Get Rid of Capitalism?

[Speaker to Animals]

That's really how capitalism ends, in my opinion. The fact that it doesn't work for the majority of participants with respect to access to jobs is horrible, but I can imagine a system where people are oppressed and locked down enough that it could sort of carry on for a while.

But the only way capitalism can exist in our near future is by transitioning from the idea that capitalists control the means of production to capitalists controlling the ideas of production.

But that's just untenable, really. People will eventually unlock printers and get around it.

I do suspect, however, a pretty big push for the universal recognition of "intellectual property" rights pretty soon, really. They are going to have to do that to remain in economic power. They have to get it into peoples' minds that just copying some idea for your own use is "theft".

Capitalism is only viable when the means of production are rare.

[Speaker to Animals]

And if you want my opinion about what comes next, maybe go read a novel titled City, by Clifford D. Simak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_(novel)


I don't mean the dogs and stuff, but what happens to the "city" and humanity in general.

[Zlaxer]

That's really how capitalism ends, in my opinion. The fact that it doesn't work for the majority of participants with respect to access to jobs is horrible, but I can imagine a system where people are oppressed and locked down enough that it could sort of carry on for a while.

But the only way capitalism can exist in our near future is by transitioning from the idea that capitalists control the means of production to capitalists controlling the ideas of production.

But that's just untenable, really. People will eventually unlock printers and get around it.

I do suspect, however, a pretty big push for the universal recognition of "intellectual property" rights pretty soon, really. They are going to have to do that to remain in economic power. They have to get it into peoples' minds that just copying some idea for your own use is "theft".

Capitalism is only viable when the means of production are rare.

A system based on the worth of "ideas" won't work for 95% of the human population - they simply lack the intelligence to compete....I hate to say it, but some form of UBI seems necessary, unless we reduce the number of proles.....do you really see most of the third world (or most Americans) working on a purely "idea" based economy?

[Zlaxer]

UBI with dramatically reduced world population we don't need 10 Billion people....

Fife won't like it - but he's offered up a big fat Goose Egg when it comes to keeping the proles employed....

[LVH2]

Sunkara and Chibber insisted their idea of democratic socialism shouldn’t be confused with the communist dictatorships that killed millions of people in the 20th century. Mangu-Ward and Gillespie likewise insisted on defending a capitalist ideal, not the current, corrupt reality. “Neither Nick nor I are fans of big business,” she said. “We’re not fans of crony capitalism.”

I figured as much. A lot of these things are about semantics.

But, there was a DSA FB group I joined. I found it largely unreadable, but I saw that a lot of people were confused. One day they might express a fondness for Bernie, the next they might express one for Marx, or suggest that we should do away with capitalism. I've seen some suggest they'd favor a command economy to a market economy, which is (at least to me) almost literal insanity. I doubt that any of them REALLY want some guy in an office picking out all their clothes for a year.

As simple as it seems I think a lot, being young, are on board with some things (universal healthcare, say) and then think it's all in the same bucket, which, of course, many conservatives do too. People who think Hillary Clinton is a Marxist.

Anyway, I've seen 'capitalism' used to mean different things, ranging from market driven, mixed economies (which would include Bernie/Sweden) to a system where capitalists have most or all of the power, i.e. the cronie capitalism of today.

I think a lot of these people would be happy to move to a more mixed economy, but still driven by markets (Bernie). But they think of "capitalism" to mean, Wall Street ruling the country (Clinton/Bush), and, as Zlaxon said, themselves buried in debt, with few good jobs, at the mercy of their masters, so they say they oppose capitalism and favor socialism.

[Zlaxer]

[...as Zlaxon said, themselves buried in debt, with few good jobs, at the mercy of their masters, so they say they oppose capitalism and favor socialism.

Who's this Zlaxon character? Seems pretty sage like.

[LVH2]

Thanks.

Re: your 3D printing insights, I could see the sheer absurdity of unlocking so much wealth/power, but simultaneously keeping it locked up thru patents, as the straw that breaks the camel's back.

We've seen that to a degree with file sharing, I think.

Imagine telling someone in 1940 that there would be a free, universal library of every work every created, including film, music and TV. Then trying to explain to him why this was a bad thing and the FBI must be deployed to shut it down.

[LVH2]

[...as Zlaxon said, themselves buried in debt, with few good jobs, at the mercy of their masters, so they say they oppose capitalism and favor socialism.

Who's this Zlaxon character? Seems pretty sage like.

I merged you with my favorite Commodore 64 game. High praise indeed.

[Speaker to Animals]

That's really how capitalism ends, in my opinion. The fact that it doesn't work for the majority of participants with respect to access to jobs is horrible, but I can imagine a system where people are oppressed and locked down enough that it could sort of carry on for a while.

But the only way capitalism can exist in our near future is by transitioning from the idea that capitalists control the means of production to capitalists controlling the ideas of production.

But that's just untenable, really. People will eventually unlock printers and get around it.

I do suspect, however, a pretty big push for the universal recognition of "intellectual property" rights pretty soon, really. They are going to have to do that to remain in economic power. They have to get it into peoples' minds that just copying some idea for your own use is "theft".

Capitalism is only viable when the means of production are rare.

A system based on the worth of "ideas" won't work for 95% of the human population - they simply lack the intelligence to compete....I hate to say it, but some form of UBI seems necessary, unless we reduce the number of proles.....do you really see most of the third world (or most Americans) working on a purely "idea" based economy?

It might work, but I think there exist some really big vulnerabilities to the idea of a UBI. For one thing, it makes your nation extremely inflexible. If some huge crisis occurs, you will have much less to work with in order to deal with it since your entire society is basically dependent upon that UBI now and you can't really cut into that.

To my mind, a better solution is to replace it with massive research and development programs designed to mitigate high-impact events in the style of black swan events. Those kinds of events are not ever going to be dealt with by capitalism, so we might as well make a list of the most high-impact events that could fuck our shit sideways and pay people to figure out how mitigate them. This would include war spending, by the way, but also dealing with asteroid collisions, black death 2.0, etc. You are still paying people to live, but they are at least providing a service to society at the same time while negating the laggard effects of a straight UBI on your ability to deal with crises.

Still, that might not even do it.

Think about this in terms of some future point where there exists no scarcity at all. Where it wouldn't matter if somebody is getting a UBI or not. He could just fabricate a house somewhere, and print pretty much everything he needs. Maybe he needs to grow his own food, but that's about it.

I think the general direction here is something like Simak described in City.

[apeman]

Thanks.

Re: your 3D printing insights, I could see the sheer absurdity of unlocking so much wealth/power, but simultaneously keeping it locked up thru patents, as the straw that breaks the camel's back.

We've seen that to a degree with file sharing, I think.

Imagine telling someone in 1940 that there would be a free, universal library of every work every created, including film, music and TV. Then trying to explain to him why this was a bad thing and the FBI must be deployed to shut it down.

Good point.

Agreeing with the general idea that we gotta move past capitalism, but once I try to think about any particulars I just dead end. Wresting control of capital from those in power keep coming back to Robespierre.

Future is gonna be weird. I suspect I might get to see where this heads before I die.