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The real impacts of "the orgy of capitalism" are already well known: the highest quality of living in humanity's history, longest average life expectancy ever,

The real impacts of "the orgy of capitalism" are already well known: the highest quality of living in humanity's history, longest average life expectancy ever, widespread access to education in all levels, peace, and most affluent population in the recorded history. What's your point?

vkou 9y ago
That's the impact of burning millions of years of solar energy, stored as fossil fuels, in the span of two hundred years, not of capitalism. Capitalism in a society without cheap access to energy wouldn't have given you any of these things. And whether or not capitalism's dependency on fossil fuels can be broken before AGW cooks us is still an open question. If the worst case scenario holds true, will you also credit capitalism for it?
- cgmg 9y ago
  Capitalist countries have much higher standards of living than anti-capitalist countries. That is fact, not opinion.
  - mrguyorama 9y ago
    That ignores about a billion confounding factors. Correlation, causation, not equal to, and all that
    - monort 9y ago
      There are some experiments with control group. South/North Korea, West/East Germany. Taiwan/Mainland China.
      - mrguyorama 9y ago
        Those "experiments" are not nearly robust enough to make such claims.
        cgmg 9y ago
        Why?
        geezerjay 9y ago
        > Those "experiments" are not nearly robust enough to make such claims. ...and yet here you are making the exact opposite claims that have absolutely no basis in reality and go against any fact, and somehow you show no concern regarding lack of evidence or facts supporting your claims.
    - cgmg 9y ago
      What are these confounding factors you speak of?
  - vkou 9y ago
    And all of them completely rely on fossil fuels. Without them, we'd still have middle-ages-level wealth, life expectancies, and standard of living. [1] Non-capitalist countries also made huge improvements in standards of living, as they industrialized. Again, industrialization is the common factor, not the economic system. [1] Short, nasty, and brutish.
    - cgmg 9y ago
      > Non-capitalist countries also made huge improvements in standards of living Not as much as capitalist countries. That's the point.
      - vkou 9y ago
        If you want to credit that to capitalism, capitalism was a multiplier to national economic prosperity. However, you need something to multiply for there to be any prosperity. Capitalism for stone-age people would not have resulted in prosperity, wealth, or rising standard of living, just as it did not cause it in industrial age people. Fossil fuels did. Crediting capitalism is putting the cart before the horse. Just because electrification happened faster in the West then the USSR, doesn't mean that electricity isn't the reason why both societies became more prosperous. Life was largely shit for most people for most of history, and it wasn't because because people didn't figure out that private ownership of the means of production is more efficient at producing widgets then state-owned means of production. When 70% of your population is growing just enough food to feed themselves, and the other 30% are banging rocks together to make tools for the first group, you don't have time to think about inventing antibiotics or bitcoin or bicycles.
Spooky23 9y ago
The point is when families measure their worth in economic terms, the people in those families suffer. Read the story. He had a dad who worked 90 hours a week and contemplated suicide in 6th grade. His life sounds to have been directed and micromanaged well into adulthood, with an objective of keeping up the family brand above all else. That’s a human tragedy.
- geezerjay 9y ago
  > The point is when families measure their worth in economic terms That's a silly argument. It's like accusing the concept of motorized transportation of being the scourge of society just because some random family out there might have had a bad experience by measuring their worth in terms of how many cars they own.

vkou 9y ago

That's the impact of burning millions of years of solar energy, stored as fossil fuels, in the span of two hundred years, not of capitalism. Capitalism in a society without cheap access to energy wouldn't have given you any of these things. And whether or not capitalism's dependency on fossil fuels can be broken before AGW cooks us is still an open question. If the worst case scenario holds true, will you also credit capitalism for it?

cgmg 9y ago
Capitalist countries have much higher standards of living than anti-capitalist countries. That is fact, not opinion.
- mrguyorama 9y ago
  That ignores about a billion confounding factors. Correlation, causation, not equal to, and all that
  - monort 9y ago
    There are some experiments with control group. South/North Korea, West/East Germany. Taiwan/Mainland China.
    - mrguyorama 9y ago
      Those "experiments" are not nearly robust enough to make such claims.
      - cgmg 9y ago
        Why?
      - geezerjay 9y ago
        > Those "experiments" are not nearly robust enough to make such claims. ...and yet here you are making the exact opposite claims that have absolutely no basis in reality and go against any fact, and somehow you show no concern regarding lack of evidence or facts supporting your claims.
  - cgmg 9y ago
    What are these confounding factors you speak of?
- vkou 9y ago
  And all of them completely rely on fossil fuels. Without them, we'd still have middle-ages-level wealth, life expectancies, and standard of living. [1] Non-capitalist countries also made huge improvements in standards of living, as they industrialized. Again, industrialization is the common factor, not the economic system. [1] Short, nasty, and brutish.
  - cgmg 9y ago
    > Non-capitalist countries also made huge improvements in standards of living Not as much as capitalist countries. That's the point.
    - vkou 9y ago
      If you want to credit that to capitalism, capitalism was a multiplier to national economic prosperity. However, you need something to multiply for there to be any prosperity. Capitalism for stone-age people would not have resulted in prosperity, wealth, or rising standard of living, just as it did not cause it in industrial age people. Fossil fuels did. Crediting capitalism is putting the cart before the horse. Just because electrification happened faster in the West then the USSR, doesn't mean that electricity isn't the reason why both societies became more prosperous. Life was largely shit for most people for most of history, and it wasn't because because people didn't figure out that private ownership of the means of production is more efficient at producing widgets then state-owned means of production. When 70% of your population is growing just enough food to feed themselves, and the other 30% are banging rocks together to make tools for the first group, you don't have time to think about inventing antibiotics or bitcoin or bicycles.

Spooky23 9y ago

The point is when families measure their worth in economic terms, the people in those families suffer. Read the story. He had a dad who worked 90 hours a week and contemplated suicide in 6th grade. His life sounds to have been directed and micromanaged well into adulthood, with an objective of keeping up the family brand above all else. That’s a human tragedy.

geezerjay 9y ago
> The point is when families measure their worth in economic terms That's a silly argument. It's like accusing the concept of motorized transportation of being the scourge of society just because some random family out there might have had a bad experience by measuring their worth in terms of how many cars they own.