Administered by:
Folks: there’s no alternative to capitalism.
Capitalism: Hello! Today I created a potentially deadly new pandemic by feeding ground-up chicken shit and other poultry waste to cows because profit!
@aral The fundamental problem here is that both these statements are true.
@tokensane [citation needed]
@aral
/1
I assume you're asking for a cite on "no alternative to capitalism" one.
I don't have a single cite, but I'll try to lay out my thinking in brief.
If we want running water, sewage disposal, electricity, modern medicine, mechanised farming, transport faster than a horse etc then we need a high-tech civilisation. Going back to 1700 is not an option.
@aral
/2
Hi-tech civ requires large-scale organisation. Any tech product has a BOM of hundreds or thousands of parts. There are tens of millions of different products. E.g. https://www.rs-online.com/ 500,000 products alone. Getting the right number to the right place is a huge problem.
So far we have two models.
1: central planning. That has many failure modes. The USSR provides a good case study. I can go in to more detail if you are interested.
@aral
/3
2: Decentralised planning mediated by money. Current implementation: capitalism.
Could there be a different implementation of money-based planning? Possibly, but I haven't seen a credible one yet. Closest one is worker-cooperative model, but that only manages steady-state, not investment in innovation and Schumpterian creative-destruction. For that you need investors. So we come back to capitalism.
@aral
/4
Also, worker co-ops are just as likely to feed poultry waste to cows as capitalist companies are: same pressures, same response.
So I'm in favour of a "kinder gentler capitalism" built around free health care, Basic Income and stronger regulation, but still in a fundamentally capitalist mode of economic organisation.
Does that answer your question? I'm happy to engage further.
When capitalists set the stage by cutting the bloodiest corners possible, that outcompetes everyone who slows down enough to do anything RIGHT. Everyone is pressured into behaving the same inhuman ways, and too many gradually just shrug and accept it instead of getting fed up.