this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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Why support an unsustainable system?
Because I think with proper regulation capitalism has ushered in the greatest improvements in quality of life compared to the other economic systems we have tried.
When you don't assume infinite growth and you instead optimize for maintaining a distribution of capital, I think it can be a good motivating system. We just need our baseline focused by human rights, not the money.
Money is what we decide it is, not the other way around. The people who are in charge right now want you to think money is in control.
Why do you believe that Capitalism has done that? I think reading Wage Labor and Capital might help you.
I believe it because countries with more capitalist tendencies tend to have higher standards of living than other countries.
That's an easy mistake to make. Judging countries by where they get their wealth, ie exploitation of the Global South, combined with judging by trajectory, will explain why this is a mistake.
Capitalism allowed the global north and "west" to outpace those other countries and exploit them in the first place. It wasn't moral, but capitalism is what positioned them in the first place.
Yes, via violent domestic and hyper-violent international exploitation.
Read the linked text.
Like I said, it wasn't moral. It is still a result of capitalism. Think we've probably finished here because you're not my teacher and you don't assign me reading.
It was not, it was a result of industrialization, followed by Imperialism.
Suit yourself though.
Colonial imperialism began with industrialization in your explanation? Capitalist countries were colonizing the world well before the industrial revolution.
Colonialism is not the same as what I am referring to as Imperialism. I specifically mean the point at which Capitalism reaches outward and exports Capital to less developed countries to super-exploit for super-profits.
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