21
votes
Musings on our current system
Do you think that the future will look back on our last late stage capitalist system and see the brutalization of marginalized populations around the globe? As our society looks back on chattel slavery, feudalism, etc?
I would like to imagine a socialism or a different system. Rooted in humanism.
Nobody knows the future, but to speculate a bit:
I think of history as being mostly about terrible things happening to people. I don’t see the present as standing out as being particularly terrible in the far future. From a very zoomed-out view (which is only one perspective), even things like a pandemic or a terrible but minor war don’t really stand out - they tend to blend together after a while. Global statistics hide a lot, but they suggest that poverty is decreasing.
The 20th century seems far more terrible than the 21st? So far, anyway.
I also don’t see any signs that capitalism won’t continue in some form. That is, depending on what you mean by capitalism.
The reasons for capitalism seem pretty fundamental. I see three choices, paid labor, volunteer labor, and forced labor. Volunteer labor is important but pretty limited, and I expect forced labor to continue to be mostly illegal. So I expect that most people will expect to be paid for at least some of their work, and other people to willingly pay them. People will have opinions about how much they should pay or be paid, which is an inevitable source of conflict.
Large-scale projects require many people and large amounts of funding to pay the workers. Raising that funding is what finance is all about. Controlling how those projects are done is what management is all about. There will be powerful people controlling these large projects.
Perhaps I’m not imaginative enough? What signs are there that a competing system will become more successful? (I see what the Nordic countries do as a more comfortable flavor of capitalism, not something fundamentally different.)
I would argue it’s not a lack of imagination. I also don’t have the imagination to envision what a more just society would look like. But I think we need to strive for it non the less. Did people think the inevitably of kings and sovereign leaders was a thing until it wasn’t? I just think we need to challenge the status quo.
Also I totally agree that “we” are better off than we were in the past. I’m not advocating for some return to sharecropping. Our current system has brought us many advancements and helped to provide for millions.
As far as large scale projects go, sure they require labor and management, but who is to say that managing is more valuable than labor ? How do we value a humans labor, by the goods they produce? Value to society?
Another tangential point/question is one of technology and workers. How does it assist, is the point to increase well being or productivity?
Also how do we ensure a just society for all people.
I didn’t respond to every point, i kinda rambled, at lunch and on my phone. Will try to come back and edit/respond more once I gather some thoughts
It seems to me that alternative economic systems, whatever they might be, would still need to invented, tested, and promoted? This is a creative act. “Challenge the status quo” is abstracting away a whole lot of work.
Building a mostly-isolated, advanced economy that works seems like an interesting project and I’d like to see someone try it. But compared to making a living through trade, it’s definitely playing in hard mode, and doing these kinds of experiments probably requires huge amounts of money.
Every country sees advantage in international trade. Capitalism can build computer chips and produce medicines, and an alternative system that doesn’t trade for them probably couldn’t do it very easily, or at least not right away. Isolation is associated with poverty, which is why trade sanctions are pretty powerful.
I think a system that paid managers less (as some companies do) would still count as capitalism? From a zoomed-out perspective, that seems like a detail, not fundamental. There will still be groups of people who control large funds and large projects, even if they don’t directly profit from it. That’s power.
The best system was "You live in a large Capitalist nation with other large communist nations around."
Billionaires behaved better with the threat of being convicted in a Worker's Tribunal and being sent off to a gulag. I miss the Soviet Union.
(From the outside though. I would never want to live in a socialist country until there's some evidence that they can exist on a large scale without becoming enormous brutal prisons.)
I'm not sure I ascribe most of the brutality in the world to capitalism, per se. Current conflicts (Gaza/Ukraine, which are contained locally for the most part) notwithstanding, the current era of capitalism (since the fall of the Berlin wall, generally) has largely been the most peaceful (in terms of outright famine and war) and prosperous in recorded history.
It kind of begs the question "which era would you have preferred to live in where despotic committees or some other hereditary mechanism instead of collective demand determined the prices of things"? Because there were plenty of those: people died at 28 and made very little "human progress" for centuries.
Which, again, is not to say that we should ignore the suffering of "marginal" populations (especially refugees) but we should be honest about what is causing their plight and I'm not sure it's necessarily "capitalism".
