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Eat the Rich

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
This is not unique to capitalism, tho.
Aye, as we can observe in alternative economies,
the concentration of wealth by elite members of
society, with misery for the masses still happens.
There's just less wealth for fewer elites.
 

The Kilted Heathen

Crow FreyjasmaðR
Any helpful information in that article on why we're "disillusioned with Capitalism" is drowned out to near obscurity with tons of opinion-languaged slush. It doesn't start well, either; we're not angry that people have refrigerators and start-push cars, that's just idiocy, we're mad because the system is broken and does not work toward us at all. It benefits literally a handful of people. Now pardon me, it's 11:10 and I have to leave to spend my entire day at work.
 

Rival

Si m'ait Dieus
Staff member
Premium Member
Aye, as we can observe in alternative economies,
the concentration of wealth by elite members of
society, with misery for the masses still happens.
There's just less wealth for fewer elites.
Your correct usage of 'less' and 'fewer' satisfies me.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
This is not unique to capitalism, tho.
Capitalism is an economic system defined by it's giving all the decision-making power within a productive business entity to the business's capital investor(s). Capitalism is not a form of government., it's just a form of economic control based on the ideal of rewarding excess wealth with more excess wealth. In fact, government has to become the main antagonist of capitalism just to protect and maintain any society that's foolish enough to engage a capitalist economic system.
 
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Stevicus

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
For not so smart, not so skilled, & not so ambitious people,
capitalism is indeed rough these days. Automation is causing
low skill jobs to disappear. But for the rest, there's much high
paying work available.
Some things that would help....
- UBI
- Loosened zoning, housing code, & building code regulations
to allow higher density, less expensive, & flexible housing.
- Loosen licensing requirements for professions posing no
health or safety risk, eg, hair braiding, car service.
- Changing the primary education system to be not only about
college prep, but to also teach trades & life skills.
- Reform the unemployment insurance system to be less
onerous to employers, thereby making lower wage jobs &
temporary jobs less costly.
- Ban rent control so that housing markets can expand faster
where needed.

From what I've seen lately, business owners complain more about the lack of unskilled labor than anything else, yet it still doesn't occur to them to offer higher wages. Or they could replace them with more automation, but that doesn't seem to be happening as much as one might expect.

And even jobs which are considered "skilled" could someday be conceivably be replaced by automation. So, teaching more trade skills might not be a long-term solution.

The whole idea of sending young people to college was for them to get skills and better jobs, only to find that degrees in sociology or gender studies weren't all that they were cracked up to be. A lot of people might have been misled in that regard. College should perhaps return to centers for research and scholarship and not viewed as massive career-building factories.
 

Stevicus

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Besides, I would prefer eating the rich with a side of gravy and mashed potatoes - and perhaps a nice bourgeois salad to go with it.
 

Rival

Si m'ait Dieus
Staff member
Premium Member
From what I've seen lately, business owners complain more about the lack of unskilled labor than anything else, yet it still doesn't occur to them to offer higher wages.
They have started in the UK.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
The alternatives have failed everyone....failure on steroids.
Right, so we need to develop new economic systems that are not based on rewarding greed and the abuse of power with more wealth and more power. Common sense would make this obvious to us, except that everyone is so afraid of losing whatever degree of wealth and power they have that they fight to resist improvement. Millennials are the first generation in a long time that has been able to see the "writing on the wall", and understand what it means. The question is, will they have the courage that so may preceding generations have lacked, to actually try and DO SOMETHING about it?
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
It seems many young folks have an impression of capitalism in the hardcore Victorian sense, not realising there's not just one concept or implementation of capitalism.

Capitalism can be abused like any system. The better educated people are about capitalism the less abuse will occur.

A healthy economy requires a healthy pay-rate. Low wages limits everyone's wealth.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
From what I've seen lately, business owners complain more about the lack of unskilled labor than anything else, yet it still doesn't occur to them to offer higher wages. Or they could replace them with more automation, but that doesn't seem to be happening as much as one might expect.
Everyone I know in business needs skilled labor, eg,
carpenters, electricians, arborists, mechanics.
And even jobs which are considered "skilled" could someday be conceivably be replaced by automation. So, teaching more trade skills might not be a long-term solution.
In the long run, we're all dead.
But during the next couple generations, it'll be worth
training workers for trades. When your fully automated
future arrives, there'll be different solutions.
The whole idea of sending young people to college was for them to get skills and better jobs, only to find that degrees in sociology or gender studies weren't all that they were cracked up to be. A lot of people might have been misled in that regard. College should perhaps return to centers for research and scholarship and not viewed as massive career-building factories.
Reminds me of an interview I heard on the radio once.
A gal described her herculean efforts to find a job...a
couple years of sending out hundreds of resumes.
No takers.
Then, near the end of the interview, she divulged that
her degree was in International Diversity Studies.
With such an education, one could could develop
some useful skills, eg, writing, research. But the
degree itself is pretty lame.
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
They have started in the UK.

