I saw a Tik Tok that said something like “capitalism gives society marvels faster than socialism can declare them human rights.” In 50 years Mamdani’s grandkids will be saying that universal AI tokens are a human right.
Thus the circus of Tesla's Roadster sideshow last nioht...
We currently certainly have some issues, but the average living space per person has only trended up for the last half century at least. And nobody in western capitalist societies has to live with real hunger or starve.
??
I have friends raised in the US who experienced serious food scarcity as children (~20-25 years ago), and they have plainly disordered eating as a result. The stories I hear, many variants on things like "oh, yeah, as a kid I learned you can get rid of hunger by just drinking more water".
The cookie-cutter 1950s northern virginia house my brother and I grew up in was 1,100 square feet. We were upper middle class, with two college educated parents. Adjusted for CPI inflation, I paid less for our house in 2016 that’s three times the size.
People aren’t mad about “capitalism.” They’re mad about the knowledge work industries that pay a large fraction of the population so much better than everyone else that everyone is priced out of the communities where they grew up. After Google moved into Northern VA, prices skyrocketed and the same shitty 1,100 square foot house is $900,000. Shitty 1950s houses in what used to be drab faceless suburbs in the Bay Area are $2,000,000. In a way the knowledge work industry is capitalism’s fault too, but not in the way people think.