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I highly highly recommend the late Mark Fischer's Capitalist Realism. There's no good reason why the internet needs to be this bad.... aside from an irrational

I highly highly recommend the late Mark Fischer's Capitalist Realism. There's no good reason why the internet needs to be this bad.... aside from an irrational demand for continual returns, damn the cost to humanity. There are, in fact, better ways to run society than begging the rich to care about the rest of us. Anyone who says alternatives to capitalism are unrealistic are lying to your face.

smitty1e 2y ago
I fully agree that Socialism is a simpler and more beautiful approach. What I haven't seen is Socialism scaling in any sustainable way above, roughly, Dunbar's Number[1]. I submit, looking at human history, that the non-scalabity is intrinsic, and that capitalism is relatively less-worse approach. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
- immibis 2y ago
  The word "socialism" really means "everything that isn't capitalism, and has a more equitable distribution of resources". Making socialism work just means making something other than capitalism work, and there are lots of ideas out there.
  - gjsman-1000 2y ago
    Ideas which will thankfully remain suppressed due to their socialist association. We know what happened when a socialist party with new ideas took over Germany in the early 30s, and have collectively decided the new ideas can take a hike.
    - thrance 2y ago
      Look up Hitler's views on socialism before speaking such nonsense here. The socialists and communists were the first to go under nazi leadership.
      - guerrilla 2y ago
        Even the vaguely semi-socialist Nazis (Strasserist) were purged from the party and killed, not just non-Nazis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasserism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasserism
        smitty1e 2y ago
        It's all so much authoritarianism, as far as I can tell. The Socialists seem to do a better job of providing a crypto-religious veneer.
    - monadINtop 2y ago
      Maybe one of the most ahistorical and abhorrently dishonest claims someone could make about the last century. In the UK we were taught a more accurate picture of history as a child studying for GCSEs - specifically how the German state handed the reigns over to Fascism with the blessing of the business conglomerates as a large ditch effort to quell the labor movement then rippling across Europe - so you really have no excuse.
      - gjsman-1000 2y ago
        Well, that’s an ahistorical version of the story if I’ve ever heard one.
        monadINtop 2y ago
        You probably haven't heard of any since you clearly don't know anything about history or politics
    - achierius 2y ago
      In the 1932 German federal elections where Hitler took power, the next two parties on the list were the SPD (moderate socialists) and the KPD (revolutionary communists), both of whom refused to ally with the NSDAP. It was the centrist conservative Franz von Papen who first chose to strike a confidence-and-supply deal with the Nazis in order to avoid having to work with socialists. Then it was the right-wing President Paul von Hindenburg who chose to replace Papen with Hitler and let the Nazis form a new government -- again, in order to have him 'deal with' the communists. At the same time as Hitler was setting up his dictatorship, his brownshirt paramilitaries (the Sturmabteilung) were having shooting matches in the streets with communist militias, seemingly the only group in the country to recognize the existential danger of Naziism. Indeed, it was a terror attack on the Nazi-controlled parliament by an independent (i.e. non-KPD affiliated) communist that Hitler ultimately chose to use as pretext for declaring an emergency and beginning his dictatorship. Socialists and Communists certainly tried to take control of Germany, but they never succeeded. As the Nazi party took power, they were opposed every step of the way by communist forces, even as nearly every other major pillar of German society (excepting a few segments like the Catholic Church and, for a time, the Wehrmacht) fell totally in line. It was the conservatives, not the communists, who betrayed Europe to fascism, war, and genocide.
      - aguaviva 2y ago
        It was the conservatives, not the communists, who betrayed Europe to fascism, war, and genocide. Bitte. Please. The KPD paramilitaries (with their various assassinations) and the the SPD (through their alliance with various reactionist forces at the time and the far greater violence they supported) did their part as well. And that's just Germany, not to mention events in Spain, etc. It was a mutual effort.
  - piva00 2y ago
    At this point in my life I just want to see an evolved version of capitalism, we are stuck with the bullshit from the 80s/90s being milked dry from any progress it could have generated. It's over, we need something else for the fucking 2020s.
