Thing is, America thinks giving us bread and circuses is "Socialism"
Circuses isn't socialism, it's a pretty useful tool of capitalism, even though it ruins it in some cases.
Bread though, no capitalist will ever share their bread. Or anything for that matter.
No, but the tyrants are so insane that they're writing off ciruces and bread as socialism
Isn't any tyrants left in the west, the system is the one being tyrannical. No head will fall and capitalism will end.
And the system is revolt proof. So it doesn't care for the people one bit. Hence it can call anything good for the population "Socialism", as in the enemy.
Capitalism was good but it's time let it go, it failed us.
Historical precedence says you're wrong. Rockefeller, a prominent capitalist and thus commonly demonized by anti-capitalists, supported initiatives to combat hunger. His foundation provided substantial funding for soup kitchens during the great depression, and his foundation has continued to focus on public health, education, and scientific research.
JP Morgan, "the ghost of rich dudes passed", was also philanthropic as fuck. He didn't donate food directly, but his efforts supported educational institutions, scientific research, and the arts.
Even Elon Musk has a foundation that studies renewable energy research, space exploration, pediatric research, and more, all at cost for the betterment of the world. In fact, when it was especially popular to point out that his wealth could end poverty entirely, he started directly asking people for their metrics and potential methods. He was clearly ready to put resources into fixing a problem, but nothing ever came of it because no one actually had real metrics or methods, they just wanted a reason to dunk on Elon.
Okay so those are just some guys I already knew about, what if I just pick a random "capitalist" name I hear commonly thrown around. Carnegie, sure, not sure what he did but I know I've seen his name besmirched for being capitalist aaaaand yep look at that! In his older age he donated most of his wealth to the establishment of public libraries, educational institutions, and foundations aimed at promoting world peace. I literally had no idea about any details of this guy's life, but yeah, it's not surprising that a successful prominent capitalist lived a life of philanthropy in his later years, because that's the more consistent pattern.
Have you ever once even tried to look into whether what you believe is true or not? Or would you just rather hate a label you've been told to hate?
Sociology professor Linsey McGoey has written that many current and past philanthropists amassed their fortunes by predatory business practices which enhanced the very social problems their philanthropy is intended to alleviate.
3 times in a row you simply linked something without typing. Do you ever think for yourself? Tell me with your own words. I want to know what you think, not what the internet thinks
Intelligence isn’t spontaneous. It is shared. You want to dismiss credible sources, but cannot because you are not a credible source. So, you want me to stand in for the sources, so you can dismiss me. No, I don’t think I will.
No I actually just wanted to have a conversation with someone who has thoughts of their own to share. Could imagine if you asked someone what they thought about something and that just handed you an essay written by someone else? Would you have any confidence that this person has any thoughts at all?
And if you pointed that out to them, what would you think if their response was nothing but condescending?
You have not come across very well here. I was not trying to contradict or dismiss, I was looking for an honest conversation. Your constant assumptions that I am a bad faith party have directly resulted in you acting in bad faith yourself, and now you've proudly defended an act of pure ignorance.
You need to stop assuming you're better than people, because you will only make yourself worse.
I don’t intend to be condescending. And I know I’m not better than others. Which is why I defer to experts and sources that have more knowledge and studies that reference what I think. Conversations are fine when talking about the weather or sports. But if you are getting your philosophy and politics from conversations with strangers on the internet, you’re at best going to learn a narrow view of the world, or worst going to be led astray.
Don’t look to social media to learn what to think, but use it as a tool to learn what not to think.
Discussing ideas is not the same as getting my philosophy blindly from what people say on the internet.
What you worry about, being led astray by a narrow view, is precisely what I worry about in people like you. If someone is unwilling to talk about their ideas or hear others out, which is what you did, then they are less likely to hear good reason to rethink their world view.
Likewise, if you are unable to summarize your ideas in conversational form, I have low confidence in believing you understand the things you say. An expert in a scientific field is almost always able to explain more complicated theories in simpler ways that the layman can understand. If a theory can't be explained to a layman, it's effectively useless.
