Comment by azan_
8 hours ago
> Capitalism already is a poor allocator of human effort, resources, and energy, why lock in on this specifically?
It's absolutely best allocator of human effort there is. It has some problems but compared to alternatives it's almost perfect.
No it is the best of what we know.
There’s something else out there that nobody has the imagination to personally figure it out and get alignment toward it.
It can also be true that capitalism is transitory to get to a place where much of the capital one needs is invented.
Well of course the discussion is only about systems that actually exist, not ones that not only not exist, but also can't be imagined by anyone.
Looking around, the evidence doesn't seem to support this conclusion. 50% of food thrown away, yet people go hungry. Every privatized industry diminishes in quality and reach. Selects and optimizes for profit rather than for human need.
> Looking around, the evidence doesn't seem to support this conclusion.
It absolutely does if you look at facts and not "vibes". There are less people starving now than ever now and it's a giant, giant difference. We are tackling more and more diseases thanks to big pharma. Even semi-socialist countries such as China have opened markets. Basically the only countries that do not implement capitalist solutions are the ones you'd never want to live in such as North Korea or Cuba (funny thing - even China urged Cuba to free their markets).
> There are less people starving now than ever now
I see no reason to attribute that to capitalism. Capitalist and non capitalist societies had famines, and capitalist and non capitalist societies industrialized and improved people's material conditions - by raw number of people, non capitalist societies did this for more people.
The PRC indeed has opened their markets, and now has capital allocation issues - their initial chip development programs failed because of market viability issues, and for whatever reason their government didn't put the communism hat on and just nationalize the entire industry like it's done for other ones. More evidence against the supposed increase efficiency and outcomes of privatization and market based R&D and incentives.
North Korea seems to be failing less because of its economic system and more because the entire nation is a cult with a horrifying political system.
It seems quite literally all economic strife in Cuba is due to American sanctions - and in spite of these they still have a lower infant mortality rate than the Americans and make breakthroug medical discoveries.
So again, given the evidence, it seems capitalism is, at best, equally viable to whatever the Soviets and PRC did, in terms of allocating resources and lifting people out of poverty.
Given that we probably all will run out of ways to justify our existence under capitalism through selling our labor within our lifetimes, it seems like a very good time to start considering alternatives. Capitalism has no answer to the question, "what do you do with people when you have an 80% unemployment rate?"