    - achierius 2y ago
      A survey of social/political/economic history (even just post-1800) shows that capitalism, as a system, strongly resists 'evolution', and over time erodes those gains which have been made against it. When people talk about their dream for an 'evolved capitalism' it often comes down to New Deal America plus free healthcare. Yet even setting aside how the post-WW2 economy was a singular moment that we cannot hope to recapitulate, you have to ask: if we _had_ this, and everyone thought it was great, why did we give it up? Or rather, why was it taken away from us? This is the second fork of 'why not capitalism'? The first -- that capitalism, left to its own devices, produces increasingly terrible ('misaligned') results, is not enough. The second -- that capitalism, as a system of power distribution, strongly incentivizes people to work against any attempts at regulating it, and indeed to roll back those regulations -- is what cinches the issue.
      - smitty1e 2y ago
        Capitalism is a continuously evolving system, as the shift from print to radio to television to the internet shows in a thoroughly obvious manner. Or you can look at the top X stocks on Wall Street and see how many exist in subsequent decades. The constants here are human nature and the capitalist/socialist tension.
        immibis 2y ago
        The same system with different people at the top isn't an evolution of the system, it's the same system with different people at the top. Like, if I take HTTP and then change the port number to 8080 (lower layer change), or use it to host interactive videos (higher layer change), it's not an evolution of HTTP, it's still just HTTP.
  - hahahacorn 2y ago
    None of which have worked at scale, nor would their incentives lead a rational person to believe they have a chance of succeeding at scale. Capitalism is the worst, and it’s the best we’ve got (so far).
    - immibis 2y ago
      This is the best thing that can be said about capitalism: that we've never succeeded at anything better at scale. Which is a lot like the title text of XKCD 1357.
- thrance 2y ago
  You're a victim of that capitalist realism the comment you replied to spoke of. I can only recommend you read about the subject.
  - amelius 2y ago
    Why is socialism a band-aid? You might as well call modern law a band-aid applied to ancient tribal disputes.
    - thrance 2y ago
      Sorry, I removed that part of my comment before seeing your reply. I realized it wasn't well thought out. Maybe you can still delete this comment?
      - fsflover 2y ago
        One can't delete a comment after someone else replies to it.
        amelius 2y ago
        But what if that other person deletes their comment?
  - smitty1e 2y ago
    I'm only a victim of an un-scalable federal government whose debt burden and resulting tax load would be an obvious resource leak in an information system. People do not scale in a linear fashion. Ignore reality at your peril. Oh, and: "Merry Christmas".
    - thrance 2y ago
      If you are seeking a country that doesn't overspend, you should move to Somalia. If you want an actual constructive conversation in which we don't portray the opposite side inaccurately, please document yourself on capitalist realism: you don't even have to agree! Merry Christmas to you too.
ruthmarx 2y ago
Capitalism is not and never was the problem, the lack of regulation around it is. Compare how bad things are in the US for many people, directly due to a lack of regulation in many instances. Healthcare pre-Obamacare is a great example. Compare that things are generally better in countries with more regulation like NZ and Norway. Consider then that even more regulation is possible to improve things.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- hollandheese 2y ago
  >Capitalism is not and never was the problem, the lack of regulation around it is. Yeah, sure. You keep believing that. >Compare how bad things are in the US for many people, directly due to a lack of regulation in many instances. Healthcare pre-Obamacare is a great example. The regulation has done so well to reign in healthcare corporations that people are shooting healthcare ceos in cold blood on the streets and people are cheering about it.
  - ruthmarx 2y ago
    > Yeah, sure. You keep believing that. It's not a question of belief, the evidence is clear as day. > The regulation has done so well to reign in healthcare corporations that people are shooting healthcare ceos in cold blood on the streets and people are cheering about it. The GOP is extremely resistant to any regulation and went out of there way to cripple Obamacare as much as they could. If your takeaway from my previous comment was that regulation in the US is working well, I invite you to re-read it.
    - hollandheese 2y ago
      >It's not a question of belief, the evidence is clear as day. Yeah, sure. The economic system that is boiling the planet and will make it unlivable is the best thing ever!
      - 2y ago

