I wonder why it is so hard for so many people to accept that the world is better than it ever has been, and is still getting better. You see this from every side of the political spectrum. Is being super cynical just a bug in our nature?
Our planet is literally dying. We lost over 60% of land animals [1], insects are dying out as well [2], and life in the oceans isn't doing much better [3].
The temperatures keep rising at an accelerating rate. We're about to get a big methane burp once permafrost melts. That's gonna put 25 gigatons of a greenhouse gas that's 4x more powerful than C02 into the atmosphere. Currently there are about 4 gigatons of methane.
Complex life on this planet could literally go extinct in the near future. All of this is a direct result of human activity. Thinknig that life around the world is getting better, and everything is fine is the height of idiocy. We're facing an unimaginable climate catastrophe that's going to affect every single person in the world.
Altho all this is the result of human activity resulting from exponential increase in our population. And hence consumption.
It’s not capitalism. It is uncurtailed procreation. Altho’ one might suggest that there is some correlation between capitalism and decrease in crushing poverty(leading to higher survivability) ..which will result in our eventual demise of our species(and others).
It's both though. Growth is the core tent of capitalism, and it promotes consumerism that in turn requires consumers. This ethos is what's killing us. And just to contrast for you. I grew up in USSR, and the focus there was on sustainability. Products were built to last because it cost the state a lot of resources to produce them. There was no drive to make products for the sake of making them, or to introduce insane ideas like planned obsolescence. A lot less resources were devoted to frivolousness as well. So for all its faults it was actually a much better system in this regard.
It's also perfectly possible to aim for sustainability and to manage our population. Just look at how China managed to put a stop to its population growth. The problem is that the capitlist economic system is completely at odds with that because it requires constant growth.
I hear you and I don’t mean to be disrespectful in order to disagree...but it seems like USSR didn’t stand a chance. Sustainablity is different from a failed economy.
I grew up in India. One might say China and India’s population is more sustainable than USA because they consume less and yet 2.5 billion sustainable people consume a lot more than 350 million Americans. Life is certainly better in the USA. For me. I must hasten to add that because my needs are different from my kin and peers who prefer India.
My entire school years, I studied from Russian(USSR then) puzzle books and text books and went to the counsul to learn chess. I have very fond memories of what USSR was...from a distance. It was an economy of scarcity. It is not the same as an economy of sustainability. And yet, it failed. It did not create a better life for its citizens.
People leave communist countries for survival while Americans threaten to leave their capitalist paradise because they are embarrassed by their first term President. The priorities are very stark.
China forced the one child policy upon its citizens. Not by granting incentives but punitively. I am not sure that I can be on board with that...I think population control should still have the element of ‘free choice’. People must choose to have smaller families because it benefits them first.
Capitalism will certainly have to change its flavor now especially with automation., but it has done a great job building a foundation. We are already fast approaching a world where there will be more people than jobs. It is going to be possible to survive and even thrive without a work force. But not with 10 billion predicted for 2050 because there is certainly a tipping point to this planet and fixed resources.
I sometimes feel like we should step away from limiting labels like communism and socialism and capitalism. I think those times are long gone..what we need now is a new structure. A sustainable structure based on all that we learnt from capitalism AND communism. Everything is going to change now ..not just with automation but also with climate change.
Capitalism can and will morph. I doubt if communism can..it’s just too rigid because it’s a philosophy of conformity for all while capitalism is a philosophy of freedom for the majority.(not all)
I won’t pretend to know a lot about this...I know plants and animals more than political systems. What do you think of the above and can you convince me to change my position?
I don't really see how that follows. The primary cause of USSR collapse was NATO, which chipped away at it on every front until the collapse. However, it looks like USA isn't really going to outlast USSR by a big margin. Having lived through the collapse I see many of the same signs, and I think the US is much worse prepared to deal with it than USSR due to lack of public infrastructure and services.
>It did not create a better life for its citizens.
It certainly did for me, and what's more USSR created decent life for most citizens without exploitation. Everybody had access to housing, food, medicine, and education. There was no concept of homelessness for example. I have very fond memories of living in USSR.
>People leave communist countries for survival while Americans threaten to leave their capitalist paradise because they are embarrassed by their first term President. The priorities are very stark.
With all due respect, I don't think you have any idea of what you're talking about here. Having actually lived in the soviet union, I can tell you that the quality of life was very high for great many people. We had more free time, better education, and the basic needs taken care of.
In the capitalist system, you have a large pool of people who are struggling to survive and have no access to things like basic medicine. People die all the time from preventable causes in the USA. People die because they can't get things like insulin that cost nothing to make. Then you have places like Flint where people don't even have drinking water.
It's also important to note that slave labor plays a very big role in the capitalist system where large portion of the population produces goods for the middle class to consume in horrible conditions.
This is reflected in the prison labor system in the states, as well as what's effectively indentured servitude of many workers in third world countries who have to work insane hours in horrific conditions to produce the goods consumed in US.
