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the left button would be better represented by saying 'capitalism doesn't work because it naturally brings about a scenario in which the most selfish people have the most power'.
@Zest Same problem with communism. The selfish people just leech off the people who arent selfish. But even worse as you are effectively pennalized for being selfless. At least to be selfish in a capitalism you have to be skilled or an effective business man. In a communism you just need to be lazy.
@freemo I get what you're saying, but people 'leeching' off the system to live lazy lives isn't the same thing as having massive power to influence the world around you because of your extreme selfishness.
a bunch of lazy people aren't personally ordering people to commit atrocity and paying those people to fulfill those orders, at worst they're ignorantly supporting atrocity or being apathetic towards it but that's way different to making the choice yourself because you know it'll get you an extra yacht or another 20 million dollars you don't do anything with because there's only so much money one person can spend.
we're talking about completely different degrees of selfishness here, between the average lazy person's lack of care and the absolute most extremely selfish and ruthless people who exist. and between giving those extreme examples ALL the power vs giving those average lame people the ability to maybe be inefficient, as if the only important thing in life is productivity.
also nobody who's selfless is going to perceive other people benefiting from their selflessness as 'being penalized' for being selfless. in actuality multiple socialist models account for the ability to incentivize productivity and altruism. we just don't want to also let people starve at the same time.
@Zest For starters, its not like communism reduces the concentration of power in greedy people either. Since 100% of power in a communism is distilled into the government you wind up with all the skilled liars and cheaters in government concentrating the power there **and** have huge quantities of selfishness, encouraged selfesness in the masses.
As for a selfless person not seeing being leeched off of by a person who is purely lazy and has no excuse... yea, no.. Even the most generous of people wouldnt take on an extra 40 hour shift, give the money to their friend who had no excuse than to want to play video games all day (well in a communism I guess it would be tic tac toe or something, cant afford video games in a communism).
yes unfortunately historically governments which use the label of communism have failed to live up to the ideals of it.
and I definitely agree with those criticisms, but I also don't want to get stuck on political ideologies that have had serious issues being shown. one way or another capitalist and communist systems have both been shown to be extraordinarily flawed in their ability to adequately account for the behaviors and needs of humanity.
I'm an anarchist so I don't want to sit here and defend oppressive communist regimes, the main thing I'm saying is that the criticism of capitalism in the meme you posted is dumb, but there's a more salient criticism from my perspective (which admittedly is an anarchist one not a communist one primarily) which touches on the same issue.
and yeah the most extreme example of abusing someone's goodwill is going to sound ridiculous, but currently there are workers who are fine with their tax dollars going to support disabled people, who may in fact be spending their time playing video games all day, what we're usually more sore about is the 40 hour shift, which btw is an expectation put on us by capitalist corporations, but which a leftist tradition of unionization had kept at bay historically.
@Zest They lived up to the ideals just fine.. the problem is the ideals are such that they will always create the worst sort of hell on earth. The whole idea of communism boils down to the government having ultimate control, distilling all the power away from the people, away from the workers, and concentrating it in the government. As they say, power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Communism can never and will never work. Greed and selfishness will garuntee that. Capitalism is a far sight better, doesnt mean there cant be something even better, but communism certainly aint it.
Not only is the comparison in the meme not dumb.. it is **literally** the reason communism cant work, selfish people, particularly when being selfish is rewarded the same as being generous.
@freemo haha, ok well you've clearly got a nuanced view on this already.
@Zest indeed, economic theory is one of my interests, and even did some novel contributions to the field that are still used by some.
@freemo well either way, we both seem to agree that capitalism is flawed and that maybe something else could be a better alternative. I'd love to hear it if you had any theories or ideas because, well, this stuff just comes from people like you or me anyways and I've got plenty of reason to respect your intelligence to begin with.
@Zest Thank you.
Well let me start by saying that governments can only go so far. In the end if you want a eutopian society where everyone lifts up everyone else, that is a social change not a government one.
That said, my own theory of an ideal government doesnt really exist in any proposals I ever heard. The idea would be that instead of people voting for representatives directly they would vote for outcomes (for example people might vote to make unemployment the most important factor). Then the politician that has the best history of achieving that in their jurisdiction would be elected. Likewise when reelection comes up we would look directly at how well they achieved their goal and that would determine if they get another term or not
Obviously the details are way more complex than all that, but thats the general gist of it.
Socialism always refers to places like soviet russia... As several prime ministers of europe have already went public stating multiple times, the EU and its member countries are not a socialism, they are all capitalist nations
Jacobin has a great "ABCs of Socialism" primer for those new to the concept,
and even more importantly CrimethInc has a pamphlet called "To Change Everything" that you can find digitally here:
https://crimethinc.com/tce
@freemo The problem of capitalism is not about the selfishness of people: capitalism would have several problems even in a situation without selfish people.
Capitalism has no way to properly allocate resources and avoid waste, unfortunately this problem is also present in socialism...