My understanding of Catholicism is that if you name your kid Saint [Something] they grow up to be pretty awesome. But then there's the, you know, martyrdom.
Its always pertinent to remember that the "Dragon" that St George slays in the story they tell about him is supposed to be an allegory for paganism. And that story ignores the actual events in St George's life and rips off the pagan/Norse myth of Siegfried and Brunhilde (I am using the Western European names because the Northern European names and spellings completely escape me).
Trina Schart Hyman's illustrations for that book are still vivid images in my brain and I haven't seen that book in likely 25 years. Really wild how some images just capture us when we forget so many other things from those years.
I might be sleep deprived and i don't follow the conversation but wasn't Satan depicted as a dragon few times? Slaying dragons should be one of more christian things to do.
I was debating whether to put the /s too. I really was. Fool that I am.
But also, if you talk to a lot of evangelical Christians, which seems to be the prevailing sect of Christianity, at least in America right now, they disavow the shit out of Catholicism
Believe me, if there's an actual deflation, they'll all of a sudden stop being billionaires (companies not able to sell, revenues and stocks going down) and there won't be much to redistribute
Billionaires would love deflation, when money becomes more valuable over time the people with the most money benefit the most. Inflation is "better" for people with less savings relative to their income
Not necessarily. Velocity is one of the core components of inflation. Policies that target this would change the risks
For example theoretically (hand waving a million variables) a wealth tax for single-payer healthcare encourages more movement through regular goods and services
Capitalism: a system so great it needs to be bailed out every 10 years
Edit: for those of you who refuse to look anywhere outside the US, the Nordic model has existed for over 90 years and is extremely successful. The countries that use it consistently rank highest in happiness, quality of life, work life balance, has low rates of corruption, and are economically competitive
Your taxes go towards funding the department, you have an emergency, they come save you.
Pretty straightforward; unless you live in one of those "unincorporated" hell-scapes where you have the option of donating to the volunteer department, and if you don't they don't have to help.
There is always going to be capitalism even in a socialist system.
We’ve unironically coup’d foreign governments(ie Iran) for threatening to do what Norway did with nationalizing their oil reserves.
It’s insane to me that we sell federal land to private companies to exploit, rape, and pillage for what would be pennies on the dollar for the amount of wealth they extract from it.
capitalism is when the corporations are by themselves private entities with a superable bureaucracy from the government. It's the difference between Amtrak and Union pacific.
Chinese corporations are government owned and managed. Nearly all are practically like Amtrak. In addition, privat property doens't exist.
Private property does exist - see Civil Code of the People's Republic of China. You can own a home, or an iPhone for example. Private businesses (Chinese owned like Temu or foreign owned like, say, Amazon China) also exist as well as the State Owned Enterprises that mostly cover key infrastructure. Its state capitalist, but it's capitalist.
Personal property: toothbrush, flatware, clothes, a PC, a home, a personal business like a cafe
Private property: utility providers, factories, farms, grocery stores, possibly even retail outlets selling personal property
See the difference?
China is strange; they have different "economic zones." Places like Hong Kong are a "capitalist zone," where foreign enterprises, like Amazon China, are allowed to incorporate and operate.
People have a hard time understanding what capital actually is. The biggest scam we've been sold is that our personal possessions are private property.
It's only land which cannot be privately owned in china. You can own a factory, so you can own a means of production and you can extract profit within a competitive market. Americans seem to have a peculiar view that if you don't own the land it's not private property. That view doesn't colour how the rest of the world operates!
China is probably closest to state managed capitalism. The government chooses the battleground and the rules of engagement but then it a free for all from there. The US is currently suffering from being warped into a Capitalistic managed state where the businesses have controlled the government.
Arguably China has parts of it that are the most true form of capitalism on the planet. All systems have issues but right now China's is utilizing the best parts of capitalism better than almost anyone else.
China's state capitalism is still capitalism, and North Korea doesn't need to be sabotaged because it's already failing horribly (and no reasonable person would put forth North Korea's fucked up hyperauthoritarianism as a suggestion anyway).
You're gonna get hated on for suggesting that capitalism somehow isn't the great evil. At the end of the day, you're right -- it's always the powers that be exploiting a system, not the economic model itself.
That doesn't change the fact that some systems are more vulnerable to exploitation than others.
Any system that allows the concentration of power, be it capitalism, authoritarianism, or whatever, will end up in the situation we're dealing with now where those with the power will fuck everybody else over to hold on to it, regardless of how much suffering and death they cause.