smitty1e 2y ago

I fully agree that Socialism is a simpler and more beautiful approach. What I haven't seen is Socialism scaling in any sustainable way above, roughly, Dunbar's Number[1]. I submit, looking at human history, that the non-scalabity is intrinsic, and that capitalism is relatively less-worse approach. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

immibis 2y ago
The word "socialism" really means "everything that isn't capitalism, and has a more equitable distribution of resources". Making socialism work just means making something other than capitalism work, and there are lots of ideas out there.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  Ideas which will thankfully remain suppressed due to their socialist association. We know what happened when a socialist party with new ideas took over Germany in the early 30s, and have collectively decided the new ideas can take a hike.
  - thrance 2y ago
    Look up Hitler's views on socialism before speaking such nonsense here. The socialists and communists were the first to go under nazi leadership.
    - guerrilla 2y ago
      Even the vaguely semi-socialist Nazis (Strasserist) were purged from the party and killed, not just non-Nazis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasserism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasserism
      - smitty1e 2y ago
        It's all so much authoritarianism, as far as I can tell. The Socialists seem to do a better job of providing a crypto-religious veneer.
  - monadINtop 2y ago
    Maybe one of the most ahistorical and abhorrently dishonest claims someone could make about the last century. In the UK we were taught a more accurate picture of history as a child studying for GCSEs - specifically how the German state handed the reigns over to Fascism with the blessing of the business conglomerates as a large ditch effort to quell the labor movement then rippling across Europe - so you really have no excuse.
    - gjsman-1000 2y ago
      Well, that’s an ahistorical version of the story if I’ve ever heard one.
      - monadINtop 2y ago
        You probably haven't heard of any since you clearly don't know anything about history or politics
  - achierius 2y ago
    In the 1932 German federal elections where Hitler took power, the next two parties on the list were the SPD (moderate socialists) and the KPD (revolutionary communists), both of whom refused to ally with the NSDAP. It was the centrist conservative Franz von Papen who first chose to strike a confidence-and-supply deal with the Nazis in order to avoid having to work with socialists. Then it was the right-wing President Paul von Hindenburg who chose to replace Papen with Hitler and let the Nazis form a new government -- again, in order to have him 'deal with' the communists. At the same time as Hitler was setting up his dictatorship, his brownshirt paramilitaries (the Sturmabteilung) were having shooting matches in the streets with communist militias, seemingly the only group in the country to recognize the existential danger of Naziism. Indeed, it was a terror attack on the Nazi-controlled parliament by an independent (i.e. non-KPD affiliated) communist that Hitler ultimately chose to use as pretext for declaring an emergency and beginning his dictatorship. Socialists and Communists certainly tried to take control of Germany, but they never succeeded. As the Nazi party took power, they were opposed every step of the way by communist forces, even as nearly every other major pillar of German society (excepting a few segments like the Catholic Church and, for a time, the Wehrmacht) fell totally in line. It was the conservatives, not the communists, who betrayed Europe to fascism, war, and genocide.
    - aguaviva 2y ago
      It was the conservatives, not the communists, who betrayed Europe to fascism, war, and genocide. Bitte. Please. The KPD paramilitaries (with their various assassinations) and the the SPD (through their alliance with various reactionist forces at the time and the far greater violence they supported) did their part as well. And that's just Germany, not to mention events in Spain, etc. It was a mutual effort.
- piva00 2y ago
  At this point in my life I just want to see an evolved version of capitalism, we are stuck with the bullshit from the 80s/90s being milked dry from any progress it could have generated. It's over, we need something else for the fucking 2020s.
  - achierius 2y ago
    A survey of social/political/economic history (even just post-1800) shows that capitalism, as a system, strongly resists 'evolution', and over time erodes those gains which have been made against it. When people talk about their dream for an 'evolved capitalism' it often comes down to New Deal America plus free healthcare. Yet even setting aside how the post-WW2 economy was a singular moment that we cannot hope to recapitulate, you have to ask: if we _had_ this, and everyone thought it was great, why did we give it up? Or rather, why was it taken away from us? This is the second fork of 'why not capitalism'? The first -- that capitalism, left to its own devices, produces increasingly terrible ('misaligned') results, is not enough. The second -- that capitalism, as a system of power distribution, strongly incentivizes people to work against any attempts at regulating it, and indeed to roll back those regulations -- is what cinches the issue.
    - smitty1e 2y ago
      Capitalism is a continuously evolving system, as the shift from print to radio to television to the internet shows in a thoroughly obvious manner. Or you can look at the top X stocks on Wall Street and see how many exist in subsequent decades. The constants here are human nature and the capitalist/socialist tension.
      - immibis 2y ago
        The same system with different people at the top isn't an evolution of the system, it's the same system with different people at the top. Like, if I take HTTP and then change the port number to 8080 (lower layer change), or use it to host interactive videos (higher layer change), it's not an evolution of HTTP, it's still just HTTP.
- hahahacorn 2y ago
  None of which have worked at scale, nor would their incentives lead a rational person to believe they have a chance of succeeding at scale. Capitalism is the worst, and it’s the best we’ve got (so far).
  - immibis 2y ago
    This is the best thing that can be said about capitalism: that we've never succeeded at anything better at scale. Which is a lot like the title text of XKCD 1357.
thrance 2y ago
You're a victim of that capitalist realism the comment you replied to spoke of. I can only recommend you read about the subject.
- amelius 2y ago
  Why is socialism a band-aid? You might as well call modern law a band-aid applied to ancient tribal disputes.
  - thrance 2y ago
    Sorry, I removed that part of my comment before seeing your reply. I realized it wasn't well thought out. Maybe you can still delete this comment?
    - fsflover 2y ago
      One can't delete a comment after someone else replies to it.
      - amelius 2y ago
        But what if that other person deletes their comment?
- smitty1e 2y ago
  I'm only a victim of an un-scalable federal government whose debt burden and resulting tax load would be an obvious resource leak in an information system. People do not scale in a linear fashion. Ignore reality at your peril. Oh, and: "Merry Christmas".
  - thrance 2y ago
    If you are seeking a country that doesn't overspend, you should move to Somalia. If you want an actual constructive conversation in which we don't portray the opposite side inaccurately, please document yourself on capitalist realism: you don't even have to agree! Merry Christmas to you too.

