Capitalism

Good? Yes. Bad? Yes.

I'm reading a science fiction novel right now with a functionally immortal human population living in an intersolar Capitalist civilization. It also has a main character that is a terrorist and an avowed Marxist who gets at least some page real estate to elucidate his philosophy. There's also spaceships and wormholes and a strong-AI the size of a planet and space elves and one of the more terrifyingly creative alternate evolutions I've ever come across. It's a bit busy you might say.

But, as one does, this led to me waking up and muddling over the role of Capitalism in bed with a dream fogged brain.

And the primary thing I think people rarely talk about with Capitalism is that it eats people. And what I mean by that is that it creates bad, even horrific, outcomes for some people. Capitalism has losers. By definition you can't have a "winner" like Jeff Bezos unless you also have a bunch of people that can't buy small countries. I know he's a winner because I'm not sure how my kid will pay for college but he builds rockets out of petty cash. Then again, I have a roof over my head, and I know my kid will have a warm dinner tonight (chicken nugget night in fact) and that's not true of every parent in this country so I'm only a loser from a certain perspective. So Capitalism drives inequality and it's neither "communist" or "socialist" to point this out. It's axiomatic that Capitalism and inequality are tightly coupled.

However. And this is a big "however." Capitalism is also the best economic model we've ever come up with as a civilization. It's lead to the lowest unemployment, the longest lived, most literate, and least violent global civilization in human history. Starting with the industrial revolution we've been on a roller-coaster of world improvement that just goes faster and faster. To wit, if someone told me I was going to be randomly reborn in a random location anywhere in the world and I can pick any point in world history the smart choice is to choose now. Now is when I want to be born. So Capitalism and improvement are tightly coupled also.

And you can tell this because nowhere is still a hunter/gather society or a feudal society. There are no truly Communist societies because the one big one, Russia, collapsed specifically because they couldn't compete with the Capitalist ones. Now you also get things like China which espouse some sort of "Communism" but are more than happy to compete in the world economy which is also Capitalist. Oh, and the "Nordic Model" doesn't count either because it is highly Capitalistic in many ways...but only in some ways, not all.

Which leads me to a part that maybe everybody understands but I rarely see mentioned in discourse and seems to be forgotten in the middle of arguments. The ideas of "Capitalism" and "Socialism" and "Communism" as pure ideas have never really been implemented. We are not fully Capitalist. You can tell because we have a government that mostly makes sure cows aren't slaughtered in a fly-infested and disease-ridden slaughterhouse, businesses can't pollute the drinking water with industrial waste around them, and monopolies do get broken up. China is not "Communist" because, amongst other things, some people have bigger houses than others and the government kills lots of people and that part wasn't in any of the excerpts from Das Kapital I read...

Mostly I just wanted to write this out. At best my point is really just that I think everyone should appreciate, and exercise a little empathy, when discussing economic models with someone of a different persuasion. It's a rare individual who wants to see the government disappear or see the government in control of everything or create a world where merit is irrelevant. But we argue against the "Other" as if they believe in the pure ideal when the answer for almost all of us is somewhere in the middle. At root, I think everyone should remember that Capitalism is both a horrific and a beautiful thing. To pretend otherwise is reductive and lazy. The world is more complicated than bad guys and good guys so...stop making the person that disagrees with you evil?

And I guess now I gotta go to work this Monday morning.

Squirt Says…

The Ideal Communism would be a utopia but you would need to have it just perfect so nobody felt like they were less than anyone else which in theory would remove crime because you have the same as everybody else so why would you take when you already have it you already have the maximum amount you ever will have everyone would have the same amount worked so it was fair, but communism will almost certainly not reach that level and will remain unfair and bad approach for running a country

Dad Responds…

I don’t remember talking specifically about Communism with him but I do know we’ve talked about how ideals and realities are different things. This, I think, is what he’s keyed in on here. He talked about the hippie communes of the Sixties and how they were the closest we got until they devolved into infighting. We talked a bit about self-interest and how people putting themselves first invalidates even the concept of Communism in my opinion. I will save conversations about forcing functions such as scarcity for a different time…