AIBU to not know the point of capitalism?

[TooBigForMyBoots]

OK, so I'm not an idiot. Did politics, economics, languages and other stuff. Got a degree and everything. I've studied ideologies/religions/philosophies and lived for 50 years. Paid close attention to the news/history along the way. Somehow though, I seem to have forgotten why Capitalism is a good thing. And the actual point of it.

Back in the day, I understood it as innovation and talent being exhalted by consumer demand for the goods/services in a competitive market. Hard work achieving rewards. Demand and supply (including supply of labour) balancing out.

But it seems it is just about very rich and super rich people getting richer while those who actually work, MC/WC whatever are expected to pay. Intelligence and hard work aren't important and won't necessarily get you ahead.

Being minted and connected to politicians certainly will. Is this Capitalism in 2022? Or AIBU and missing something?

Marx's writing on commodity fetishism was really interesting to me, though pretty hard to grasp. Also his predictions around human alienation from nature and each other due to capitalist relationships. Orwell's time with the anarchists fighting Franco and his sympathy towards anarchist ideas was also interesting,

But this misses the point.

Some 'capitalist' societies have more market regulation, some have less. And regulation varies from one sector to another. There is probably more regulation of financial markets now than there was in the 70s. There's no 'right' answer. You can do it how you like.

The only binary choice is whether the state has control if the means of production, supply and exchange (ie socialism / Communism) or whether it doesn't, and even in capitalist countries the state does control the means of exchange (ie currency).

I don’t think anyone is going to question that the capitalist west, in the long run, has been responsible for more technological innovation than any communist system but to say that social media could only have been invented or exist under capitalism is really a bit daft.

Actually life expectancy is now falling all over the UK.

Are you sayingn that because we currently have a shitshow of a thrown together, unplanned barely mixed economy that's a disgrace that it must be the case that any mixed economy of any sort would have the same result?

The Norse countries currently have a decent basis for social democracy which evidently work, also ignored.

It's all ridiculous comprisons to Lenins russia straight from it being one of the poorest countries on earth with a vast peasantry.

The 1945 labour socialist government was the best this country ever had. That is what socialism in britain would actually be like, not centuries old russia.

There's no evidence that it would have been invented under a Communist system. The Internet already existed in the US before the Cold War ended. There wasn't any Soviet equivalent and, besides, do you really think the Communist Party would have been at all keen on the concept, except as a way to spy on people?

So what if nobody had invented the internet?

The Norse countries currently have a decent basis for social democracy which evidently work, also ignored.

Those countries are capitalist on any normal definition. I think the real point is that the UK has been governed by second-rate politicians since 2010.

It's all ridiculous comprisons to Lenins russia straight from it being one of the poorest countries on earth with a vast peasantry.

Tsarist Russia was certainly not one of the poorest countries on earth. It was a powerful empire and (compared to the rest of the world) comparatively developed.

But I think it was always going to be. I mean, if you invent more and more sophisticated computers, it's logical to try and get them to talk to each other, isn't it?

Communism doesn't matter @TomPinch, it's a failed system which in Russia produced the oligarchs who were welcomed with open arms. It's just a different super wealthy group rinsing their country.

There is similarly no evidence it could only have been invented under a capitalist system, which is what you claimed in your first post.

No I didnt, Norse is a perfectly acceptable and used term. And as for life expectancy-

'Life expectancy declining in many English communities even before pandemic'

www.imperial.ac.uk/news/231119/life-expectancy-declining-many-english-communities/

And I said the norse countries had social de socratic governments, you 8magined the rest. Want to check for me which governments are the manority in power in scandinavia and Finland?

And you come across as somebody as being so terrified of the fact our whole system which you were always assured was the greatest in the world is horseshit that you will use personal insults and deny facts and statistics to stave off the cognitive dissonance

'“Declines in life expectancy used to be rare in wealthy countries like the UK, and happened when there were major adversities like wars and pandemics. For such declines to be seen in ‘normal times’ before the pandemic is alarming, and signals ongoing policy failures to tackle poverty and provide adequate social support and health care.”

Orlando Figes and Robert Service have both written about the russian empire being one of the poorest places on earth at the time.

Life expectancy is falling in areas for the first time ever. How is this not a negative picture?

You could say that's because housing is not a free market. Housing supply is constrained by the state (in the form of planning laws) so prices have rocketed.

My first post was in response to someone who said the only use of capitalism was enriching the 1%. I said it had also enabled them to make that comment on social media. That's clearly true, because the Internet was developed within a capitalist system.

You read in the bit about it only being possible in a capitalist system. But I think that's reasonable. Communism didn't develop an Internet and it's no good saying it would have eventually because Communism collapsed before that happened.

Succint and here lies the issue is that the people at the top have us so focussed on weeding out who is in 'real need' of support against 'those who are not' and 'malingering', that we have taken the eye off the ball of their behaviour. The way I see enough tech exists to be able to make life easier, not earn more money, and that is my issue with capitalism - we don't know when to stop. UBI is the way forward I think and making tech support us to slow down rather than produce more.

I do not know what precisely they have said. But the point was that:

It's all ridiculous comprisons to Lenins russia straight from it being one of the poorest countries on earth with a vast peasantry.

Are you suggesting that the Russian Empire in, say, 1917 was even poorer than sub-Saharan Africa or India under the British Raj? It's surely true that there were a lot of poor people in the Russian Empire. But there was a lot of wealth too - concentrated in the hands of a dilettante aristocracy who splurged it on objets d'art and general high living, rather than investing in development as happened further West. Think of, for example, the development of St Petersburg. A massive project requiring huge amounts of capital, which the Tsar had. The modern equivalent would be scarcely fathomable. And mostly an unnecessary vanity project - all that Russia really needed was a port.

Russia in 1914 did have wealth, power, factories etc - and all the wrong people in charge. It just wasn't was industrialised as the countries further West.

Another comment to make about Russia is that the fact that it became Communist first shows that Marx got it wrong. He said that the most industrialised countries, ie, Britain or France, would become Communist first. Not Russia, which was during his day still feudal on his terms. Some Marxists say this shows that communism is still on its way. I can't say I'm convinced.