I am shocked to see how many anti-capitalist’s there are these days. Capitalism is quite frankly the great western experiment that has historically been proven to promote technological and social progress through the understanding that hard work and freedom to communicate ideas brings success. The opposite would be forced ideology and mandated work schedules - this has historically brought famine, genocide and mass technological decline.

Let’s keep it clean and post a single question per post so it can be more easily digested.

  • @AxG68KOPM
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    -33 years ago

    forgive the use of my word “simply”. It is quite the opposite. You must dedicate your life to that goal. At the very least a decade or two if luck is not in your cards. It is impossible to achieve relative success without a decent amount of effort and perseverance. One thing that I cannot grasp is why so many people think that the wealthy do not deserve to be wealthy. Some obviously don’t, but if you are in the top 5% of the income generating range of the country then you have done something that the 95% have not. What that is exactly will differ, but it will differ considerably and one of the main characteristics of those that are self made millionaires is that they spend way less than they earn. They do this throughout their entire life - even when making average wages. Yeah - I hear you, small earners are really at a disadvantage here.

    • @dlvoz
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      33 years ago

      There’s the issue, you only give a shit about your own country. Capitalism doesn’t care about borders. Foxconn being in China is proof of that. Yes in American capitalism may work well for anyone but America and the countries like it are only a fraction of the people in existence. Unfortunately, and as many capitlist try to ignore, there is not infinite resources. Capitlist argue that by virtue of luck and nothing else a few are entitled to the means of survival for many. Yes it takes hard work to succeed in capitalism, but hard work isn’t the same as success. “keep working and you will be rich someday” is the carrot the few wealthy dangle in front of the gullible masses to keep them running on the treadmills. This ignores the fact that being rich is pointless and pursuing it by depriving others of the things they need to live is abhorrent. Capitalism breeds wealth, but wealth cannot exist without poverty. There is no rich without poor. You can’t pretend away the lives of thousands of people because they aren’t in your country.

      • @AxG68KOPM
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        -43 years ago

        There is no rich without poor. You can’t pretend away the lives of thousands of people because they aren’t in your country.

        Please elaborate on this.
        I do not follow. There is no set amount of money in the world, so you don’t need to take something away from another to make them wealthy. Money is dynamic in this respect. It is not like Monopoly, the bills multiply. As for having a world government - I think the best choice would be capitalism. This world view would only be true if we traded in something like gold and everyone kept it in their safes.

        As for poverty in the world today - it has never been less no matter how you look at it. The numbers I found point to less than 3% of the worlds population that are in absolute poverty. Let me know if you find something different. Relative poverty is a tricky thing to define, but not being able to eat and feed your child levels of poverty are very low. Id say humanity is doing very good right now - regardless of what the media is removed about.

        When I hear someone talking about communisms and how great things will be - I am always reminded of the USSR in the 1920. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4076244/Distressing-photos-1920s-Russian-famine-turned-hopeless-peasants-cannibals-five-million-people-starved-death.html

    • @AxG68KOPM
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      -13 years ago

      Here is why thinking of two groups - the wealthy oppressor and the poor oppressed is self defeating.

      I am paraphrasing a local example I am familiar with.

      Example: You are a mechanic in your early 20s and work hard and save your dollars for a rainy day. You earn about 40K/year to start off. One day in your late 20s you decide that the large corporation you work for is no longer compatible with your needs. You quit (and you don’t burn any bridges and give them 2 weeks at least - although you don’t have to) With the money saved you rent a small location an start to do independent repairs on automobiles. You dedicate most of your energy to building this business and re-investing your profits. By your mid 30s you employ 2 people and pay their salary and contribute to 50% of their health insurance. By your early 40s you employ 8 people and are able to now pay for 80% of their health insurance too. You decide to bring home about 125K/year. Your employees start at 40K/year. The employees that work harder get more raises. The ones that are lazy are fired. The ones that contribute more to the company get more out of it. They all work together to make everyone profitable. A top employee will probably make more per hour than the business owner (this is actually common). The employer has alot on his mind. The logistics of the entire company are not trivial. Paying for health insurance for everyone is not cheap. There is lots of stress at night when you fall asleep because all these peoples lives depend on your sucessfull running of the business. To think these people are oppressor’s is not the way to go.

      One thing not factored into this story is innovation. Add innovation to the business and then it will thrive because the consumer will choose your product over others. See iPhone and what is has done for the global economy. Capitalism does care about other countries.

      The idea that there are two groups is self defeating because you will never try to move up or even contribute to an organization that ultimately helps everyone that is employed by it.

      I cannot think of a more elegant and self fueling solution to mutual aid than the capitalist system with free will, true free speech and employment at-will.