ThaeciaBoard

Crowtania wrote:

From my point of view I dont see it viable with that thinking of taking over economy freedom it just ruin it natural flow slowly destroying it making it collapse sooner or later, socially well I like some points of view.Well you are totally wrong you are explaining from a point of view very ignorant, is not if I choose or not X product it is if I can choose it or is only for higher classes, I have the liberty to choose a cellphone or no, but in socialism you cant choose it reach a point where you must accept the things that the state give you even if is air, industries stay on the top by innovation not by wealth, if they are popular they will sell if no they will go bankrupt, that happen to a lot of dominant companies like Atari, the countries where there wage slave are casually controlled markets and no free market here are the examples, controlled economies: Angola, Venezuela, Mongolia,etc free markets: Denmark, Usa, Japan, etc, the lower wages of the free market economies are non titule jobs but casually they are higher than the titule jobs in the other 3 countries, and casually social liberties are a lot higher than the controlled economies.

And what about the developing world? Look at wages in India, in the DRC and in Burundi. There can be no rich nations without poor ones in capitalism. The wealth of the first world comes from both colonialism and neocolonialism, through the development of a class of foreign wage slaves: whether it is child labour in the Congo or sweatshops in South East Asia, this is why Britain, the US and the rest of the West is rich. It is through this systematic plundering propped up by institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, along with military force from nations such as the USA in the example of the Banana Republics, that proves that neoimperialism, not a comparatively free market, that makes the West wealthy. We could afford to eliminate poverty - and I don't mean absolute poverty - I mean relative poverty by first world standards, yet we don't, and capitalism lets 37 million people a year die of hunger, 2 million of preventable disease, all in the name of the free market. Well, the "free" market. Capitalist prosperity in the West is the result of what is practically economic theft, modern imperialism and a campaign of spreading "freedom" that has lead to numerous human rights violations, including mass executions of civilians in Chile, outright genocide in East Timor and child labour in central Africa.

Fishergate wrote:

Ethical capitalism actually exists in the real world though. Socialism doesn't and never has. Putting faith in a system that doesn't reward self-interest is fantastical because every human's greatest ambition is to preserve and promote their own interest in whatever way they see best to do that. Suppressing the freedom to act in self-interest creates an artificial and unproductive environment. 'True' socialism doesn't exist and never will on any large scale because it goes against human nature. State-enforced socialism is a failed experiment which necessitates extreme coercion to remain enforceable, again because it goes against human nature.

Human nature...Human nature...The one argument that every capitalist loves to bring up. Evolutionary biologist Peter Krotopkin actually addressed this before, in fact, he wrote a book about it. Again, you say socialism has never existed, yet prehistoric humanity lived in socialist societies. Socialism is a natural system, formed due to humanity being a social species. Look at the social structures of ants and of bees: socialism can exist in nature, and in human nature as well...A system borne of self-interest is self-destructive, particularly when it is short-term self interest. Look at climate change, for example, and the coverup by fossil fuel industries. Humans, by nature, are built to pursue the collective good, which benefits the individual by definition, as the individual is part of the collective.

Had we evolved to be capitalist creatures, we would have no love, no empathy, only ruthless self-interest. The sheer existence of empathy, the sheer existence of love, proves that we are not creatures of self-interest. We are creatures of society, we are creatures of peace. Had we evolved to be capitalist creatures, I say again, we would have no society. We would be barbarians, refusing to cooperate for the greater good. In fact, you can see this in prisoner's dilemma style situations: strategies which fundamentally focus on cooperation rather than competition - and not expending resources to do so - are the most successful. And putting aside that there is an evolutionary advantage to cooperation over competition, meaning we should pursue it regardless of our nature, the same experiments prove that people, even if the rational, self-interested thing to do is compete and hoard, will still cooperate. Sure, we lean a bit to the competitive side, as that is the nature that is forced into us from capitalist society.

In one-off games, where there is no consequence for betrayal, for lying or for cheating your opponent, people will still cooperate. And that, to me, is the greatest argument against the self-interested human nature.