ruthmarx 2y ago

Capitalism is not and never was the problem, the lack of regulation around it is. Compare how bad things are in the US for many people, directly due to a lack of regulation in many instances. Healthcare pre-Obamacare is a great example. Compare that things are generally better in countries with more regulation like NZ and Norway. Consider then that even more regulation is possible to improve things.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hollandheese 2y ago
>Capitalism is not and never was the problem, the lack of regulation around it is. Yeah, sure. You keep believing that. >Compare how bad things are in the US for many people, directly due to a lack of regulation in many instances. Healthcare pre-Obamacare is a great example. The regulation has done so well to reign in healthcare corporations that people are shooting healthcare ceos in cold blood on the streets and people are cheering about it.
- ruthmarx 2y ago
  > Yeah, sure. You keep believing that. It's not a question of belief, the evidence is clear as day. > The regulation has done so well to reign in healthcare corporations that people are shooting healthcare ceos in cold blood on the streets and people are cheering about it. The GOP is extremely resistant to any regulation and went out of there way to cripple Obamacare as much as they could. If your takeaway from my previous comment was that regulation in the US is working well, I invite you to re-read it.
  - hollandheese 2y ago
    >It's not a question of belief, the evidence is clear as day. Yeah, sure. The economic system that is boiling the planet and will make it unlivable is the best thing ever!
    - 2y ago