The US too. They now have a problem with ghosting. Where an employee takes one job and leaves after a week without notice for a better paying job. A lot of companies are offering sign on bonuses. It's an employee market ATM.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Right, so we need to develop new economic systems that are not based on rewarding greed and the abuse of power with more wealth and more power. Common sense would make this obvious to us, except that everyone is so afraid of losing whatever degree of wealth and power they have that they fight to resist improvement. Millennials are the first generation in a long time that has been able to see the "writing on the wall", and understand what it means. The question is, will they have the courage that so may preceding generations have lacked, to actually try and DO SOMETHING about it?
Or....
Apply my proposed solutions without going socialist.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
Capitalism can be abused like any system. The better educated people are about capitalism the less abuse will occur.

A healthy economy requires a healthy pay-rate. Low wages limits everyone's wealth.
Any system that allows for the massive accumulation of wealth will be corrupted and ultimately destroyed by those who control that wealth. So the solution is to develop economic systems that do not allow for this massive accumulation of wealth. And to implement them BEFORE those accumulated piles of wealth, and those who control them, have a chance to prevent it.
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
Any system that allows for the massive accumulation of wealth will be corrupted and ultimately destroyed by those who control that wealth. So the solution is to develop economic systems that do not allow for this massive accumulation of wealth. And to implement them BEFORE those accumulated piles of wealth, and those who control them, have a chance to prevent it.

In a healthy capitalist system, people have control over their own wealth.
To address corruption you have to address the human factor. If humans are naturally greedy, no system is going to stop it.
 

F1fan

Veteran Member
Socialists have fought, died and killed for the advancement of the working class through most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There was no level of sacrifice or suffering they were not willing to undertake (or inflict) in the belief it was for the advancement of mankind. Communists and Socialists were fierce resistance fighters in Nazi occupied Europe, especially the Partisans in Yugoslavia. They defended the Spanish Republic in the face of it's defeat to General Franco. They resisted even in the concentration camps and in the death camps. And the Soviet Union sent tens of millions of it's own citizens to die to ensure that Fascism was defeated, even as it faced the brunt of the final solution and Nazi atrocities and war crimes.

And when people were sent to the Gulags in Russia, their ideological fervour was so strong, they believed that if only Joseph Stalin knew what was going on, he would put a stop to it. We know now of course that was a mistake and despite the efforts by Khrushchev and his successors to remedy the situation, the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union with it.

I simply don't see a comparison between a comfortable western elitist using "Eat the Rich" as an empty slogan and the people forced to engage in cannibalism because collectivisation produced famines in China, Ethiopia and the USSR. And when pushed, these millennials and gen Z will almost always dissociate themselves from their ideological predecessors because they are too "extreme", "inhumane" and "dictatorial". They only wear Che Guevara on a T-shirt because they don't know he was a homophobe and that Cuba put gays in concentration camps. I find efforts to "redefine" socialism to a level of shallow wokeness that you can "swipe left" for as an insult the horror, tragedy and heroism of those who actually dedicated their lives to it and are definitely not equivalent to one another.
No one is arguing for this kind and level of Socialism. The USA, and most all other First World nations, have a mix of Capitalism and Socialism as it's operating set of rules. All Democrats and Republicans will approve of ideas that can be labeled Socialist. Public school teachers? There's a socialist idea. Police, fire departments? Socialist. Any small tribe or multi-million member society will need to have collective investments to function as Capitalists. You can't have winner takes all, as that will end in a collapse.

It's just that the USA is lagging behind the rest of the more civilized and organized nations and instead trying to let a "free for all" approach happen, and let the chips fall where they may. As we can see this tends to create instability, and this can lead to dramatic economic fluctuations, and more stress on society.

Being organized and having a set of rules that manages fairness, and balances the advantaged with the disadvantaged, is really where the USA needs to be going. The right side of politics tends to oppose organization, and their rhetoric tends to work with conservative voters. So progress is minimal and often too late. Climate change is an example, it's already costing the USA quite a bit and it is expected to cost more in the coming decades. Who is going to pay for it?
 
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F1fan

Veteran Member
Any "solution" to the failure of capitalism will by definition be "socialist",
The dilemma is that Capitalism has no social or moral framework. It's an economic philosophy that has to be balanced by a social framework, like child labor laws, OSHA, minimum wage, vacations, overtime, etc. The Industrial Revolution showed us how bad the moral obligation to humans can be with Capitalism as the sole guiding set of rules.
 
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