>I think population control should still have the element of ‘free choice’.
I don't agree when the risk of 'free choice' is the whole species going extinct.
>Capitalism will certainly have to change its flavor now especially with automation., but it has done a great job building a foundation. We are already fast approaching a world where there will be more people than jobs.
That doesn't make sense. The more jobs are automated the less people are able to do meaningful work. The insane premise of capitalism is that everybody has to work to live. Automation is completely at odds with capitalism. Nowadays it's not just automation of manual labor either, machine learning is quickly encroaching on many jobs in fields like medicine, law, and journalism. The amount of jobs that people can do better than machines is rapidly shrinking.
>I sometimes feel like we should step away from limiting labels like communism and socialism and capitalism. I think those times are long gone..what we need now is a new structure. A sustainable structure based on all that we learnt from capitalism AND communism. Everything is going to change now ..not just with automation but also with climate change.
I think the new system has to be much closer to communism than to capitalism. We need something that's sustainable and not rooted in materialism if we are to survive as a species.
>Capitalism can and will morph. I doubt if communism can..it’s just too rigid because it’s a philosophy of conformity for all while capitalism is a philosophy of freedom for the majority.(not all)
Not really sure what you mean there to be honest. I think you might be conflating communism and totalitarianism which are orthogonal concepts.
So, to sum up I'm not really convinced by the argument. I think that capitalism is fundamentally at odds with long term survival of humanity as a species.
Thanks for your response and you have said a great many things..I have numbered them for my ease.. I hope that’s ok.
1. Y: I don't really see how that follows. The primary cause of USSR collapse was NATO, which chipped away at it on every front until the collapse. However, it looks like USA isn't really going to outlast USSR by a big margin. Having lived through the collapse I see many of the same signs, and I think the US is much worse prepared to deal with it than USSR due to lack of public infrastructure and services.
JF: we do have public infrastructure and services in the USA and perhaps you are right, but I have a harder time imagining a collapse like the one in Soviet Russia.
I remember the narrative behind USSR collapsing differently. I still remember the day I read it in the newspaper and I was in high school. We had 30 minutes of discussing the day’s news and I still believe what I believed then..Gorbachev introduced perestroika to a people and nation that wasn’t ready for it. Russia was already weakened and destabilized and it was too much. You cannot blame NATO without looking at the internal mechanics and the role Gorbachev played.
2. Y: It certainly did for me, and what's more USSR created decent life for most citizens without exploitation. Everybody had access to housing, food, medicine, and education. There was no concept of homelessness for example. I have very fond memories of living in USSR.
JF: Yes, I have heard this over many many times. My close friend is from Georgia and she is here now. I want to beckon the concept of survivability. When any system is so weak that it cannot recover from a severe blow, it means that it is not the optimal for survival. Which automatically(to me) makes the good times ephemeral.
Colder countries generally have a lesser degree of homelessness than those in warmer tropical climes because it is certain death to be homeless in winter.
I do believe that it comes down to personal notions of what freedom means to individuals. The men and women lined the streets and wept when Stalin and also Mao died. They ran regimes. Not governments. They were responsible for some brutal inflictions upon their own people and yet, like how a child cries when an abusive parent dies..they felt bereft and lost. There was suppression of thought and an iron hand on how people were expected to think and act..they were free within the spheres of state control and it is freedom nevertheless, but outside was a world with a feral freedom as befits the human spirit.
3. Y: With all due respect, I don't think you have any idea of what you're talking about here. Having actually lived in the soviet union, I can tell you that the quality of life was very high for great many people. We had more free time, better education, and the basic needs taken care of.
JF: you might be right. I can only speak from my perspective.
5. Y: In the capitalist system, you have a large pool of people who are struggling to survive and have no access to things like basic medicine. People die all the time from preventable causes in the USA. People die because they can't get things like insulin that cost nothing to make. Then you have places like Flint where people don't even have drinking water.
JF: that is only one side of the United States. There are many facets of a capitalist society.
There will always be people working for others. There will always be some who are richer than others..smarter than others..more wily than others..more able than others. The game of life ...as I see it..is evaluating the cards you hold and play them well for the best possible outcome for oneself.
6. Y: It's also important to note that slave labor plays a very big role in the capitalist system where large portion of the population produces goods for the middle class to consume in horrible conditions.
JF: one of my replies got flagged because I objected to the use of the term ‘slave labour’. That is not slavery.
When I spot that word, I step away from any discussion. Because it’s connatations are horrific and is not really suitable to be borrowed to fit unrelated arguments.
I find that I am at a loss of words when I am confronted with such black and white perspectives of capitalism.
7. Y: This is reflected in the prison labor system in the states, as well as what's effectively indentured servitude of many workers in third world countries who have to work insane hours in horrific conditions to produce the goods consumed in US.
