Criticizing capitalism while participating in it is not hypocritical because our individual actions within the capitalist system are a means of survival within the existing system, not an endorsement of it. Advocating for systemic change doesn't negate the need to navigate the current structure for basic needs, considering it coercively shapes people's lives.
Criticizing capitalism while participating in it is not hypocritical
It is because it shows whatever system you want to replace it with can't even work at tiny scale, without devolving into a cult and people massively taking advantage of others. You cannot move to a place that has said system, because they don't exist or you scream they're "not real <insert>" (China for Commies, Somalia for Libertarians, North Korea for Fascist). I mean I guess you could move to such places, but you're probably not going to have a good time.
Capitalism does work really well if you have something to offer society and merit. Capitalism based societies have gotten worse since 2020 because they are abandoning capitalism, and have embraced excessive money printing and modern monetary theory. The society you live in now is less capitalist than 2019 and it shows.
@djsumdog
You're not wrong, but there are hairs I want to split.
A lot of problems these days involve numerous departures from actually free markets and property rights through bureaucratized crime, currency manipulation, and all kinds of other nonsense.
This is where classical liberals will argue that capitalism is like a garden that needs to be protected with proper care and regulations. Of course, this is partially a non-starter because the very people empowered to write and enforce these regulations are very much part of the problem.
My point is that some people (not the person you're replying to) actually just want capitalism to be real again. Which is a defensible point, but fundamentally requires major changes socially, politically, and likely legally. Our system works great if your definition is "number go up", but if you're valuing wealth in something else other than that things fall apart very quickly.
This is the grain of truth that people you're replying to know about that I wish was better understood by "our side". We can agree that meritocratic systems and competition are good, but competition and meritocracy to do what? Societies differ, some have more noble aims than others. Meritocracy is good when it's aimed at building up a prosperous and loving people, but gets ugly fast when it's about liquidating people's minds, bodies, and souls in exchange for quick temporary gain. This has less to do with economic structure than people would think, but there are absolutely incentives that need to be changed. There comes a time when the monied class does need to have their predatory instincts curtailed.
like democracy, property rights require an inviolate basis in human rights, which comes down to cultural values. for example, gang rape is democratic (the victim's vote was outnumbered). so if there isn't a conception of inviolate human rights which supersede democracy, or property, then it will not help matters one iota. $0.02
"... What are human rights, but a kind of derivation of a form of spilt Christianity? There’s no reason to have human rights. They’re not self-evident...."
Even from my liberal/progressive days, I still think I can conceded the free market doesn't really work as such.
The other days a friend of mine was trying to make a point from drivers licenses: to get a license means driving is illegal without the exception from the state (ignoring Thompson v. Smith, which he didn't know about).
Interesting argument, and I can see its merit .. but it's also stupidly easy to get a drivers license. What is a license? It means you mean some bare minimum standard, that society has agreed upon, to ensure there is some level of safety or accountability.
Pure libertarianism/capitalism means someone can put saw dust in your meat, an people will just choose not to buy said food. A functioning high-income nation has a bare minimum set of standards, where the FDA labels x as actual meat and not sawdust. (I had a Chinese roommate who told me the meat stores in his town frequently injected meat with water and nitrates so they looked okay long past when they were good).
Everything has tradeoffs. So in a sense, yes, you never have a real pure-market capitalist society. You want to maximize rewards for merit and the value of people, but people who take greater risks are going to get greater rewards as well, even if they depend on the skill of lower risk takers. And society has to concede some power (a monopoly of violence) to the State, in order to ensure some minimum standards for food, flying a plane or driving a car.
It's a delicate balance for sure. You want clean water, but you don't want mandatory medical injections. If you don't want capitalism to nose dive into a corporate-state, some tradeoffs have to be made .. and it is always a struggle. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
It's not a "commoner" thing ... I'm talking about long tail evolution of morality ... which takes centuries and involves quit a bit for torture and witch burning ... and ... drag queen story hour apparently ... possibly leading to a new ear of heretic burning
:agummythink: You can't really have a shared morality or culture without collectivism can you?
America has done a lot of shitty things, bombed a lot of people, encourage and fought a drug trade simultaneously for money. It isn't in a vacuum. The EU, UK, Japan, AU, NZ all benefit from Americas dominance (they have socialized healthcare, because they outsource defense to the US Navy). And really most US wars (Iraq, Libya, Obama's failed attempt to go into Syria) are wars of Israel, which has an undue amount of influence over the EU/US/West.
