Capitalism is the most efficient system possible for concentrating the wealth in hands of as few people as possible.
@yogthos Scandinavian one, really?
@kravietz Sweden is an interesting case study https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/08/the-social-democratic-road-to-socialism
I think capitalism has a fundamental problem that it accumulates the wealth in the upper class. Then this class starts using this wealth to influence policy in their favor creating a downward spiral. So the setup seems like it's inherently fragile.
@yogthos If both USA and Sweden have capitalist economy, and in one the accumulation happens, and in the other it doesn't, then the capitalist economy isn't the root cause. Let's just apply some scientific thinking here.
@kravietz the article shows that the more capitalist Sweden gets the worse life becomes for the average person though. Socialism and democracy keep capitalism in check, but the capitalists continuously work to undermine socialist policies. And it's an inherently asymmetric relationship because capitalists are the ones with the wealth.
@yogthos Because market economy generates wealth in general. Then it's only matter of redistribution. US does it poorly, Scandinavian countries - much better.
Marxian economy is economics of shortages, for everyone and arbitrary redistribution by the ruling party.
@kravietz the distribution of wealth is precisely the problem, and I think it's an inherent problem. Scandinavian countries are in a fragile balance right now, and Sweden example that I linked shows that the balance is eroding.
And I don't really understand what you mean by this to be honest:
Marxian economy is economics of shortages, for everyone and arbitrary redistribution by the ruling party.
@kravietz another issue that you have to take into account is that ALL capitalist countries, including Scandinavia, are built on top of exploitation of third world countries where majority of the goods are manufactured. That has to be considered as part of the overall system.
@yogthos And the notion that outsourcing production to poor countries is "exploitation" is quite absurd. In 80's in Poland you could buy a pair of shoes for maybe month's salary. In France - for two hours salary. When joint ventures started to open in late 80's everyone dreamed of working there (eg IKEA) because this guaranteed not only high salary but also reasonable working hours and that the salary will be actually paid on time.
@kravietz it's not just "outsourcing" work to poor countries. It's active subjugation of poor countries at the barrel of a gun. Take a look at all the wars, coups, and dictatorships that US is responsible for around the world. All of that traces back to capitalist economics of needing a large cheap labor force.
Capitalism is a system that works on gradients. You need to produce goods cheaper than what you sell them for. This creates an inherent incentive to exploit.
@kravietz furthermore, capitalism requires growth to function. This translates into consumerism which is what's killing our biosphere right now. There is a very real possibility that capitalism will make us go extinct as a species.
@yogthos Somehow it were capitalist economies that reduced emissions of ozone-depleting gases and saved Earth's ozone layer. USSR at the same time caused the largest nuclear disaster so far in 1986 and hundreds of smaller yet catastrophic environment pollution incidents.
@kravietz look up how many people died total in Chernobyl disaster and compare it to oil industry disasters in the West.
@yogthos Do you realize that 50% of income of the late USSR and now Russia is from exports of hydrocarbons?
@kravietz you do realize that Russia is a capitalist economy nowadays, and back when USSR existed fossil fuels weren't considered a burning issue by anybody.
Meanwhile, the only large country that's doing anything meaningful about climate change is... China!
@yogthos Oh please, don't lose the discussion so cheaply. Tu quoque argument, really?
@kravietz you're claiming that USSR was somehow unique in terms of environmental damage, but it's clear that the damage is far greater under capitalism. What is your response to that?
@yogthos It's "clear" how exactly?
@kravietz I don't know if you're aware but we have a global climate catastrophe on our hands. 60% of land animals are dead, insects are dying out, oceans are acidifying.
All of that is happening because of capitalist practices. Cutting down of rain forests to make way for palm trees and cattle farms. Ongoing environmental disasters from fossil fuels. Not just the huge spills that nobody does anything about, but also things like fraking that create huge amounts of pollution.
@kravietz capitalism has fucked the planet to the point that we're literally debating whether the human race will go extinct.
Clearly capitalism is incapable of addressing this issue. We set Paris agreement targets that nobody wants to meet because it's bad for business. An we keep pretending like everything is honky dory while our biosphere collapses.
The only country doing anything meaningful is the communist China.
@yogthos You're wrong again, data says something else. All countries, including "communist" China (which is not) and bolivarian Venezuela, just as capitalist countries *did* reduce emissions. Even USA did, with its openly denialist president. And this is a global effort - tribalist thinking like you're implying is nothing better than neconons rants about "socialism".
@kravietz all countries have reduced emissions, but when you look at the numbers per capita, it's pretty clear who the worst offenders are. On top of that, China is actually implementing large scale projects to move off fossils while no capitalist economy is doing that.
The difference with China is that the government has the final say, and it's able to set long term plans for the country. This is not possible to achieve in a free market economy.