As a non-American, I've often wondered why "socialism" is such a dirty word to them. It's often thrown around like a slur, almost like atheism is to religious people. And I think it's because of its historical implementation, rather than the ideals put forward. If we look at some common dictionary definitions, we get this:
(Economics) an economic theory or system in which the means of production, distribution, and exchange are owned by the community collectively, usually through the state. It is characterized by production for use rather than profit, by equality of individual wealth, by the absence of competitive economic activity, and, usually, by government determination of investment, prices, and production levels.
(Government, Politics & Diplomacy) any of various social or political theories or movements in which the common welfare is to be achieved through the establishment of a socialist economic system
A set of political and economic theories based on the belief that everyone has an equal right to a share of a country’s wealth and that the government should own and control the main industries
Now, there are some aspects that sound pretty good, and other parts not so much. I think the first definition is what makes some people nervous: collective ownership, government determination of prices and production, etc. It sounds like communism, and even though the ideals of communism were noble, it has historically been implemented as an authoritarian system without individual liberties.
But the other definitions are also valid, where the welfare of people is put before profit or at least given equal priority, and where wealth is distributed more evenly. When we think of more socialist countries, like the Scandinavian ones for example, they are still capitalist, but have high taxes and strong welfare systems. They often come out well in quality-of-life and happiness rankings.
So, even though a rigid socialist system doesn't sound great, implementing some "socialist" ideals or policies doesn't need to be such a dirty word. After all, the main point is to take care of everyone in society and to eradicate the class system that develops from an aristocracy or oligarchy.
Personally, I can't think of a better system than capitalism, but not the rampant for-profit, low-taxes, free-market capitalism that the US seems to love. That just seems to lead to wealth inequality, market consolidation, oligopolies and enshittification (what many refer to as late-stage capitalism). I would like to see a more regulated capitalism that leaves the core mechanics alone, but incorporates socialist values of mutual benefit, a more linear spread of wealth, eradicating poverty, and generally taking care of the population. It seems so obvious that problems like crime and disease will diminish if you take care of your society and meet their basic needs. Capitalism can lead to prosperity and happiness, but not if it's allowed to run rampant and create irreparable schisms in your society.
Like probably everyone in the world, Americans are indoctrinated at a very early age to think that they have the best system. In America, culturally, capitalism and freedom are intertwined as if they relied on each other to exist. The "free market" and "freedom" seem to be the same thing. It isn't until some people are out of school that they realize that the free market is largely a myth. Most never learn it at all, and they surround themselves with news sources and information that reinforces the mythology. Sure we learn what a monopoly is, but we aren't really taught (or at least don't fully understand) about crony capitalism, regulatory capture, lobbying, and all the other corruptions that undermine actual freedom. A lot of this cultural love of capitalism came out of cold war propaganda, but I think it was also strengthened a lot when Reagan was president. It's very hard to break out of the bubble where you think that corporate profit and personal wealth is an ultimate goal of civilization and somehow is an extension of Christianity.
Well...yeah. The "historical implementation" has led to some of the most brutal regimes on the planet and one of the largest preventable famines to ever exist. There are still people alive who were there for those events, and yes a lot of them left/escaped/fled to other countries, like america, and thus take issue with the idea that "no really this time we're not going to starve everyone one/murder people with glasses. We'll get it right".
Obvious the majority of american hate for communism is NOT people escaping from communist countries, but the cold war was a thing and for decades two countries basically said "if i get the chance I will erase you from the world" while doing all sorts of horrible shit, and that deservedly puts people on edge.
So yes the mental image of the farmer who's only thought on the subject is "god said communism is bad" and all that is wrong with that is a thing, but a massive problem with any push towards socialist ideas is the handwaving of "oh it's just ignorant hicks and money grubbing billionaires against this!" and it's really really not.
If you can't answer "so how are you going to make sure that the co-mingling of capital and the military doesn't lead to atrocities", then you're not really addressing the issue.
Now it's unfortunate because the answer to that (for just socialist policies, not full blown communism) is "ah no we're not going that far. We just agree that there's things like healthcare that are a fucking mess in a market economy and there's quite a few european countries that have done this well.".
And yes, there's people who will then dig in and talk about dumb shit, but i've had a ton more progress with people assuming they aren't going to do that and bothering to actually give the explanation than many of the fundamentalists i've seen who just assume anyone who hasn't already had the discussion is some die hard wannabe billionaire.
