Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe. Sodium-ion batteries have been in the works for years, and now sodium-ion batteries have started to appear in cars and home storage. JAC, in a partnership with Volkswagen, has been shipping a vehicle called the Sehol or E10X with sodium-ion ... [continued]
That’s reductive. Seeing capitalism as the root cause of all problems is disingenuous. The particular ideology oligarchies are using to justify their rule is incidental.
It makes a lot of sense, but I doubt we can have a rational debate about that. In short, people tend to be motivated by profit, so theoretically productivity goes up when the economic system rewards that.
The root of the problem has little to do with the economic system, and it’s like blaming bombs for war. The real problem is government structures that reward and encourage consolidation of power, both in the government itself and in the private sector. If you strip away capitalism, you just consolidate that power into the public sector, and for examples of that look at China and the USSR.
I would think that people on Lemmy who likely left other social media due to centralization wouldn’t be so enamored w/ more centralization in the government space. We need solutions that look like Lemmy in the public space to decentralize power so we don’t run into this type of problem. I don’t think there’s a magical structure that fixes everything, and I don’t even necessarily think that capitalism has to be the dominant economic system in play, I just think we need to come up with ideas on how to reduce the power of those at the top.
Specific example of the US military
We should dramatically reduce the federal standing military, increase the National Guard to match, and put stricter limits on when the President can use the National Guard. IMO, the only way the President should access the National Guard is if one of the following happen:
governor explicitly yields control, or the state’s legislature forces the governor to yield control
states vote with a super majority to declare war
legislative branch votes to declare war with a super majority
That’s it. The President would otherwise be left with a small standing military that’s enough to deter or perhaps assist in peacekeeping, but nowhere near large enough to invade another country.
I personally think we should embrace capitalism as it’s decentralized by nature, unless forces centralize it, and then create rules that discourage/punish over-centralization. For example, I think small companies should have liability protections, and larger companies should lose it, such that lawsuits could target specific individuals in the organization instead of allowing the organization to be used as a shield. For example, if a company files bankruptcy and it’s over a certain size (maybe $1B market cap? $100M?), then shareholders and top executives become responsible to cover whatever the debts are still unresolved after liquidation. If a crime is committed, it shouldn’t simply result in a fine that’s factored in as the cost of doing business, it should result in arrests. The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s corruption and protectionism.
Come on. Even animals are motivated by profit: getting more out of something than you put into it. Profit doesn’t have to mean “shareholder dividends.”
It’s so naive to claim that it’s only society’s setup and status pressures that make us care about getting better things for less effort. As if that hasn’t been the aim of every individual AND every society since the dawn of time.
The easiest way used to be to just plunder people. Take their shit. Now it’s your shit. Easier and faster than making the shit. Woohoo.
Then trade entered the chat, and it was the first time that people started to think there might actually be a better way: that both parties could walk away from an exchange better off, and that it might be in each of their interests to keep the other alive.
I’d like to explain what you’re missing in detail, but truthfully it would take a course in it of itself. I’ll try to be concise.
Simply put all evidence that we have points to humans living relatively egalitarian and peacefully for the majority of our history. We additionally have early evidence of trade.
Now there is, with all things, nuance. For the past 10,000 or so years evidence points to humans being very violent to one another and we have seen an increase in social stratification. However, in the modern era violence is on a downward trend relative to the total human population. Social stratification is obviously not.
Skeletal evidence is our best, but we also have evidence in the form of more traditional artifacts.
To be clear I’m not saying we can tell you every human in a hunter gatherer group carried the same social status or that people never killed each other. Obviously not, but what I can tell you is that every member of the group had access to the same nutrition and that evidence of violent skeletal trauma is significantly less prevalent than after the advent of agriculture. There is also significant evidence of trade prior to evidence of mass warfare.
Capitalism may be workable with strict regulation and proper social safety nets. The problem is that we have crony capitalism, which allows billionaires to essentially control the laws, which concentrates power into too few hands, similar to other oppressive forms of government. A key piece we are missing to make capitalism more workable is right in the word itself: “cap”. There should be a cap on how much wealth any one individual can accumulate.
