What would you do if Capitalism didn't curb your potential and force you to sell most of your time?
What would you do if Capitalism didn't curb your potential and force you to sell most of your time?
I often daydream about how society would be if we were not forced by society to pigeon hole ourselves into a specialized career for maximizing the profits of capitalists, and sell most of our time for it.
The idea of creating an entire identity for you around your "career" and only specializing in one thing would be ridiculous in another universe. Humans have so much natural potential for breadth, but that is just not compatible with capitalism.
This is evident with how most people develop "hobbies" outside of work, like wood working, gardening, electronics, music, etc. This idea of separating "hobbies" and the thing we do most of our lives (work) is ridiculous.
Here's how my world could be different if I owned my time and dedicated it to the benefit of my own and my community instead of capitalists:
- more reading, learning and excusing knowledge with others.
- learn more handy work, like plumbing and wood working. I love customizing my own home!
- more gardening
- participate in the transportation system (picking up shifts to drive a bus for example)
- become a tour guide for my city
- cook and bake for my neighbors
- academic research
- open source software (and non-software) contributions
- pick up shifts at a café and make coffee, tea and smoothies for people
- pick up shifts to clean up public spaces, such as parks or my own neighborhood
- participate in more than one "professions". I studied one type of engineering but work in a completely different engineering. This already proves I can do both, so why not do both and others?
Humans do not like the same thing over and over every day. It's unnatural. But somehow we revolve our whole livelihood around if.
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Why is there so much communist content on lemmy?
Not every criticism of capitalism is communism.
But also, is it any wonder that a platform built without a profit incentive and centred around the concepts of mutual voluntary interaction rather than hierarchical control would attract a more anti-capitalist userbase?
I’m generally baffled that an anti-capitalist user base even exists to be attracted at all.
Having criticism is one thing, but this thread just reads like State Propoganda from the CCCP
And I'm genuinely baffled that anyone can still support modern day capitalism, given the state of the world.
Sure thing, man
I mean no way are you better off than cavemen, hunter getherers, Cubans, Venezuelans, 1940’s Germany or the old USSR.
Medieval England, would you rather live there than here?
Where is this non-capitalist utopia that you’re thinking of when you’re saying this?
I just don't make the mistake of attributing every advancement of human living conditions to capitalism, all while conveniently omitting all of the horrible conditions capitalism also creates.
Let me just explain something very simple here. The base state of man is suffering.
That’s our default. That’s how living works.
What our system has done is alleviate so much of that base suffering that now, we are so incredibly unused to any real suffering that we just make up things to be ‘hurt’ over.
Capitalism has removed almost all of that base suffering from your life. The ‘horrible conditions’ capitalism ‘creates’ is simply handing you much much too cushy of a life.
I mean, who had time to be offended when you’re too busy trying not to starve to death, hiding in the bushes with a spear, hoping a rabbits gonna run by.
Let me just explain something very simple here.
No. Sod off with your "explanation" you condescending prick.
Literally just doing the thing I mentioned in my last comment, making "the mistake of attributing every advancement of human living conditions to capitalism, all while conveniently omitting all of the horrible conditions capitalism also creates."
You can misunderstand how life works all you want.
Go be miserable somewhere else
Go be miserable somewhere else
You are using an open source platform, developed without a profit incentive, running on one of the most impactful publicly-funded infrastructure developments of our lifetimes, which is also powered by near countless free-and-open-source tech stacks.
You are on our turf, buddy.
You go somewhere else.
You are using an open source platform, developed without a profit incentive, running on one of the most impactful publicly-funded infrastructure developments of our lifetimes, which is also powered by near countless free-and-open-source tech stacks.
I can almost guarantee every single physical thing you used to type that was the product of capitalism based optimization.
I'm sorry what do you think happened before capitalism existed? Do you think that all Indigenous peoples were struggling to survive before white colonists came and enslaved them? Capitalism has created suffering around the globe.
Wait wait, do you think the rest of the world was in perfect harmony until the white man came?
AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA
Where the fuck do you think African slaves came from? Most europeans didn't enslave them, they just bought them in the well established african slave markets after other africans and arabs enslaved them first.
In North America, do you think the indians only started scalping when the europeans appeared, or that it was a common practice in tribes that were at constant war with each other?
In South Africa a lot of the land europeans got was payment from tribes for help fighting other tribes.
Did europeans cause extra suffering in the places they colonized? Definitly.