@yogthos You're cherry picking again. If you look at most EU countries they already reduced their emissions to a lower level than China.
And the greatest hero here is probably France, who as of today happily emits 65 g CO2/kWh thanks to their country-wide, government-driven nuclear program. Or Sweden (38) with their hydro and nuclear power.
Both having market economy.
@kravietz it's only meaningful to talk about per capita numbers. On top of that, much of the pollution generated by China comes from the goods produced for the West. The consumerist demand is the problem here.
You keep talking about these things like they're happening on completely separate planets. It's an intertwined global economy we're talking about here.
If Europe completely stops importing anything from China and keeps the same pollution levels then you'd have a point.
@yogthos You're partially right... but this partiality matters. Over 70% of CO2 emissions globally originate from power generation and car fuel. Chinese emissions increase comes mostly from private cars, reduction - from low-emission power generation.
@yogthos In market economy BP had an insurance and paid for cleaning up Deep Water Horizon from their operational profit and reserves. And we knew about the disaster from the first minute. USSR denied Chernobyl disaster for a week, just as it covered Kyshtym, Andreev Bay and other nuclear incidents you never heard of.
@kravietz deep water horizon is an ongoing disaster, what's worse it's not even the biggest or the only one. Meanwhile, people responsible for Chrenobyl were actually held accountable, and not a single oil exec has ever had to face consequences of their actions.
In fact, show me a single instance where the oligarchy is held accountable for anything under capitalism.
@kravietz I find the amount of vitriol you have towards USSR really interesting in the context of all the hand waving you do when it comes to discussing the same problems you decry under capitalism. It's as if you're just fitting things into a narrative that fits your worldview.
@yogthos USSR was not only ineffective, authoritarian and oppressive towards its own citizens. It was also exploitative and imperialistic towards its neighbours, which I have personally experienced. This gives me many reasons to dislike it.
In market economy I have built my career, significantly improved my economic status and - most importantly - I'm free to go wherever I wish at any time, rather than being effectively a prisoner of my own country, as I was under communism.
@kravietz yes, I understand that you personally benefit from capitalism. However, my point is that you're benefiting at the cost of many others who are not.
Capitalism is necessarily an asymmetric system where the wealth accumulates at the top. This was my original point that you replied to. You just happen to be in a comfortable place on that gradient.
The reason you're there is simply because you won the birth lottery.
@yogthos The difference is that modern capitalist economies can be, and are, changed without the use of oppression. USSR couldn't change on its own because of the inflexible Marxian ideology that has driven it. And this is why it eventually collapsed.
One of the few countries driven by similarly inflexible ideology is USA and I have similar attitude towards neocons as I have towards Marxism. Levels of personal freedom and rule of law are still much higher though.
@wbtd Russia didn't either - it's a very popular catch phrase there "democracy, freedom of speech and rule of law didn't work", like they ever had one! It's because market economy is orthogonal to democracy, which I'm for quite a while trying to demonstrate to @yogthos Plus, both of them are spectra rather than binary states.
@kravietz what are you talking about. Modern capitalism is utterly and completely rooted in oppression. Perhaps you missed the ongoing protests in France and the brutal suppression there. Remember what happened to the occupy Wallstreet movement. That got put down pretty fast.
While USA does most of the dirty work, every Western country benefits from the countries it subjugates.
@kravietz also since you keep bringing up Poland as an example, I don't see how the situation was improved by capitalism myself https://borgenproject.org/top-10-facts-about-poverty-in-poland/
@kravietz again, the problem with that is the gap between the rich and the poor becoming much more significant. What that chart shows is that some people become rich while others starve. This sort of inequality is precisely what USSR avoided.
@yogthos Avoided? With rich CPSU nomenclature shopping at "ΠΠ΅ΡΡΠ·ΠΊΠ°" ("Pewex" in Poland) and the rest living three families in single flat and waiting in overnight queues to buy basic supplies?
@kravietz address the article that I linked then, because it doesn't paint a pretty picture
@kravietz my view is that the society should provide everybody with the basic needs unconditionally, and there shouldn't be a large gap between the rich and the poor.
Capitalism has created a world where 1% of the population controls over half the resources in the world. These people are driving us all towards extinction. This is not the kind of world I want to live in, and I think that's far worse than anything that's happened under communism in USSR.
@yogthos And I 100% subscribe to the first part of your statement.
@kravietz the second part of the statement is what precludes the first part from happening under capitalism.
@yogthos So, to summarise, Poland is still recovering from the poverty left by real socialism, but on the right track.
At least in terms of economy, because the current national-populist government is a separate topic...
@kravietz that's not what the numbers show at all though. The numbers are showing that the upper class in Poland is actively exploiting the poor to get ahead.