You're also suggesting that the reason I'm here is to finally get a grasp on all these theories I've heard about but never learned. That's not what's happening, and I already told you that explicitly. I am here to talk to you about what you think. That's normal and should be understood as normal.
All of these men would have made more of a difference and reduced their own wealth more if they'd supported a land value tax and the restructuring of capitalist economics to it's true form of laborers creating an increase in wealth due to labor, and having wages derived from said labor by estimating their personal effort and the increase in capital that comes from it.
Instead we have men who owned more of the economy than Bezos and Musk giving out a pittance to help the poor when they're the source of the problem with their pseudo-capitalism "trickle up" economics.
Fix the issue, rich people giving away 1% of their wealth isn't a solution when the problem is the system that allows for them by taxing the wrong people on the wrong items. Eliminate all taxes and institute the LVT so the middle class doesn't have to keep shouldering the burden that the rich should have an equal share of.
Land value tax is simply unjustifiable, because land is the most important thing to leave in private hands. To allow for land tax is to concede that the state has a right to the land you own. The problems that has directly lead to in history are innumerable. From Rome to Russia, state control of land was at the forefront of their issues.
Why do you think reducing their wealth is a moral good? If you want to improve life for some people, your focus should not be on reducing wealth for others. The latter does not necessarily lead to the former, and it's an inherently destructive mindset. Destroying one person's wealth merely destroys their wealth, it does not make others lives better by default
I'm sorry but I completely disagree, the state of current affairs is a direct result of the private ownership of land with inefficient tax systems intended to staunch the flow of blood like a bandaid over a gushing artery.
Land and natural resources were not created by anyone and cannot be justified as being owned by anyone. The way we would represent public ownership of natural resources via capitalism would be a tax on the use of said resources, a rent paid to society for being allowed exclusive use of it.
I'm not advocating for socialism or communism which is where your issues regarding public ownership of land stem from, capitalism works just fine as long as the correct institutions are being taxed in an efficient manner. The LVT would work well because it doesn't allow land to just sit around unused. You either fulfill a direct supply need for a market or you sell it to someone who will do so. Not only does that put market direction and supply back into the domain of the consumer who's needs in terms of say... Housing are being left unfulfilled, but would incentivize the efficient use of land and help create something other than single family homes that most of society doesn't need and can't afford.
It also keeps the wealthy from dodging taxes, because it wouldn't be possible to hide the amount of land your businesses use the same way you can take stock options instead of an income or use tax haven bank accounts and deflect most of your tax burden. It also frees up the worker and their employer from taxes while putting the tax directly onto the people who provide the least value in the chain and derive the most wealth from that parasitic action, landholders. Individuals who own a couple houses aren't the target, we are talking primarily about businesses that take up hundreds of thousands of acres for manufacturing and who's owners possess more wealth than the rest of the nation combined.
As for your insinuation that reducing wealth doesn't equal more wealth for others, that's correct. However, the entire idea of wages deriving from capital and the malthusian doctrine are both fundamentally flawed and have lead to the idea that there has to be poverty, there has to be this significant of a class divide. It's just the laws of the universe, can't do anything about it! We have never seen the outcome of a society that taxes in this manner and provides services like an automated capitalist economy which uses land tax to facilitate a UBI, which is the inevitable endgame of modern LLM and robotics technology. If we don't plan for that by deciding now that land is publically owned and "rented" from society via tax then we are going to see continual wealth disparity and our Western cities are going to start looking a lot more like India with obscene wealth next to miles of homeless camps. Those that own the land and the capital will reduce our workforce while sucking up the increased profit margins and the eventual reality will be a few trillionaires alongside millions of destitute and starving people who don't have jobs to justify their existence. Only we won't have the ability to drag them into the street and cut off their heads like the French revolution, because they'll be living in underground bunkers on unmarked islands or in space stations at the top of the gravity well. Untouchable.
The human race is fucked, these issues were called out over a century ago and we might have gotten through to people, but because an entire generation of Westerners thinks public ownership of anything is LITERALLY COMMUNISM even when it's in a capitalist economy, we will just see the issue get worse as the middle class gets nuked into oblivion.
