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I can only imagine how bizarre you must find those comments where someone has convinced themselves that "capitalism doesn't let us have nice things." I remembe

I can only imagine how bizarre you must find those comments where someone has convinced themselves that "capitalism doesn't let us have nice things." I remember in which direction people were trying to escape across the iron curtain.

manoDev 2y ago
I love how any criticism of capitalism automatically invites the “but things sucked more at a particular place in a particular period” argument. I grew up in a capitalist country. Being poor doesn’t give you access to things just the same.
- otherme123 2y ago
  Being poor is the natural state of humans. We have been poor for thousands of years, with regular famines eveywhere. Even in the richer parts of the world, there where deaths due to starvation if the year was bad. Then it came capitalism. For the first time in history, a country eliminated famines just by adopting the new of organizing production. They were still poor people who lacked things, but they lived in the only part of the world where at least they could count on not starving to death. Then some countries organized as socialism, and they caused huge famines, that in a rare historical event, were not caused by climate or a natural catastrophe, but by wrong resource allocation. You can criticize capitalism, but not on terms of producing what people want. In that field we don't know any other system that does it better. Capitalism is bad at distributing the wealth equally to everyone, causing that some people cannot have some things, but also we don't know a better model that does it while keeping poverty away. If people today doesn't have unbreakable glassware (it exists!) is just because they prefer cheaper and fancier glasses from Ikea. When I need a truly unbreakable "glass" I buy a titanium made camping glass. In general we don't want all products to last a long time: we want to change our car to get the newest fancy things, we want a bigger and faster phone. We don't want a single pair of shoes that last forever, but lots of shoes to match with lots of clothes. There are long lasting shoes, but they don't sell well (i.e. people don't want them, even if they say so).
  - ahf8Aithaex7Nai 2y ago
    Believing in undercomplex narratives that describe the state of the world in a pleasant way is the natural state of humans.
- pxmpxm 2y ago
  Being poor in a capitalist country still puts you in the very top of the ladder in any communist place. Everyone was poor there, and way poorer than you, myself included.
- pxmpxm 2y ago
  Just to add some numbers for context, in 1980 the US poverty line family income was ~ $8k year. In the USSR the MEDIAN family income was ~1200 rubles a year, which is around $400/year using the real exchange change. People in the west have no grasp at the level of abject poverty that communism creates.
  - hcarvalhoalves 2y ago
    So to prove your point, you picked the richest country in the west to compare with the USSR, but generalized to “people in the west don’t know what poverty is”. The “west” is more than the US you know, unless you’re not talking about this side of the meridian.
    - pxmpxm 2y ago
      Pick your favourite country in "the west" and you will end up with the same conclusion, since you're like 2 orders of magnitude off.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mordae 2y ago
To the countries that were doing the exploiting in South America, Africa and Asia as opposed to staying in a country being exploited by Russia? From countries that used secret service against it's own citizens to countries that used it to assassinate inconvenient democratically elected leaders of other countries? And now, with the threat of "communism" (no, it wasn't one, because communism would have meant giving up state power), capitalism is slowly getting just as awful to the people in the core as it was to the people on the periphery. The progress you so enjoy is the product of trade, truly. Across thousands of years. But best trade is free trade. One where nobody is coerced by police NOR implicitly by having choices stripped away from them by the capitalist ruling class that just wants to maintain it's position. People deep in debt, living from paycheck to paycheck, cannot make their choices freely. Imagine running away from USSR only to have to send you kid there: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/business/child-labor-meatpacking-plants.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/business/child-labor-meat...
- CaptainFever 2y ago
  > And now, with the threat of "communism" (no, it wasn't one, because communism would have meant giving up state power) "Not real communism" If it's only viable in theory, as shown by many practical failures, it's not worth discussing at all. > The progress you so enjoy is the product of trade, truly. Across thousands of years. But best trade is free trade. One where nobody is coerced by police NOR implicitly by having choices stripped away from them by the capitalist ruling class that just wants to maintain it's position. People deep in debt, living from paycheck to paycheck, cannot make their choices freely. This sounds like you'd like welfare capitalism. Bur your comment conflates and gish-gallops so many things that it's impossible to have a conversation with you.
  - p_l 2y ago
    > "Not real communism" Because the term has been perverted by both anti and pro crowds. Capitalism isn't equal to free market (arguably Adam Smith was first to give scathing rejection of capitalism) Communism isn't equal with state control and planned economy, no matter how much Imperial Russian traumatised politicians insisted on everyone.
adrian_b 2y ago
I have grown up in a country occupied by communists and of course everybody was trying to escape across the iron curtain. Nevertheless, the reasons were because people hated being forced to do and to say things that they did not want to do and to say, and because there were many categories of things that they were completely forbidden to own. On the other hand, among the few categories of things that they could have, many were quite nice things in comparison with what is available today everywhere. For instance the quality of clothes and of food has been lowered dramatically after the communists lost the power, the internal market was opened to global commerce and the local factories had been destroyed by their managers (who had stolen all their assets in order to transform themselves from communist bureaucrats into capitalist businessmen).
kolinko 2y ago
Yes, totally.