I guess if you're ok with having a comfy lifestyle at the expense of exploiting those who were unlucky to be born into poverty then it's a pretty fantastic system though.
@yogthos It's not true. Here's the graph of Poland's Gini index (higher=more inequality) from 1800 till 2019. As you can see inequality has fallen significantly in the beginning of 20th century (II Rzeczpospolita), then inequality started rising (!) after Soviet occupation and communist Poland, further increased during 90's and then started falling again after 2000. You can play with the graph here https://bit.ly/2lOgFLn
@kravietz that seems quite different from the numbers here that show a huge increase in poverty after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and around 18% of the population being below the poverty line today. That's a staggering percentage of the population.
@yogthos Again you post something that actually disproves your point.
At the end of real socialism in 1990 there were 24% people living below the poverty line. This 24% is the socialist Poland's closing balance (not to mention collapsed pension system and 48 billion dollars of foreign debt).
Even your graph shows that it never returned to the "socialist" levels of poverty.
If you more detailed data you can see it's falling down all the time (green=changes in law)
@kravietz USSR collapsed in 1991, and the period after was total hell. I lived through it personally. The 1993 levels of poverty are not the socialist levels of poverty.
@yogthos If you lived in Moscow or St Petersburg, you might have only experienced this in 90's. Most of Soviet province and satellite states (like Poland) were living in this hell at least since 70's.
@kravietz I think part of the issue here is that Poland was an a vassal state of USSR. And that would be comparable to places like South America that US currently subjugates. And quality of life there is a lot worse right now.
If we're going to compare the two systems fairly, then we have to compare them in that context. We have to recognize that Western lifestyle is dependent on exploitation of the third world.
@yogthos You could just as well say that Astrakhan was a vassal state of Moscow and St Petersburg. There are huuuge income gaps between these two and the rest of the country even today (or maybe especially today), just as there were in Soviet times.
@kravietz this is a more detailed analysis that's more meanignful btw http://www.roiw.org/2006/2006-21.pdf
@yogthos Now, this is really good and in-depth article. Just remember that communism in Poland ended in 1989 so the "closing balance" is 1990. Now, if you go to page 8:
"income poverty and expenditure poverty incidence startedto decrease after 1994 and 1995, respectively, reaching levels much below the1990 values by the end of the decade"
Page 9 gives absolute values - the closing balance of socialism is indeed 23.8% below social minimum line.
@yogthos It briefly rises to 28% in 1995 but quickly falls to 17% in 1999 and then continues to decrease.
Also note that people losing income from collapsing enterprises in 90's is not the "fault" of market economy. It was direct consequence of their often absurd ineficiency resulting from applying Marxian economy. They were only able to function as long as the party was receiving Western loans.
@kravietz I don't think what Poland or USSR had was anything even remotely like Marxist economy though.
Marxist economy would be running worker owned coops as opposed to state level planning which is clearly Leninist.
@kravietz failure to embrace Marxism was the real problem with USSR in my opinion. What they created was a state run capitalist system.
@yogthos You don't know much about Marxian economy then. Marx and Engels had a few very outright directives: first violent revolution, then dictatorship of the proletariat and nationalisation of means of production, central planning, prices based on (rather bizarre) labour-value theory. USSR did everything correctly from the theory point of view.
These elements like the cult of the Plan or regulated prices survived to the very end of USSR.
@kravietz I don't understand the term "dictatorship of the proletariat", it seems self contradictory to me. Proletariat is the majority of the population, and a "dictatorship" of the majority is commonly referred to as a democracy.
Meanwhile, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having central planning, and it's necessary to do any large scale projects efficiently.
Incidentally, this is similar to the system China currently has where the state governs a capitalist market.
@kravietz and once again the core of the discussion is how socialism stacks up against capitalism.
My claim is that far more exploitation and inequality happens under capitalism when you look at the system as a whole.
My second claim is that inequality is inherent in capitalism by design because it requires a gradient to function.
We can agree USSR had tons of problems, but it's absurd to discount socialism based on that. You clearly don't think we should discard capitalism based on US.
@yogthos There's a fundamental problem with central planning: it assumes planners have perfect knowledge of consumer needs and their changes. If you apply planning to *everything* from production of toilet paper, food and steel, it will never work.
All countries in the world apply *some* economic planning to strategic sectors, like energy. This works, but nobody applies it to all sectors like Marxists did.
@kravietz how do you reconcile that claim with the fact that pretty much every megacorp like Amazon and Walmart is centrally planned?
@kravietz well yeah since USSR doesn't exist anymore, who's paying for all the damage US fossil fuel industry is causing? Who's going to pay for the fucking climate disaster capitalism is responsible for that might well kill us all.
How does the free market solve this problem please do explain?