Systems with flatter power curves are objectively better, the problem is implementing them in the shadow of the current wielders of power. This is why "eat the rich" is such a common sentiment, we can't move forward until we topple the power structures that are currently preventing us from having a chance to even try.
they do exist under complete hostility from the global hegemony. the us busts in it sleep over the idea of over throwing them to get at those sweet sweet resources
There is a lot of right wing propaganda to convince Americans the Chinese can’t be trusted and wants to fight. This is bogus. But, the Chinese do steal corporate tech and methods from any and all who try to do business in China and they see it as their birthright. So there is Chinese anti-western sentiment for sure. We also sell more to China than to anyone else, food, tech, finished goods, etc. It’s a two-way street and China is more of a friend and partner than a country like North Korea or Russia but many Americans think Russia could one day be our friend and that’s naive and imbecilic.
Communism recognizes that people are greedy, and distributes goods and wealth evenly to ensure that everyone gets some. It fails because it doesn't account for the fact that people are lazy, and won't do the work required to be a healthy society without motivation.
Capitalism recognizes that people are lazy and rewards people for working hard. It fails because it doesn't account for the fact that people are greedy and will hoard wealth, causing many to go without.
Both systems fail because they don't account for the fundamental flaw of Mankind: people are assholes, and no matter what system you use, someone will fuck it up just because they can. I don't have a system that accounts for this. When I think of one, I will start a revolution. Don't hold your breath however, because I am too lazy to start anything.
Capitalism can be pretty great when it's restrained by laws to help keep things balanced. Back in the 1950s the highest tax bracket in the U.S. was around 90%, IIRC, and they were more serious about breaking up monopolies and "trust busting". Unions were pretty strong. Minimum wages were reasonable. Things weren't perfect, but they were pretty good.
The problem is that powerful corporations and the wealthy seem to eventually find ways to get rid of or disable the restraints, to tilt things in their favor. And they just keep tilting things further and further in their favor. They find ways to make most unions go away. Allow monopolies to persist. To push more and more of the tax burden on the non-rich and non-corporations. Prevent the minimum wage from keeping up with inflation. They demonize government handouts to individual people, while corporations get huge subsidies and bailouts constantly.
In the U.S. capitalism is like a garden, where the weeds somehow convinced the owner that the garden would be better if the weeds were never pulled out or restrained in any way. The weeds (the rich and corporations) are now choking out the rest of us.
Other countries have figured it out. But in the U.S. a large percentage of the population has bought into the propaganda that restraining capitalism = socialism = communism = evil. It's crazy and maddening how many people believe it.
This fails to understand WHY America was able to do these things.
America in the 50’s and 60’s were exploiting the labor of foreign countries. Destablizing their governments and killing their leftists for daring to try and make life better for them.
America would fund right wing groups to kill the dissenting leftists who were trying to make their countries better. Capitalism has been a blight on the global south before it was called Capitalism.
America destabilized Guatemala for the capitalist interest of the United Fruit company in 1950 by overthrowing a left leaning (but still capitalist) Juan Jacob Arbenz) because he had the audacity to try and make his markets work for his people
America caused massive destabilization of the Middle East, because they were scared of left leaning politicians coming into power and ridding the influence of the West.
Cuba basically has been under the American stranglehold for decades because they overthrew the American backed military dictator. America has done everything in its power to weaken Cuba, and they blame the struggles on communism but it’s really capitalism
There’s literally dozens of these. Capitalism only works when there are people to be exploited.
I don't disagree with any of your facts, but I think Capitalism is being mixed up with politics, government, and other things.
Let's use the analogy of a car. I think of Capitalism as the engine. I think of politics and government as the driver. I think of labor as the fuel. Exploitation could be considered stolen fuel.
All the immoral stuff you listed was done by politicians, the government, the driver, to keep the engine running faster.
Your argument is that Capitalism is inherently evil and only runs on stolen fuel. I think that the driver makes the evil choices, the engine is not inherently evil at all. And I think that while the engine has probably never run on 100% non-stolen fuel, it easily could. And it has run on mostly non-stolen fuel. The fact that no driver has ever avoided at least some stolen fuel doesn't mean the engine can't run just fine without it.
And whenever exploitation needs to be done in order to maintain your profits. That’s also stolen fuel.
Which has been the backbone of capitalism since its inception. If it isn’t wage theft it’s slavery.
Capitalism is political, and you can’t seperate the two, because for capitalism to work it must erode protections so that it can flourish. So whenever capitalist get in power, they run the government.
Capitalism isn’t the engine. It is the driver. You need to use your car, labor provides the fuel, the engine and everything else.
Capitalist demand that you do their bidding, and it will give you its scraps. If you choose not to, you die because everything has been made to prop up capitalism.
