Gen Z embraces 'safety capitalism', says current social safety net is broken
Gen Z embraces 'safety capitalism', says current social safety net is broken
Gen Zers are embracing "safety capitalism" because they think the current social safety net is insufficient.
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No they don’t. They want socialism. Or democratic socialism.
The fuck is safety capitalism? Is it just some bullshit word for people who don't want to say socialism? Fuck, if that's what it takes for people to accept socialism then they can call it whatever the fuck they want.
Social democracy isn't sexy enough of a word I suppose. It would be capitalism but with a safety net
Also, it didn’t work out so well
Out of all countries, social democratic Nordic countries are probably doing the best. Pretty good going imo.
also looking at those countries we can see it isn’t a permanent fix though. Capitalists don’t stop fighting and will be successful in the long run
I mean that's going to be the same for every country and every solution.
I'm not saying the work is done or that Nordic countries are anywhere near perfect or anything. Just that considering how others are doing, social democracy at least in the Nordic countries has done really well imo.
True
How much of their wealth is colonial wealth brought back by their ancestors?
Very little? None of them have been big colonial countries (Denmark was the biggest and they were a pretty small player) and Finland was itself a colonized country. Not sure if Iceland counts as a colonized country since I don't think there lived anyone there beforehand.
Hm, Africa, the Caribbean, Indochina, all bloodily plundered by, lessee here… ah yes, the people of the Nordic countries
[yes I know nobody is innocent and the Sami would have some words but come the fuck on now]
Or just basic equality ... more specifically WEALTH EQUALITY
to remove the power of the wealthy to get even more wealthy by exploiting everyone faster
And to give more power to those with little or no money and give them a chance to gain a bit of wealth.
Honestly if we just created a civilization where we spread the money around a little more equally, we'd have less psychopaths controlling the world and more people wanting to cooperate in making things better.
It wouldn't create a utopia because we're too complicated to be happy with one another but it would make our situation more tolerable and manageable.
So, socialism.
Or anarchism or communism.
Anarchism has too many forms and communism doesn’t work on a large scale (greed and corruption are too easy).
I’m not saying capitalism is working!!
What, specifically, about Communism is easier to take advantage of with greed and corruption than Capitalism? Why can't these issues be cleared up with policy changes, and are structural to Communism?
Why does Anarchism having more forms detract from its validity?
Hayek's classic The Road to Serfdom covered it pretty comprehensively: The structural issue with communism is that it is a command economy, and central planning cannot work because the planners always have imperfect information. That may result simply from the impracticality of nation-scale information gathering, or deliberate misinformation from ambitious bureaucrats trying to distinguish themselves by juicing their numbers. In computer terms, capitalism is a massively-distributed system in which the economy is directed by the interactions of all economic agents at the network edge, rather than centralized in one, huge server.
So, as far as greed and corruption go, just like in the computer analogy, I think it's far easier for individual agents engage in it given an ideal free-market capitalist system(*), but the consequences tend to be localized and contained. In a communist system, it's very difficult for any arbitrary individual in society to engage in corruption and greed, but for the well-connected party insiders do it, the consequences can be dire, and intractable.
(*) I say ideal capitalist system, because the fatal flaw of capitalism is a mathematical one: The math shows that even with a starting condition of equal opportunity and conditions for all people, a few people end up with most of the wealth (and therefore power) just by pure, random chance.
Hayek was debunked even by Capitalists, that's why the Austrian school is largely abandoned even among liberals. His ECP has several issues, of which I'll elaborate on a few.
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Hayek assumes a lack of incentives within Socialism/Communism. Even learning the basics of Socialism and Communism can debunk this, but Hayek makes it core to his arguments.
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Hayek ties all sources of "rational economic decision making" to price signals, ie profit vs loss. This is similarly incorrect, you can have a demanded service without profit. Some examples include single payer Healthcare, high speed rail, and other free at point of service programs.
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Hayek pretends command economies are functionally entirely different from market economies, which is also false. Amazon is entirely internally planned, and often relies on computer automation for planning. A Socialist system would have worker ownership of a larger Amazon.
Largely, you run into issues with corruption when people aren't accountable. The issue is, in Capitalism, Capitalists are far less accountable than people in a Socialist system might be, as there's a level of democratic control inherently within Socialism that is lacking in Capitalism.
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Bro. Show me a successful communist nation in which its citizen are happy and with all its basic necessities covered.
Bro. Show me a successful communist nation in which its citizen are happy and with all its basic necessities covered.
Name me a country where this happens.
Good point. In that case, show me a successful communist nation.
So, just so we're clear, Communism doesn't work, because it hasn't been successful.
But Capitalism does work, even though it hasn't been successful.
We do have Socialist nations and they are doing better than everyone else, with the highest happiness rates, and most of the necessities covered. But to answer your question, we have no successful countries at all. The closest we have are Socialist nations.
Answer my question first. Until then, I'll ask another: which Capitalist nations can be considered successful, happy, with all basic necessities covered? Not even the Nordic Countries do that, and they still brutally exploit the global south.
I don't know, man... most developed nations are having quite a nice ride compared to the so-called communist countries.
Do you think it's because they are Capitalist, or do you think it's because they're developed, and started industrializing earlier, with plentiful access to global trade?
Does this matter? Every communist state I've known has failed.
The idea may sound good in principle, but clearly humans can't grasp it.
It absolutely matters. If you're tying development to quality of life, which I agree with, you also have to make the absolute claim that Socialist states can't develop, which I disagree with. Capitalism is only a few hundred years old anyways, and already is failing, ie disparity is continuing to accelerate to unsustainable levels.
First of all, what is a "Communist state?" There's no such thing, so if you clarify what you are referring to, that would help.
Secondly, clarify what you mean by "failed," because either you don't know much about leftist states or you're using a different meaning of the word "failed."
Finally, what do you mean "the idea sounds good on paper?" If it sounds good on paper, ie it works in theory, what about reality is an unknown factor? If humans can't grasp it (whatever that means), then it doesn't work in theory!
You're playing red scare bingo, lol
Show me happy people.
What, specifically, about Communism is easier to take advantage of with greed and corruption than Capitalism? Why can't these issues be cleared up with policy changes, and are structural to Communism?
Why does Anarchism having more forms detract from its validity?
Communism, as in community driven government, has never existed.
Lol yes it has, we just know the end results. Stop acting like communism hasn't been tried.
I see you don't know what communism is. Sad.
I see you tankies don't know what it is at all. My family has lived through that shit, so you can kindly go fuck yourself. Bad capitalism is 1000xs better than anything communism can spit out.
Weren't you the guy that even after a 10+ long comment chain still fundamentally didn't know what Communism was, and then ran away when I threw an actual quote from Critique of the Gotha Programme?
Naa I got bored of arguing with a dumbass tankie. You still think communism is going to magically make people want to work harder than others without rewards and you also still think those in power won't abuse an it.
You can get more rewards, lol, and in Communism, there isn't anyone "in power."
I'm not a tankie, you just legitimately have no idea what you're talking about.
Socialism exists only as a stepping stone to the end goal of anarchism/communism.
If you don't believe those work, there is no point in advocating for socialism.
I disagree with you entirely.
Okay.
But you do realise the Soviet Union was socialist right? We kinda need to move away from the state based control model.
To what?
An anarchist/communist based society.
We see time and time again what happens when you give all the power to a small subset of society.
I’m all for a classless society, but we need a structure for governing. I’d say a global structure. But I don’t think humans are capable of that kind of thing. Greed and prejudice are too powerful.