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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, sure. The economic system that is boiling the planet and will make it unlivable is the best thing ever!
You can’t patch a fundamentally failed system.
The claim that capitalism is fundamentally failed is one that needs support, given that it is capitalist countries that have the highest quality of life and are highest on the happiness indices.
You wouldn't use past failed examples of socialism to argue socialism is fundamentally flawed, would you?
I understand you disagree with me and may be dismissive of my position, but let's try to assume good faith and keep this civil, please? We may end up finding we agree more than disagree.
I simply disagree. Read the book.
> Compare that things are generally better in countries with more regulation like NZ and Norway.
I don't think they fixed the problem either.
I've read plenty of books criticizing capitalism. How about you read some in support if it?
> I don't think they fixed the problem either.
Twist: They did.
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.
The Socialists seem to do a better job of providing a crypto-religious veneer.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Worked until technology shrunk the world and WWI happened and the Administrative State began building a Progressive Tower of Babel under Woodrow.
If you are interested in affecting substantive improvement, see https://conventionofstates.com/
Capitalism is the worst, and it’s the best we’ve got (so far).
Which is a lot like the title text of XKCD 1357.
People do not scale in a linear fashion.
Ignore reality at your peril.
Oh, and: "Merry Christmas".
Merry Christmas to you too.