Feminism, whats the goal?

[UglyGlassVase]

How can we ever be in a place were we aren't reliant on men?

We have the babies.

We are physically weaker.

How do we get around that? What's the goal?

I'm feeling very despondent, the more I think about it the more bleak it seems.

@queenofknives

What would you propose instead of capitalism? Some form of capitalism seems to be the most stable way of organising society, though I do think that the ruthless profit-seeking model could be modified and a sort of humanitarian model be adopted that would mean free healthcare, childcare, education, elderly care and support for those unable to work for whatever reason.

I'm wary of the idea of abolishing capitalism, though not of curbing its excesses and having a sort of mixed model with some areas (education, childcare, transport, utilities etc) that are not run by private business or the free market. I don't think communism was a great deal for women either!

I'm not sure why you think that - capitalism is a fairly recent economic phenomena, it's arisen since the modern period. It's not particularly stable either, historically economic crashes were attached to wars and famines and such (which still cause them now) but not so much things like banking failures or other kinds of recessions which seem to be cyclical in capitalism and caused by the baking and currency structures it involves. State socialism of the kind that existed in the 20th century isn't really all that different than capitalism - arguably it's a kind of a mirror image, the same thing organised differently, one has a few private citizens holding the capital, the other has a few people who are part of the state apparatus holding the capital.

Personally I would consider myself something more like a Distributist.

Personally I would consider myself something more like a Distributist.

Sorry, I don't know what that is! I'll have a google.

Well, you might be right about the instability of capitalism, although from where I'm sitting it has provided a very good quality of life for a great number of people and delivered an insane amount of progress in science and medicine especially. Though perhaps capitalism shouldn't get all the credit for that.

I guess I just wanted to ask the question of what people think should replace capitalism because I am wary of the "burn it all down" attitude that seems to be the leftist approach at the moment and which just seems really destructive and frightening. (An example would be something like the call to abolish the police which has now seemingly become a moderate leftist opinion - but I can only imagine the terror this would cause for women, children, and really anyone who thinks about it.) I am guessing that most people who describe themselves as anti-capitalist have specific elements in mind that they are against, and would probably feel that many parts of society are just fine, or perhaps could be improved but don't need to be completely destroyed and replaced with something else. Ultimately, I don't think it's capitalism that is the root cause of women's inequality. I think I'm right in saying that the most developed capitalist nations are also the nations where women have most rights and freedoms - the UK, US, Europe. (This is not to argue that I think capitalism is all super duper! I'm aware it is not.)

Is an equal role in the house and especially with children not down to education though. I was brought up to believe it is 50/50 and you do what is best for the family. I changed my hours to be at home with the children, as my wife had better earning potential than me, something we had learnt from our parents. Can someone explain the pay gap as I have been in management for a long time and I have to pay everyone the same rate, regardless of man, woman, fish etc etc.

really? All of the Full time employees at your it company have the same salary, from cleaners to IT to upper management? They are all paid the same?

If not, why not?

and even then, do your half time And contingent employees actually get half the salary and Equal retirement benefits, opportunities to invest etc?

Surely you’ll argue well, cleaners make less because it’s unskilled and anyone can do it. If they can’t get into college we’ll that’s too bad they should have worked harder. So the argument is people who are better at school just deserve to have better lives? Why?

Is a just society really one where people who work just as hard, but simply aren’t as able should live worse lives? Or people who are excellent at an occupation like child care which is paid less? If this seems just to you, why? What’s the moral reasoning here?

Capitalism is absolutely at the heart of inequality of all sorts. Incredible progress depends on what you measure. Rampant free market capitalism has benefited very very few people and keeps life very fragile and unstable for millions of workers around the world.
It is a global structure and our lives are completely interlinked. Our comfort and progress is at the direct expense of workers around the world. Over and out

What market organisation tends to result in lowest child mortality, longest life span and fewest people starving to death compared to the others? Capitalism.

It is far from perfect but it's better than anything else we've managed to do on a large scale in recent centuries.

Technology has been the main reason we've seen a change in lifespan. Capitalism has been uneven in terms of driving tech.

It's not going to last long though, anyway, as environmental degradation caused by over-consumption will reverse many of our gains. Unfortunately capitalism can't work without constant expansion of the economy, it has no steady-state version.

On the topic of capitalism, technology and innovation - it's only my list of things to read - I'd recommend The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato.

marianamazzucato.com/entrepreneurial-state/

The book comprehensively debunks the myth of a lumbering, bureaucratic state versus a dynamic, innovative private sector. In a series of case studies—from IT, biotech, nanotech to today’s emerging green tech—Professor Mazzucato shows that the opposite is true: the private sector only finds the courage to invest after an entrepreneurial state has made the high-risk investments. In an intensely researched chapter, she reveals that every technology that makes the iPhone so ‘smart’ was government funded: the Internet, GPS, its touch-screen display and the voice-activated Siri.

Thanks for the recommendation Nonny. I feel current gov are being led by their assumption that private sector is better, cheaper and faster when commissioning taxpayer-funded goods or services around Covid-19, for example.

Is a just society really one where people who work just as hard, but simply aren’t as able should live worse lives? Or people who are excellent at an occupation like child care which is paid less? If this seems just to you, why? What’s the moral reasoning here?

This is a very interesting question and I've been thinking about it since you posed it. My answer would be that, in a society of scarcity and pre-automation (in the sense that all essential services are not yet able to be fully automated) a choice has to be made as to how people are motivated to do jobs they wouldn't otherwise do without acceptable compensation. I don't think it's necessarily a moral question but more a reflection of both base reality and human nature.

I think that to explore the question further, it would be useful to define what you mean by 'worse lives'. For example, do you include access to luxury items? It would also be helpful if you described an alternative system. For example, total state ownership of industry, fixed wages for all or something else.

