Not judging and am genuinely curious. Am asking here because this version of the “ask” community doesn’t have a “no politics” rule. Again, I’m not here to bash, this has just been on my mind for a while. This question has two components that are both relevant to capitalism and communism.
So we should start off with the context that capitalism, love it or hate it, is very preachy. Capitalists, like Communists with Communism, like the idea that as many nations as possible are Capitalist. This is regardless of a nation’s properties.
At the same time, the very nature of the Earth is not equal opportunity. Much like how one person can be born with better eyesight or athleticism than another person, one nation can exist with more natural valuables than another nation. You certainly aren’t going to find people moving to Australia “because the rainforests are nice”.
Natural valuables, however, are valuables nevertheless. Did you strike gold or valuable plant life in your native region? You can snag it from the Earth and drag it into the economic system and money will unquestionably pour in. Did you try to find valuables in your Saharan nation but can only find sand? Too bad, nobody is going to buy your sand.
That means that capitalist prosperity is not equal opportunity. One nation’s maximum possible level of capitalist prosperity could be levels lower than another nation’s maximum possible level of capitalist prosperity. At the same time, this does not stop the classic Capitalist view that Capitalism should be ubiquitous and the same everywhere. Also at the same time, there is no obligation to create a crutch.
Along comes Communism (by that I refer to hard Communism, since there are many highly pick-and-choose versions of it). Communism tries to acknowledge a lack of being equal opportunity and so it sets up a system where everything, from parts of the environment to the people themselves, are given roles based on their skills and needs, abandoning mutual exchange as a backbone. However, partially going back to the part about people themselves not being equal opportunity, this leads to a hierarchy of respect based on one’s work and skills. Are you a very sickly person who can’t afford to take part in the wolf pack, someone whose needs overshadow the little providable skill? You will, in many circumstances, be put on the back burner (note that wolves are bad model here, they care for their less fortunate). Same with the environment.
And to be fair, this is a valid question for many other ideologies as well. Libertarianism especially, if you live in a world where people have the liberty to leave people behind without the guilt of having been called murderers (since you’re acting on your liberties).
How do you explain this away and/or stray from the conventional form of your ideology (in a doctrinal way or maybe in the form of little habits you do) so that your approach makes things a little more equal opportunity (for example, my employer made a system to cycle errands according to employee sleep issues)?
I think it’s a miracle that we found a way to get humans to cooperate whatsoever. It’s fragile but by assuming everyone is fundamentally self-interested then it just about works.
Other systems assume a higher degree of altruism than humans actually have. Paradoxically this leads to more corruption in those systems, like endemic corruption in communist countries once some people start to play the system.
Capitalism facilitates cooperation but with an underlying game theory assumption of self interest holding it all together.
Is it? Humans have cooperated for much of our history. And even when power structures are pushing them against each other people literally risk life and limb to help them.
Australia has some of the largest rainforests: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondwana_Rainforests
Wait, it does? I was always taught it had the fertility of a three thousand kilometer savannah.
I asked chatGPT to extract the question from that as I struggled to pinpoint it myself. I’ll put it here as I’m probably not the only one wondering. So it seems like what OP is asking is (correct me if I’m wrong):
How do you adjust or change your beliefs (about capitalism, communism, libertarianism, or other ideologies) to deal with the fact that some people or countries naturally have more advantages than others?
Why is everyone complaining these days that they had to run something by ChatGPT for clarification as if the very fact ChatGPT understands a question doesn’t itself imply there’s nothing linguistically wrong with how it was asked?
Because you write like shit. ChatGPT doesn’t.
If what I say correctly abides by the rules of language, then the only issues with what I write would thus be technical.
I’m going to pull a quote out of !casualconversation@lemm.ee’s playbook and say if you insist standards for how people present themselves should be so high, a community of people exchanging questions and answers, especially ones with high concentrations of socialists, isn’t for you.
If what I say correct abides…
Idk bro, you’re not making your case here. Maybe speak pleainly if you want people to talk to you? Just saying.
pleainly
You prove my point. There’s a difference between ways of communicating that go against the rules of language and ways of communicating that simply, to some people, seem to overuse it. My original message had no typos.
There’s nothing stopping a sound mind that wants to understand it from understanding it. Or this sound mind could also, in theory, ask for a paraphrasing, and maybe the asker would have the courtesy to elaborate in some way.
Treating someone as having committed an offense worse than using slurs, just due to the way they explained something in the style of normal speech and language rules, is at least two levels of escalation above that and unprovoked.
Lol. That’s the spirit!
Because what you wrote is unnecessarily convoluted, circular and overly complex.
Going right along with that is your sophist projection of someone “complaining”. Nowhere was there a complaint. That was nothing more than an argumentation tactic by you: sophistry.
“Everyone” =/= Any of you in particular
I see it as lead-up.
Because what you wrote is unnecessarily convoluted, circular and overly complex.
Says the guy who used two forms of sophistry.
I kid. Just a little friendly ribbing.
Linguistically, whatever. Rhetorically, you failed to deliver a clear explanation of the problem you were seeking to have addressed.
