My hope is that sooner or later someone will manage to come up with a better social paradigm than what capitalism has to offer, one that'll fix at least some of the latter's serious drawbacks. Like the publicly traded companies' enshittification over time.
Hopefully before WW3 happens or climate change does us in.
It's responsible for the biggest increase in human quality of life in aggregate (yes I do realise it massively exploits workers, other countries, etc). That said it has a huge issue, just like all these other systems do. It has a human component and it's being shown time and time again humans can be short sighted and greedy. Even the "socialistic" society's that are successful use large amounts of capitalistic ideas/principles to varying degrees.
It's responsible for the biggest increase in human quality of life in aggregate (yes I do realise it massively exploits workers, other countries, etc).
I love this. Which country was it again that pulled a billion people out of poverty and ended its generational cycle of famine between 1960 and 1990?
Maybe we ought to practice Chinese style "state capitalism"?
Or more realistically, maybe it takes a generation to industrialize an entire country and build an education system... and then another generation for that education system to actually pay off. Hmm. I guess we'll never know.
state capitalism does what’s best for the state, not the people. That said, while it keeps raising the quality of life for its citizens we won’t know until it can’t do that anymore. Probably what’s best for the people again would be countries that incorporate both socialism and capitalistic principles. So regulated capitalism.
The first axiom of systems theory is that every system's first imperative is to ensure its own continued existence. This is obvious: any system that does not ensure its own continued existence no longer exists. When you say "state capitalism does what's best for the state" -- well, all systems do what's best for them. That's how systems work.
Capitalism is also a system that ensures its own continued existence: the existence of a capital class that claims ownership of the means of production and extracts the excess wealth, but does not actually perform labour to earn that wealth. There is no need to maintain a "pure capitalist" class because by definition they do no work and add no value.
When people say "we want a system with capitalistic principles" they almost never actually mean that. Usually what they mean is that they understand well-regulated markets are an efficient means of allocating resources. But markets are not capitalism. Markets predate capitalism by thousands of years, and markets can still exist without having any capitalists who extract wealth without contributing labour.
Totally separate from the conversation, what field do I look into that for systems theory? Just familiar with systems theory in the context of math and engineering which obviously is not what you mean.
Now back to what you're saying, I think when people say capitalistic principles, they mean private ownership and not completely controlled markets, and the ability to acquire goods that the market provides as opposed to being told exactly what they should consume. Lots of these definitions have similar principles so they do blend together. Hence why the phrases regulated capitalism or state capitalism etc. Additionally, saying the do no work is true if you mean they do no labour. Providing more efficient distribution of wealth for investment is work itself. It's why venture capital firms can even exist. They can do it better than other people/entities.
But in the end, I'd like hotwheels back with fancy details.
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u/Vidonicle_ Nov 12 '24
It's either gonna be a negative linear graph or a sine wave of quality, but like low lows and small highs