this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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I asked my co-admin once if he thought Capitalism was evil, he's usually extremely careful with his words. He responded with "it might be".
It seems to have a lot of real problems, wealth inequality, human exploitation, environmental destruction. I think countries that have a mixed system, where it's part capitalist and part socialist tend to do better in most metrics. I wouldn't want to live in a country without socialised medicine, socialised education and pretty strict environmental restrictions.
Is this really uniquely true of capitalism? After all, the Chinese government sacrificed their environment (and neighboring countries) to supercharge growth. Then there was the destruction of the Aral Sea by the Soviet Union, one of the worst environmental disasters. I'm not claiming that communism was the cause, but that neither communist nor capitalism was the cause.
Agreed. I have a similar critique of some of the other comments. A lot of people are pointing to problems right now and drawing the conclusion that capitalism caused those problems. No doubt that capitalism was part of many problems but I think it's flawed to say the problems of today are uniquely caused by capitalism.
I can't think of a country that is purely capitalistic. They're usually some mixture of free-market with government intervention where needed. I think the US is in a period of transition but that description will likely hold for the future.
Mixed economy is the term. It's the almost universal modern economic model, though of course the balance varies widely.