Were I complaining?
Seemed that way to me, but complaint was warranted, so it may be that my own opinion colored my reading of your comment.
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, Pëtr Kropotkin (1902)
All things in moderation. The world is a spinning plate and extremes are to be avoided. Instead, the correct course is an ephemeral point somewhere around the middle which we must continually chase as it moves in response to the world. We all do our best to balance the world a little closer to what we want it to be.
Assuming I am even making sense of what you’re asking, because this is pretty unclear.
You're asking the wrong questions IMO. No one loves capitalism. Capitalism is an acknowledgment that humans are inherently corrupt and the concentration of power is a primary corrupting force. If anything the capitalist countries are failing at capitalism in the present.
Capitalism is also an acknowledgement of the true complexity of the world. No overarching human authority can encompass the true complexity of human enterprises. We simply lack the cognitive scope to manage at all scales without some forms of natural selection in play. Real competition drives people like no other force.
It is a terrible system, but there is no chance that a concentration of power in an alternative system will be better for the average person. Broad scale and scope altruism is not a long term successful form of governance. It is like the best form of governance, altruistic monarchy. However it suffers the same fatal flaw of a succession crisis. The naïveté of idealist is a recipe for authoritarianism.
No one loves capitalism. If they are intelligent, capitalism is the lesser of evils in the big picture. The alternative is a return to monarchy or feudalism in our conflict strewn past… IMO
I hate capitalism BTW. I don’t think we are there yet, but I think AGI is our best chance at a broad scale idealist future alternative. An entity that can never die and can plan long term with scalable and nearly infinite attention is the kind of manager that can achieve what we are empirically incapable of achieving. The systems it will take to institute and protect such an AGI are enormous, critical, and unlikely to get it right the first time, but the outcome is inevitable IMO. We will likely never see such a future in our lifetimes, but it will happen eventually. It will start by politicians either publicly or secretly deferring their policy and decisions to an AGI entity. Corporate offices will do the same. Humans can not compete with a true AGI when such a system emerges. We simply lack the cognitive scope and persistence. At present, AI is still orders of magnitude away from AGI. At the present the building blocks required are already in play. We can build a stacked stone wall and a house, but we need a palatial fortress, and that is still a big ask.
Capitalism sucks for all but a small elite. However, capitalism has an effective hook for people to oust bad actors through a entirely separate government. Such separation and protection does not exist when the government is expected to play some major management role in the market. If the government is such an authority, it will devolve into authoritarianism because nearly all humans are corruptible. There is nothing more dangerous than trust in others to do the right thing. Someone will always take advantage of the opportunity to exploit and pillage their neighbors when they can get away with it. Capitalism is hated by everyone but fools. It is just hated slightly less than succession crises and authoritarianism.
Tl;dr?
“how do you compensate for the fact that your capitalist ideology cares very little for the fact that things valuable in a capitalist economy (resources) are not evenly distributed? how do you compensate for the fact that your communist ideology cares very little for the fact that things valuable in a communist economy (capacity to work) are not evenly distributed?”
I don’t.
/thread
Who cares. Move on.
I think the big problem is the concept of state and corresponding geographical boundaries. If humanity could get rid of geographical binding of territories to states, it would stop all wars, and capitalism would work much better for everyone. Instead of states there could be some kind of unions and they could be represented in different geographical locations, and the infrastructure of any geographical location could be managed by cooperation of unions existing there.
I’m not entirely clear on what your angle is (or even what you’re particularly asking about). But I’ll try my best to offer something meaningful.
From what I can gather, you are making the rather common mistake of equating captialism with corporate capitalism/venture capitalism It may seem convenient (and depressing to think of the things as intertwined, but they’re really not.
Capitalism is very simple. It’s the exchange of goods and services for monetary reward. The harder you work (theoretically) the more you’re rewarded. It’s only when corporations, venture capitalists and stock prices become involved that that notion begins to become corrupted.
If I make a point to trying to do my grocery shopping at the local grocery store rather than the big chain, that’s still capitalism. I’d argue it’s more pure capitalism than corporate douchebaggery.
If I have a neighbour who likes to make wooden furniture in his garage and I procure a table and chairs from him instead of going to IKEA. That’s still capitalism.
If (as I had all the time growing up) our neighbours kept cows while my family kept chickens, we would purchase beef from them and they would purchase eggs and poultry from us. THAT’S CAPITALISM.
Seeing the reward from your own sweat rather than a corporation seeing the reward from other people’s sweat.
I guess in some sort of answer to your question, take back the notion of capitalism from the greedy corporations that have hijacked it. Support your local community. Go to your local farmer’s markets. Buy from local artisans and farmers. THAT’S how we reconcile (and fix) capitalism.
Capitalism is not just echange of goods and services for monetary reward. Its also the separation of labour from the means of production, the ensuing necessity of labour to sell their labour for a wage, and their ability to spend that wage freely at an open market.
There is no quirk. Hierarchy and inequality are natural and good. Equal opportunity sounds nice but like you explained it doesn’t really make sense anyway.
