"Capitalism tends to destroy its two sources of wealth: Nature and Human Beings" Karl Marx

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[–]StillLessons 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

Still on with this "A or B" mentality?

It's not A or B. It's NEITHER. Yes, the capitalist system as it has evolved to this point is evil. It is destroying people. Fine.

But Marx? Seriously? I have never seen a successful experiment using the framework he provided. Show me just even one, please.

BOTH of these systems are destructive. Both lead to the same endpoint from different pathways: centralization of wealth and power.

Any "system" that is to retain even a modicum of true human justice and dignity needs to be explicitly decentralized. Neither current capitalism nor socialism respects this requirement.

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and power corrupts proportional to the degree of absolute control it is able to establish.

Free markets require limits on consolidation of power into few hands if they are to remain free. Socialism has absolutely no mechanism to allow for this that I have ever seen. While the capitalist systems make a nod to this concept (anti-monopoly and other SEC mechanisms), these limits are there for show and are not enforced because it hinders precisely the power grab that powerful people crave. And powerful people choose whether or not to enforce "the rules".

It's long since time people begin the shift to system C. The challenge, of course, is humans have never before lived under system C, so we are looking at a creative process that has never occurred in our 10,000 year history. If it doesn't happen, however, we're about at the end of our run. The A and B systems we keep bouncing back and forth between for our entire history are now developed fully enough that they are close to generating the extinction set of events that is the natural endpoint of both.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Lybia had a "system C" before it was "liberated" by the "democratic West".

[–]StillLessons 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I know very little about Libya. Can you briefly explain? I'm curious.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

They had a fairly localized, direct democracy. Now their MUSLIM (sharia) laws wouldn't be to our liking, but let's remember it was THEIR laws for THEIR people. I am not, never have been, and never had any ambition to be Lybian.

That being said, their system had the government give newly married couples a US$50,000 equivalent subsidy on their first home purchase, and the rest was lent by the government at 0% interest rate. Free education for all, and the government would even pay for foreign education if the individual's studies weren't available locally. Electricity was free. And of course the Lybian nation had their own central bank, not a Jew-owned one.

And many many other great things: https://hannenabintuherland.com/mideast/saif-al-islam-gaddafi-runs-for-office-in-libya-under-gaddafi-libya-was-africas-richest-welfare-state-hanne-nabintu-herland/

[–]StillLessons 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Interesting. The key question to my mind would be what were the "assets" the central bank was holding, as the backstop for the subsidies the government was offering. Still sounds pretty centralized to me if people's daily lives were so affected by and built around the policies of a faceless central government.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's an oil-rich nation and they had also been stockpiling gold. Also, while there were universal national policies such as the ones I mention, most of the day to day was ruled by laws made locally, not even at the municipal level, but at the neighborhood level.

[–]EndlessSunflowers[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Imagine looking around at the world and thinking, yeah this is a good system! lol

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Neither are. Actual socialism, which is the antithesis of communism, no matter that Marxist koolaid every English speaker has been force-fed, balances the excesses of the kind of anti-market-forces capitalism we now have, without the excesses of what most of you call "socialism" which is in fact communism.

Couple that with a direct democracy and forbid "legal persons" and you have a truly good system.

[–]jet199 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Nature and human beings did far worse under communism.

Still do in North Korea and China.

[–]IkeConn 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.