If capitalism was so grand, it wouldn’t need to dedicate billions of dollars a year to assasinating political opponents and sanctioning communist countries so that they fail.
The Nordic model is capitalist, it's just a social democracy.
There are ways in which Sweden is more market oriented than the US, and way's it's not. What isn't arguable is that sweden has much better social safety nets. Sweden had previously been much less market oriented but has liberalized it's economy since the 80s/90s.
On certain market freedom indexes Sweden outscores the US. Sweden has much higher %Gdp as government than the US, but the US also has a lot more trade barriers, and subsidies, and other bloat that makes it hard to do a 1:1.
Because Keynes is a hack who only gets used because it justifies the government spending money. You don't need a bailout if you just actually let poor business models fail
Nordic countries are capitalist countries. They implement programs and policy that are socialism in ways, but the economies by and large are capitalistic.
Have insurance? Pay for it every month? Something bad happen to you that you need insurance for? Sorry too bad you had your child in the car so actually we are just going to pretend like you didn’t have insurance through us for the last 6 months and retroactively revoke your insurance through us.
Don’t like that? Well guess what we have a completely different business that actually makes sure you are covered in that type of situation, and you get to pay them too, ontop of your insurance premium, so now you’re paying your car payment for a car that’s realistically worse in every metric than it was than even just 10 years ago, you pay your “full coverage” insurance, and now you get to pay your broker.
Now you need to make basically the median wage of the country just to afford having a car.
Both groups have this idea that socialism and capitalism are mutually exclusive. The Nordics are a good example of how you can benefit from both systems. Sweden for example is very pro business and has a lot of capitalistic ideals woven through their policy. Yet they still have a ton of social safety nets and common sense for the greater good policies that are ideals normally found in socialism doctrine. Hell in America our eras of greatest growth and progress go hand in hand with the spreading of wealth AND supporting business and capitalistic competition. Things like the GI bill allowed a ton of new businesses to start and flourish which in hand with the monopoly busting of the 1880's fostered an environment of competition in the market and opportunity for both consumers and producers.
I want the USA to move towards a more Nordic model like we were closer to in the 50s. I also think the Nordic model would have to be modified to work in a country has geographically big, diverse, and economically massive as the US. That doesn't mean we can't make it work.
capitalism is killing around 25k a day through starvation because it isnt profitable to feed everyone and would rather farm cash crops. I mean there a countries where capitalist bought all the land to farm cash crops leaving nowhere for the people to farm food
I read the whole article and it's talking about the entire world not just the united states only about 50 people die of malnutrition daily In the united states saying that 25000 die daily is misconstrued and I'm not down playing those 50 people that die in this country everyday but we do not have a food problem in this country unless you want to call out the obesity problem this country has. The united states has an overeating problem not a starvation problem
A deflationary crisis has nothing to do with wealth concentration and almost everything to do with liquidity. Japan is your best example for that.
Believe it or not, more socialism isn’t the cure for everything that can go sideways in an economy. A bank failure can cripple a welfare state like it did with Iceland, debt and lack of liquidity blew up the Eastern Block, Dutch Disease killed Venezuela and sadistic bailout conditions wrecked Greece.
The trick is, who gets to do the redistribution and who gets to decide how much someone gets...that's the part everybody loves to conveniently gloss over
Fun fact: before Milton Friedman became the "Supply Side" guy, he advocated for a higher velocity of money changing hands instead of it being pooled by high-wealth individuals.
You snap your fingers. Everybody can afford Salmon and steak overnight. Salmon goes extinct within six months and the world’s forrests are gone because the entire industrial capacity of the world turned them into pasture. Everybody dies.
The law of unintended consequences is always smarter than us
Oh, God, no. At least not if you live in the United States. We have a problem where big money has defanged regulators. Regulatory capture is the closest thing to a platform that the right-wing in this country has and the "left-wing" democrats might as well have it as a covert platform as well.
We do not have a strong left-wing party in the United States, which is part of the problem.
Yeah good luck growing businesses and innovation with regulations on how much money you have. A buisness owner with an innovative idea is bound get a ton of money because people will pay for it.
Entire world mainly runs on capitalism. Even communist, socialist countries accept capitalism for their markets because that's the only way out. Money is a huge motivating factor. Be it innovation or something entirely opposite.
Glass-Steagle protected us from big money buying up all of our housing. That's just one tiny example of many. Dodd-Frank has been neutered because it was inconvenient for wealthy people trying to steal all the money on the planet. It goes on and on.