manoDev 2y ago

I love how any criticism of capitalism automatically invites the “but things sucked more at a particular place in a particular period” argument. I grew up in a capitalist country. Being poor doesn’t give you access to things just the same.

otherme123 2y ago
Being poor is the natural state of humans. We have been poor for thousands of years, with regular famines eveywhere. Even in the richer parts of the world, there where deaths due to starvation if the year was bad. Then it came capitalism. For the first time in history, a country eliminated famines just by adopting the new of organizing production. They were still poor people who lacked things, but they lived in the only part of the world where at least they could count on not starving to death. Then some countries organized as socialism, and they caused huge famines, that in a rare historical event, were not caused by climate or a natural catastrophe, but by wrong resource allocation. You can criticize capitalism, but not on terms of producing what people want. In that field we don't know any other system that does it better. Capitalism is bad at distributing the wealth equally to everyone, causing that some people cannot have some things, but also we don't know a better model that does it while keeping poverty away. If people today doesn't have unbreakable glassware (it exists!) is just because they prefer cheaper and fancier glasses from Ikea. When I need a truly unbreakable "glass" I buy a titanium made camping glass. In general we don't want all products to last a long time: we want to change our car to get the newest fancy things, we want a bigger and faster phone. We don't want a single pair of shoes that last forever, but lots of shoes to match with lots of clothes. There are long lasting shoes, but they don't sell well (i.e. people don't want them, even if they say so).
- ahf8Aithaex7Nai 2y ago
  Believing in undercomplex narratives that describe the state of the world in a pleasant way is the natural state of humans.
pxmpxm 2y ago
Being poor in a capitalist country still puts you in the very top of the ladder in any communist place. Everyone was poor there, and way poorer than you, myself included.
pxmpxm 2y ago
Just to add some numbers for context, in 1980 the US poverty line family income was ~ $8k year. In the USSR the MEDIAN family income was ~1200 rubles a year, which is around $400/year using the real exchange change. People in the west have no grasp at the level of abject poverty that communism creates.
- hcarvalhoalves 2y ago
  So to prove your point, you picked the richest country in the west to compare with the USSR, but generalized to “people in the west don’t know what poverty is”. The “west” is more than the US you know, unless you’re not talking about this side of the meridian.
  - pxmpxm 2y ago
    Pick your favourite country in "the west" and you will end up with the same conclusion, since you're like 2 orders of magnitude off.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mordae 2y ago

To the countries that were doing the exploiting in South America, Africa and Asia as opposed to staying in a country being exploited by Russia? From countries that used secret service against it's own citizens to countries that used it to assassinate inconvenient democratically elected leaders of other countries? And now, with the threat of "communism" (no, it wasn't one, because communism would have meant giving up state power), capitalism is slowly getting just as awful to the people in the core as it was to the people on the periphery. The progress you so enjoy is the product of trade, truly. Across thousands of years. But best trade is free trade. One where nobody is coerced by police NOR implicitly by having choices stripped away from them by the capitalist ruling class that just wants to maintain it's position. People deep in debt, living from paycheck to paycheck, cannot make their choices freely. Imagine running away from USSR only to have to send you kid there: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/business/child-labor-meatpacking-plants.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/business/child-labor-meat...

CaptainFever 2y ago
> And now, with the threat of "communism" (no, it wasn't one, because communism would have meant giving up state power) "Not real communism" If it's only viable in theory, as shown by many practical failures, it's not worth discussing at all. > The progress you so enjoy is the product of trade, truly. Across thousands of years. But best trade is free trade. One where nobody is coerced by police NOR implicitly by having choices stripped away from them by the capitalist ruling class that just wants to maintain it's position. People deep in debt, living from paycheck to paycheck, cannot make their choices freely. This sounds like you'd like welfare capitalism. Bur your comment conflates and gish-gallops so many things that it's impossible to have a conversation with you.
- p_l 2y ago
  > "Not real communism" Because the term has been perverted by both anti and pro crowds. Capitalism isn't equal to free market (arguably Adam Smith was first to give scathing rejection of capitalism) Communism isn't equal with state control and planned economy, no matter how much Imperial Russian traumatised politicians insisted on everyone.

adrian_b 2y ago

I have grown up in a country occupied by communists and of course everybody was trying to escape across the iron curtain. Nevertheless, the reasons were because people hated being forced to do and to say things that they did not want to do and to say, and because there were many categories of things that they were completely forbidden to own. On the other hand, among the few categories of things that they could have, many were quite nice things in comparison with what is available today everywhere. For instance the quality of clothes and of food has been lowered dramatically after the communists lost the power, the internal market was opened to global commerce and the local factories had been destroyed by their managers (who had stolen all their assets in order to transform themselves from communist bureaucrats into capitalist businessmen).

kolinko 2y ago

Yes, totally.