I'm certainly not gonna apologize for Stalin. But after his death, the USSR did properly start to stabilize afterwards. War excuses an awful lot of sins. I'd wager if there was a less hostile geopolitical climate through the 60s and 70s the USSR would have ended in a far better place.
Let's not forget that the USA also had quite a large self-inflicted farming problem exacerbated by capitalism as well.
In the end, I feel that the two biggest shortcomings of the USSR have answers today:
We have exponentially better understanding of the world and its industrial capabilities. It's much easier to set reasonable quotas and distribute resources appropriately now that we have multiple decades of that data at our fingertips.
A proper democratic government implementing socialist policies during peacetime will avoid the vast majority of atrocities. A socialist transition isn't going to work during a coup, for the same reason democracy tends to fail during coups.
I don’t think the dust bowl is a remotely fair comparison to the Great Leap Forward.
You’re also vastly underestimating how difficult central economies and industrial planning are. Covid showed quite clearly just how little we’ve learned.
What do you mean? Covid certainly wasn't a command economy, and most of the pain points Covid pressed on were things that were well known to be a problem.
Like the fragility of our supply chains. That's been a known issue for about 25 years or so.
The problem is that democracies aren't like that - they thrash, a lot. The history of democracy is the history of swinging policy. That's OK, but it fundamentally makes systems where the government has full control of production a recipe for disaster. The equivalent of Republicans WILL be in power for ~half of this state's time.
This presumes that the government is benevolent and acting in good faith, which isn't something that can be presumed at all. Such a group of humans has never existed. The excellence of markets is that you can assume all parties are 100% selfish and despise each other, and it'll work out.
The thing is....most US government stuff actually functions pretty well when the electorate itself isn't in a constitutional crisis.
The USPS is one such example of a well functioning government service. Basically all of the things targeted by DOGE, contrary to their claims, are all highly effective services for which the private sector is utterly incapable of doing.
The whole reason the NGO was invented was to provide that level of autonomy. Shielded from direct political whims, while still being publicly accountable.
The biggest failures of our governmental services is when we allow private industry to hook into the government funds instead of just having the government do the work. See the whole Medicare/Medicare Advantage fiasco. Or how Turbotax is the reason that IRS is so backwards on online filing.
Provided you have a functional government to wield the banhammer whenever it doesn't. Like when companies dump toxic waste into waterways.
We see time and again that the equilibrium state isn't a thriving market...it's a monopoly provider.
The only difference between a monopoly provider and a government-owned service is that the governments owned service is more easily held accountable with public records.
The government-is-a-failure narrative is a self-fulfilling prophecy sold by people who profit from making the government suck at doing stuff.
No one can deny the historical implementation and associated problems. But "socialist" is still thrown around at capitalist countries whenever they have highish taxes or a some kind of social welfare program. It's this aspect that puzzles me because "socialized healthcare" should not be used as a stick to try and beat those countries with. I've known friends who have moved to the US and returned to their native country and complained how socialist it is. Apart from being untrue, why is it such a dirty word to have a program designed to help those in need?
That was my main point about the word. I certainly wouldn't argue that people have a right to be wary of what communism and socialism has historically led to in certain countries.
Right, but the issue is that many people have linked socialist and communist because of extremist and bad actors from all over.
On the one side you've got the morons claiming that everyone needs to "earn their way" or whatever and on the other you have people saying "well yeah it's our first step towards true communism!", so you need to actually address the communication failure first before even discussing it, and naturally no politician or media group has incentive to bother.
Yes... I don't think a economic system exists that is perfect everywhere. There will always be disagreements but even finding and using the best-fit-optimal economic system for each region does not guarantee world peace--it just means that there will be less economic violence--the money system is more efficient so we are, collectively, dropping more bombs from the resources that we've extracted.
"Capitalism" is very overloaded.
So I'll say that I think in the future, we will continue to have most economic planning done by free markets, and that most things will be able to be owned by private individuals. If that's capitalism, then we'll continue to have capitalism, and that there will never be a viable form of socialism or communism that lasts beyond the kind of mixed-market democratic socialism that exists in certain countries today (but which still allows for most economic planning to be wrought by the markets and for the majority of capital to be privately owned).
Totally!
Socialism and communism are equally loaded and often misrepresented by even like minded parties.
