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I don’t understand how you can devote so many words to the staying power of “capitalism” and not once give any concrete sense of what the economics of an altern
by Gimpei 3y ago
I don’t understand how you can devote so many words to the staying power of “capitalism” and not once give any concrete sense of what the economics of an alternative would look like and how you would make it work. The degree to which people microanalyze culture seems bonkers to me. If you don’t like our current economic system, then it’s kind of on you to come up with a viable alternative using empirical evidence. Nirvana was a great band, but they have absolutely nothing to do with this.
- TotalCrackpot 3y agoAlternative would be libertarian socialism, with economy of some mixture of cooperative economics, decentralized planning, gift economy and library economy.
- colonwqbang 3y agoDo you have any good links that explain more? In my mind the ideas of socialism and libertarianism are polar opposites.
- TotalCrackpot 3y agoIt's probably best to watch some YT videos by Anark https://www.youtube.com/@Anark https://www.youtube.com/@Anark or Andrewism https://www.youtube.com/@Andrewism https://www.youtube.com/@Andrewism on Youtube. Anark is very pedantic which I like, while Andrewism is more chill. Take your time especially with Anark's videos, cause they are veeeeery pedantic and can overwhelm with their information content.
- harimau777 3y agoLibertarian socialism tends to reject both corporate power/ownership and state power/ownership in favor of worker led ownership. They aren't necessarily libertarian socialism per se, but there area also lots of variations of socialism that combine social liberalism with economic socialism or which are fine with greater collectivism but reject central planning.
- amalcon 3y agoI'm guessing you're a fellow American? Or talk to a lot of Americans online? Here, for some reason, left-libertarians barely seem to exist compared to right-libertarians. They aren't that uncommon elsewhere, though. The distinction is mainly that they want to weaken power structures of all sorts, not just governments. Wikipedia on left-libertarianism isn't too bad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism), though notably missing a "Criticism" section. Note that I don't endorse the views described in that article. I am expressing neither support nor opposition for left-libertarianism as a political philosophy. I have zero interest in debating the merits or demerits here at this time; I'm only trying to answer a question.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoHere are some links to get you started. If you asked about my idea economic philosophy 10 years ago, I probably would have gone on at length about Proudon's Mutualism. However, now I think that like Georgism/LVT, it is outdated due to the focus on Material means of production, and doesnt account for the increasing importance of white collar knowledge work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon#Philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon#Philoso... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(economic_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(economic_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
- parineum 3y agoI don't understand how what you've just said isn't the same as what we would currently call a social democracy with a capitalist economy. Specifically, "decentralized planning" is a synonym of capitalism and the other concepts your using exist already, enabled by the capitalist ethos of allowing the individual to use their capital as they see fit.
- TotalCrackpot 3y agoLibertarian socialism rejects representative democracy, they favour horizontal institutions with instantly recallable delegates instead of representives.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoI think it also seeks to minimize democracy itself, in favor of anarchy wherever possible, if not entirely.
- TotalCrackpot 3y agoIf by anarchy you mean freedom of association, then sure.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoI dont follow the distinction you are drawing. The point that I was making is that democracy is still a tool for restricting indidvidual freedoms of all types. You can have a controlling tyranny of the majority in direct democracy just like a representative ones. A feature of libertarianism is seeking to minimize the scope of state control and authority, irrespective of government mechanism. That is to say, the purpose of direct democracy is still to tell people what they can, cant, and must do.
- ericmcer 3y agoThe bit about Cobain's suicide felt like it was probing around something important but blaming it on Capitalism felt a bit off. Cobain would have experienced something similar at any period in history, that is what happens to talented people who rise from the masses. If anything capitalism gave him way more freedom to use his talent how he wanted than any other system would have. I am not an expert on Nirvana but I would guess his suicide was more about his personal struggles than some grandiose statement about politics and capitalism.
- watwut 3y agoAfaik he had psychiatric issues that made suicide more likely ... and drug dependence that also made it more likely. He did not even needed to be talented one to rise from the masses, people like him commit suicides more then general population simply out of own suffering. He had bipolar disorder, depression and ADHD.
- InSteady 3y agoHe also had a severe GI disorder that caused him constant pain, and from what I recall reading, the medical system wasn't able to properly diagnose or treat him (no surprise, our understanding of tricky GI disorders was not terribly advanced in the 90's). IMO it's likely that some or all of his mental health struggles stemmed from a completely dysfunctional digestive system. In any case, blaming his suicide on capitalism seems like rewriting history to fit one's preferred narrative.
- makomk 3y agoPretty much every article lamenting the seeming inevitability of capitalism and the lack of coherent alternatives is going to misdiagnose the problem and have no concrete solutions, because the fundamental problem is that the problems people care about are not simply consequences of capitalism and cannot be eliminated just by getting rid of it. For example, no amount of monkeying with the economic system will make it possible to fight global warming simply by cutting off fossil fuel supplies and destroying fossil fuel company profits without huge impacts on the demand side that affect ordinary people - that'd require consuming fuel that was never produced. This effect on ordinary voters would make it horrendously unattractive to politicans even if they didn't have to care what corporations thought at all. Similarly, here in the UK there's huge public anger over sewage in our rivers and seas but no amount of nationalisation can change the fact that rebuilding the sewage system not to do that would take huge amounts of resources from other things that people care about and cause lots of unpopular disruption from the work required. Because the things that people care about and want fixed aren't actually caused by capitalism, the most politically effective anti-capitalist ideas are populist lies that promise false solutions to those problems which cannot actually work. This also means that any leader or would-be leader with any sense isn't willing to go along with those ideas because they're creating a whip for their own back when they fail to live up to that. Any concrete, achievable anti-capitalism also has to fall so short of the populist version to be entirely unattractive.