“Badly flawed capitalism is far superior to Communism, Socialism and Fascism.”
That’s what our capitalist teachers and media have told us for years and years. Why don’t people from other countries ever listen?
But do those systems not work because they are flawed or because the US interfered in other countries democracies?
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What’s the current eviction rate again?
There’s 4 evictions per minute in the US. Every 20 seconds someone is evicted. https://www.npr.org/2018/04/12/601783346/first-ever-evictions-database-shows-were-in-the-middle-of-a-housing-crisis
What’s the suicide rate again?
There’s a suicide every 12 minutes in the US and estimated 25 attempts. That’s a suicide attempt every 30 seconds. In the US. https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/
How many people are bankrupt from medical bills?
Every 30 seconds someone files for bankruptcy from medical bills. This doesn’t happen in other countries. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9447-2005Feb8.html?noredirect=on
Natural markets have existed since man existed but unfettered neoliberal capitalism is like a cult religion except instead of eventually ending up in heaven you end up in hell.
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Because of survival competition businesses nearly always have to follow the path of least costs. Ask any business and they will admit it. They don’t see anything wrong with it.
What this means in practice is that if your competitor outsources the factory and offers his products at a lower cost, then you have to too to stay in business. You have just sent a job overseas. You just took a job away from an American worker. Factory towns have been decimated by this.
That also means if your competitor automates away 90 out of 100 jobs then you have to too to stay in business. Now you’ve just taken 90 jobs away from American or global workforce.
That means if your competitor uses AI in self driving trucks to deliver your products across the country than you do too. Does it matter that it puts millions of transportation drivers out of work?
Or if you choose to use automation, AI or outsourcing then your competitor does too if they want to stay in business.
All of those people who are out of work now face starvation or homelessness. They didn’t do anything wrong. The business sent their work overseas or gave it to machines to do. Social safety nets don’t cover unemployment unless someone has been fired or found to be incapable of working. How much suffering is going on now because we don’t take human value into account?
Saving costs may seem benign until you dump toxic waste into a river or pollutants into the air to save the company or worse, to save a small fraction of a cost. Yes, this happens and it costs human lives. Or when a company cuts costs on safety? If businesses can regulate themselves why do they have inspectors come through yearly to check on safety?
Maybe Socialism and Communism aren’t better but in capitalism you have to pay to live. You have to have money to exist. So if you don’t have money, if you are poor, your survival is constantly threatened. Humans are the only creatures on the planet that pay to live here.
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A basic form of capitalism, a true free market as has nearly always existed, is fine and works when people have alternative forms of subsistence.
But when you don’t have alternate subsistence, common public access to resources, you live in a rigged system because the job market is biased. One year it may want welders, another construction workers, another computer scientists. It filters out what it doesn’t need. But if you don’t have that skill, then you don’t have that income, and in a pay to live society your survival is at risk. This isn’t the social contract that the Constitution described. This isn’t the “reasonable means of subsistence”.
Capitalism, works when you have alternatives. And it sortof has until recently with homesteading, unconditional social welfare and so on. But those have been removed or put behind means tests in recent years.
If you don’t have alternatives you can’t say no to work. If you can’t say no you are vulnerable to exploitation. You have a system where you have to “work or die”. That’s not normal. It’s a form of wage slavery. It allows stagnant wages. Wages that don’t pay the cost of living.
And our Constitution is based on the condition of public lands, of the Commons, to equalize that the power structure. Our constitution is inspired from the Magna Carta and that is inspired by The Charter of the Forests. The right to hunt and fish and resources and lands to build shelter whether you worked for someone else or not. It is a human right.
The old systems don’t work in a global system. We know that. The Great Depression, the 2008 financial crash, and the massive amounts of technological unemployment being created in our society and massive amounts of suffering (mostly erased by the main media) are proof.
So, again, maybe socialism and communism aren’t the answer. But there needs to be an upgrade now that contains human values, opportunity and subsistence to those with or without work because what we have now is not working for the majority but the minority.
