What is capitalism?

@reasoning logic,

Fine... there are technological advances that make mass killings easier now then 100 years ago.

But after another couple more minutes searching, I found...

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1928&dat=19100113&id=IbEgAAAAIBAJ&sjid=VmkFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1364,549770
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Times_bombing

And again I would mention that woman could be battered without legal protection and lynching was too common (and unpunished).

The claim that we were more moral then then we are now is ridiculous, especially given the great advances we have made in rights and social justice.

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@maxdancona,

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Fine... there are technological advances that make mass killings easier now then 100 years ago.

OK I have agreed with some of what you already said and it seems that you are getting more teeth into your argument now.

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But after another couple more minutes searching, I found...

Which seems to be a result of a lack of social responsibility such as what is seen in a capitalist system.

Look at the bomber you shared in your last post. He was a psychopath but I do wonder if there was a social safety net in place to keep you from losing your home if he would have acted as aggressive.

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And again I would mention that woman could be battered without legal protection and lynching was too common (and unpunished).

Another social norm that most religions practiced in the past, Is it not luck that we had progressives and liberals to counter these conservative ideas?

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The claim that we were more moral then then we are now is ridiculous, especially given the great advances we have made in rights and social justice.

If I did make that claim I would like to retract it and say that our mores have changed.

Do you think that this may have anything to do with our problems?

http://www.breakingranks.net/weblog/rankism/

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@maxdancona,

I shared a different link than what I intended, here is the link I meant to share.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-fuller/what-is-rankism-and-why-d_b_465940.html

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@reasoning logic,

Part of the problem with people griping about our society is that they fail to show any realistic alternative.

It is very easy to complain and very difficult to come up with anything better. I certainly think we should at least recognize the good (if only to make sure that we don't lose the progress we have have already made).

The fact is that capitalism has served us well, at least well as any other economic system ever devised. Over the past several hundred years under capitalism life expectancy keeps going up, fewer people are dying of hunger or disease than ever and more people have more rights than ever.

Griping is always great fun. But it isn't always warranted.

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@reasoning logic,

Interesting links, rl. I was suddenly reminded of a linguistic dialectal usage of 1950s black ghetto slang. (There was no such word as 'Ebonics' back then.) To "rank" on somebody meant to be insulting. But I believe the etymology was different. The word did not refer to social standing or rank, but, rather, was derived from the adjective meaning of "rank," i.e. vile, gross, nasty etc. etc.

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@maxdancona,

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The fact is that capitalism has served us well, at least well as any other economic system ever devised. Over the past several hundred years under capitalism life expectancy keeps going up, fewer people are dying of hunger or disease than ever and more people have more rights than ever.

Didn't conservatives make this same argument a few hundred years ago and again a few thousand years before then?

The slave masters could argue that things have progressed during slavery as well.

I can only guess that they would make claims of how they were job creators and if it were not for them the slaves would not have a job picking cotton and would not have shoes on their feet but rather be in Africa beating drums or something similar.

We could do a search and find exactly what some of them did say in recorded history.

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@maxdancona,

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How cliche! How are we less moral now then we were 100 years ago (when women couldn't vote and interracial marriage was not allowed in many places)? Or 200 years ago when we had institutional slavery and were perpetrating ethnic cleansing.

Are you saying that there are no places left where women aren't allowed to vote? Or that ethnic cleansing is a thing of the past?
I beg to differ.
The foul things are not gone. They are just supressed to a minimum around the reach of our senses, for comfortable denial.

Here's how I see it. A long time ago, some very clever people came up with an economic system that inspired growth and prosperity.
Since then, that system has been abused in the same way dishonest men of the church abused their power for their own ends. In the same way that christianity is forever tainted by misuse, our current economic system has become warped.

I bet that you don't have to seach for a long time to find someone who hates their job. Someone who would rather spend their time doing something else, but who are forced to work dead end jobs to make ends meet. Tell them about how slavery is abolished...

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@Cyracuz,

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Are you saying that there are no places left where women aren't allowed to vote? Or that ethnic cleansing is a thing of the past?

Of course not.

I am simply saying that things are demonstrably better now, in modern capitalist societies, then they ever have been under any other economic system.

If you were just saying that things aren't perfect and that we should be working to make society better, then I might agree with you. But you aren't saying that. You are the making bogus claims that society is deteriorating under capitalism. If this were true than we would be seeing things getting worse, while over the past several hundred years they have been undeniably getting better (not perfect, but definitely better).

