this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Most folks have taken things for granted for too long. Throughout the course of our history, we human have never been wealthier, healthier, and happier. Our stomachs have never been more filled. People have forgotten how we get here. It is not dynastic empires, Soviet Republics, nor facist dictatorships that bring us the quality of life we all enjoy. It is rather tragic to withness the spread of the anti-capitalism ignorance.
The things you stated are not because of our financial system, but rather the scientific advances made. Scientific advances are not limited to capitalist systems.
Science cannot exist without finance. Science and its practitioners do not exist in a vacuum. Who are going to feed the "scientists"? Or who are going to be the "scientists"? It takes time and resources to train "scientists". It also takes time and resources to ensure knowledge is inherited and shared. That is why renaissance and enlightenment is such a big deal in history.
That is why renaissance and enlightenment is such a big deal in history.>
Umm...capitalism didn't exist in the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations wasn't published until 1776. Most of Europe was still feudal during the Renaissance and Enlightenment. England is the exception, but England was always the exception. So, I'm not sure what you're talking about. The Royal Society, for which Newton, Hooke, Halley, etc., were all members of, was funded by the Crown, hence the name, "Royal Society". The European savants all had royal patrons, like Leibniz, Brahe, and Huygens, that funded their livelihoods.
For note, I am a published historian by education that specialized in Tudor England.
Capitalism as a classification/concept did not exist does not mean the practice did not exist. Capital (both in kind and in mind) accumulation has been occurring since even the stone age. Of course we would not call those societies capitalistic.
Plus I am replying to the comment that tries to dismember science from finance/economy.
Nope. What you mean is science cannot exist without resources. In wartime, countries switch to a production economy and finance is not executed when building all the war supply. The country simply has the resources to execute the production directly. It could also execute science as well, as seen in the manhattan project. It could also ensure the knowledge transfer and upbringing of future scientists too. But when government is for sale, laws protect the interests of the buyer. Simple as that.
And please enlighten me on where the resources come from and how they are allocated. Do the coal/oil/gas buried deep under earth dig themselves out or the cattle/pigs/chickens will automagically grow and serve themselves on our dinner table? Command economies can only work spontaneously. The Nazi and the USSR both did have made spectacular achievements over the course of their existence. But is the process sustainable? No. That was why they both failed eventually.
The US did not become the arsenal of democracies by centralizing all the industries during the second World War. The private industries involved a lot. You can say that paved way for the future military-industrial complex. Even the secretive Manhattan project had a number of corporate partners.
What a simplistic, solipsistic, history-blind take! Do you have no knowledge of the 19th century? Arguably, before the Civil War was the prime time of truly "free markets" and pure capitalism in the US. It was also a time of drastic wealth inequality, exploitation of anyone that wasn't a white, male landowner, to say nothing of slavery. How many thousands died creating the railroads in the US? All of those millionaires like Carnegie, JP Morgan, Vanderbilt, Rockerfeller, all made their money on the backs and deaths of poor people.
Prior to FDR and the New Deal, we'd have Panics, where there'd be massive bank failures about every 20-30 years because of unfettered capitalism. And, just like the Great Recession, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. It was the New Deal and the FDIC that stopped the cycle.
Workers rights are antithetical to capitalism. Triangles Shirtwaist Factory Fire, children in the coal mines in Appalachia, coolie labor building the railroads.
We are not "wealthier, healthier, and happier" because of capitalism. It was the New Deal that helped shape the world the US has now, for which conservativism has been chipping away since Nixon. Socialistic practices like labor unions, collective bargaining, etc., brought wealth and stability, and created the massive middle-class that we have now. There had been no real middle-class before that, historically, just the rich and the poor. FDIC stopped the Panics; labor unions and collective bargaining brought wealth and education the working class, thus elevating and creating the massive middle-class we have now. Prior to the Great Depression, life was pretty awful and hard if you weren't rich in the US.
I'm not shitting on capitalism, but it needs the limitations that socialism brings to keep it in check, to keep it accountable, and not run roughshod over minorities, women, and children.
Also, scientific advancements actually came a lot from war, sad to say. The exponential growth of computers, GPS, obviously nuclear technology, a lot of medicine and medical procedures (thanks MASH units in Korea!) all came out of war. As for later 20th century advancements? All funded by the government. I'd suggest reading Neil DeGrasse Tyson's book, Accessory to War.
So are you saying, after the New Deal, the US was/is no longer practicing capitalism? I am afraid I have to disagree.
The US government did not produce all the technologies. Many of them are from private companies. Yes the government funded them with public money, public money paid by the taxpayers.
What? Do you have only a black/white mentality? Of course not. We have a mixed system, as does almost the rest of the world that isn't a dictatorship. Capitalism and socialism are not mutually exclusive; in fact, there's a compelling argument that one really can't exist without the other.
