However, the truth is Brexit was a disinformation campaign - such a campaign cannot be maintained indefinitely, it can only be focused onto key events - particularly when it was driven by targeted lies (primarily on Facebook) immediately before a vote. You can say whatever you want if only the people who won’t question it see it, and by the time anyone else does it will be too late. If people had subsequent opporunities to decide how Brexit would be done, along with votes on whether or not to proceed down any particular route, things wouldn’t have been anywhere near as bad.


          I believe in a strong social safety net. The bare basics of human needs should be provided for any citizen: food, clothing, and shelter. Without these needs, people get desperate, and they turn feral. They resort to crime - which then easily becomes a habit. This is worse for everyone overall; by preventing this we help maintain a stable and productive society.

          The basics should be provided. If people want nice things, they should have to work for it. If you want a nice house, you need to work and earn enough. If you want nice designer clothes, you need to work. If you want a PS5/Sexbox/1337 PC you need to work for it and earn it. If you just want to rest on your laurels with the bare minimum, that should be an option, too.

          However lazing about doing nothing is incredibly fucking boring and unfulfilling. No one wants to live their life that way. The lifetime benefit scrounger is pretty much a myth - maybe there’s one or two who game the system, but it never lasts forever. People want to improve their position in life, they want to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”, they just need the opportunity.

          I know this full well. I’ve had the luxury of not doing anything, I’ve skirted poverty but never quite truly fell into it. And it’s not anywhere anyone wants to be. However, even in my position success is limited - debtors and financiers prey upon anyone who falls below a certain line. If you pay off your credit cards every month, they’ll feed you more credit, then when you start building up debt they’ll rack up your interest rates such that your instinct is to dig in deeper in some vein hope of finding your way out.

          Meanwhile, the past is littered with famous artists, many musicians, who have spent some time living off the state. These stories have become fewer and fewer over the past couple decades - no one can live off the dole anymore. This begs the question: how much social development has the human race missed out on, given that young people have been stretched to their limit, such that they barely even want to contribute anything because their prospects are now so bleak?

          People shouldn’t be exploited to their limits. Particularly, citizens of any country shouldn’t be left to rot. Any great country that calls itself wealthy should be able to care for its people, such that these people can find their feet and positively contribute to the collective good. And that collective good must belong to everyone, not just those who sit at the top and do very little to contribute themselves.

          • The problem with things like welfare and food stamps isn’t that people are lazy, it’s that the system produces distorted incentives. If getting a job means you lose money, why would you ever get a job? How are you supposed to get a better job if you can’t get a basic one?

            There should just be a universal basic income. And instead of a simple cutoff, your benefits should ramp down as your work income ramps up so that you basically keep 50 cents of every extra dollar you make from working until you’re completely weened off of the UBI.

            •  TWeaK   ( @TWeaK@lemm.ee ) 
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              21 year ago

              Not even term limits, I’d say politics should be like jury duty. Everyone has to do it, they get paid time off work for it, they don’t get to make a career out of it.

              But there should also be some meritocracy. The EU actually manages that quite well - the European Commission is made up of “unelected bureaucrats”, but actually what that means is they’re made up of talented lawyers chosen by each member state. These lawyers write laws. Then, the democratically elected Members of European Parliament vote on the laws.

              The clever people who know how to write laws write the laws, then the people democratically vote on the laws. That’s a pretty good principle.

              The only difference I would add is that people should have a more direct say on their vote. If I want to vote on a particular law, I should be able to vote on that law. If I don’t care I should be able to pool my vote with some group that I align with, who can then vote on my behalf.

              If I don’t like how the group votes, I can leave and vote for another next time.

              None of this, “vote for a guy, then hope they do what I expect of them for the next 4 years” bollocks.

              Furthermore, after the first vote, there should be an opportunity for more votes. So if the group I align with votes against my interest, I have a chance to object later on, be it before the realisation of the policy or upon review after the policy has been running for some time.

              Sure, there are faults with this. People can be manipulated. However, you can’t manipulate people constantly, forever, and eventually good policy should win through.

              • Okay, so how do we get everyone to actually bother to vote? In the US we’ve been having problems trying to get equal representation at the polls and so far haven’t really done a great job of fixing it.

                Having a team of lawyers to draft and submit legal terms is a great idea, in fact it’s kind of the point of lawyers. The issue is having the people who vote on them be able to both understand them, and to check both the writer and the representative check each other for corruption. If you give the representative the ability to remove the lawyer then the representative holds the real power, if you don’t, you give the lawyer more power. We need a balance in there somewhere.

