Exactly. Capitalism isn’t bad because of free markets, free markets are great and arguably way better than planned economies in most applications (minus things like healthcare, if you can’t reasonably choose not to buy a product then prices will inflate out of control).
The problem with Capitalism is the concentration of capital which inevitably leads to oligarchy. Put profits in the hands of workers instead of investors and watch the problems melt away. Hell, I can see the merits of totally replacing wages with proportional stake in the company. When everyone gets a percentage of the profits, they’re way more motivated to work efficiently with less waste and higher productivity.
I’d argue that the emergence of capitalists and capitalist ideology, and the amassing of currency is just a natural tendency of currency itself. Currency itself is a tool of transactional thought, and I’d argue that if we could move away from transactional trade and focused more on mutual wellbeing, we could do without currency entirely.
That requires a basically unanimous raising of class consciousness. I just don’t see that happening anytime soon. We’re just not wired that way on a scale above small communities. Even without currency, hoarders gonna hoard. Before we had currency, we had people hoarding resources directly. It works in Star Trek because they’re post-scarcity.
Until we’re post-scarcity, we need a way to exchange goods and services on a scale larger than a neighborhood.
Exactly. Capitalism isn’t bad because of free markets, free markets are great and arguably way better than planned economies in most applications (minus things like healthcare, if you can’t reasonably choose not to buy a product then prices will inflate out of control).
The problem with Capitalism is the concentration of capital which inevitably leads to oligarchy. Put profits in the hands of workers instead of investors and watch the problems melt away. Hell, I can see the merits of totally replacing wages with proportional stake in the company. When everyone gets a percentage of the profits, they’re way more motivated to work efficiently with less waste and higher productivity.
I’d argue that the emergence of capitalists and capitalist ideology, and the amassing of currency is just a natural tendency of currency itself. Currency itself is a tool of transactional thought, and I’d argue that if we could move away from transactional trade and focused more on mutual wellbeing, we could do without currency entirely.
That requires a basically unanimous raising of class consciousness. I just don’t see that happening anytime soon. We’re just not wired that way on a scale above small communities. Even without currency, hoarders gonna hoard. Before we had currency, we had people hoarding resources directly. It works in Star Trek because they’re post-scarcity.
Until we’re post-scarcity, we need a way to exchange goods and services on a scale larger than a neighborhood.
We are post scarcity, on basic needs.
Don’t think that’s gonna be enough.