My point of view is that the money all capitalist have is a resource that was taken from the rest of us. So donating all of it back would just be the bare minimum someone can do.
After donating all of it back, you're right we also need to figure out a plan to distribute it properly in the first place, and most important make a system and society that's gonna provide for everyone.
And no kidding no one found a answer to that, from the beginning of human society we only very briefly achieved some systems that's almost there. But no one never had the answer. There is always some problems in any society.
What i know for sure is that capitalism is not only not the answer, but is actually a system that's getting more and more corrupted, with increasing problems. To the point it's leading us directly to a wall.
So in all the different view we can have of the world, all the different system we can use for society, there is no right system, there is worse than capitalism, but there is also better. I strive for not the definitive best, just better...
My point of view is that the money all capitalist have is a resource that was taken from the rest of us.
Why?
you're right we also need to figure out a plan to distribute it properly in the first place
I didn't suggest that. Redistribution of resources doesn't work, because people don't easily comply with their wealth being taken away. This idea requires the assumption that it's not theirs to begin with, so we're back to the first question: why is a capitalist's wealth not rightfully theirs?
Because we have limited resources, no riches can come to you without profiting of the work of others. If you really want to get your own view you can just look for yourself how rich people got their wealth and judge by yourself is that normal.
I meant that for the extremely wealthy to be precise.
Some moderately rich people are actually contributing positively. They are examples of what capitalism used to be, a system that wasn't perfect but could still lead society in a positive direction, sometimes better than the alternatives.
Redistribution of resources only works to some extent. Not to redistribute all the wealth in one go sure, but to balance the inequity continuously. For exemple taxe on income could be such a way. And like you said some rich people are ok with it and are philanthropic even.
But the true goal of society would be to distribute riches correctly in the first place. So we don't have to rely on philanthropy.
And yeah i don't think capitalism distribute it correctly. So it's theirs in our capitalistic society, but it isn't rightfully in my opinion.
Because we have limited resources, no riches can come to you without profiting from the work of others.
Why is this true, and why is this a problem?
look for yourself how rich people got their wealth and judge by yourself is that normal.
In almost all cases I can think of, a rich person became rich because they provided a product or service that others saw value in, and this generally works for the betterment of civilization.
Ford got rich off cars, the people benefitted by gaining access to transportation. JP Morgan got rich off trains, same thing, he provided a transportation service that people willfully used. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs gave us home computers, despite whatever your opinion is for each of them. Jeff Bezos got rich because he made the online marketplace so ridiculously easy to use, a service people enjoy and see value in.
This is the principle reason they got rich in all of these cases: they sold something the people wanted, at a price they were willing to.
Some moderately rich people are actually contributing positively.
Can you describe what some of these moderately rich people are doing better than the mega rich people?
But the true goal of society would be to distribute riches correctly in the first place.
Why is this the goal of society? How do you determine it's been distributed correctly?
Do you think it's false? Because unless you don't get it i'm not sure i'm interested in formulating logically a trivia.
And it's not always a problem. When is it not, only if it's balanced by making a plus-value on that work. And of course if its done within some ethical rules. (For exemple no slavery.) That plus-value is what's better for moderately rich people who can create jobs and services without the problems that most very rich creates...
I think all the services you quoted would have been implemented either way. Some like cars for example might have been at the expense of better ways. An exemple is how, in the us, highways replaced the railroad system for profit.
In general, the way they implemented those solutions was through corruption like that and unethical work condition. (And it goes beyond the service they got rich on, to what they are doing currently too)
Moreover this idea of selling things at the (highest) price people are willing to buy is a great factor in creating many of thoses problems.
It's the same logic that makes work conditions unethical. That includes using worker in other countries wich conditions are literally considered unethical in the country the goods are sold. But to a lesser degree also the bad conditions of work in many field.
Taking healthcare as a exemple, how do you expect a nurse to sell her work at a higher price. If you want a nurse to give the best service to society or even be ethical, you can't raise the price?