                Let’s also not forget that direct democracy has lead to the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the election of theocratic and fascistic leaders. How do we balance that?

                Capping terms at 1 or 2 prevents people from being able to consolidate and exploit their power. But we’ll still need leaders to vote on our behalf so how do we prevent corruption? What if we had a new institution whose sole job was to check the government and maintain an open forum where all opinions can be shared and argued.

                More than any of this, I really think the rich just need to be scared of the poor again.

                •  TWeaK   ( @TWeaK@lemm.ee ) 
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                  11 year ago

                  You wouldn’t need everyone to vote on everything. However there is a natural incentive to vote on things that interest and affect you. Right now, people don’t vote because they don’t believe it will change anything - you vote for a person, but they’re no different to any other person. Meanwhile, if they were given the opportunity to vote on whether their tax money should go to fixing their roads or building a new school, more people will have an opinion on that and want to vote.

                  For things they don’t care about, they could either not vote, or better they could join a representative group. Rather than voting for a person to represent you for a set period, you join or leave a representative as you see fit. If you want to vote on a particular issue, or if the representative doesn’t vote the way you like, you withdraw your representative membership. Representatives would have to continue to act in the interests of their members, else they would lose their status.

                  I disagree that democracy led to Roe vs Wade being reversed. Trump was elected despite not having the most votes - which isn’t democratic - and then he appointed people to the court - not democratic - to rig the votes in their rulings. Even the opportunity to appoint new judges isn’t democratic, as they are appointed for life, so the timing of when one elects to retire or dies determines who gets to decide their replacement. This prevents the system from being democratic or fair - it is a political decision made by politicians, rather than a meritocratic decision made by experts of the profession. The legal profession should be picking judges, not politicians.

      • I think it is interesting that when talking about systems designed to organize people, their labor, and what to produce, that you are blaming people. It’s kind of like blaming water for flowing down hill when you want it to go up into your kitchen sink. Maybe use pipes and pressurized water instead.

        If these systems don’t work, the issues are with the systems and not with the people.

        •  treefrog   ( @treefrog@lemm.ee ) 
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          1 year ago

          this is like playing poker with someone and blaming the game when they exploit their position as dealer to slip themself an ace off the bottom of the deck.

          that said, i partially agree. the systems shouldn’t encourage greed or authoritarianism. we need a middle way and a system that accounts for peoples’ less wholesome tendencies and doesn’t reward them while encouraging wholesome behavior like sharing and generosity.

          burning man culture does an interesting job of this with decommodification and gifting principles.

          • I’m suspicious of burning man culture. It’s not a completely isolated example and there is too much influence that could leak from/to external society for it to be a real test case. I am not saying it wouldn’t work, just that it’s current successes have been biased.

        • I don’t think they blamed people. I think they said the issue is that the systems didn’t account for people. That’s saying the systems are inadequate solutions for the scenario.

          It’s like saying an iron rod rusts when placed in salt water because it didn’t account for the salt water. The iron rod might be a good design but it’s not designed for that use.

      • I feel like you’re misrepresenting or misunderstanding what communism is. You might base your opinion on the soviet union but they never actually achieved communism, and some would even say it was state capitalism and not even socialism. In fact it’s unlikely we’ll ever see what an actual communist society would be because it’s very much a vague utopia, and just a goal to strive towards.

        Communism by definition actually isn’t very clear because Marx never actually got into the details of how a communist society day to day life would look like. But he did postulate the primary idea of communism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” One idea of communism is that it’s stateless and classless, meaning there literally couldn’t be a small portion of people getting a large portion of wealth. Marx himself actually said that future communist institutions should be designed to be decided democratically by the people.

      •  fuklu   ( @fuklu@lemmy.fmhy.ml ) 
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        1 year ago

        Relatively speaking, I’d say yes.

        The communist systems I’m aware of have failed hard on these due to not having built in outlets for negative human characteristics.

        • No, we tried communism, the weird dielectric system of government that Lenin came up with.

          Communism, the market ideology, can exist within a capitalist framework - all we have to do is say “companies are owned and operated by employees. From now on, we cap ROI when loaning money, no more infinite payout because you provided startup capital”.

