Small foreword: I don't think there is ground to open a new thread, so I just answer here instead of the Covid-19 thread.
Consider moving this conversation somewhere else?
On that, as usual, important modifications to our lives and worldwide crises bring the topic on political and economical organization. Always on the crisis-specific threads...
However, you are right in pointing out it has to be moved elsewhere, as always.
The conversation about economical systems is lovely and I wish to see if it reaches a compromise, an agreement to disagree, if someone brings up that that big advantage is also a disadvantage when you get to really high amounts of reward, or if it devolves into namecalling and shitfling.
I am sure willing to try and find a dialogue, but I don't think a rewarding (or even acceptable, in some cases) compromise is actually reachable. After many years, things are still more or less at the starting point.
Basically I point out at the blatant shortcomings of the system we use and that many calls "capitalism", but should actually have a different names given how many declinations it may take, and I basically say: these problems have to be addresses.
The answer, basically, is that Capitalism(tm) is a sort of totemic god that grants us prosperity and abundance and you should not take the name of Capitalism in vain. Like all the problems it bring, like all the recurring crises, all the poverty, all the injustices, all the corruption and cheatings of the basic rules of the market itself that we can all see before our eyes everyday were either invented or were the fault of some isolated "bad guy" who break the rules.
Then I say: how can people become rich and powerful by breaking the rules, if the system is perfect? How can people cotinuously be exploited (in many ways) if the system is perfect? And the answer is... to blame some -limited, never systemic- problem.
It is ingrained that "capitalism=what we have=the best of the bestest". But that is religious-like thinking. Also, and this is particularly true with american commenters: there seem to be no alternative to monolithic, god-like, all-mighty and all-good Capitalism, except for evil, failure-ridden, inferior, monolithic communism in its most vicious soviet forms. Nothing else. Then you can see answers like Argatoga's on Capitalism being "human nature"... Come on...
Really, no land in between. I am almost tented to take it as the joke it resembles and to say I am for the one and only Emperor (of the Holy Roman Empire, of course) and that feudalism under the divine protection the Roman Catholic church is the best way to give a king and a God to the plebs (seriously, these guys entered the elections here, and they got some votes! They even have a hymn in the form of a nice metal song!
)
You are correct. However, it is the closer to the basic primitive instinct of "do thing, get reward". Carrot and stick, bell and saliva, take your pic.
It is. What I say is: it is not enough. Following just instinct brings us to the problems I listed before; cyclically, continuously, inescapably. It is time to try to address the issues that bring us all there all the time. And I don't start with any pre-defined solutions or slogan word or fanatical ideology "clearly better" than others. Because the problems are complex and complicated on multiple levels.
Still, hitting similar crises to those who marked the human population since at least the bronze age, and saying everything is fine and the best there is is really a stupid move, in my view.
Societies have existed (and exist, to a lesser extent) who were organized differently. They had lights and shadows: we should learn how to get the lights and avoid the shadows.
Basically, my thoughts revolve around three main thoughts.
1)Wealth is not a fixed quantity, and it does not depend on resources alone. A basic ground of available and valuable resources are organized in a specific manner that make them fruitful. Wealth is resources times organization. The wealth level of a society is mostly an organizational equilibrium that the society is able to keep. For this reason, wealth is not "produced", wealth is "increased": when the society is able to reach and maintain a higher level of organizational complexity, wealth grows.
On a personal level, wealth is not increased by simply "getting rich", because you can become rich by depleting one or more resources or by stealing; rather it is increased when personal work modify the organizational structure towards a more functional balance. Wealth is only increased by three means: with our minds, to understand what to do; with our hands, to learn how to do it; with our time, that we actually use to do it.
We should reward these things, not something else. If someone gets rich while doing nothing, that is taking away from wealth, not adding up to it. If someone gets rich by depleting a resource or by exploiting someone else's work, or by controlling a resource and selling it a enormously high prices, that is taking away from wealth, not adding up to it.
The amount of people taking away more than they contribute is staggering, and some of them are revered as great people. This shows things could be better.
Also, capital is a resource, like all the others.
2) market is not "the answer"; market is a human behaviour, a mechanistic -cooperation- strategy veined with individualism (yes, market is -cooperation-, not competition). It works on a balance of conditions and realations and it needs a "fertile ground" of social and practical conditions to really shine and bring wealth and growth. The more you get imbalances and disfunctions and blocks, the less it works. If the conditions are wrong, it can turn into a destructive force, an exploiting tool. It is much definitely not a balncing factor itself (it's not the "benevolent god" of the ideologues)
3) Being humans, we tend to overdo (or underdo) things, until the system is not balanced anymore and we get a crisis. This is cyclical and stupidly wasteful. We know it will happen, we should take the necessary precautions to avoid or limit the deep destructive plunges that are bound to happen.
The idea that we have to crash down and start over from time to time is time- and resource-consuming, and given the timespan of those things, if you live during the downward phase, chances are you won't live enough to get to the next peak, even if you survive the crash.
So, let's not be stupid, let's work together to make the lives of everyone better, and to free time for them to try to get us all to an higher and better level of organizational complexity.
The "individualism is the only way" is the lie selfish people tell you to get your things when they are stronger and exploit you when they need you.
So basically what humans have been doing since cave times more or less...
Shouldn't we be evolve a little, then, instead of repeating the same errors over and over and over?