So it goes either way, either healthcare become expensive. Or like in my country, it's free, but the conditions becomes worse and worse. Both being bad for society.
So maybe not the goal, but a goal of society is to distribute those resources correctly. Simply because it's necessary for us to live together.
Thing is, America thinks giving us bread and circuses is "Socialism"
Circuses isn't socialism, it's a pretty useful tool of capitalism, even though it ruins it in some cases.
Bread though, no capitalist will ever share their bread. Or anything for that matter.
No, but the tyrants are so insane that they're writing off ciruces and bread as socialism
Isn't any tyrants left in the west, the system is the one being tyrannical. No head will fall and capitalism will end.
And the system is revolt proof. So it doesn't care for the people one bit. Hence it can call anything good for the population "Socialism", as in the enemy.
Capitalism was good but it's time let it go, it failed us.
Historical precedence says you're wrong. Rockefeller, a prominent capitalist and thus commonly demonized by anti-capitalists, supported initiatives to combat hunger. His foundation provided substantial funding for soup kitchens during the great depression, and his foundation has continued to focus on public health, education, and scientific research.
JP Morgan, "the ghost of rich dudes passed", was also philanthropic as fuck. He didn't donate food directly, but his efforts supported educational institutions, scientific research, and the arts.
Even Elon Musk has a foundation that studies renewable energy research, space exploration, pediatric research, and more, all at cost for the betterment of the world. In fact, when it was especially popular to point out that his wealth could end poverty entirely, he started directly asking people for their metrics and potential methods. He was clearly ready to put resources into fixing a problem, but nothing ever came of it because no one actually had real metrics or methods, they just wanted a reason to dunk on Elon.
Okay so those are just some guys I already knew about, what if I just pick a random "capitalist" name I hear commonly thrown around. Carnegie, sure, not sure what he did but I know I've seen his name besmirched for being capitalist aaaaand yep look at that! In his older age he donated most of his wealth to the establishment of public libraries, educational institutions, and foundations aimed at promoting world peace. I literally had no idea about any details of this guy's life, but yeah, it's not surprising that a successful prominent capitalist lived a life of philanthropy in his later years, because that's the more consistent pattern.
Have you ever once even tried to look into whether what you believe is true or not? Or would you just rather hate a label you've been told to hate?
Same
What predatory practices?
Exploitation
And how were they being exploitative?
Why Billionaire Philanthropy Won’t Solve Anything
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Why Billionaire Philanthropy Won’t Solve Anything
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
3 times in a row you simply linked something without typing. Do you ever think for yourself? Tell me with your own words. I want to know what you think, not what the internet thinks
Intelligence isn’t spontaneous. It is shared. You want to dismiss credible sources, but cannot because you are not a credible source. So, you want me to stand in for the sources, so you can dismiss me. No, I don’t think I will.
No I actually just wanted to have a conversation with someone who has thoughts of their own to share. Could imagine if you asked someone what they thought about something and that just handed you an essay written by someone else? Would you have any confidence that this person has any thoughts at all?
And if you pointed that out to them, what would you think if their response was nothing but condescending?
You have not come across very well here. I was not trying to contradict or dismiss, I was looking for an honest conversation. Your constant assumptions that I am a bad faith party have directly resulted in you acting in bad faith yourself, and now you've proudly defended an act of pure ignorance.
You need to stop assuming you're better than people, because you will only make yourself worse.
I don’t intend to be condescending. And I know I’m not better than others. Which is why I defer to experts and sources that have more knowledge and studies that reference what I think. Conversations are fine when talking about the weather or sports. But if you are getting your philosophy and politics from conversations with strangers on the internet, you’re at best going to learn a narrow view of the world, or worst going to be led astray.
Don’t look to social media to learn what to think, but use it as a tool to learn what not to think.
Discussing ideas is not the same as getting my philosophy blindly from what people say on the internet.
What you worry about, being led astray by a narrow view, is precisely what I worry about in people like you. If someone is unwilling to talk about their ideas or hear others out, which is what you did, then they are less likely to hear good reason to rethink their world view.
