4 ms·
Don't be quick to dismiss them as ignorants. Just looking at the markets the past few years, how they are and how they react, it doesn't seem like capitalism is
by return0 11y ago
Don't be quick to dismiss them as ignorants. Just looking at the markets the past few years, how they are and how they react, it doesn't seem like capitalism is trustworthy. There is no direction and often no reason behind it. If capitalism is a means to achieve national interests, it's not clear whose interests it serves anymore, it's too globalized.
- atemerev 11y agoCapitalism serves the interests of all market participants, including general public. As every consumer-faced business owner knows, rich and well-developed middle class is absolutely necessary for good sales and healthy profits. "National interests" don't care about public welfare. They only care about outcompeting other nation states, both in wartime and peacetime. Public interests are routinely sacrificed by governments for the sake of such competition.
- return0 11y agoThen i would expect capitalists to have developed their own private armies (and probably road systems, and so on).
- atemerev 11y agoArmed forces are one thing better left to the government. Police and courts are two other. The rest, including healthcare, road building and launching spaceships, can be safely handed by private sector.
- kuschku 11y agoAnything that gives an actor power over other actors – so everything that includes a monopoly, and where actors can’t switch to competitors without moving into another area – is better left to an administration of that area, usually a state, federation, etc.
- ethanbond 11y agoSo what do you think dissolved the rich and well-developed middle class that millennials never saw?
- atemerev 11y agoMiddle class is currently far from being dissolved. Jobs are still there, salaries are paid, taxes are collected. As for "what caused the crisis of jobs and industrial society", the answer is of course automation (this is one thing where Marx was right). The full-blown crisis was imminent 100 years ago (which is why socialist regimes appeared), but it was delayed by two world wars (there are no unemployed in wartime), the Cold war, and rise of the clerks / bureaucracy. Socialism was Marx's answer to the idea of automation of production, but it didn't work out 100 years ago. It will not work now as well. We have to think of something new.