I guess I’m am asking. Are we all ok with the system as it stands? Can we envision one, where we treat people better?
I am OK with incremental improvements. I do not think there is an economic system which is outright better than the one we have now.
It can always get worse, as well. Maybe people in the future will look back at “late stage capitalism” like the Latins would in Italia gazing at the ruins of great structures after the collapse of the western Roman Empire. Those were the good days, if only we could be back.
The issue is simple, how do you make a system that lasts?
I’ve used the analogy a lot but modern government is a bunker built on a beach. It’s not pretty, it still has problems, it can still fail, but it’s not going to get obliterated when the first hurricane/tidal wave hits.
Possibly. But they might also view us as we view ancient Rome — which is to say, with a much less critical eye than deserved.
(U.S. specific perspective)
Yes, who knows?
We can imagine future historians to be wiser than us, since we have no idea what they’ll be like, or even whether they will exist. This is really a way of self-criticism, but in “far mode.” Imagining how things would look from such a zoomed-out perspective isn’t necessarily any better than trying to understand events from a close-up point of view, since zooming out hides all the details.
Well to bring the mood down a bit more, we might see this as a golden age that will not exist for some time/possibly ever again.
The world for most of its history has been a hell of a lot more brutal and unforgiving, and still is in many parts of the world.
Most of modern society is a pretty new invention in a historical timeframe, and has only stuck around because it out performed the societies that did not.
With the development of mass data collection and automation, your modern dictator/king/tyrant has tools at their fingertips they never had before. It's hard to keep a regime going when people are constantly plotting to overthrow/invade you, but it's so much easier when you can just track and purge problems from day one, and force multipliers like drones might even make it so you don't need to worry as much about the "we have 2 million troops in a country of 200 million".
Further dictatorships and the like have ALSO been evolving over the decades, just like modern representative democracies, and have gotten much much better at striking the balance between "i do whatever the hell I want and live in splendor at the cost of anyone" and "oh shit they're at the gates!".
Honestly I'd say there's better odds future historians aren't allowed to discuss various features of modern society than they'll say "well yeah they could talk how they wanted freely to almost anyone on the planet, BUT here's where they were cruel....."
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- Orwell, 1984
It depends on who controls the narrative. We seem to be headed toward a period of authoritarianism where history is likely to be rewritten to suit each individual tyrant and their supporters. If that direction holds, "late stage capitalism" will likely cease to exist as a meme. Perhaps "capitalism", as a meme, will fade as well. Both seem likely to be replaced by "god and country" or "blood and soil".
We're already seeing media and large corporations dramatically change direction in speech and behavior based on 47. Academia is likely feeling similar pressure.
As for the system? I expect we will continue to see wealth concentrate and the majority having to work longer and harder to get by. At least, in the US, we've seen an erosion of the middle class. I don't see why that will stop.
What makes you say this is the last stage of capitalism?
Need to edit, and say late! Fat fingers and auto correct.
Okay, then what makes you say this is a late stage of capitalism?
I would say because rentseeking behavior has outstripped innovation as the preferred method for growth.
Billion dollar companies are gobbling up other billion dollar companies. At this point, the only way to stop this cycle is going to be to smash every company larger than a few million dollars with a metaphorical hammer and rewrite a huge portion of the rules undergirding the market structure.
Much like a game of Monopoly, all the land has been bought, and now it's just waiting it out to see who comes out on top.
Or the doomspiral of nostalgia mining that's going on right now. The entertainment megacomplex has tapped out the public domain and has started eating itself alive.
Initially late stage capitalism helped described the change post ww2. Then in the aughts globalism, and neoliberalism were ascendant. I was imprecise with my word choice. I think late stage capitalism, neoliberalism, and globalism are often conflated as I did above.
It will be interesting to see how ai affects this going forward.
I think this entirely depends on who you ask in the future.
We already look back on things like, slavery, feudalism, and all sorts of human and natural disasters, and continue to perpetuate them anyway, often just in different forms or sometimes, in the same forms.
As long as we continue on our trajectory towards individualism* presiding as the most reliable way to get what you want, we will continue to go down that road. (*This individualism is bolstered by our continued separation from community interaction and person to person relationships.)