          Communes and entirely employee owned/operated companies exist, and they do well. They just don’t grow until they implode - they grow to a point and then stop letting people in

          Communism is a market system, not a system of government. It doesn’t need to be centralized - and centralization is the real problem IMO

  • farmers let rot there vegetable in field to save labour cost and inflate price , supermarket in us throw away food eveyday that can feed millions and lot of them pour chemicals or lock the dust bin in cage so homeless dont take food from it

  •  Jordan Lund   ( @jordanlund@lemmy.one ) 
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    1 year ago

    It costs money to produce food.

    The more people you want to feed, the more money it costs.

    Food production is not free. Food distribution is not free.

    If you have an alternative to capitalism, I’m open, but you can’t just stamp your feet and go “but it should be free!” It’s not, someone has to pay for the seed, irrigation, fertilization, equipment fuel and labor involved in production and distribution.

    p.s. Is it just me or is it the same people wanting $20+ hour minimum wage who also think food should be free?

    • First, I don’t think they ever said food should be free. Second, capitalism and communism and all the isms are the inventions of people - humanity makes the rules. Third, there is an awful lot of wiggle room between today’s food prices and “free”. Put it all together, and you might realize that feeding everyone doesn’t have to mean food is free and farmers and distributors go bankrupt.

      You call into question whether there are any alternatives to capitalism as if nobody has ever proposed any, and you call out people who want a $20/hour minimum wage as if minimum wage hasn’t been falling behind inflation and cost of living for decades. It kinda sounds like you want to pin society’s problems on the failure of individuals and don’t see anything wrong with “the system”.

      I don’t think anything less than a collective effort to support the vulnerable and dismantle the rotten parts of the system has any hope of improving our situation.

    • It costs money to produce food.

      The more people you want to feed, the more money it costs.

      Food production is not free. Food distribution is not free.

      Then it should be a task of the State, as “feeding people” is, quite obviously, a task Too Big to Fail. And, as such, the State can (and should) just automatically print the money needed to reward the work done. Feeding the hungry should not depend on a “budget”. A budget is basically putting a price on human lives.

        • Of course, but maybe destroying the modern economy is a good thing. Things like serving essential needs causing hyperinflation showcases that modern economy is purposefully built to make people lose. No matter what you try to do to help society, something (or rather, someone) counterplays you.

          IMO the real solution is that things that are essential, like food and health, should not depend on money exchange to be provided, period. Sure, producers of food and providers of health should be paid for their work, but that payment should not have a codependence with the fact that the hungry or unhealthy person get the attention they need.

          • that things that are essential, like food and health, should not depend on money exchange to be provided, period.

            The problem with that is the people providing the food and health services still need to survive.

            Doctors need to pay their rent. Farmers need to buy feed, seed, and fertilizer. Everyone pays for water.

            So once you go down the road of making it impossible to charge for services that need to bring in money to literally keep the lights on, you collapse the economy, and no, that’s NOT a good thing. That road leads to chaos and death.

            • I’m not saying doctors et all should not be paid for their work. I’m saying it should not depend on a money transaction on the afflicted citizen. I think it’s perfectly feasible to, for example, have the State pay for things that are essential, it’s kind of the entire role of the State after all. Or even better, give doctors and providers of those services the same treatment as in not collecting from them for stuff.

              Also, if there’s such things as “companies Too Big To Fail should be handed over to the State”, then that also applies to Tasks Too Big To Fail. Like, you know, keeping your citizens alive. I insist: the core task of the State is to keep the Country alive.

              If that collapses the economy, IMO that’s an indicative that the economy model is not good, or perhaps even unethical.

    •  bstix   ( @bstix@feddit.dk ) 
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      21 year ago

      It does however get considerably cheaper to produce more food when production is scaled up. If enough people got together on the “free food” they could potentially do it cheaper than what capitalism provides.

      The issue however is that capitalism has already made food really fucking cheap. It’s actually too cheap. And that is because someone else is paying the true cost of providing it. Obviously the animals who sacrifice the their lives, but also the human workers who also sacrifice their lives, just to bring food for everyone. Everyone eats, nobody gets paid, except for the owners who also do none of the work.

      • On a per capita basis, yes. But the Doritos that sell for $6 a bag come out of a multi billion dollar organization (Frito Lay, part of Pepsi).

        Individuals coming together to produce a single bag of Doritos aren’t going to be able to do it for $6. They need the infrastructure of that multi billion dollar corporation to get there.

        •  bstix   ( @bstix@feddit.dk ) 
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          21 year ago

          Yes, exactly. The problem is to get local produce cheaper than importing global crap. Distribution is a huge part of it. It shouldn’t be cheaper to transport crap food globally than for a domestic producer to deliver quality food, but it is.