JF: I am departing from this discussion. I disagree with you on majority of the points. But I respect your right to pursue your deeply held convictions. Have a good day.
>I remember the narrative behind USSR collapsing differently.
That's the difference though, you remember a narrative while I remember actually living in USSR, and living through the collapse as a personal experience.
>When any system is so weak that it cannot recover from a severe blow, it means that it is not the optimal for survival. Which automatically(to me) makes the good times ephemeral.
This is the case for literally every single system of government we've had. Every empire that ever existed has collapsed. Entropy is literally a law of thermodynamics.
>Colder countries generally have a lesser degree of homelessness than those in warmer tropical climes because it is certain death to be homeless in winter.
There is plenty of homelessness in US and Canada, and there is no mandate to prevent that under capitalism. Soviet Union actually saw things like shelter and food as human rights.
>The men and women lined the streets and wept when Stalin and also Mao died. They ran regimes. Not governments.
You're once again confusing communism with totalitarianism.
>There will always be people working for others. There will always be some who are richer than others..smarter than others..more wily than others..more able than others. The game of life ...as I see it..is evaluating the cards you hold and play them well for the best possible outcome for oneself.
The point was that you have a double standard for communism and capitalism. You're saying there were poor people in USSR and that's what made communism bad, but people suffering under capitalism are themselves at fault. The reality is that capitalism creates a system of exploitation, and if you happen to be a member of the exploited class, there's no easy way out.
> one of my replies got flagged because I objected to the use of the term ‘slave labour’. That is not slavery.
It's slavery in anything but name. If you object to the term, then please justify what you're basing this assertion on. When you chain up children in factories to make things like clothing, that's slavery plain and simple. If you're not comfortable discussing capitalism factually, then I don't know what else to say here.
People that are 20-30 years old right now have always lived in a world where everyone told them that everything (food, economy, climate, pensions, planet, the middle east, ...) is going to shit and is getting worse and worse, even though this is patently not the case. (Just one example: when you have all these articles about how BAD food today is, consider that today you get clean + nutritious foods for very little money; malnutrition is actually hard to do! I can go out right now in winter and buy vegetables and fruits that prior generations simply did not have at all at this time of year -- but clearly everything's worse now!).
This is pretty much the original form of clickbait.
Wild expectations driven by a culture of greed. People just want more and more and when they can't get it, everything is terrible. A life of comfort has basically incubated generations of immature childish people that have lost sight of what is really needed in life. I have personally talked to people that are well off but are stressed out because they can't afford to keep paying for an additional property they have. They get so caught up in maintaining what they have and getting more. This is particularly dramatic to me because all I want is a secure place to work and study. I feel very out of touch for not wanting all these things that people around me seem to fight tooth and nail for.
The opinion piece was pointing out the flaws in the infographic's depiction of poverty, not any other metric. The poverty graph was clearly flawed as it made assumptions about most of the timeline. Recasting the data from 1981 failed to account for China, another point clearly made in the article.
Easier access to data + negative bias[0] = people thinking the world is a shit show (don't get me wrong it probably is in a lot places).
That's what happens when you're blasted 24/7 with news about kidnappings / rapes / killings / terrorist attacks / natural disasters happening in far away places and which have 0 impact on your daily life & community.
The only case I can see is that as material suffering has decreased, psychological suffering has (possibly) increased.
I know many people who make a lot of money, have abundant food, access to shelter, medicine, education, entertainment. And their self-reported emotional and psychological experience of life is hellish misery.
I’m not disputing that by many metrics the world is much better now. But it does seem that we apply a certain set of assumptions about the subjective importance of some types of suffering vs others. Sometimes that’s justified, sometimes we are noseblind to how modern society foments a hellish introspective existence.
Seriously, it boggles the mind. Right now is the best time to be alive and it's not even remotely close. 20 years from now it will likely be even better.
I mean, like 20 years ago HIV was still a death sentence. Now we have physicians saying they'd rather have HIV than diabetes. Just think about that!
Personal anecdote here. Socialists seem to reject the idea that capitalism has brought more general prosperity to the world more often than not when speaking in terms of life longevity and food availability. Its as if they don't want to admit the upsides of capitalism at the cost of rationality. I personally haven't seen this from the far right as I have the far left.
That's complete and utter nonsense. Capitalism works on slave labor plain and simple. The reason everything is made in third world countries is because they have no worker protections. Your clothing is made by some kids in Pakistan, your phone parts are made by suicidal workers at Foxconn, and so on. This is slavery in anything but name. Any countries that don't want to play in this system are systematically destroyed by US interventions. Just look at the history of South America as an example. It's a continuous stream of brutal coups and dictatorships instigated by CIA. Even domestically US now has a huge prison labor force that's become its own economy. You likely never experienced any of this personally, and never really wondered about the human cost of your lifestyle.
A rational person would understand that a system where 1% of the population owns 99% of the wealth is not working for the common people around the world.