So when people look back on our society and ask themselves, what was going on, I think the "winners"(or those that benefit from the status quo) will find a way to justify their means to their ends, and the losers, will find a way to justify the means so that they can survive the shitty outcome.
Noise
I believe we will constantly ebb and flow between a desire for homogeneity and a desire for diversity. People often look to the Nordic countries as an example and solution to be applied across the board, and if everyone would just be like them, the world we be perfect.Let me be clear, I love the Nordic countries and am very envious of their successes and lifestyles. However, it cannot be ignored that part of their success is due to their homogeneity and very xenophobic citizenship laws. It's easy to achieve goals when you all want the same things, in the same way. We can all say "I want the freedom to choose", but what that looks like is different to people.
For decades now, I've been trying to find a comparable civilization to the USA (both for commiseration, but also solutions). What other country is as diverse as the USA, has the geographical size and variety as the USA, and is as young in its formation (wars and independence, etc.). The only countries I can ever really think of are Brazil and India, and sort of China, but it's my understanding that China is pretty ethnically homogenous, so that negates the large diversity aspect I'm looking for. When I think of those countries, I can't say I see a role model and think "yes, the USA should replicate that". So it feels...hopeless?
I can't say if you're right or wrong, but I'm not sure you can say it confidently without the data to back it up. As of 2020, about one quarter of Sweden's population is foreign born or from foreign-born parents. That's not insignificant, although obviously nothing like the US. But there are just so many other differences from the US that I think it becomes very hard to say why Nordic countries are on a different trajectory to the US. Religion (or lack of), education, taxation, history, climate, population size, family traditions..... so many differences that contribute to a society's health.
The sheer size difference has to be a major factor, and that's where I agree that a certain homogeneity helps in these countries. Even though they may have diversity in their populations, it's still a smaller population to take care of, keep happy and build national pride around. The US is just too darn big to get everyone to agree!
That's a fair point, I had not considered Sweden and had not looked up the stats (as a professional armchair analyst).
I agree, the size is just wild, I guess all "Empires" fall when they become too large to manage.
Consider Australia perhaps? It is similar to the US in a lot of ways: it is a very young country with vast lands full of possibility, and with quite the independent cowboy streak that comes with the territory. It is culturally tied to the US (more so than it is to the UK or Europe, in my observation) and also politically tied to the US (for example, it reliably joins in on even the stupidest American wars). It is distinctly more diverse than the US, with 30% of the population having been born overseas — the highest of any major Western nation.
And yet Australia has a very stable democracy and robust public services, which I think is due to two features of its election system: instant runoff voting (which ensures the viability of third parties) and compulsory voting (which ensures that government represents moderates equally to extremists).
The main knock against Australia (or any other “Western” country for that matter) is population size; Aus. has less than 10% of the population of the U.S., and even the largest Western European nations (Britain, France, and Germany) are only a fifth to a quarter the size of the U.S.
That said, I do think compulsory voting helps with stability. Politicians are forced to compete for a wider swathe of the electorate.
Interesting! I had not considered Australia, tbh, because my very ignorant view of Australia has been, "aren't they basically the USA, but only marginally better?" Which is a result of my own obsessions with perfectionism.
I'm curious, how did Australia end up with these two laws(?), runoff voting, and compulsory voting.
In the context of the USA, I have always wondered why the USA does not have the option to record abstaining. I think at the bare minimum, people should be given the right to express, "I do not like the options I have, and if I had an option I liked, I would vote." But this is not captured at all by the current system.
Australia did not gain independence suddenly like the US did. It was planned over several decades, and political scholars from the UK and the US helped design Australia's government and voting system. Australia basically offered an opportunity for them to put some 19th century political theories to the test — many of starting with one of the smaller states, like Tasmania, before being adopted by the rest of Australia (although compulsory voting went the other way; it was enacted for federal elections initially, and then spread to state elections, and now even most local elections — like voting for mayor — are compulsory).
You might be interested to know that one of these initiatives, called the Australian ballot, has been adopted by the US as well. This is the secret ballot system that helps protect voters against blackmail, intimidation, and vote buying. The Australian ballot was gradually adopted by the individual states, not the federal government as whole, so it should be feasible for them to enact other electoral reforms as well.
I think people of the future will have their own problems that they believe to be the worst that civilization has ever faced, and so they will look back on our current era fondly as the tail end of a golden age right before things started really getting bad.