          • The thing is, you can’t source enough local produce to support any significant population. I live in a town of 641,162 (2021 numbers), you’re not going to deliver 1,923,486 meals a day, 702,072,390 meals per year, using only local resources. It simply can’t be done.

            Even on my property, for two people, I would not be able to produce 6 meals a day every day. I have to bring in outside resources.

    •  TWeaK   ( @TWeaK@lemm.ee ) 
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      21 year ago

      Food should be free though - the basics at least. The same with clothing and housing. These are 3 essential things that any civilised society should be able to provide to all of its citizens.

      Beyond that, people will want nice things. People will work for money to buy those nice things. There’s this whole fiction about benefit scroungers that doesn’t really ring true, very few people spend their entire lives reliant on social welfare, rather it allows them to pick themselves up and make money to improve their position in life.

      If people are without food, clothing or shelter they run the risk of basically turning feral. No one should want that for anyone else.

    • Yes, you are correct, food is not free. So does that mean it is good (per your morality) that people starve? The military is super expensive, but that hasn’t stopped us from deciding all Americans need protection and making that happen.

      Capitalism has done some good stuff, but it has also done some bad stuff too. It’s not an all or nothing proposition. I think if the majority of us agree everyone should have access to food, money should be a detail to solve, not a barrier.

      The question is, do you think food should be free? Have you ever thought about it seriously?

      •  Jordan Lund   ( @jordanlund@lemmy.one ) 
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        1 year ago

        Morality doesn’t enter into it. If you want something that somebody else puts effort into producing, they need to be compensated for their effort, materials, etc. etc.

        I guess you could phrase that as a moral demand. You don’t have free access to the results of someone elses effort.

        You want to eat without paying someone? Grow your own food. Nothing stopping you. Oh, but you’ll have to pay for the land, seed, water, fertilizer, animals. Learn how to slaughter and butcher on your own because you can’t pay someone else to teach you those skills. You could learn to hunt, but then you’d have to make your own weapons because even re-loading supplies cost money.

        • Wait, what?! Morality doesn’t play into it?! Well, then why do people need to be compensated? You can just stab them after they make the thing you want.

          I’m almost afraid to tell you that bullets are cheaper than most things you can get by shooting people who carry said things.

          Also, “grow your own food”. Sure, on what land? Is no one going to stop me from uprooting crops on land owned by others so I can grow my own? What tools will I use? Do I make my own from sticks and rocks, or do I take the tools owned by others?

          What your proposing is insane. I think you need to touch some grass.

          • People need to be compensated otherwise they will stop producing.

            Let’s say you own a bakery and you make really good donuts. Maybe the best donuts in town. Every day you get up at 5 AM to make a fresh batch and put them out for sale.

            And every day, every single one of them gets stolen.

            How long before you just stop making donuts?

            https://youtu.be/petqFm94osQ

            • Sorry, I deleted my comment because I realized that I misread the post I was replying to.

              To respond to this post, yes, that is problematic if you care about the workability of the system, but if you have morals, then weather or not the system works is moot.

              • And, again, morals don’t enter into it. People deserve to be paid for the work that they do, and it doesn’t matter what that work is.

                Isn’t that what the whole “anti-work” is about? Paying people what they deserve to be paid, right? Why do you think people involved in food production or distribution deserve any less? They work as hard, or harder, than you or I do. Nobody should expect them to work for free “because food should be a right, man!”

                •  deaf_fish   ( @deaf_fish@lemm.ee ) 
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                  Ok, but why do people deserve to get paid for their work? That seems like a moralist statement. Is there deeper rational supporting that statement, or is that a moral imperative for you?

                  Edit: to be clear I’m not disagreeing with the premise, I just want your reasoning for arriving at it.

          • Yes, because if you don’t own the land, you have no right to trespass on it to work that land.

            Now, here’s the correct way to do it:

            1. Buy the land and do what you want with it.

            2. Contact the owner of the land and work out an agreement. Maybe they’ll let you use it for free, maybe they’ll take a cut of whatever you produce there, whatever is mutually agreeable.

            You don’t have the right to just do whatever you want, and, further, once you put the effort in to do something with that land, nobody can just take it from you because they feel your work has no value.

            For example…

            I have a fence that faces a busy road. It’s on my property and just sits there, it provides privacy for my home.

            Someone asked if it was OK to hang carpets on my fence and try to sell them.

            I told them “Sure, kick me 5% of the sales and you can do what you want.”

