Ask Lemmy

Democratic socialism.

Look at Scandinavia.

Social Democracy slowly transitioning into Democratic Socialism.

Eventually automation will be able to provide UBI, and people need to work less hours.

Norway is a great country btw. 🇳🇴

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Capitalism has only existed for a few centuries. Humans have had economies for thousands of years. Wage labor isn't a universal constant.

Start here https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-fragments-of-an-anarchist-anthropology

when there's never been any other successful systems.

I don't know what you define as successful, but I can assure you there were previous systems and alternatives that currently exist. It's a broad term

There's literally whole libraries of thought on this topic written at much higher level than you'll find in an Internet comment.

If you were interested in the actual arguments you'd be reading books and papers, not Lemmy shitposts.

Speaking of which, big "the divine right of kings is indisputable" energy btw

It amazes me how many people just think capitalism means earning money and owning things and don't realize it is about having a minority ownership class that literally uses everyone else as a disposable resource.

all systems of societal organization have been successful and failures depending on what your criteria are.

if we are talking about people living together in groups with relative safety and most physical needs met, pretty much every economic/political structure has had "success." monarchies, republics, feudalism, theocracies, agrarian societies, tribal communities with fairly democratic structures have all existed throughout history and have been very successful in many respects and have also contributed to social challenges.

it could be argued that the quality of life that modern people enjoy in developed nations is in large part thanks to technology not necessarily capitalism though capitalism, as any form of economy, certainly plays a significant role in the distribution of those resources and technology.

im not sure if we should define as the mass accumulation of material goods, consumerism, and the grotesquely imbalanced concentration of wealth as "success" necessarily, as all contribute greatly to the incredible destruction of the biosphere, mass extinctions, climate change, and basically the reason society and life on earth is spiralling into a giant pit of hell.

nor is capitalism the most "peaceful" system as proponents claim; the greatest wars and genocides on earth have occurred during the capitalist era. the united states, the great capitalist nation, is in perpetual war and has been pretty much throughout its entire history. how many armed conflicts are happening right now in the world? every one of those countries involved exists in capitalism. 

there is enough wealth in the world to afford every person a decent life, to provide healthcare, education, shelter, resources to live and yet this does not occur and as a bonus every ecosystem on earth is in imminent collapse. does not sound like a "success" to me.  

could we manage to have a more sustainable and equal society with capitalism? surely it is possible but currently our capitalist structure is deeply sick.

if we are talking about finding the most egalitarian societies, it would probably be some societies in pre-colonial north america or maybe some ancient societies in the indus valley, which are said to have very interesting and fairly equal communities.

What a strange thing to say when every fiat currency in history prior to our current crop of them has eventually gone to 0. We live in fragile, temporary bubbles of wealth concentration largely funded on violence and grift and inflated vastly beyond reality by credit and debt, ones that turn out to be largely illusion when the boss decides to close shop and skip town, not "the only successful system". I agree it is the dominant system and it has essentially destroyed any of the other possible ones at this point.

Get rid of greed and any system would work great.

The trend seems to be that capitalism works great for new and emerging markets. It incentivises optimization, and businesses will naturally try to min/max profit. Once the product/service/resource is ubiquitous enough to be nearly mandatory, the min/max of capitalism tends to push for conglomeration. Once that happens, number must go up, so they cut corners and dilute their own service or product to enshittify it to extract more profit.

I say once a service/product/resource is a staple of the society and effectively mandatory for a person to have, a free, socialized, option must then exist. It must meet the minimum demand for a person, while still having better/higher tiers available- but the encroaching free option is then the main driver of competition.

Right now, a lot of capitalism markets don't have any real competition, so they have no real incentive to genuinely improve.

Every system is susceptible to the same corruption we're dealing with now.

A working system starts with transparency. Any system that allows back-room deals, preferential treatment to a subgroup, etc. will eventually lead to a Trump-like demagogue looking to be the king of it all.

No one convinced anyone that capitalism was a good Idea when it came out, they just did it.

And there's no "better" alternative because, most of the time, capitalist kill it before it could flourish.

Regulated Capitalism. Specifically, capitalism without corporate personhood, with strong antitrust laws, with strong consumer protections, and with regulatory bodies that have real teeth.

I've heard this rhetoric before and I don't know where you people get it.

Why do you need a drop-in replacement ready?

Why can't you just say, "the current system sucks" ?

Personally, I think it's valid to say that the current system isn't working. My opinion still counts, even if I don't have a convenient replacement at hand.

Me: I have a blockage in my artery! Doctor, please remove it!

Doctor: ok but what are you going to replace it with lol

This is super incurious. Capitalism is a relatively new form is societal economic organization. There have been many forms of economy that persisted for long periods of time. Using this as a starting point, every capitalist society eventually fails too. Capitalism isn't the end ultimate form of economic organization. There will come a time when another form becomes dominant and hopefully better for more than a few at the top. And someone like you will say the same thing about it. Also the argument that every communist society has failed is a statement that is common in the western world. It is propaganda. The statement is just as incorrect as replacing it with any other economic organization of society. Sure every communist society will fail but what it leaves out is that every communist society has been pushed to the fringe by capitalism with war, sanctions, and bullying.

Does any of the countries high on wealth and happiness rankings not qualify as capitalist?

We could trade things for handjobs, kind of like your mom.

Why should we? We aren't your sounding board