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Not a Step posted:Where did it go? Why did the basic constraints of fairness break down? They broke down because they are designed in such a way that they always would. I believe that as soon as a system contains inequality it's essentially doomed to break unless corrected. I don't have time this second to go into the details of why, but people who gain from inequality will seek to defend it, either through force or by ideology. We're getting the ideological defence for inequality in western democracies primarily (with a healthy dose of violence "as needed"). The ideological defences now are essentially that you have to earn what you get and what you earn is a reflection of what you deserve, and also that certain people also automatically deserve less through things like race, sex, etc. This naturally causes people to selfishly scramble for themselves and then those with more resources will win just a little more often and compound advantage over and over until they just run away with all the power and wealth. Once inequality grows far enough the whole ideology is undermined not necessarily because people don't believe it, but because they can't afford to believe it, which puts huge strain on the ideology and leaves society vulnerable to breaking down in all sorts of fun and interesting ways. Late era Soviet Union, current Russia, likely near-future USA all fell or are falling into an absurdist malaise because their citizens are being mind-hosed by the contradiction between their society's ideology and the reality.
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Jan 19, 2017 05:57
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I think the individualism and worthiness are the aspects of American liberalism that are incompatible with real change. I'm not a fan of capitalism but I think it could be workable if income was seen as a benefit from society and capitalists were seen as managers of societal wealth rather than owners of wealth. Basically if capitalism was seen as the means of determining where labour and resources are used for society rather than as a way to enrich the individual. You know, we demand payment for goods and services so that goods and services that don't get paid for are discontinued and the resources reassigned by what people are willing to pay for and allowing you to pick and choose what you want, rather than say deciding centrally what people want. But as soon as liberalism inserted individualism and worth into the market it became an unworkable ideology that created a worthy ruling class not enough different from the aristocracy it originally replaced. How do you fix wealth inequality if the very justification for inequality are baked into a society's ideology?
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Jan 19, 2017 07:49
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Crane Fist posted:So... Capitalism would work if it wasn't capitalism, but instead something completely different? Eh, no. I'm not saying anything would change in the mechanism of capitalism. Capitalists would still control the means of production and individuals would still gain income by serving capitalists. But capitalists would be restricted from actually using all their wealth for themselves. Capitalism only requires that capitalists control the means of production, not that they get to use it for themselves. That part comes from liberalism. You could have a communal capitalist society. We could require capitalists to live like monks and still call our system capitalism. I mean yes, it completely violates the spirit of capitalism as it is practised today, but the letter of it is not necessarily broken here. Futuresight fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Jan 19, 2017 |
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Jan 19, 2017 08:08
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I legit think this is interesting but speculation about alternatives to/modifications of capitalism definitely deserves its own thread. I'd read it! Yeah, was just trying to separate out liberalism and capitalism. I think an important thing to keep in mind is that a system will naturally accumulate leaders and power brokers that like the system, because if they didn't it would have changed, and then kept on changing until it reached a point where enough of the powers that be wanted to maintain the system. Basically every system settles into an equilibrium where it will take force to change it from that state. I think any approach that wants to change things needs to assume it will have to overthrow or heavily pressure the establishment, you're just not going to get anything done if the people up top have their way. They might say they want change, but they basically can't mean it or the system wouldn't be what it is. That's in addition to people generally helping people they agree with and funding sources being easier to get from people who benefit from the current system, etc. Basically you have to assume near everybody with power doesn't want to change anything meaningfully.
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Jan 19, 2017 08:45
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