But I do like the concept behind Americanism and our implementation of the Bill of Rights, ignoring all the presidents who ignored it (like Abraham Lincoln, who is only praised because he won the war for America by forsaking all American constitutional ideals, ordering his armies to murder a lot of civilians and burn through all their land).
My family is from India and I've see the alternative: also a capitalist and democratic nation, but on that doesn't function as well as the US or Japan, due to a mixture of corruption, lack of unified culture (the same multiculturalism that Europe is trying to bring to their shores) and possibly the population and infrastructure issues.
Capitalism can work and work well, but it needs to be tempered ... and it's independent of morality and human rights, which must be fought for diligently at all times, or else the psychopaths and bankers will do their best to take them away to maximize their own capital.
Yes, that's true and the Korematsu decision was evil and wrong, as was Buck vs Bell (State forced sterilization of the retarded) and Jacobson (fines for not taking forced medication).
Japanese American citizens were locked up and that was horrific. The SCOTUS case was never officially reversed and Regan gave the families a piddly amount of money (I think it was $20k) without acknowledging fault. It was terrible.
There was a court case in America. In how many other countries would it have never gotten past a smaller court, much less the Supreme Court?
If you think the bill of rights is worth toilet paper, go live in Australia where they locked people in hotel rooms during the Scamdemic, or New Zealand where the State took a fucking infant from his parents because they wanted to use their own (non-vaccinated) blood donners for a surgery.
And yes, things got bad in America too ... but no where near as bad, because despite all our issues, courts and public opinion in America is more in favor of the Bill of Rights than in our western counterparts.
Australia as no bill of rights. New Zealand has no constitution.
@djsumdog@icedquinn@gabriel@s8n@toiletpaper the supreme court justification for japanese internment was that the supreme court was not going to contradict the executive branch in the middle of a war that could lead to the death of the free world if lost. I am not really taking a positive position on it because I believe that nothing about japanese internment was necessary to protect america besides being utterly morally contemptible. but the argument is interesting because yeah the court probably should be careful about that.
@Moon judges tend to just be pitiful creatures in robes that want to be perceived as powerful but have no real right to command of their own. the instant things get dicy they cuck out. literally worthless animals.
I guess the "royal we" of society ... at some point in history, more people started making more road vehicles and a lot of communities had some people who got in an uproar cause John was riding his motorized carriage after drinking a 5th of Whiskey and ran over the Taylor girl killing her. And so somewhere, either through some local government or a sheriff or a monarch, through demands of people or aristocracy (often both) people stared making rules and enough people agreed with (or at least weren't bothered by) those rules that people started enforcing and living by them.
I mean, just because you don't go to city council meetings or talk to your local reps, or volunteer for political work, doesn't mean you're not a part of society. It shows you have other priorities. Even for people who don't do that, simply talking about things loudly and writing and letting opinions be known does have an influence on the larger zeitgeist.
You don't have to agree on the rules by the way. You can go driving drunk and run through other peoples' houses if you want. That's fine. Enough of society has accepted those rules they will lock you up. If you can convince enough of them you're in the right, then maybe you can get away with all of that ... but it's unlikely because you being a shitty driver hurts other people.
> :blobcatbot: The post discusses how the "royal we" of society is created through rules and regulations made by local governments or monarchs as a result of community demands and concerns. People can influence these rules through their opinions, even if they do not actively participate in political work. However, breaking these rules can lead to consequences such as being locked up. The post emphasizes that individuals have the right to disagree with the rules but must accept them in order to avoid negative consequences.
it just annoys me when people propagate that weird line about "society" does things, "society" has a contract, etc. it's just nonsense the control grid uses to make it sound like you consented to be controlled at gunpoint somehow.
Society is easier than saying, "The great mythos of ideological thought that's brought about in the vat of cultural, spiritual and moral ideology."
I mean, you are a part of (and influence society) whether you want to believe it or not. Right now you have less influence because the megaphones have been moved back to the few to blast to the masses, but as with the beginning of the printing press and the radio, these megaphones can make their way back to the people.
Just like the Radio and Printing Press, control, marketing and state actors have turned the Internet into a one directional medium devoid of discussion. But these tables do turn eventually. It requires some degree of vigilance. I'm curious what new technology will cause the next big shift.
In the past I've worked on local campaigns, I've gone to city council meetings about things I cared about (I once got up and presented on transportation options in Wellington) .. and once you start going and seeing what others say and present, it helps you make better presentations too. I haven't in a long while though, but it's something anyone can do with some time.
To quote Robert Barnes, "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. The greatest trick the State even pulled was convincing the people you couldn't resist."
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