Now I am wondering how you definite capitalism.
Classically, capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.
It needs private property, free market and an independent legal system of law and courts to prosper .
Pure greed by Big Business and Big Pharma and whatever other Big is, IMO, causing the huge income gap, causing the middle class to sink lower into lower class and the upper class gets the majority of income.
There’s the rub.
Today we have mega-corporations, private enterprises dictated by maximizing profits, minimizing externalities. They’ve grown to be more powerful than governments, they resent governments (who were set up to help serve the people of a nation by regulating capitalism). Now they are engaged in hostile takeover attents upon governments.
That isn’t anything like what “capitalism” was all about.
Thats exactly how capitalism works
Now a days, no doubt,
I’m thinking historically to earlier times before we became mad-godlike-beings.
When natural forces still kept people in check.
Unfortunately Natural Forces are going to prevail no matter how many skirmishes we believe we’ve won.
AGW is a perfect example of ignoring natural laws of cause and effect and the effects
from that negligence speak for themselves.
The good old days when child labour was the norm and a 14 hour work day was demanded
Yeah, yeah labels are so tricky.
You’re right the good old days were never that grand. Still what’s going on today is off the charts. . .
I do hope you’re being sarcastic.
He was insinuating that this past were better days
Well in a lot of ways they were better days, they had their problems, but they also had way more promise then these days do.
It all depends on how you want to look at it
and of course, it also depends upon where on the pecking order one winds up at.
I sure know that today the 18 year old me would have had way the heck less opportunities and options then the 18 year old me had in 1973.
Better for who ??? In what way?.
zedenko77 I answered both those questions. read my comment again.
Develop a discussion, develop some foundation of trust, you seem more interested in gotchas.
I do appreciate that today I’m enjoying a modest life, yet one with amenities and transportation possibilities beyond imagination a few generations back. With my luck of the draw I have an interesting forty acre backyard to roam in peace, and access to an abundance of good food, my life is better than any royalty in previous ages. I’m not blind to that.
But I’m also aware of the incredible damage it has done. So much so that our society is seriously threaten, in fact it’s demise is guaranteed, even if specific timing can’t be calculated, the trajectories and math is clear enough, too clear for comfort.
I don’t think what we achieved has been worth that.
We are destroying the biosphere that created and sustains us.
That’s insane.
Lets have a look
“Well in a lot of ways they were better days, they had their problems, but they also had way more promise then these days do.”
Cant see it there
“It all depends on how you want to look at it
and of course, it also depends upon where on the pecking order one winds up at.”
Nothing in that to hang a hat on.
“I sure know that today the 18 year old me would have had way the heck less opportunities and options then [the 18 year old me had in 1973]”
And zilch for that one,
Lots of opportunities for the 8 year old in cleaning the chimney stack in 1890s England !!!
Your funny. Okay.
And I can’t see what you see.
We’re even.
Good night.
Better old days ?
Depends from the reference and the point of view.
I am a baby boomer. I grew up in a word when the world unemployment was unknown, when the debate was about the end of work, and its consequences, when the word was a safe place, at least for West people and so. In fact i was sure that i would do and live at least as well as my parents.
Now, what ever the situation anywhere in the world, we have Ukraine war at our doors, unemployment, climate crisis, communitarianism, globalization and the ultra right rising. The next generation, the one of my grand children has the feeling that it will not live as well as us or at least in a more difficult world.
But if i look at 100 years or 200 years ago, except the homeless and quasi homeless, in West, the poorest people live better that the average people. With the progresses of medicine, life expectancy has progressed, we have opportunities to travel and meet people that ordinary people had not at this time. Since 1945, up to the Ukraine war, no wars in Europe, except the Yugoslavia business. The standards of education have no comparison and so.
And even if i look at the 50ths, i can see the progresses in the daily life. Nowadays, even the poorer have a fridge, a washing machine, a TV and so. Many have cars. It was not true in 1965.
Even if the situation is far from perfect, women social position is better and racial discrimination has ended.
Youre missing the point. Every improvement to workers lives was fought with blood sweat and tears by the working class.
It was despite capitalism not because of these material improvements were won.
You have a talent for finding the worst in everything. Maybe if you offered a solution now and then?
I was just emphasising the difference without attributing to any one.
And, about your point, yes and no.
There were strikes, uprisings and so.
But under the Ford/Keynes compromise, workers must get their share of the added value, to be able to buy the goods which were not yet produced in China and other countries.
And 70 years ago, most of the goods were not existing or were reserved to the rich.
Look at the numbers of cars in the 580ths and now. when did micro-ovens and dishes washing machines entered in the homes.
Remember the first I-X on which you could load music and listen to.
As long as there is a potential market, capitalism is able to produce the goods. He is even able to create the needs.
I am very conscious of the failures of capitalism and that it drives us into a wall.
But i prefer to live in a system which gives me some private life and a minimum of freedoms than to live under a dictatorship.
And, as far as i know, these dictatorships are as damageable for the planet than the capitalist countries.
How is that the point? What system has ever been that didn’t involve people fighting for their rights? The few small egalitarian communities in history still had to defend themselves from outside forces.
It’s the struggle were in now, to defend democracy. We’ve created statements of human rights and international laws, but maintaining those while fighting for them is not easy.