Likewise, if you are unable to summarize your ideas in conversational form, I have low confidence in believing you understand the things you say. An expert in a scientific field is almost always able to explain more complicated theories in simpler ways that the layman can understand. If a theory can't be explained to a layman, it's effectively useless.
You're also suggesting that the reason I'm here is to finally get a grasp on all these theories I've heard about but never learned. That's not what's happening, and I already told you that explicitly. I am here to talk to you about what you think. That's normal and should be understood as normal.
All of these men would have made more of a difference and reduced their own wealth more if they'd supported a land value tax and the restructuring of capitalist economics to it's true form of laborers creating an increase in wealth due to labor, and having wages derived from said labor by estimating their personal effort and the increase in capital that comes from it.
Instead we have men who owned more of the economy than Bezos and Musk giving out a pittance to help the poor when they're the source of the problem with their pseudo-capitalism "trickle up" economics.
Fix the issue, rich people giving away 1% of their wealth isn't a solution when the problem is the system that allows for them by taxing the wrong people on the wrong items. Eliminate all taxes and institute the LVT so the middle class doesn't have to keep shouldering the burden that the rich should have an equal share of.
Land value tax is simply unjustifiable, because land is the most important thing to leave in private hands. To allow for land tax is to concede that the state has a right to the land you own. The problems that has directly lead to in history are innumerable. From Rome to Russia, state control of land was at the forefront of their issues.
Why do you think reducing their wealth is a moral good? If you want to improve life for some people, your focus should not be on reducing wealth for others. The latter does not necessarily lead to the former, and it's an inherently destructive mindset. Destroying one person's wealth merely destroys their wealth, it does not make others lives better by default
I'm sorry but I completely disagree, the state of current affairs is a direct result of the private ownership of land with inefficient tax systems intended to staunch the flow of blood like a bandaid over a gushing artery.
Land and natural resources were not created by anyone and cannot be justified as being owned by anyone. The way we would represent public ownership of natural resources via capitalism would be a tax on the use of said resources, a rent paid to society for being allowed exclusive use of it.
I'm not advocating for socialism or communism which is where your issues regarding public ownership of land stem from, capitalism works just fine as long as the correct institutions are being taxed in an efficient manner. The LVT would work well because it doesn't allow land to just sit around unused. You either fulfill a direct supply need for a market or you sell it to someone who will do so. Not only does that put market direction and supply back into the domain of the consumer who's needs in terms of say... Housing are being left unfulfilled, but would incentivize the efficient use of land and help create something other than single family homes that most of society doesn't need and can't afford.
It also keeps the wealthy from dodging taxes, because it wouldn't be possible to hide the amount of land your businesses use the same way you can take stock options instead of an income or use tax haven bank accounts and deflect most of your tax burden. It also frees up the worker and their employer from taxes while putting the tax directly onto the people who provide the least value in the chain and derive the most wealth from that parasitic action, landholders. Individuals who own a couple houses aren't the target, we are talking primarily about businesses that take up hundreds of thousands of acres for manufacturing and who's owners possess more wealth than the rest of the nation combined.
As for your insinuation that reducing wealth doesn't equal more wealth for others, that's correct. However, the entire idea of wages deriving from capital and the malthusian doctrine are both fundamentally flawed and have lead to the idea that there has to be poverty, there has to be this significant of a class divide. It's just the laws of the universe, can't do anything about it! We have never seen the outcome of a society that taxes in this manner and provides services like an automated capitalist economy which uses land tax to facilitate a UBI, which is the inevitable endgame of modern LLM and robotics technology. If we don't plan for that by deciding now that land is publically owned and "rented" from society via tax then we are going to see continual wealth disparity and our Western cities are going to start looking a lot more like India with obscene wealth next to miles of homeless camps. Those that own the land and the capital will reduce our workforce while sucking up the increased profit margins and the eventual reality will be a few trillionaires alongside millions of destitute and starving people who don't have jobs to justify their existence. Only we won't have the ability to drag them into the street and cut off their heads like the French revolution, because they'll be living in underground bunkers on unmarked islands or in space stations at the top of the gravity well. Untouchable.