            Never heard from them again. If they hadn’t asked me, I’d have trespassed them. If they wanted to negotiate, I’d have been open to that too.

              • Nothing prevents them from having the means to grow their own food. The trick is being able to do it sustainably for a long period of time.

                My house sits on 0.16 acres, 6,970sqft. I could turn that land over to growing food. But the problem is, growing food is a full time job and if I spend all my time growing food for my wife and myself, I’m not making money to pay the mortgage, and soon I have nothing.

                I could pay someone else to grow my food, they aren’t going to do it for free, but if I’m going to do that, I may as well keep my property as it is (not much you can grow on 0.16 acres) and just buy my food at a store.

        • Ok, so it sounds like in your case, the market is morality, if I am understanding you. So you would be cool with buying and selling slaves and paying hit men to kill people? All that would be good because everyone was paid?

          Have you though about this stuff seriously?

          • You’re making a disingenous slippery slope argument. The law isn’t about morality either, it’s about what is and is not legal.

            Slavery isn’t illegal because it’s immoral, it’s illegal because one person doesn’t have the right to take away another persons self determination. You can choose to hire them, and they can choose to work for you, but you can’t force them to do anything.

            By the same reason, you don’t have the right to take another persons food without paying them for it. That’s theft.

            • No, I am not making a slippery slope argument. I am just trying to understand your moral framework, or see if you have any.

              Yes, lets talk about laws, maybe that will help. Ok, laws are not just some magic thing that happens, they are developed by society, right? In fact you can argue that laws are related to morality. In a truly democratic society laws would derivative of morality, right?

              Humans develop constructs like laws and capitatim to help us do things. So it is important for us to not derive our morality from existing structures, because if we did, we could never evolve them in a way to help us do more/better things. I know this is kind of abstract and I am sorry about that.

              So you are using existing laws and economic systems to argue for the correctness of the current laws and economic systems. Using this approach I could argue that that Feudalism is pretty awesome because it is way better than the stone age, etc…

              This is why I am wondering if you have given any thought to your moral frame work, or if you have just accepted the status quo and are trying to justify it because you don’t have a framework.

              • No, laws have absolutely jack all to do with morality, and when they do (prohibition for example) they inevitably fail.

                Laws exist to define which rights supercede other rights.

                So, for example, in my state there are three cases where I can use lethal force:

                1. If someone is or is about to commit a violent felony on me.
                2. If someone is breaking into my house.
                3. If someone is or is about to commit a violent felony on someone else.

                So, I see a dude walking down the street swinging a machete (I live in Portland, it’s not as crazy as you’d think.)

                I don’t have the right to just plug the guy. That would be illegal. He has the right to be in public, swinging around a machete.

                Now, if he’s swinging it AT ME or someone else, or chasing them or threatening them, then it’s a different deal and my right to be safe in a public space supercedes his right to wave his arms in the air like he just don’t care.

                Again, laws are not present to pick moral winners and losers.

                • I completely disagree. Why are there laws to prevent people from killing each other? Why would we as a society bother to make that a thing? It’s morality. It’s the basis of everything.

                  If the most common moral framework didn’t hold that human life is valuable. Then we wouldn’t make those laws. It wouldn’t make sense for those laws to be on the books.

                  And yes the laws do and should pick winners and losers. If you are a serial killer, the laws are not in your favor, your a loser.

  • Without capitalism, what motivates farmers to do their work? It’s miserable work that has yet to be automated, so they certainly aren’t going to do it just for fun.

    So no, we haven’t conquered scarcity. Not yet, anyway.

  • Under modern food production systems that are entirely for profit we have had less famine in the world than any prior generation and especially far less famine in the world than in any communist nation that has tried to go and produce food without profit motives.

    Ideas like this one will lead far more people to starve.

    • @bioemerl Many many more people who would otherwise starve no longer starve. Many many more people who would otherwise have access to nutritional food are now surrounded by food that makes them sick.

      I hope we can agree that both are true and there are ways to do better.

      We failed with no profit motive and we failed by maximizing profit motive. I don’t think this idea would cause any more people to starve. I worry about our ongoing, collective failures of imagination.

      No, I don’t know how to solve the problem.

      • No, I don’t know how to solve the problem.

        It’s really not hard, You just push for regulations. Problem is, people like their junk food so they are almost always against regulations against it.

        We are a democracy at the end of the day and taking away people’s favorite foods is going to cause politicians to get voted out of office, even if it’s better for them.