Yes, that's called socialism. The government levies taxes from its people, then the government redistributes the wealth, that's the very definition of socialism.
We have a mixed system. But we are capitalistic leaning are we not? Being capitalist or socialist are not discrete choices, but a continuous scale. I agree with you on that.
Btw the 1929 great crash was facilitate and exacerbated by lax Federal Reserve control of money issuance and the drastic tightening after the crash. This is actually an argument against centralized money.
Well a joint stock company also does that. It engages in production. It does redistribute wealth. For a long time, public services e.g. firefighting, were provided by private entities. Is it socialism? I don't think so. It has to involve coercion, say, via monopoly of violence to be socialism as it is a form of governing.
I'd suggest you look up the Panics of the 19th century.
You obviously don't understand what socialism means. Socialism, by its definition, means involving government, be it local or federal. So, a private company is not socialism, a private fire fighting brigade is not socialism.
Unfortunately, your reply ignores the increasing, and increasingly destructive and fatal (for all), short, mid, and long term consequences of doing this. Yes indeed, for an unfortunately small overall percentage of all of humanity, we've never been wealthier, healthier, and happier. Very true! And for those of us, me included, that are enjoying the fruits of that (middle class and above in the world's wealthier countries, which is also the demographic that is far more likely to be reading and commenting here) it is really easy to ignore, deny, and pretend those consequences are not rearing their heads both now and in the future. However, for the sake of our species we cannot ignore this.
"Thing could be worse" is not a valid argument against improving things.
"Improving things" is not a justification for ignorance. I have never seen things getting "improved" by someone ignorant of the building blocks or even worse motivated to destroy the building blocks on which we all stand.
Feudalism was once a part of building blocks upon which we all stood.
Yes so we need to understand it. You don't think our countless historians and social scientists are doing their work purely for fun or do you?
Sure. I never said we shouldn't understand it.
Understanding != continued existence.
But with that said, capitalism has proven itself to be unsustainable and in need of replacement. The longer we take to replace it the worse things are going to be.
It’s because everyone here has only ever lived under capitalism, and they see all its issues and think socialism/communism would solve them.
I used to work with two former USSR expats - one Polish, one Russian. (I was 30 years younger than them.) We were a small crew and would work away from home for weeks at a time, so we’d spend a lot of our down time talking. They did sometimes reminisce about the things they liked from the old country, but they were very clear that their live was so much better once they left.
People on Lemmy have this romantic idea of communism. That you’ll work 15 hours per week doing something the like, like selling old books or gardening, and the state will provide everything you need. But in reality, under communism you will be assigned a job, assigned a house, and you’ll be happy about it. And if you complain, the state will take things away from you, because the state controls everything - your job, your house, your savings - they’re all government controlled. You can’t have freedom under communism. Don’t like your job - too bad, you’ll do it until you retire. You can’t take a gap year to find yourself (unless you count the compulsory military service), you can’t move to another city because you prefer the vibe there, you can’t start a business because you had a good idea.
Communism only sounds good if you’ve never lived it, and never really spoken to someone who has.
(Being Lemmy, I fully expect someone to respond saving that the USSR wasn’t real communism, and that they could design a communist system better than Marx or Lenin.)
I'm an immigrant that has worked extensively in the legal community with immigrants. I'm more than aware of what other regimes are like.
That being said, what I'd like to see is more nuance. There's this bizarre belief, and I'm not sure if it's age or lack of education, that says that only pure capitalism or pure socialism is BEST. When, in actuality, I don't think a healthy society can exist without the other. Pure capitalism will eat itself without the checks socialism brings; whereas pure socialism will reify itself into inertia without the incentives capitalism brings. The trick, of course, is finding a balance.
Unless you're an insane person like Maggot Trash-Garbage, I don't think anyone thinks the FDIC is bad, or government funding for new antibiotics, or NASA, or necessary municipal utilities like sewage systems or fire fighters. All of that stuff is socialism, and they work great along side capitalism. I also don't think the average person thinks breaking up monopolies is bad. Anti-trust laws and legislation are also socialism, remember.
Anyone who wants a free-market completely devoid of government intervention has clearly never studied economics.
The most important book regarding capitalism is “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith. It’s the first book any education on economics will ask you to read. It in, Smith states that the role of government should be 3 main points: defence, law and order, and public services. So the person regarded as the father of capitalism would consider NASA, firefighters and sewerage to all be government responsibilities.
The Wealth of Nations was written at a time when government intervention was the cause of monopolies, not a solution to it.
As the free market was embraced in different countries, economists saw it operating and built on Smiths work. Pigou wrote about “externalities” (such as pollution) where the person benefiting is not paying all the costs of production, and that this required government intervention to correct the imbalance this causes in the free market.
This is certainly true. But it is also inarguable that capitalism has problems. I think we can talk about those problems without engaging in anti-capitalist ignorance.