The human race is fucked, these issues were called out over a century ago and we might have gotten through to people, but because an entire generation of Westerners thinks public ownership of anything is LITERALLY COMMUNISM even when it's in a capitalist economy, we will just see the issue get worse as the middle class gets nuked into oblivion.
My point of view is that the money all capitalist have is a resource that was taken from the rest of us. So donating all of it back would just be the bare minimum someone can do.
After donating all of it back, you're right we also need to figure out a plan to distribute it properly in the first place, and most important make a system and society that's gonna provide for everyone.
And no kidding no one found a answer to that, from the beginning of human society we only very briefly achieved some systems that's almost there. But no one never had the answer. There is always some problems in any society.
What i know for sure is that capitalism is not only not the answer, but is actually a system that's getting more and more corrupted, with increasing problems. To the point it's leading us directly to a wall.
So in all the different view we can have of the world, all the different system we can use for society, there is no right system, there is worse than capitalism, but there is also better. I strive for not the definitive best, just better...
Why?
I didn't suggest that. Redistribution of resources doesn't work, because people don't easily comply with their wealth being taken away. This idea requires the assumption that it's not theirs to begin with, so we're back to the first question: why is a capitalist's wealth not rightfully theirs?
Because we have limited resources, no riches can come to you without profiting of the work of others. If you really want to get your own view you can just look for yourself how rich people got their wealth and judge by yourself is that normal.
I meant that for the extremely wealthy to be precise.
Some moderately rich people are actually contributing positively. They are examples of what capitalism used to be, a system that wasn't perfect but could still lead society in a positive direction, sometimes better than the alternatives.
Redistribution of resources only works to some extent. Not to redistribute all the wealth in one go sure, but to balance the inequity continuously. For exemple taxe on income could be such a way. And like you said some rich people are ok with it and are philanthropic even.
But the true goal of society would be to distribute riches correctly in the first place. So we don't have to rely on philanthropy.
And yeah i don't think capitalism distribute it correctly. So it's theirs in our capitalistic society, but it isn't rightfully in my opinion.
Why is this true, and why is this a problem?
In almost all cases I can think of, a rich person became rich because they provided a product or service that others saw value in, and this generally works for the betterment of civilization.
Ford got rich off cars, the people benefitted by gaining access to transportation. JP Morgan got rich off trains, same thing, he provided a transportation service that people willfully used. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs gave us home computers, despite whatever your opinion is for each of them. Jeff Bezos got rich because he made the online marketplace so ridiculously easy to use, a service people enjoy and see value in.
This is the principle reason they got rich in all of these cases: they sold something the people wanted, at a price they were willing to.
Can you describe what some of these moderately rich people are doing better than the mega rich people?
Why is this the goal of society? How do you determine it's been distributed correctly?
Do you think it's false? Because unless you don't get it i'm not sure i'm interested in formulating logically a trivia.
And it's not always a problem. When is it not, only if it's balanced by making a plus-value on that work. And of course if its done within some ethical rules. (For exemple no slavery.) That plus-value is what's better for moderately rich people who can create jobs and services without the problems that most very rich creates...
I think all the services you quoted would have been implemented either way. Some like cars for example might have been at the expense of better ways. An exemple is how, in the us, highways replaced the railroad system for profit.
In general, the way they implemented those solutions was through corruption like that and unethical work condition. (And it goes beyond the service they got rich on, to what they are doing currently too)
Moreover this idea of selling things at the (highest) price people are willing to buy is a great factor in creating many of thoses problems.
It's the same logic that makes work conditions unethical. That includes using worker in other countries wich conditions are literally considered unethical in the country the goods are sold. But to a lesser degree also the bad conditions of work in many field.
Taking healthcare as a exemple, how do you expect a nurse to sell her work at a higher price. If you want a nurse to give the best service to society or even be ethical, you can't raise the price?
So it goes either way, either healthcare become expensive. Or like in my country, it's free, but the conditions becomes worse and worse. Both being bad for society.
So maybe not the goal, but a goal of society is to distribute those resources correctly. Simply because it's necessary for us to live together.