Do You Have the Same Politics or Religion You Grew Up With?

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capitalism doesn't act like hitler or stalin or pol pot, massacring in strikes, but kills piecemeal, decimating legions who lack the capitalist genes.

What are "the capitalist genes"?

I agree there is a lot of disfunction in USA but I wonder what alternatives you believe would make it better.

the northern European or Scandinavian 3rd way would suit me better, they don't marginalize what we amuuuricans dismissively deem "unproductive" people there. simultaneously, they don't create so many "unproductive" people in the first place, they much more efficiently use their human capital to its fullest extent, whereas in amuuurica we're the ultimate disposable society, we throw away all too many of our own citizens with nary a thought. too many here refuse to even consider investing in our own social capital, preferring to take the short-term route of cherry-picking rather than better fertilizing the ground to make more cherries, so to speak. the best that can be said of anybody who denies this reality, is that they simply don't care to ponder it. i mean, think about it just for a moment- while we've long been the leaders in incarcerating our own people at an accelerating pace, in at least one European nation they are actually closing down some prisons and jails because their culture doesn't create so many criminals. as more than one pol here has said, either we're the most evil people on earth, or we are doing something terribly wrong. capitalists here could do something to ameliorate this, but they choose to go in the opposite direction, tightening the screws on the lower classes like something not seen since the gilded age.

I agree some heritage of socialism here is actually not bad - like state-funded education and health care that is only supplemented by private activity. Not perfect but I believe better than putting people in debts.
Or social philosophy that does not segregate people by income.

BTW, I love listening to "Coast to Coast" when I can. I started to listen in early 1995 when Art Bell hosted it. George Noory and even Ian Punnett are good hosts, but Art Bell was the best. It's a shame Art passed away last year.

Between the two, I would choose capitalism, at least I have more of a chance to try to get what I want in life. Socialism/Communism, not too much. I do believe the "best" humanly way is the "Peter Principle" libertarian system where one rises as far as his/her ability, training, etc., can take them until they reach their point of incompetence and they pretty much stay there. Of course, it depends on the abilities and skills one has, I'm very good at computers and electronics but suck as a carpenter for example. The problem with capitalism is, the pure form of it, there are people who do get left behind, sometimes be fault of their own but many times, it is not, just bum luck or whatever factors there are. I was listening to Glenn Beck and he pretty much called the Scandinavian model capitalist but with a bigger welfare state. We are one too but not as extensive as they are. In Scandinavia, they have very little business regulation, so companies can grow, but the taxes are higher naturally. If you are going to provide healthcare for everyone, it has to be that way. Also, their population is like 6 to 8 million people, it is easier to do that in that circumstance than it is for 330 million. Also, if you have such a system, you need to control immigration more, you cannot hand out goodies to everyone who comes in legal or illegally.

Here in the U.S., I do understand like the health issue, we need some system which is better than the Medicaid/Medicare we have now. I understand where Bernie Sanders wants to open Medicare to all who do not have private insurance. Maybe it is a good idea, I do not know, but you could break the bank too and everyone will be worse off. I liked John McCain's idea of handing out vouchers of $5000 each year for each person to use to buy healthcare on their own. Maybe that is a good compromise. Then again, I don't know, I do see where we do need some sort of system where people should not be afraid to see a doctor or hospital without breaking their banks or losing their homes, etc.

I'm a libertarian but I do see the need that we do have for a welfare system as a safety net.

Also, in a capitalist society, things can change on a dime too where the skills you learned and went to college/school for might be obsolete or you could be in a field that is oversaturated. You have too many people in computers and business administration plus on the other side of obsolete skills, you do not need as may telephone operators and so on. With AI and automation, who know, unless we blow ourselves up first, it could put more people out of work and then you would need some sort of Universal Basic Income. The political and ideological side of e does not like the idea, but the other side of me, the realistic, necessity says that we might have to do that as a society.

There is a lot of luck too. I bring up Bill Gates for example. IIRC, his mother was a higher up in the City of Seattle government and that did give him access to the time-share mainframe to practice on as a child/teenager. Back in the late 1960's and early 1970's, you had to do that to get computer time. What if, his mother was a housewife or worked at a job that did not give him access to the computer? What if he was born Black in the Southside of Chicago in the projects? What if he was born in Vietnam, the USSR or North Korea? What if he was born in 1945 or 1965 instead of 1955? We most likely might have never heard of him and he would be poor or m maybe middle class at best. Well, in that case, maybe Gary Kildall and CP/M would have taken off and we be using some form of CP/M, maybe with a graphical interface (the graphical interface idea we all use was first made by Xerox in the late 1960's although you had hints of it in the U.S. Air Forces SAGE system in the late 1950's) So many butterflies and changes.

