I hate capitalism

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I find it funny how people who seem to like or argue in favour of capitalism point out 'growth' and equate this with increasing living standards.

GDP is a measure of the economic output of a country. If the wealth of a country is placed in a small group of hands, which it is, in places like the US & UK, then moving away from social democracy towards increasing capitalism actually harms the average person, because wealth isn't distributed fairly.

And by the average person, I mean the masses.

The UK has become a dumpster fire of poverty and wealth inequality since the 1980's with Margaret Thatcher and her move toward neo-liberal policies.

Neo-liberalism is and has been a failure, and this is seen in the fact of failing public services, unaffordable housing due to policies of 'the market' capitalism and so on.

There is some serious money to make in green energy. Solar and wind farms are popping up all over the area I live and they sell by the megawatt from an unlimited supply of wind or solar.

There is nothing not to like about it but the practicalities of how to store and transfer that energy is the problem. Electric cars are just........crap. Who wants to spend 25k on a car that'll need a new battery in five years?

Interestingly, when I googled it, it claimed that the average lifespan of an electric car battery is 10-20 years, not 5.

Battery life is usually measured in charge / usage cycles, not simply "passage of time". Regarding "usage", tesla claims their batteries are good for up to 500,000 miles of usage, and the associated charge / discharge that would accompany it. Average expected mileage for a 5 year old car is 60,000 miles.

As for capitalism...

Capitalism as a means of trade and exchange is all well and good. Currency is a highly convenient method for standardizing commerce.

But Capitalism seems to have become more of a religion or cult in some ways. Leveraged beyond a certain point, capitalism seems little more than manufactured exploitation.

One thing that can reduce the working lifespan of an electric car battery is exposure to extreme temperature changes. Extreme cold (below -30 degrees F) prolongs the life of the battery up to a point, but also reduces the output of the battery. The car will not go if not enough electricity can flow in the circuit. The cold effect on voltage is how many lead acid batteries die during a severe cold front. High temperatures (above 100 degrees F) for long times can reduce the lifespan of the battery, as well as cause cracking issues to the battery cases (if plastic). As long as you use it in a moderated environment, you have a chance at reaching those listed 10-20 year lifespan times. Otherwise plan on replacing the batteries much sooner.

USA...



Ronald Reagan...



People in the USA do not know what neoliberalism means, and they don't know what neoconservatism means, and they don't know that both major parties are both neoliberal and neoconservative, and they don't know that "the primaries" are not actually elections and the parties are not obligated to even hold them, and they don't know blah blah blah blah blah...

Neoliberal and neoconservatism has not done education any good, either. There is, in fact, a growing anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-literate backlash against the coastal elites, manifested most amusingly in the word "woke" becoming an insult.

It's a pretty good thing to hate.

I'm not quite sure what a better replacement would look like, but it does suck that there is such a massive divide between haves and have nots, Billionaires and the working poor etc.

How often do you hear of an ND getting voted into office?
NT's run this world and they are destroying it. Capitalism is an NT invention, along with most everything else that is destructive. It is sad.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if they try to blame it on us at some point though.

Some of the poorest countries need growth, not just equality. For countries with a low GPD per capita, if you equalised everyone's income, they would still be living in dire poverty.

For poorer countries, the economy is not a zero sum game. They still have a lot of growing to do.

Never. But is this type of discrimination exclusive to capitalist countries? Which non-capitalist country had an ND ruler?

I don't think that batteries last 10 to 20 years even when exposed to ideal conditions. Phones and tablet batteries struggle to make it past 5 years before considerable loss of performance even when kept at room temperature almost constantly.

Tesla are just being dishonest about 500k miles. 100k will probably send the car to the scrap yard.

I basically agree with this. A more productive approach might be to just debate specific economic abuses that occur in countries having "capitalist" systems rather than the philosophical merits of Capitalism or whatever system one proposes as a replacement.

Neoliberalism isn't a word with one definition. It has at least three:

1) a liberal philosophy emerging in the 1930s which advocated for a move away from the classic liberalism that generally opposed the welfare state;

2) a 1970s/80s revival of classic liberalism aimed, focusing on the privatisation of state-owned industries, deregulation, and tax cuts;

3) "anything I don't like" <- this is the most common definition

Neoconservatism is a less contested word. It refers to a movement that was originally the result of former Democrats who supported the Civil Rights Movement becoming disillusioned by the 1960s counterculture and particularly its embrace of Marxism and pacifism. Since then, neoconservatism has been associated with a combination of conservative social views, a fairly relaxed attitude towards government spending, and especially an aggressive unilateral pursuit (rather than diplomatic multilateral promotion) of democracy in US foreign policy.

Both neoliberalism and neoconservatism are currently at a very low ebb in the US, where the dominant ideologies are social democracy (among the Democrats) and unhinged populism (among the Republicans). Now you could say that the Democratic Party generally resembles the first definition of neoliberalism, but the Republican Party certainly doesn't. The second definition, however, doesn't fit either - neither has any serious interest in reducing the deficit or privatisation or expanding free trade, and while the Republican Party managed to quietly do a lot of deregulation during Trump's term, these days it's perfectly willing to use regulation to go after its perceived "enemies".

As for neoconservatism, that's doing even worse. Both parties are increasingly isolationist, there is no serious interest in "nation building" any more, and the Republicans have lost their intellectual streak in favour of fundamentally unserious people who don't care about democracy and human rights. The Democratic Party has some attraction for some neocons because they're at least trying to govern and defend US democracy, but it's also a socially liberal party that seems to put neocons off - as far as I can tell, most are holding their nose and voting red in the hope that they'll like the Republican appointees to the federal courts.

Joe Biden is frequently described as either Neoconservative, Neoliberal, or both. Not as a compliment.

"Neoliberal" has nothing to do with "liberalism" as the word is used in the US.

Both neoliberalism and neoconservatism are "conservative".

The "liberal" part of the term "neoliberal" refers to "classic liberalism" or "laissez Faire liberalism" of the 19th century...the belief in "letting the free market do its thing", and non interference.

American "Liberals" favor letting the govt occasionally step in to...do a few things for people that the free market cant do.

Yeah this is why Americans on the left use both those epithets to attack Biden. On the Right, assuming the speaker gives Biden credit for being fully functional (rather than impaired by dementia) they will simply say he's either a Communist or a common criminal.

Yes...Biden is a woke Marxist, and a neocon neoliberal. Not to mention head of a crime family!

Forgot to add that the two main parties in the UK are "Labor and Conservative" ...the equivalent in Australia are "Labor and Liberal" because apparently the Australians retain the 19th Century definition of "Liberal" to mean ...basically "conservative". So it really just like Britain. Or thats my understanding (everything I know about Aussie politics I got from watching the movie "Don's Party" back in the Seventies).