this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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Showerthoughts

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We live in a post information scarcity society and we still haven't moved on from capitalism. (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by Danterious@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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Edit: Changed title to be more accurate.

Also here is the summary from Wikipedia on what Post-scarcity means:

Post-scarcity is a theoretical economic situation in which most goods can be produced in great abundance with minimal human labor needed, so that they become available to all very cheaply or even freely. Post-scarcity does not mean that scarcity has been eliminated for all goods and services but that all people can easily have their basic survival needs met along with some significant proportion of their desires for goods and services. Writers on the topic often emphasize that some commodities will remain scarce in a post-scarcity society.

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 13 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Not sure how anyone can sanely argue that Capitalist wealth is spread more evenly than any other system when disparity is rising everywhere it's practiced, even if at slower rates in Social Democracies.

[–] lobelia581@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not to disagree, but what examples are there of a different system being practiced which have a more even distribution of wealth?

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 9 months ago

Numerous different systems. If you want to look at modern, developed economies, Worker Co-operatives are smaller, Socialist entities that have far more equitable distribution, happier workers, and more stability. If you want a more Libertarian approach, EZLN doesn't seem to have very high disparity, a bulk of the wealth is owned by the Workers, though they reject terms like Socialism. At the risk of being called a tankie (I'm not, I am incredibly critical of more centralized Socialist projects), even the USSR had far lower disparity during it's time than Tsarist Russia or the current Capitalist Russian Federation.

The answer is for Workers to share the Means of Production in a democratic fashion, as opposed to having petite dictators focused on accumulating Capital.

[–] Menteros@lemm.ee 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

In response to the food crisis, communities rallied together, giving rise to social movements and calls for change, as a sense of solidarity developed among the people. These interconnected issues eroded public trust in the government’s ability to fulfill the basic needs of its citizens. It, in turn, fueled public dissatisfaction and ultimately led to widespread calls for political and economic reforms. The downfall of communism in Eastern Europe was, therefore, not solely a consequence of political factors but also deeply rooted in the economic challenges and fundamental survival concerns faced by the population.

https://calxylian.com/food-scarcity-and-the-fall-of-communism-in-eastern-europe/

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago

Nobody brought up the USSR, and your linked comment has several issues, even as someone who is a critic of the USSR and does not wish to rebuild the USSR:

  1. None of that fundamentally addresses the fact that Russia had higher rates of disparity both under the Tsarist Regime and under the Russian Federation than under the USSR: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/soviets-oligarchs-inequality-and-property-russia-1905-2016
  2. The article you linked goes largely without citations, and both articles cited at the bottom of the article state that the USSR improved food production from an initial state of instability through investment in industrialization: "The paper summarises the East European experience with socialist agriculture and notes that while production often failed to meet plan targets (thereby giving the impression of a sector in crisis), there was steady growth based on substantial investments in buildings, machinery, fertilisers and irrigation systems which provided food for the population at affordable prices."
  3. The Marxist-Leninist USSR is absolutely NOT the only form of non-Capitalist economy. Market Socialism, Anarchism, Syndicalism, Democratic Socialism, and more all exist and can similarly solve the issues of inequality.

What is the point of your comment?

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Because the comparison is between systems. In other systems some people often end up with nothing, as in not even enough food to survive. That happens less under capitalism, hence there’s a more even distribution of resources.

Kinda like two pieces of paper are both thin, but one of those pieces can be thicker than the other one, despite still being considered thin.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 points 9 months ago

People end up with nothing under Capitalism as well, and there is less disparity in some non-Capitalist systems.