Quote Originally Posted by rpm View Post
these are all relatively new ideas to me, and i'd need to mull them over a bit before i could really continue discussing this with you. fwiw, i'm certain your understanding of this topic is far deeper than mine. and part of my incentive for even posting in this thread was to put the opinions which i used to hold strongly, which have been progressively weakening for years, on the chopping block. it seems our fundamental disagreement is that you acknowledge our current capitalist system as being "optimal" and as such - we should begin to work within its confines to achieve (insert whatever your personal moral sensibilities believe is "just" or "ethical" within a society here). for much of my life, i was of the position that we had evolved adequately as a species to be able to formulate a new system which is able to achieve more utilitarian ends. it was never socialism or communism or anarchism, but it was certainly influenced to differing degrees by those ideas. these days i have no idea what i believe and i think part of that is because i don't fully understand economics. so thanks for your insights.

edit: heh, and sorry for the derail
I feel like I would describe what we do have as utilitarian

As far as capitalism being optimal (compared to other options), it's difficult to argue against that due to things like the technological progress and upward mobility it provides. Keep in mind that "capital" isn't money, it's resources. Your ability to labor is your "human capital". Cooperative capitalism (worker owned) and state capitalism (government owned) are two varieties that work, and I would rather call them, along with free market capitalism, aspects of overall capitalism. For example, pure state capitalism has problems, but it can also do things that free market capitalism can't (or doesn't tend to). China is doing both, and it's reaping unique benefits of both.

Capitalism is basically this: "using your resources to create more resources." The phrasing is important. The "your" implies that there needs to be some sort of ownership. The model to describe the process illustrates this. It's basically a man has land and labors it and reaps benefits from it. If he is fortunate enough he can have others labor on his land for compensation. They use their human capital for this and get paid in a different form of capital, and the man also benefits from the labor more than he would have otherwise. "Land" may not be an infinite quantity, but in a dynamic economy like ours, "capital" virtually is, so it isn't flawed for others to labor on something they don't own, especially since the "land" they labor on will have all sorts of enhancements that increase the value of their own capital. This system is incredibly difficult to alter because it's so fundamentally sound.

Socialism is a counter to this theory in the way that it declares that there should be no "your", and the proceeds of labor should be distributed based on need. But if we try to fit this into the basic example of a man using his resources to create more resources, it doesn't work, because when there is no "your" and instead is a communal "need", there is little incentive to use your resources to create more resources


I hope that wasn't too abstract. I now have some even more abstract stuff that helps explain it: Russia's pre-industrial history


To keep it as short as can be, Russia has never been stable due to its geographical boundaries providing weak defenses, but it still maintained it's identity due to the ability to retreat north into permafrost that invaders couldn't navigate. The worst time of Russia's history was back in the polis days when the Khanates used Moscow as a slave farm. I forget how long it lasted, but it was for generations that the Crimean Khanate would invade Moscow and enslave or murder the majority of the population. Then Ivan the Terrible happened. Why Terrible? Because in order for Moscow to finally stop the molestation of its people, they needed the scariest leader they could get. And they needed to submit fully to this leader. Without total unification, Moscow knew it was unable to win. Well, Moscow did unify under the iron fist of Ivan, and they destroyed the Khanates. Next they followed Peter and Catherine in a great expansion of national borders, mainly for the purpose establishing national defenses and strategic depth

Why is any of this relevant? Because the sensibilities of total communal unity under one leader and the cheapness of human lives have been in the backbone of Russia's culture ever since. It's been like this for nearly a thousand years. Now why is that relevant? Because it's a philosophical foundation of communism. Long story short, every time Russia is threatened, it moves towards submission to a leader and national unity. This is how Stalin was so easily able to actualize the socialist "Utopia" of communal efforts for the purpose of need.

But it failed miserably because it ignored supply and demand. Because costs were never fit to value and vise versa, the people never reaped any benefits, and after Glasnost and Perestroika, where the USSR opened some of its markets for the world to see, the whole thing crumbled

So yeah, that's my hypothesis explaining the existence of the most anti-capitalist sentiments we've had so far