Shall we go through the history of capitalism? How about 5 centuries of European and American imperialism and the genocides that caused throughout the Western hemisphere and beyond (for example in your country)? How about the global history of slavery and the tens of millions people forced against their will across the Atlantic (most of them to Brazil), the millions who died en route and the lives as human property and all the tortures they endured for lifetimes and generations across the Americas? How about the million plus the British killed in inducing a famine in Bengal in the 1940s (to take one example from South Asia), something Churchill thought was worth it b/c he viewed Bengalis as dogs or something else sub-human? How about the Opium Wars in China? Or the Nazis and Italian fascists (both of which were quite capitalist in their aims, economic program, structure of their economies and support they got from the UK, US and other western countries for years before Germany invaded France)? How about the costs of China's transition to capitalism since Deng Xiaoping and the millions of lives its wrecked in its ceaseless pursuit of growth? How about the costs of neocolonialism on Africa, Latin America, the genocide of real or suspected communists in Indonesia, the US bombing the hell out of Korea and Indochina, or the Iraqi, Libyan, Yemeni or Syrian wars of this century pursued by the capitalist military industrial complexes of the US, UK, France and others allied w/Israel, the Gulf monarchies, etc.

I really could go on all day about this and it dwarfs any numbers you can come up with from the USSR, PRC, Cambodia or wherever. And it's STILL on going around the world. Capitalism is what's wrecking the world now and socialism and ultimately communism is the only way out of it, if nothing else b/c only ditching capitalism can stop climate change. You can't sustain the capitalist mode of production that dominates the world today and expect to have a habitable planet by the end of this century. It's not possible and anyone who tells you otherwise is misleading you, lying or ignorant. That's why I'm a communist and at least in this country the generations after mine have a large percentage (if not a majority) that are quite interested in living in a socialist society b/c they're sick and tired of what capitalism has given them. This dystopia that's forced them into an impossible precarious economy, obscene, rising and unsustainable levels of inequality and poverty and a planet that their kids, if not they themselves, will no longer be able to live in in the not too distant future.

My only nitpick w/your post is, as I said in my last post, Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese during WWII were all very capitalist in everything they believed and did. And the former two got lots of support from the US, UK and others for years at least before the 1940s. FDR, for example, also turned away 10,000s (maybe more) Jews fleeing Germany and seeking refugee status in the States and the bulk of those people were then massacred in the Holocaust. Capitalism has centuries of blood on its hands, far more than any other type of economic and political system the world's ever seen.

your country seems more civilized than my country. and i forgot to answer your question about financial talents. a fortunate minority in the world has the social talent of entreprenurialism, it's a social talent above all, to be able to make money off of persuading others to give you their money. this cannot be taught any better than teaching a tone-deaf person to play the piano.

Maybe because it had to be rebuilt from scratch in 1920s and then reorganized several times. USA was extremely modern in 1776 when European politics still relied on dynastic monarchies and aristocracy. But after the Civil War the US seems to have been pretty stable compared to the rest of the world.
Hard to tell, I'm under an impression of living in a totally different reality. Of course some people have a talent for making big money and most lack it - but people around me live quite valuable lives employing their other talents to make ends meet. Maybe it's about less income-fixated society. You don't need to be rich to be respected.

Last edited by magz on 13 May 2019, 2:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

in amuuurica, if one fails to make money, one is literally considered disposable worthless trash. that is the long and short of it. everything revolves around money and making money here in the land of the wage slave, home of the unfree.

No.

"Disposable worthless trash". Nice.
Yes, I think Scandinavian social philosophy here asks a question: can we make this "trash" a valuable contributor to the society? Human recycling
I haven't been to Sweden or Norway to see it with my own eyes, I only talked to people from there. They complained on stiffening the social stratification, too - defined not by money but by social, cultural and educational background.

over here, instead of extracting utility from the jaws of futility - recycling as it were - we just dispose of less than perfect human beings like yesterday's refuse. at most we make only token, patchwork tries at true rehabilitation. we're the most wasteful society on the earth. it's gonna bite us in the tuchas before we're even aware of what's going on.

I think I'll stay in Oz.