That’s a false dichotomy. We can also improve our technology while ditching capitalism.
That’s reductive. Seeing capitalism as the root cause of all problems is disingenuous. The particular ideology oligarchies are using to justify their rule is incidental.
But… It is the root of a lot of problems and it helps the oligarchs… And it just sucks and makes no sense in general?
It makes a lot of sense, but I doubt we can have a rational debate about that. In short, people tend to be motivated by profit, so theoretically productivity goes up when the economic system rewards that.
The root of the problem has little to do with the economic system, and it’s like blaming bombs for war. The real problem is government structures that reward and encourage consolidation of power, both in the government itself and in the private sector. If you strip away capitalism, you just consolidate that power into the public sector, and for examples of that look at China and the USSR.
I would think that people on Lemmy who likely left other social media due to centralization wouldn’t be so enamored w/ more centralization in the government space. We need solutions that look like Lemmy in the public space to decentralize power so we don’t run into this type of problem. I don’t think there’s a magical structure that fixes everything, and I don’t even necessarily think that capitalism has to be the dominant economic system in play, I just think we need to come up with ideas on how to reduce the power of those at the top.
Specific example of the US military
We should dramatically reduce the federal standing military, increase the National Guard to match, and put stricter limits on when the President can use the National Guard. IMO, the only way the President should access the National Guard is if one of the following happen:
That’s it. The President would otherwise be left with a small standing military that’s enough to deter or perhaps assist in peacekeeping, but nowhere near large enough to invade another country.
I personally think we should embrace capitalism as it’s decentralized by nature, unless forces centralize it, and then create rules that discourage/punish over-centralization. For example, I think small companies should have liability protections, and larger companies should lose it, such that lawsuits could target specific individuals in the organization instead of allowing the organization to be used as a shield. For example, if a company files bankruptcy and it’s over a certain size (maybe $1B market cap? $100M?), then shareholders and top executives become responsible to cover whatever the debts are still unresolved after liquidation. If a crime is committed, it shouldn’t simply result in a fine that’s factored in as the cost of doing business, it should result in arrests. The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s corruption and protectionism.
Only in a society that commodifies your existence and success based on the wealth you generate/hold
Unless we’re changing the definition of profit to status
Come on. Even animals are motivated by profit: getting more out of something than you put into it. Profit doesn’t have to mean “shareholder dividends.”
It’s so naive to claim that it’s only society’s setup and status pressures that make us care about getting better things for less effort. As if that hasn’t been the aim of every individual AND every society since the dawn of time.
The easiest way used to be to just plunder people. Take their shit. Now it’s your shit. Easier and faster than making the shit. Woohoo.
Then trade entered the chat, and it was the first time that people started to think there might actually be a better way: that both parties could walk away from an exchange better off, and that it might be in each of their interests to keep the other alive.
Your understanding of human history is lacking depth and inaccurate
Your criticism is insubstantial and dismissible.
Yeah I’m only an archaeologist.
I’d like to explain what you’re missing in detail, but truthfully it would take a course in it of itself. I’ll try to be concise.
Simply put all evidence that we have points to humans living relatively egalitarian and peacefully for the majority of our history. We additionally have early evidence of trade.
Now there is, with all things, nuance. For the past 10,000 or so years evidence points to humans being very violent to one another and we have seen an increase in social stratification. However, in the modern era violence is on a downward trend relative to the total human population. Social stratification is obviously not.
Skeletal evidence is our best, but we also have evidence in the form of more traditional artifacts.
To be clear I’m not saying we can tell you every human in a hunter gatherer group carried the same social status or that people never killed each other. Obviously not, but what I can tell you is that every member of the group had access to the same nutrition and that evidence of violent skeletal trauma is significantly less prevalent than after the advent of agriculture. There is also significant evidence of trade prior to evidence of mass warfare.
Capitalism may be workable with strict regulation and proper social safety nets. The problem is that we have crony capitalism, which allows billionaires to essentially control the laws, which concentrates power into too few hands, similar to other oppressive forms of government. A key piece we are missing to make capitalism more workable is right in the word itself: “cap”. There should be a cap on how much wealth any one individual can accumulate.