I'm not from USA. But from what I know Glass-Steagle legislation separated commercial and investment banking. There's nothing in there that stops big money from buying huge real estates. Just that banks cannot use regular customer deposits to be used in high risk investments. That's a side effect not a direct prevention. I am not familiar with case of Dodd-Frank though.
Still I can assert no such regulation can be put in place to prevent pooling. Blatant stealing of wealth from common people is a different case. Almost every constitution prevents it in different facets. But you cannot really put a ceiling on how much a person can earn. If a company grows too big, there's always something innovation, something they do that people like and want. And so does their owners and stakeholders. You put a ceiling and suddenly no idea is lucrative enough to chase at the scale of multimillions and billions. Plus goverments are funded by giant companies one way or the other.
And people choose those in power, atleast in major functional democracies. So it boils down to us too. And changing people, well that's not an economic concern.
Doesnt happen like that. Most peoples wealth is in trust. Assets. And stocks
Which is why the lazy liberal argument of "redistribution of wealth" will never work.
They don't understand money on a fundamental level .. youll really have to fuck shit up to "redistribute wealth" in a way someone with that type of lazy argument will probably never actually beable to understand
So we will always be in a perpetual cycle of circle jerking while tthe 1% continue to enjoy run away interest to a point of a level of disgust.. on interest alone with a federal minimum wage that hasnt moved in 20. 30 years?
this is the dumbest fucking idea ive heard, doing that would create a way worse economic disaster than leaving the economy the fuck alone… the more people meddle with it the worse it gets
Basing that on your feelings is called heuristic thinking.
Since you don't have any logic to back up what you said, I'm going to assume you're just emotionally charged on this topic to the point that you can't actually engage with it in good faith.
Everyone says "redistribute wealth" with no follow up.
What is the plane here illegally steal money from rich folks then redistribute it like Robinhood?
Because if it's going to go through the tax system into the federal coffers, the middle and lower classes will never see a dime of that "redistribution".
So exactly is your solution to "redistribute wealth"?
It is human nature to be helpful and to generate community. In order to hoard weath in the ways that are detrimental, you need to be at least a bit of a sociopath. (See the common thought experiment about the ape that hoards bananas while his troop starves)
Part of the problem is scale and potential for abuse, and lastly, propaganda.
A small community can pool and share resources. And the members of that community can see how things go. They see the fruits of their labor. The see the barn they all helped to build and see that it’s providing value. They see the people who are a net drain on society and if it’s someone with a disability who means no harm, it’s easy to accommodate them and feel good about it, but if they see their work going toward someone who is intentionally lazy and harming the community, they can advocate for something to be done about that.
Now scale that up to 300 million. Most people in the US won’t ever step foot in most of the other states. I grew up in Oklahoma and around 2000, my mother was on a business meeting in DC, and someone from another state who had never been to Oklahoma genuinely asked my mother how it was living in teepees. My family is not even Native American by the way, but this person genuinely assumed people in Oklahoma lived in teepees. So it’s really hard to care for someone you have never seen in a place you don’t know that has an issue you don’t understand. Add in propaganda where rich and powerful people make everyone else out to be the bad guy except themselves and you can see how people can get so tribal and self preserving.
I think most of us, if on the way home from work saw that a barn collapsed, trapping children inside, we would stop and not hesitate to spend hours moving debris to save the lives of children trapped inside. And if it was successful, it would be a defining moment of your life. You would act embarrassed when you are out and your friend tells someone new the story but you would blushing with pride and say something line “I was just at the right place at the right time, anyone else in my place would have done the same”.
But if you are headed home from work and a demolition company had a sign saying $20 per hour to load debris. And next to it was a charity collecting money to vaccinate babies in a 3rd world country. And that $40 for 2 hours of labor was just a likely to save the life of a baby as you were to save a life removing rubble, you would probably just drive on by. Surely someone else can do it, it’s not your job. Who knows if the charity even really helps kids? Better to look out for yourself. We just aren’t wired to care about some other person $1000 miles away who we will never meet
The social contract is a result of human nature. 🤦
No matter how wealthy or influential you are, the overwhelming majority of humans you meet are fully capable of killing you. This is why society is supposed to conduct itself in a way that demonstrates rule and order is more beneficial than the alternative.
When wealth disparities grow too large and corruption runs unchecked, social order breaks down.
This isn't a fantasy. It's the history of every nation in every history book you have never read.
We have been alive and operating as a species for hundreds of thousands of years. The economic system we live under right now is only a few hundred years old, and constantly evolving to keep those in power, in power. Nothing about this is "human nature."
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u/Own_Policy8854 8h ago
We could redistribute wealth to prevent it from pooling and creating economic disasters in the first place.