Capitalism's Destruction of Childhood - By: Dr. Gabor Mate

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None of which circumvent the undeniable fact that however you vary capitalism, you end with unresolvable conflicts in interest when you divide society into economic classes.

Its telling that capitalism is at the end of its life when its constantly having to validate its position and justify itself against new ideas and alternatives.

Gabor is an outstanding professional colleague and a friend.

While I don't agree with all of his views, we have many, many shared perspectives, and his insights always provide cause for professional, political or personal introspection.

The guy basically said nothing more than capitalism is bad in both of those videos which implies something else is a better alternative without naming it.

Not at all. He said "capitalism is bad", sure. But that doesn't mean something is better. It means we need to come up with something better.

I doubt (more like know) we would ever be able to agree on what's better.

That's only because you're not a NT.

Well, you don't need physical chains to be a slave. Countless cult leaders have enslaved people by manipulating their needs and wants to capture their minds. And yes, society does prevent you from escaping, at least from the cycle of work, taxation, and consumption. It isn't literal, and with the recent revival of homesteading, it's become a bit more possible to escape, to go build a ranch somewhere. However, society is increasingly dependent on taking orders. You take orders to pay taxes. You take orders from your boss to work harder for less wage. You take orders to buy a house or rent an apartment, because even to set up a shack in the woods is vagrancy. We are taught, from birth, that the correct way of living is to go to school, go to college, get good grades, and get a job where you sit in a cubicle and put off your dreams until retirement age, when the dreams you can fulfill are limited by the ravages of age. And even that light at the end of the tunnel is increasingly becoming harder to attain, as more and more, social security vanishes. From Kindergarten to dropout age, truancy is a crime. Non-degree jobs are becoming much, much harder to find. There goes your best years. And the rest is working for someone else, for the vast majority of people.

It is slavery. You have no choice. Work or starve. No longer can you go build a hovel somewhere and work the land to sustain yourself, as even feudal peasants could do, though as always they were require to give a portion of their produce to their lord. What you wear and how you present yourself is dictated by company policy. Your wage is not a result of a negotiation between you and the company, but a base wage. You must beg for a raise. And you almost never profit. If you're savvy or lucky, maybe, but most people live paycheck to paycheck, and pray Jesus that when we resign our lease the rent doesn't go up. And before you say, well maybe they should've been smarter and gone to school, some people just can't afford it. Some people screw up. There is a clear class system in this country, and the working class are the same old slaves as ever.

In the days of "slavery", an enormous number of slaves, both white and black, escaped. They did it through suicide. And increasingly, when faced with the soulcrushing anti-individual grind to make someone else money, many young people escape the same way.

The value created by scarcity will always create a market in which some form of price--whether monetary or otherwise--is increased to reflect its scarcity. No society in human history has ever been immune from this.

Do you really know him IRL as a friend? If so the part I disagree on is the parts where he blames the parents of children for causing things like ADHD. When it really isn't the parents fault, they have no choice in the system we are living in. But I think he may have changed his stance in later years as he got more into the root cause of things. What I am referring to was in a book I can't remember that I read years back, so things can change in time.

Without capitalism you'd be living in a cave right now

Do you think that Capitalism is the only route to economic development?

What viable alternative do you offer? Communism has been demonstrated to not work in the long term, and Socialism seems to dis-incentivise innovation and invention.

[opinion=mine]

Besides, it may not be Capitalism per se that "destroys" childhood, but the rampant greed of consumerism that places material ownership above interpersonal relationships that brainwashes children into believing that toys are more important than friends and family.

Simple solutions: Eliminate Christmas as anything other than a quaint religious observance (no more Christmas commercialism), eliminate commercials and advertisements of toys and other childhood gadgets, prohibit children from using mobile communications devices and the Internet before their 18th birthdays, and mandate a minimum of 2 hours each day of group sports for children between the ages of 5 and 18.

[/opinion]

Ah, yes ... Authoritarian control of childhood development ... now that's the ticket!

Hold on, are you basically saying that children should not keep up the pace of technology until they are 18? Well, in fact alienation is a serious problem, but should we be that radical?

NTs have free will too. And if there exists a person who lusts after every possession they see, I doubt getting rid of ads would help them significantly.

I already said we can see through an individual advert and dismiss it, but what is the effect on a child growing up seeing hundreds of adverts every day. They are basically being told: "You are not good enough without this!", "Your life will be better if you have this!" all the time. It is subliminal messaging. It is no wonder a lot of people grow up dissatisfied.