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Imagine everything humans could accomplish if we were not a commerce based civilization.
(self.showerthoughts)
this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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Capitalism may hold us back in some regards but really helps in others.
The majority of people would likely be feudal peasants, working under a warmonger family that owns the sustaining land by force. No upward mobility except through bloodshed.
I suppose not much has changed then
FTFY
No you don’t understand, this 9-to-5 job that’s slowly but surely wearing me down is just a stepping stone to my millions of $$. That’s why I keep voting for tax breaks for the rich; because I’ve just been temporarily down on my luck for 30 years. /s
No, if you're lucky, clever enough, overwork yourself, or manipulate others you can live a somewhat comfortable life. Those methods don't require taking a life.
Make it make sense
Comfortable as in "you have a heated living space, food on the table, and security." Don't be dense.
That's not living comfortably, that's the bare minimum everybody should have
100 years ago people round here still had no electricity and depended on wood stoves yet. You are really spoiled.
Capitalism optimizes for efficiency. Sadly slavery is terribly efficient in terms of economics. Therefore capitalism needs to be capped by society at certain acceptable limits. Which is called socioeconomics and its not perfect but the best system we have. insert handwavy remark about whatever america is doing here
the problem with this is that we depend on the capitalist overlords to keep their pinky promise of not fucking with our rights.
right now they are breaking it again because they can.
i also don't think having the majority of the money/value going to a few owners is efficient at all.
Capitalism is based on free exchange and wage labor. Unless a slave has volunteered to be a slave, using a slave is not “free exchange”.
Thats still in a sense a commerce based system. The only reason that warlord fights for that land is because it has value, be it food, a cash crop, a strategic location.
Warlords hoarded land and power in similar ways billionaires hoard money and power.
That's literally how it is now
When you lack the imagination to think about how it could be worse, you can still get the detailed descriptions of it from history.
And yet no one cares because this is what we're dealing with now
No, you are not dealing with the life of a feudal peasant. Just stop
No, we're dealing with worse. Much, much worse.
You can't make me stop
No I can’t. Just one way in which your life is different than that of a feudal peasant.
Yet you're still desperately trying so it's obvious our suffering is valid and that you can't just invalidate it by comparing our situation to that of people 500-600 years ago, can you?
You can keep trying to get one over on me, though. I suppose it'll take the sting out of the last two times you failed. 🍿
No, stopping requires your will. It's your decision. That's called "freedom" and it's an aspect of your life a feudal peasant wouldn't have.
I'm not trying to invalidate your suffering. You are trying to invalidate those people's suffering, by claiming their lives were just as easy as ours. Which they weren't. Those people went through shit we can't imagine.
Capitalism optimises for concentrating resources.
Dividends, return on investment, profits, etc. are all inefficiencies in the production of value, and require more resources, labor, and suffering per unit of value than for example a circular economy.
But it does concentrate wealth efficiently, which in turn gives access to enough resources to start larger ventures.