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Everybody has smart phones, wealthy and poor alike. Many poor people have the same exact best available model as the wealthy. That is enrichment. Communism w

by NHQ 4y ago

Everybody has smart phones, wealthy and poor alike. Many poor people have the same exact best available model as the wealthy. That is enrichment. Communism would never have created that. Capitalism might not have gotten them manufactured as cheaply though. Thanks communism!

captainbland 4y ago
A smartphone is pretty similar in wealth terms to owning sofa/couch. They're about the same price new, they each make your life a bit better but encourage some bad habits and they each rapidly devalue second hand. I wouldn't say owning a sofa makes you rich, even owning a nice one. It might mean you're a bit sloppy with personal finance but what's a grand between billionaires? And smartphones even have much more favourable financing options. I think the thing is with smartphones that they're clever but they're not that expensive. A lot of what makes them special is just derived from sand one way or the other. Compared to renting an apartment, your phone barely registers on your finances, it's usually at least an order of magnitude out even if you're in a cheap place and have an expensive phone. Yet housing is the real necessity, why hasn't capitalism made that cheap yet? It feels like a case of bad incentives. Which is not to say that communism would do any better, I'm well aware of its pitfalls. But I think the idea that capitalism makes everyone rich is also a bit absurd.
- NHQ 4y ago
  True, but you focus on price alone. I explicitly referred to enrichment, which is more than money. Life is enriched by access to info, services, etc, which the phone offers more or less equally. Life without these now is truly 3rd world. So capitalists technology enriched poor people in ways the communism never would, via technology advancement. The smartphone comprises extreme technology infrastructure, from chips, to wireless, to software... immense industrial coordination. Right now communists want to build multi-family homes like we all live in NYC, and claim we should do this on ideological grounds (environment, etc). Housing needs notwithstanding (and exaggerated imho), communist housing would not enrich even a middle class family who has a house in the burbs. The ideology of communist housing actually plays right into capitalist factoria. What communists don't understand is that communism IS capitalism. I think this is what Marxism was trying to elucidate about capital, but then folks of a certain persuasion asked Marx to write a manifesto for communism which they spread the world over for ideological purposes. Communism and capitalism are the same coin. So communist fight the wrong fight. They fight to create conditions favorable to capitalism in the name of taking the factory they never seem to get. Crowded housing and population equals commodity labor (cheap, fungible). You can't run a giant factory without nearby workers, and they can't afford houses, so you pack them in "multi family housing". Now you need to convince them this is actually the morally right thing, so communism says its better for the environment (which is not even a core concern of communism, so that proves the ideologues are just shifty, shifty to the left as needed).
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  > housing is the real necessity, why hasn't capitalism made that cheap yet? It has, but only in Japan where they actually have a free market: https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything/ https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e...
  - captainbland 4y ago
    It's more complicated than that. They have regulations but they work differently. The Basic Law for Land regulates against speculation and profiteering off of rises in land values (which are arguably the most capitalist bits of western housing markets!) and specifically privileges public use over private interests as well as other "keeping with the surroundings" style provisions which are familiar in the UK/Europe as well. So I'd argue it's more of a social market than a free market as such. Although I can see how you'd consider it more of a free market than in the US with its zealous zoning rules.

by NHQ 4y ago

captainbland 4y ago

A smartphone is pretty similar in wealth terms to owning sofa/couch. They're about the same price new, they each make your life a bit better but encourage some bad habits and they each rapidly devalue second hand. I wouldn't say owning a sofa makes you rich, even owning a nice one. It might mean you're a bit sloppy with personal finance but what's a grand between billionaires? And smartphones even have much more favourable financing options. I think the thing is with smartphones that they're clever but they're not that expensive. A lot of what makes them special is just derived from sand one way or the other. Compared to renting an apartment, your phone barely registers on your finances, it's usually at least an order of magnitude out even if you're in a cheap place and have an expensive phone. Yet housing is the real necessity, why hasn't capitalism made that cheap yet? It feels like a case of bad incentives. Which is not to say that communism would do any better, I'm well aware of its pitfalls. But I think the idea that capitalism makes everyone rich is also a bit absurd.

NHQ 4y ago
True, but you focus on price alone. I explicitly referred to enrichment, which is more than money. Life is enriched by access to info, services, etc, which the phone offers more or less equally. Life without these now is truly 3rd world. So capitalists technology enriched poor people in ways the communism never would, via technology advancement. The smartphone comprises extreme technology infrastructure, from chips, to wireless, to software... immense industrial coordination. Right now communists want to build multi-family homes like we all live in NYC, and claim we should do this on ideological grounds (environment, etc). Housing needs notwithstanding (and exaggerated imho), communist housing would not enrich even a middle class family who has a house in the burbs. The ideology of communist housing actually plays right into capitalist factoria. What communists don't understand is that communism IS capitalism. I think this is what Marxism was trying to elucidate about capital, but then folks of a certain persuasion asked Marx to write a manifesto for communism which they spread the world over for ideological purposes. Communism and capitalism are the same coin. So communist fight the wrong fight. They fight to create conditions favorable to capitalism in the name of taking the factory they never seem to get. Crowded housing and population equals commodity labor (cheap, fungible). You can't run a giant factory without nearby workers, and they can't afford houses, so you pack them in "multi family housing". Now you need to convince them this is actually the morally right thing, so communism says its better for the environment (which is not even a core concern of communism, so that proves the ideologues are just shifty, shifty to the left as needed).
Firmwarrior 4y ago
> housing is the real necessity, why hasn't capitalism made that cheap yet? It has, but only in Japan where they actually have a free market: https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything/ https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e...
- captainbland 4y ago
  It's more complicated than that. They have regulations but they work differently. The Basic Law for Land regulates against speculation and profiteering off of rises in land values (which are arguably the most capitalist bits of western housing markets!) and specifically privileges public use over private interests as well as other "keeping with the surroundings" style provisions which are familiar in the UK/Europe as well. So I'd argue it's more of a social market than a free market as such. Although I can see how you'd consider it more of a free market than in the US with its zealous zoning rules.