Were those places peaceful before that? Fuck off.
I'm not pretending that every place that Europeans colonized was some utopia before but Colonialism made all of these places worse. On top of that you're completely generalizing huge groups of people and their practices.
Oh yeah, native American scalping was so bad. Surely worse than Europeans coming in and massacring 100 million native Americans, expelling them from their homes year after year, torturing them for existing, enslaving an African population, building a nation on their backs, then invading nearly the entire earth, causing mass suffering.
Oh yeah where were we? Scalping and inner-tribe fights. Man that was wild!
I said in my comment that Europeans made it worse. I was just saying that those places were never peaceful to begin with.
You're just parroting Thomas Hobbes uncritically
Listen to some other philisophers
Oh! Yes, I also remember 10th grade philosophy class. Was it your first week this week?
Back to school is always fun
Yes... it's obvious you remember it... because you were the one quoting it.
Odd tactic you're using, mate. I told you to broaden the horizons of what philosophies you listen to, because it's clear you're new to the realm and you... are trying to somehow turn it round and suggest I'm the one that's new?
How exactly did you expect this to play out?
He is running out of capitalist propaganda bullet points so he's starting to lose it
Everything you’re spouting as a gift from capitalism is exactly what capitalism has taught you to say in its defence.
I love hearing this delusional thinking. "we actually shouldn't complain about anything, we only complain because we have it better! So if things got even betterer, we would complain morer!! Get it?"
If you're so into suffering, why do you want to involve everyone else in it? We want a better world. No one will force you to live happily.
Look, I'm from Hong Kong, and I despise the CCP.
This is nowhere near anything like the CCP.
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Apparently one of the instances is extremely pro communism.
Even though communism has been proven historically to be detrimental by nearly every metric. Detrimental economically, detrimental environmentally, detrimental socially, and very much against basic human rights.
The pro-communists call normal people the extremists
Well they can move to Russia and check out the result of the USSR experiment.
I love how the mere idea of thinking about a better world away from capitalism immediately says "communism!" to you people, and you don't see the irony of it
It’s pretty obvious by the language you’re using that you’re a communist ‘selling your time to capitalists’ isn’t really very subtle
It's called "describing the reality of capitalist economy" not "being a communist"
The reality of capitalist economies has turned out to be: Living in the freest and richest nations the world has ever seen. If you’re too hot you can set the thermostat to cool down and if you’re too cold you can just turn the heat up.
You have ample choices for food, leisure and activity. More than anyone else has ever had in all of human history.
You only need to work a fraction of an hour for a meal, instead of all day long (and often working for days on end and not ever bringing home anything to eat)
You’re the most comfortable any human has ever been. Surviving is so easy for you, you feel the need to complain that ITS NOT EASY ENOUGH.
Tell everyone you’ve never had to experience hardship without telling everyone you’ve never had to experience hardship.
Millions of Americans have to choose between feeding themselves and housing themselves. You are hardly the “freest” country, haha. Richest? Sure just like every other wealthy country, the vast majority of the wealth is held by the people who tell you how to live your life.
Get a grip pal.
What’s your expectation? You want to be the richest man in the world? Do you want everyone to be equivalent to the richest man in the world?
You’re not making any sense. We all experience hardship.
I’m not American, but what I’m talking about applies to Americans, or anyone in a wealthy western country.
The poverty of western countries isn’t even real poverty. What looks poor to you and I is luxurious to true poverty, or to our ancestors.
What’s your expectation? You want to be the richest man in the world?
The fact that you are asking this as an absurd question while not recognizing this is exactly the false prize capitalism promises everybody is kind of incredible.
What’s the line? “No one is America is poor. They’re just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” Which is why some of the lowest earners in our country still somehow think Elon Musk pays too much in taxes.
Seriously, what is your expectation? What standard of living and what level of effort are you not reaching, or are extending too much effort to achieve?
Why is life not coming close to satisfying you? Is it because people have more than you do? Is it because people have less?
I think stating expectations is pretty important.
Me? I want to earn enough to support myself, my family a couple of dogs, have two cars and a house and raise smart and healthy and vibrant children.
I want a lifestyle where I can travel once in awhile, I can pay for the things I enjoy in my leisure time and recreation.
I want to send my kids to summer camp and soccer and gymnastics, I want to buy my wife things she likes for Christmas and birthdays and anniversaries.
If I want all of these things, I have to go out and get them. If I wait for the government to give them to me, they’ll never come.
