exactly where my mind went

…but it’s not? and I thought the term intersex was preferred

beautifully drawn!

now you’re just putting words in my mouth. when did I ever say everyone has to give everything they have over “the average” away? it’s true we should strive for more equality, and I would be happy to pay a larger share to taxes for the public good rather than warfare, but you’re really not making good faith arguments anymore.

if your faith in humanity is determined entirely by the people in charge, then you’re going to have no faith at all. so you’ve missed my point. these are not carried out by “the average person”. democracy can lead to less cruelty. it is not perfect, but it also helps if the population is not heavily propagandized and is well educated.

I’m going to stop replying after this because I feel that you’re not addressing the points I’m making anymore.

as always, this boils down to mistrust of your fellow man. capitalism makes us more selfish, it rewards greed, that is what it incentivizes and so of course people act greedier. people want to help each other, they want to make the world a better place to live, and nobody should be forced to work how someone else says they should with no say in it. without competition, people have to pick up the slack with altruism and actual passion and care. if we reward collaboration, if we incentivize kindness and caring and actual benefit, those are the things we will see more of. as it stands, we subsidize everything that is killing us.

the goal of an economy is not to produce endlessly, as much as possible. capitalism is extremely growth oriented. that’s about all it’s good for: rapid growth, at the expense of equity and workers’ autonomy. we no longer need this growth and competition; we need to downscale and produce less. the goal of an economy should be to provide what people need, as seamlessly as possible.

everything you’re saying speaks to a lack of understanding of the world around us. I think you can describe this “ideal” form of capitalism, but it’s nothing like what we actually see in the real world. companies are extremely exploitative, they do ignore or lobby against regulations as much as possible, they exploit workers as much as they can get away with.

the fundamental problem is that ethics are not profitable. ethics are a luxury, and you can always find a way to cut costs if you’re willing to be unethical. an economy is not a machine to squeeze optimum efficiency out of, it is made of people with thoughts and feelings and ambitions, and all of its externalities come back to these same people.

if we want to have an ethical society, ruthless pursuit of efficiency is about the worst possible way to get there, but it is the ultimate goal of capitalism. this efficiency is not for us, though; it is efficiency of accruing as much wealth (and thereby power) as possible.

I don’t believe any strict power hierarchy (like the employer-employee relationship or the parent-child relationship) can ever be fully ethical. we may sometimes deem them necessary, but I think we really need to think twice about making someone subject to another person’s will. workers in a corporation have no say at all in how their workplace is run, what their duties are, or how they carry them out. for eight or more hours per day, people do not control their own decisions, and I think this is the most egregious effect of capitalism.

this is again going to come down to lack of faith in human nature. I believe that people are fundamentally good, that they care about the world around them and want to improve it for themselves and the people they love. they can sometimes be selfish, but they are far more giving than we ever give them credit for. there is immense trauma throughout the world from war and abuse, but there is even greater capacity for kindness. it’s easy to believe that people are fundamentally cruel when the world around us is cruel, but the average person has no say in how it operates; this system of incentives rewards whoever is most willing to act immorally to undercut their competitors, essentially guaranteeing that the least ethical individuals end up in charge of everything. you can see this in the leadership of virtually every major corporation.

I believe the average person is far more hardworking, caring, loving, and kind than the people who run our economy, and if all of us collaborated and organized together, we could be far more efficient and beneficial to one another than our current system allows. the more we do this, the easier it becomes to be kind. after all, we know that the leading causes of crime and abuse are all situational. we will need unprecedented solidarity, and only by uplifting everyone out of poverty can we get there.

anticompetitive and anti labor practices are fundamental to capitalism - you can regulate them all you want, companies will always find ways around it. wage theft (overtime violations, unpaid or underpaid wages, off the clock violations, etc) significantly outweigh all other forms of theft (larceny, robbery, vehicle theft, etc) combined.

in addition, something like planned obsolescence (companies intentionally making their products less long-lived so you have to buy more of them) cannot be completely prevented with regulation, since companies can always choose not to make their product better in a particular way, or no better than the absolute minimum requirement.

profit measures value extracted, not value generated. providing a service to people (postal service, healthcare) produces a measurable amount of value which is not directly profit. you can always increase profit by paying workers less and charging more for your product, and these both get more effective the more you have cornered the market. a high amount of profit tends to mean a huge amount of money being extracted from communities and working individuals.

capitalism is competitive, and competitions have winners. you can make all the regulations you want, but even when everyone “plays fair” someone will eventually emerge on top.

competition is massively inefficient; you have no incentive to share anything, so huge amounts of redundant research and work gets done without public benefit. I see collaboration as the far greater social force, since it prevents us from undermining each other. an economy which is based on and rewards collaboration rather than competition would be better able to provide for everyone’s needs and ensure nobody is left behind.

co-ops get outcompeted by corporations. this is a capitalist economy we have, and so it’s very geared towards competitive profit seeking. co-ops provide better worker protections, better working conditions, better stability and resilience, and better products. corporations are better at being single-mindedly profit driven, which is what our economic structure rewards.

communism is not a vague concept, but I’m not an expert and it’s not my ideology; I’m a democratic socialist.

it’s important to remember that under capitalism a company is very much motivated to curtail workers’ rights and anything that would threaten the status quo. I find “just start a commune” to be an unhelpful argument because the system is rigged against it, which is why they tend to fail.

capitalism is not markets, nor is it free trade. capitalism is the specific system where there is an owning class that dictates how the economy is run (CEOs / shareholders), thereby holding that power away from the working class, whose lives are dictated by their decisions. I see no reason for the economy to be organized this way, which is why I believe democratic organization (either central planning or a more bottom-up approach) is an improvement.

if you’re genuinely interested in finding a system better than what we have, I don’t think arguing with strangers on the Internet will accomplish what you want. I think Second Thought makes some very good videos on these topics, though he seems to have some authoritarian leanings I don’t agree with.

okay, why are you imposing that on me though? I’m not a violent revolutionary, I’m just someone who believes we need a far more democratic approach to our economy. I can’t resolve a perfect system for you in perfect detail and I find this kind of argument frustrating. if you want an example of a system, I believe something similar to project cybersyn would be great. unfortunately the US has overthrown or otherwise stunted every socialist project, but we have lots of data to suggest that UBI, co-ops, and social welfare are highly effective at improving quality of life for everybody, as well as productivity.

dude you’re insufferable oml

investments can come from public funding for research which is democratically decided or headed by democratically elected experts

the entire ideology I hold is that people need to be directly involved in economic decision making. that is all. it can’t be held away from the people, because then the decisions won’t benefit them.

can you please not act like such a prick when making your points?

“collective ownership” is not vague. the simplest way to transform capitalism into socialism is to make every company a co-op and implement progressive tax policy.

I don’t think being an engineer makes you qualified in economics, politics, or sociology.

not enough, I’d like to be paid proportional to the exploitation of my self sabotage

in many cases autism is what makes me such a good worker

yeah if only I was joking. wouldn’t that be funny

scratch

too bad everyone else is wrong

there aren’t 30 best languages, that’s not how “best” works. we use only the best language. for everything.

we should use only the best language for everything.

I mean, what we call “communist countries” were really founded with communism as an ideal and authoritarianism as the means to supposedly achieve that ideal. turns out the people they put in power to liberate them didn’t want to give up that power willingly. shocker.

I use it less, which is better for my mental health. I still find there are similarly depressing posts and attitudes here. People are nicer, but the breadth of topics is far more limited. I won’t go back to reddit, but lemmy definitely doesn’t hold a candle to the number of communities they have. I’ve been using Tumblr as well and quite enjoying that.