Not judging and am genuinely curious. Am asking here because this version of the “ask” community doesn’t have a “no politics” rule. Again, I’m not here to bash, this has just been on my mind for a while. This question has two components that are both relevant to capitalism and communism.
So we should start off with the context that capitalism, love it or hate it, is very preachy. Capitalists, like Communists with Communism, like the idea that as many nations as possible are Capitalist. This is regardless of a nation’s properties.
At the same time, the very nature of the Earth is not equal opportunity. Much like how one person can be born with better eyesight or athleticism than another person, one nation can exist with more natural valuables than another nation. You certainly aren’t going to find people moving to Australia “because the rainforests are nice”.
Natural valuables, however, are valuables nevertheless. Did you strike gold or valuable plant life in your native region? You can snag it from the Earth and drag it into the economic system and money will unquestionably pour in. Did you try to find valuables in your Saharan nation but can only find sand? Too bad, nobody is going to buy your sand.
That means that capitalist prosperity is not equal opportunity. One nation’s maximum possible level of capitalist prosperity could be levels lower than another nation’s maximum possible level of capitalist prosperity. At the same time, this does not stop the classic Capitalist view that Capitalism should be ubiquitous and the same everywhere. Also at the same time, there is no obligation to create a crutch.
Along comes Communism (by that I refer to hard Communism, since there are many highly pick-and-choose versions of it). Communism tries to acknowledge a lack of being equal opportunity and so it sets up a system where everything, from parts of the environment to the people themselves, are given roles based on their skills and needs, abandoning mutual exchange as a backbone. However, partially going back to the part about people themselves not being equal opportunity, this leads to a hierarchy of respect based on one’s work and skills. Are you a very sickly person who can’t afford to take part in the wolf pack, someone whose needs overshadow the little providable skill? You will, in many circumstances, be put on the back burner (note that wolves are bad model here, they care for their less fortunate). Same with the environment.
And to be fair, this is a valid question for many other ideologies as well. Libertarianism especially, if you live in a world where people have the liberty to leave people behind without the guilt of having been called murderers (since you’re acting on your liberties).
How do you explain this away and/or stray from the conventional form of your ideology (in a doctrinal way or maybe in the form of little habits you do) so that your approach makes things a little more equal opportunity (for example, my employer made a system to cycle errands according to employee sleep issues)?
I think it’s a miracle that we found a way to get humans to cooperate whatsoever. It’s fragile but by assuming everyone is fundamentally self-interested then it just about works.
Other systems assume a higher degree of altruism than humans actually have. Paradoxically this leads to more corruption in those systems, like endemic corruption in communist countries once some people start to play the system.
Capitalism facilitates cooperation but with an underlying game theory assumption of self interest holding it all together.
You're asking the wrong questions IMO. No one loves capitalism. Capitalism is an acknowledgment that humans are inherently corrupt and the concentration of power is a primary corrupting force. If anything the capitalist countries are failing at capitalism in the present.
Capitalism is also an acknowledgement of the true complexity of the world. No overarching human authority can encompass the true complexity of human enterprises. We simply lack the cognitive scope to manage at all scales without some forms of natural selection in play. Real competition drives people like no other force.
It is a terrible system, but there is no chance that a concentration of power in an alternative system will be better for the average person. Broad scale and scope altruism is not a long term successful form of governance. It is like the best form of governance, altruistic monarchy. However it suffers the same fatal flaw of a succession crisis. The naïveté of idealist is a recipe for authoritarianism.
No one loves capitalism. If they are intelligent, capitalism is the lesser of evils in the big picture. The alternative is a return to monarchy or feudalism in our conflict strewn past… IMO
I hate capitalism BTW. I don’t think we are there yet, but I think AGI is our best chance at a broad scale idealist future alternative. An entity that can never die and can plan long term with scalable and nearly infinite attention is the kind of manager that can achieve what we are empirically incapable of achieving. The systems it will take to institute and protect such an AGI are enormous, critical, and unlikely to get it right the first time, but the outcome is inevitable IMO. We will likely never see such a future in our lifetimes, but it will happen eventually. It will start by politicians either publicly or secretly deferring their policy and decisions to an AGI entity. Corporate offices will do the same. Humans can not compete with a true AGI when such a system emerges. We simply lack the cognitive scope and persistence. At present, AI is still orders of magnitude away from AGI. At the present the building blocks required are already in play. We can build a stacked stone wall and a house, but we need a palatial fortress, and that is still a big ask.
Capitalism sucks for all but a small elite. However, capitalism has an effective hook for people to oust bad actors through a entirely separate government. Such separation and protection does not exist when the government is expected to play some major management role in the market. If the government is such an authority, it will devolve into authoritarianism because nearly all humans are corruptible. There is nothing more dangerous than trust in others to do the right thing. Someone will always take advantage of the opportunity to exploit and pillage their neighbors when they can get away with it. Capitalism is hated by everyone but fools. It is just hated slightly less than succession crises and authoritarianism.
I think the big problem is the concept of state and corresponding geographical boundaries. If humanity could get rid of geographical binding of territories to states, it would stop all wars, and capitalism would work much better for everyone. Instead of states there could be some kind of unions and they could be represented in different geographical locations, and the infrastructure of any geographical location could be managed by cooperation of unions existing there.