Thank you for that book, NonnyMouse1337. The blurb put me off because I'd heard a similar argument before, which was very poorly presented and was used to argue against free enterprise of any sort but it was actually a rather refreshing read.

I personally favour a mixed market approach as it seems more feasible and pragmatic to me. The government has a very important role to play in providing a stable and secure foundation for all its citizens such as national healthcare, national infrastructure and so on.
The private sector is a great add-on and is very useful in driving production and entrepreneurship in all sorts of areas. However as far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a free market, and as a society we should not be in thrall to the markets dictating terms and conditions to us and our governments - effectively the tail trying to wag the dog.

It is governments that provide the conditions that enable markets to operate and thrive, and as the sole currency issuer, it is governments that are capable of undertaking long-term projects that might cost a lot but ultimately benefit society or investing in R&D that does not guarantee immediate returns, whereas the most important factor for private businesses is profit.

Both public and private sectors have their strengths and weaknesses and it's important to structure our societies and economies in ways that use them to our advantage.

No idea where I was going with my post......

However as far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a free market, and as a society we should not be in thrall to the markets dictating terms and conditions to us and our governments - effectively the tail trying to wag the dog.

Absolutely. It's a complete myth. Markets are created and defined by the community, which in nations generally means the state.

Even think about something like incorporation. There is no clear reason that it should be possible that owners of a business would be protected, in terms of their personal assets, from the failure of the business. If Jeff Bezos made bad business decisions and owed bags of money to smaller suppliers all over the world, why shouldn't he need to sell of many of his personal assets to repay them? What's the logic there? Doesn't that encourage risky, bad decision making and people not taking responsibility for the impact of their decisions?

The argument on the other side is that it prevents personal bankruptcies and their consequences (which are bad) and encourages investment and innovation. Also probably true. But the decision to allow that legal fiction of incorporation to protect owners of capital is a decision that's been made, it's not natural and god-given, as free-market advocates would like us to believe.

What we see now is that to a large extent, it is not the state making decisions about how to define and shape markets in the best interests of citizens as a whole. That job has largely been turned over to big business who defines regulations and even arbitrates disagreements, all through various kinds of free trade agreements. The state is simply the on the ground regulation and enforcement arm for these private business decisions which exist to further the interests of capital.

One of the principles of distributism is that capital (real income generating capital rather than consumer goods), rather than being concentrated either in the hands of private capitalists or the state, should be widely distributed. That's not only to try and give people maximum power over their own decisions and reduce the necessity to sell one's labour - it's to control the possibility of that sort of regulatory capture by a few powerful (ie rich) individuals.

In an intensely researched chapter, she reveals that every technology that makes the iPhone so ‘smart’ was government funded: the Internet, GPS, its touch-screen display and the voice-activated Siri.

What's interesting about this though is these are disciplines largely untouched by day-to-day political roughhousing and these are areas where specialists direct the path of operations.

In short, they are left and trusted to achieve a goal, and have proved that they are generally able to achieve a goal.

When politics and bureaucracy gets involved, that's when things screw up, particularly when the people making decisions or "fellow stakeholders" don't really understand what's going on.

That's why so many people are wary of the state ... because politics puts power in the hands of people who do not really understand how systems under their jurisdiction work (or don't work).

A lot of that not leaving people to get on with their work is about maintaining control of processes, and it's infecting all kinds of areas. It's infected universities and education terribly. But it's also becoming pretty insufferable in many private enterprises.

It's all about process, documentation, being able to prove that you are adding value, documenting it at every step, justifying what you do. I've known a few people who thought they could escape it by leaving public employment, but generally, they haven't been able to, it's all over the private sector as well.

@Goosefoot

A lot of that not leaving people to get on with their work is about maintaining control of processes, and it's infecting all kinds of areas. It's infected universities and education terribly. But it's also becoming pretty insufferable in many private enterprises.

It's all about process, documentation, being able to prove that you are adding value, documenting it at every step, justifying what you do. I've known a few people who thought they could escape it by leaving public employment, but generally, they haven't been able to, it's all over the private sector as well.

Very accurate, Goosefoot, very accurate.

These days, in governance, the way to get anything done is to have the smallest team possible, undercut the system, and just present an eventuality as a fait accompli.

This method has serious implications for democracy, and is horrifically abused, but, in many cases, it is the only way to get anything done.

I think that's why I get so jumpy about people advocating for more state share. I see the problems with it on a daily basis, particularly because there will always be an ulterior political motive underneath certain positions, regardless of whatever a headline ideology might be.

I think I've said before on mn, the problem with modern politics is that it is just too adversarial to cope with the state governing and providing services across the range of life experience and the life course itself.

Politics seeps into every aspect of the state and as the state increases in size and covers more areas of life, politics seeps into those areas too -- often to pretty disastrous outcomes.

I think the process management infection is an interesting thing, and it isn't completely attached to any particular area or form. To some extent it's just the management fad of the moment. But in part I think it's about creating jobs.

But the size and power of the state are linked to the size and power of private enterprise. One of the jobs of the state is to control private interests where they would affect citizens. So environmental regulations, for example. But in order to be effective the state needs to wield something like the power of the private sector. When the private sector includes entities like Amazon, Apple, Walmart, the Bank of America, that means the state is going to have to be pretty large and powerful.

Arguably, with the rise of the multi-national company, national governments simply don't have the power required to manage and control those entities. Worries about international governments and trade federations and such are linked to that kind of problem - what if they are the only way to manage a company like Walmart? But what kind of power are you giving such an entity and how does it relate to citizens?

Some of the conflicts we see between people who want to take a more local approach to governance and trade, against globalists and internationalists, comes from discomfort with this sort of scenario.