Defending Capitalism

If you're a regular here you'll already know that I will do no such thing. Capitalism is indefensible, especially now in its late stage. Here's a short post explaining why.

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Defending capitalism is something we don't need more of; there's plenty of people, institutions, think tanks, politicians, teachers, professors and parents doing that. "It may not be perfect, but it's the best we can do." Or: "If only we lived in a real capitalist society, we'd do much better." Or: "If the government would just stop impeding capitalism everyone would have a fair chance to make it." There's no shortage of capitalism's defenders, and I'm tired of hearing the same dumb arguments over and over again. In defense of capitalism it's often said that, for better or for worse, it's the system that best suits human nature. This argument is made with complete and total disregard for the fact that the same argument has been made throughout human history in defense of every socioeconomic constellation that came before. Slavery was defended with the same argument. Feudalism was defended with the same argument. It's not a valid argument! Human behavior is the product of the way we transform nature into the goods we need to survive and thrive. Tribal communities lived like communists, and only when we were able to produce exponentially more than we need, did we start to develop the economic and material hierarchies we're still stuck with today.

But capitalism drives innovation! Competition is the engine of the machine that gave us all these new technologies and products making our lifes so much better! Sure. Now think again. Competition's main product is monopolies. The goal of competition is to beat the other guy. Through the process of competition we're left with a few giants in every productive field of modern society who among themselves rig the system to grow even bigger. And besides that; competition in capitalism is always aimed at growing profits, not necessarily making better or cheaper products. When a capitalist can fire half of his workers because he acquired a machine that replaces them, there's theoretically two ways this can play out; 1) he indeed fires half the workforce, leaving those individuals without income, or 2) he keeps everyone employed, pays them the same wages, but makes them work only half days. In capitalism the former is the only option, while the latter creates more freedom and happiness for most people. This is the exploitation inherent in capitalism that creates the class-conflict that's been with us in ALL systems since we've invented agriculture.

These points, and many more, are discussed in the below linked video. It's a discussion between two of my favorite YouTube personalities; Lex Fridman and Marxist professor Richard Wolff. I've made all the arguments in this discussion in many of my posts during the almost five years I've been active on Steemit and Hive, but it's nice to see them all in one single discussion. I like Lex Fridman a lot, because he always takes the time to really go deep into the fields of expertise of his guests. But in this particular discussion he was tiresome, as he clearly wanted to defend capitalism using all the tired old arguments I, and Richard Wolff, have debunked a thousand times. Please watch it if you have almost three hours to spare; it's enlightening and endearing to see how Richard Wolff clearly has difficulty to remain calm and collected, even admitting to not wanting to offend Lex (but having trouble not to)...

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