this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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Communism

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 years ago (22 children)

Yeah that sucks, but in most communist countries that exist or have existed… don’t people just starve en masse?

Capitalism is morally bankrupt, but it prevents more famine (within its borders) than it causes

[–] AllonzeeLV 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (8 children)

I might get banned for saying this, but the problem is that pure communism starves human nature and provides little incentive for labor, while the current, practically unregulated market capitalism, very close to pure capitalism, gluts human nature's worst impulses exclusively: Greed, sociopathy, apathy, hyper-individualism, unhealthy competition, superiority, jealousy, schadenfreude, on and on. In their pure forms, they are opposites and extremes with regards to how they interact with human nature.

Capitalism can if very, very tightly controlled to be a slave to society, be useful in motivating labor. A slave meaning money in politics needs to be felonious with heavy penalty, highly progressive taxation, with a maximum income so no one can accumulate enough to begin capturing institutions and warping society to individual will, a ceo wage tied to to a reasonable multiple of the lowest paid worker, etc.

But that's the problem. Any economy, by definition, is a mere tool to better distribute goods and services for the benefit of the Citizens of a society humanity has developed thus far. Capitalism conflicts with this. Capitalism left unchecked demands never ending growth/metastasis, and incentivizes hurting other members of a society to benefit oneself. Western capitalism has increasingly become the thing we are willing to sacrifice the well being of society to protect. It's perverse.

The nordic nation's seem to have the best model to maximize the overall happiness of the Citizens of the society. You have incentive to do more for society, but are taxed heavily to provide for the commons and that is understood to be for everyone's benefit. The tail doesnt wag the dog. If you work hard and become a doctor, you pay taxes so others can become doctors without massive debt, creating more doctors for society, and you can afford a larger house than a janitor, not 3 houses and a boat and a timeshare and 7 cars and a quarter million dollar vintage nintendo cartridge and on and on and on while the janitor needs 3 roommates for an apartment.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report

The problem is, we have legions of victims of unregulated (captured by the oligarchs) capitalism who delude themselves into believing one day they'll be the fuckers living large and kicking the pathetic fuckees, the peope they actually are, so they fight against their own interests of creating meaningful social equity in preparation for a day the winners ensure will never come but convince the peasants will.

[–] Nevoic 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

There's a phenomenon in psychology called "crowding out", where extrinsic motivators (e.g money) can destroy intrinsic motivators (e.g passion), because they're more important (you need money to survive, you don't need passion).

The take that communism is bad for incentives and capitalism is good for incentives is far too naive. What capitalism can do effectively is make a large mass of people do a lot of work they don't want to do, and turn work they do want to do into a nightmare, where communism would instead focus on reducing the overall burden of unpleasant work, and find non-market solutions for distributing the unpleasant work.

Automating the bad away then becomes a positive instead of an existential threat to our existence. Many other contradictions of capitalism fall away when we look towards non-capitalists modes of production.

A lot of people frame non-market solutions as "compulsory", and market solutions as "free", even though again that's far too reductive, having the choice between starving and janitorial work isn't really a good faith choice, and yet these are the kinds of choices capitalism uses and calls the epitome of freedom.

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