Now are your expectations in line with, or above or below what mine are? Does it bother you that people have more than you do?
I don’t need a yatch, or my own spaceship. I wouldn’t even know what to do with those things if I did have them.
I’m not sure you’re responding to the correct person as I have no idea what prompted those questions and this has literally nothing to do with what I said. When did I say my life wasn’t good enough? Or anything about the broad standard of living where I live?
Those advances were not created by capitalism.
They were created during capitalism. Huge difference.
Slavery didn't create agriculture.
Feudalism didn't create brickwork.
Well let’s just say that none of these things were created during communism
...and? That's kind of pointless to say. We're living under capitalism, so of course it happened under capitalism. It can't magically happen under communism if we're not living in communism, can it?
Also, while not communist (though nominally aimed towards it), elsewhere in the world, socialist governments definitely managed to achieve incredible feats of modernisation in starkly short amounts of time. Both China and the USSR went from mainly peasant farmers to industrial giants in mere decades.
People work and create because it's what humans do, under any economic system. What changes is who it's made for and who profits. Under capitalism, it's made for capitalists to profit them. Under communism, it's made for fellow workers to profit the workers.
If you’re too hot you can set the thermostat to cool down and if you’re too cold you can just turn the heat up.
I sure am thankful for HVAC technology, and the development of science and human technology in general that has been happening since way before capitalism.
You have ample choices for food
I love the agricultural revolution from hundreds of thousands of years ago! And tractors.
You only need to work a fraction of an hour for a meal, instead of all day long
Okay now, pre-industrial societies did not work an entire day for a single meal lmao. That's something you'd see in capitalism or slavery. The vast majority of human history did not involve that much work.
You’re the most comfortable any human has ever been.
Thanks for technological advancements and not-capitalism!
. Surviving is so easy for you, you feel the need to complain that ITS NOT EASY ENOUGH.
What a boomer statement lmao. Isn't it ironic that you complain about other people critiquing society, and lash out in caps lock? What if I told you that people have critiqued society since antiquity? I highly recommend you pick up a book. You'll learn something or two!
Just a heads up you are both discussing in bad faith and neither of you will make any strides with the other.
You can summarize my argument in two:
- no, these things are not attributed to capitalism. They were not a direct cause of capitalism. They occurred during capitalism (and some did before).
- complaining about people complaining about society is not even an argument worth responding to, let alone arguing it's some recent phenomenon when you can easily verify it has happened for as long as we've had writing.
I know, it's crazy. Like all of a sudden capitalism is evil. It baffles my mind. Like do people actually believe this stuff?
All of a sudden? Yeah, if over a century of critique counts as "all of a sudden"
Lemmy appears to be going more and more anti-capitalist is all I'm saying. There will always be detractors of any system.
I’m hardly a communist but if this is the first time you’re hearing “capitalism is evil” you live in quite the bubble lol
At the very least I hope you can be critical of the system.
Absolutely not the first time, but is seems like Lemmy as a whole is very anti-capitalist. I can be critical of any system, all systems have flaws. However, I believe that capitalism is the best system there is.
OK so you're just in an environment where a lot of people disagree. Plenty of online spaces are full of people who are like-minded to you. Lemmy is this way because a lot of anti-capitalists are drawn to the idea of decentralized federation not controlled by a corporation.
That's what is funny, I am drawn to the idea of decentralized federation as a capitalist because I don't want stuff controlled by the government.
I mean maybe you should leave lemmy if you can't handle differing opinions. Reddit would love to have you.
I can handle differing opinions just fine, I left Reddit and will not be returning.
Look at the state of the world right now. It’s pretty bleak - capitalism is the cause of all of this. It had its good days, sure, but in the end capitalism + greed has ruined it for everyone.
You are very much incorrect there, capitalism isn't the cause of any bleakness you may be seeing. Greed and more importantly cronyism in the government is the real issue
Capitalism allows there to be a wealthy, ruling class that can ruin the world with their greed.
capitalism isn’t the cause of any bleakness you may be seeing.
Bullcrap.
Greed and more importantly cronyism in the government is the real issue
Greed and cronyism which is directly incentivised and rewarded under capitalism.
Capitalism has been evil for a long while I would say, and this has been written about for a long while now.
Capitalism has never been evil, people have been evil. Yes, that has been written about for a long time, but it seems like Lemmy has gone off the rails recently