1周前

Best System Possible

Political Memes @lemmy.world

cm0002 @lemmy.world

1周前

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People in this thread: BUT WHAT ABOUT LIFE EXPECTANCY?!?!
Bro you really want to argue life expectancy in favour of the ideology that argues whether curing a patient is makes business sense?
Your long life expectancy is thanks to science, which has existed for a far greater percentage of human history. To argue it's because of capitalism is dumb as hell.
Also life expectancy took a nosedive when the Soviet Union fell. Wonder why.
- context for those unfamiliar with the reference https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/goldman-asks-is-curing-patients-a-sustainable-business-model.html
- People in this thread: BUT WHAT ABOUT LIFE EXPECTANCY?!?!
  Bro you really want to argue life expectancy in favour of the ideology that argues whether curing a patient is makes business sense?
  Your long life expectancy is thanks to science, which has existed for a far greater percentage of human history. To argue it's because of capitalism is dumb as hell.
  We're also literally watching it nosedive in the west and skyrocket in china but unfortunately the west is full of morons such as the one in this very thread who think that "everyone starved in medieval times" and that capitalism somehow liberated us from it
  hey wait, let's ask John Steinbeck how capitalism ACTUALLY TREATS AFFECTS FOOD SECURITY
  The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
  There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
  huh
For the people who are dunking on this by saying that historically things have been fucked up:
I think the point of the tweet is that systemic development doesn't stop at capitalism.
I'm pretty sure lots of educated people during the feudal era were saying that it was the best system available and at least they were dying less often than the Romans.
This is why liberals claim capitalism isn't a specific material circumstance, but an abstract set of values, or simply when trade exists. They want to make it seem like capitalism is an intractable part of human existence that's existed for as long as we have. One time I was talking to a guy who didn't seem to be joking who told me capitalism began when the universe did, because chemicals trade electrons.
- capitalism began when the universe did, because chemicals trade electrons
  Type of shit they'd say in Starship Troopers
- Communism is when covalent bond
  
  Pretty sure it's when ionic bond cause your can't spell union without ion. Checkmate commie
You're right. At least under feudalism we had job security. We should return to tradition /j
- Motherfucker, people were already commenting on how ACTUAL labor relations for LITERAL SERFS weren't ACTUALLY as bad as wage labor (a form of slavery if you're not too brainwashed to realize what it means to have to work for a wage TO SURVIVE) in the motherfuckong 1800s
  This isn't the own you think it is, it's just an admission of your vast and all encompassing ignorance
  We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We called those barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die or hunger.
  The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets.
  Pyotr Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread
  Let me tl;dr that for you: literal fucking peasants would give up a quarter of their crop, and this was seen as barbarous. The wage laborer GIVES UP THE ENTIRETY OF THE PRODUCT OF HIS LABOR. In exchange, he recieves A FRACTION OF ITS VALUE IN WAGE. The relative exploitation here is obscene, and yet people like you, ignorant, think it's some sort of voluntary contract that benefits us all.
  But the wage laborer only "chooses" to work because they'll starve in the streets otherwise. The employer only has the privilege of benefiting from their work by owning the means by which they can do profitable work. They EXPLOIT THE WORKERS' SURVIVAL NEEDS and in doing so reap shares of profit from their labor that would make the cruelest medieval lord envious.
  And now, you dumb motherfuckers sit here, reading all this, and think, oh, so you want to return to feudalism? like that in any way makes sense
  How about ending the exploitation of labor entirely? That's what socialism seeks to do. But you dumb motherfuckers are out here acting like your fucking landlords do you any favors (while somehow pretending to yourselves they're any different from the evil feudal lords capitalism supposedly saved you from)
  
  Let me tl;dr that for you: literal fucking peasants would give up a quarter of their crop, and this was seen as barbarous. The wage laborer GIVES UP THE ENTIRETY OF THE PRODUCT OF HIS LABOR. In exchange, he recieves A FRACTION OF ITS VALUE IN WAGE. The relative exploitation here is obscene, and yet people like you, ignorant, think it's some sort of voluntary contract that benefits us all.
  Beautiful.
  
  Why are you assuming I'm pro-capitalism? It was joke (thus the /j) because I found the framing of OP's argument strange because (at least to me) it seemed more like an argument for fuedalism than socialism.
  I do now realize that I am incorrect with my initial assumption and thus I get why my joke wasn't very well received. I probably shouldn't have made it. Though I am confused as to why you made so many assumptions about my beliefs just from a dumb joke I probably shouldn't have made. If anything, I'm more anti-capitalism than pro-capitalism.
- yeah, it's really too bad that these are the only options
- Capitalism replaced feudalism, and socialism is replacing capitalism.
  
  I mean, tbf Feudalism and Capitalism isn't all that different from one another. The only difference is that Feudalism has the hierarchy embedded into government via the monarchy whilst Capitalism's hierarchy is enforced by corporations controlled by a different select few people.
  Whether Socialism actually does replace Capitalism we have yet to see, I'd definitely prefer it over Capitalism.
- OP is advocating for socialism, not for a regression to feudalism.
- "...including being crucified, eaten by lions in a public show, and being sewn alive inside a bag with various animals and thrown in the river to drown."
  We've barely evolved at all. I just heard the President of the US relishing the idea of escapees from his concentration camp being eaten by alligators.
- The rise in life expectancy has fuck all to do with capitalism given that life expectancy in both Cuba and China is higher than the US right now. Meanwhile, slavery continues to be the backbone of western economies.
- Yeah, the classical mode of production was worse than what we have today. Slavery was worse than feudalism. Feudalism was worse than capitalism. Objectively speaking, for almost all of humanity, capitalism has brought about massive improvements in many aspects of life compared to previous modes of production^[Mind you, this does depend on when you start counting for much of the colonized world; I'm not counting the period of primitive accumulation under colonialism as capitalism, despite the fact that capitalism couldn't have come to, say, Latin America, without the Spanish and Portuguese colonial period having accumulated capital in the hands of the future bourgeoisie. A similar point also applies to Asia and Africa].
  The point isn't that capitalism is uniquely bad. When it's not crashing and burning, capitalism is very good at creating wealth. The problem is that liberals today often assume that because capitalism is better than the systems that came before it, it means it is the best possible system, and will never be replaced. We know, due to the contradictions at the foundation of capitalism, that it inevitably will destroy itself.
  
  capitalism couldn't have come to, say, Latin America, without the Spanish and Portuguese colonial period
  Oh come on we all KNOW that the Inca would have created industrial socialism by like 1750 if it wasn't for the damn Spanish
- The greatest measurable increase in life expectancy and quality of life happened in China during the second half of the 20th century, during which it developed from backwater feudalism to centrally planned socialism.
  The greatest measurable reduction in life expectancy and quality of life occured in former Soviet countries in the 1990s, where they devolved from centrally planned socialism to internationally financed capitalism.
- Capitalism hasn't done shit for you you brainwashed piece of shit
  
  It made iPhone
  
  Hey, that's not fair, their boss probably pays them a wage that makes the reproduction of their labor possible.
- OP doesn't say that an older system was better - especially not some super-specific one. Just that it's NOT the only possible system and likely not the best there can be.
  So I'm not sure who exactly you're arguing with.
- first-class example of whataboutism, favourite of useful idiots worlwide!
- I fail to see what any of this has to do with an economic system. These are scientific or legal topics.
  And indeed, slavery is present under unchecked capitalism as well.

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