Tell me an economic system that has ever worked better than modern capitalism in any measurable way.

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@maxdancona,

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I am simply saying that things are demonstrably better now, in modern capitalist societies, then they ever have been under any other economic system.

I am not here to disagree with you but to rather question you.

Do you think that " things could have been seen as subjectively and or demonstrably better in slave societies, then they ever have been under hunter gather systems?

I will be honest, when I first seen these videos that are less than 30 minutes total I thought they sucked and I did not watch after the first one but then someone who I found to be intellectual brought them up again so I thought that there may have been something I missed so I gave them another chance and I was glad I did. What is your response to them?

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@reasoning logic,

I assume you have a point to make with these videos. But I'll be damned if I understand what it is.

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@Lustig Andrei,

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I assume you have a point to make with these videos. But I'll be damned if I understand what it is.

Join the club, Like I said that was my first response as well. I had to watch them more than once and dwell on them in order to walk away with the understanding that I have now. Wink

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I don't think I was suggesting that ethical behavior in general has worsened as a result of the rise of capitalism--indeed, I think we were much more victimized by the cultural values promoted by the Church during the middle ages. By it is also true that the hegemony of "market values" as the principal standard for estimating the worth of things in general is adding to our spiritual decline.

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@JLNobody,

Spiritual decline? What do you mean by "decline"?

The term "decline" means that we, as a society, were more spiritual (whatever that means) in the past. Again, I am asking at what time in the past were we more "spiritual" than we are now?

Was it when we had segregated lunch counters? Or before woman's suffrage? Or while we had slavery and were perpetrating the trail of tears?

I don't see any evidence that we are in spiritual decline (unless you mean spiritual decline is a good thing).

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@maxdancona,

Good points, Max. What I meant to indicate is that market values contribute to a particular (materialistic) "unhygenic" worldview.

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@JLNobody,

I like having an unhygienic worldview. Brain washing has never appealed to me.

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@maxdancona,

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Was it when we had segregated lunch counters? Or before woman's suffrage? Or while we had slavery and were perpetrating the trail of tears?

Or when you were slaughtering Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, committing unrelenting terrorist acts against Cuba, murdering Panamanians, Angolans, supporting South Africa's fascist apartheid government, the list is long, Max.

I wonder how you missed all these - and all the others.

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@maxdancona,

Very clever, Max. But I see that you are not interested in communication, at least not with me and not in this topic.

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@JTT,

JTT wrote:

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Was it when we had segregated lunch counters? Or before woman's suffrage? Or while we had slavery and were perpetrating the trail of tears?

Or when you were slaughtering Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, committing unrelenting terrorist acts against Cuba, murdering Panamanians, Angolans, supporting South Africa's fascist apartheid government, the list is long, Max.

I wonder how you missed all these - and all the others.

Ah, American foreign policy at its finest. XD

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@JLNobody,

I am engaging to express skepticism. I am laying out my arguments clearly and responding to yours. That is communication. I may not be agreeing with you, but I am certainly communicating.

The point is that there are material things that are part of who I am. A good bottle of scotch makes me happy. Advancing my career with hard work and creativity also makes me happy.

My modern day culture allows me to live a productive life that I find fulfilling.

You will raise issue of inequity and perhaps even suggest that my bottle of good scotch contributes to someone else's misery. This is an intellectually lazy argument to make. Complaining about injustice is a lot simpler than coming up with ways to make things better.

So my challenge, that I keep making, is this. Tell me an economic system that has ever worked better, or at least come up with a scheme that hasn't already been tried (and failed). You have provided no reason to assert that making me less happy will make someone else happier.

If you really want to make my life less enjoyable by taking away my good scotch, at assure me that it will actually make someone else's life better.

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@maxdancona,

I don't care about your skepticism or about your alcohol consumption. (I prefer tequila, but that's beside the point. ) You just don't seem to be understanding what I am saying. Sounds to me like you are ascribing some kind of puritanism to me. That would be a misunderstanding, I assure you.
But the buzz (what you might call "happiness"?) I enjoy from tequila is nothing like the "joy" of making art or successfully helping a friend in crisis. I find the equation you make between your buzz and "happiness" strange, almost as if you were giving off some defensiveness about drinking. I hope I'm wrong there.

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