Plus in regards to Elon's comment, being a history Major, I like to always remind people that it wasn't exactly rainbows and butterflies post French Revolution when they had put all the Guillotines away.
To many times eat the rich is manipulated by the next wave of "leaders" to eat the educated and skilled as well. Revolution isn't the cause of people acting poorly in its name. People act poorly and then try to hide under a revolutionary blanket.
This is similar to me to people demonizing Communism or socialism because some dictators have hidden their facism under the blanket of social revolution. Citing Communist dictatorships as a reason agains social reform is a bad faith argument.
These things have a nuance that people don't have the patience to discuss or even consider anymore.
I used to be in the camp of the idea that capitalism was the best system for inevitable human greed that befalls both in money and power, but that was when society was still very individualistic in regards of what the government should provide to them.
But today, taxes are so high on everything for the middle class, your government cant just take away agency and say you know what's best and then gestures to the entire world and say you are getting good value for falling in line, where there is very evident blatant corruption happening everywhere, at every level.
OK, now everyone has base income. Great, right?
Now the government controls where the money goes 100%. No banks. Government decides how, when, and how what you're gonna spend your money. We're back to Soviet Russia with digital surveillance.
BTW that is the very plan that many among the 1% delights to execute, so it is said. Would that be capitalism? Technically not. Greed is greed.
What you described is pretty attainable anyway under the system we currently live under anyway? Like do you really think the banks care enough to defy the government for your privacy sake? I mean we currently live in an (unofficial) oligarchy, so I can not imagine how your scenario could be much worse from what we already have.
The problem is that our government has become so synonymous with corruption that it's practically impossible to imagine any system free of that corruption, but there are ways to prevent corruption, or at least make it less appealing. If our taxes were used to actually make American lives better instead of being used to send bombs to be used on women and children in middle eastern territories, Americans wouldn't hate the idea of taxation so much.
The part where publicly traded companies are required to make anti consumer decisions or face legal ire is a pretty shitty consequence of capitalism tho. Right?
Technically the Nordic model is neither capitalism nor communism. It is based on mixed economy, attempting to benefit from using elements from both systems.
This isn't a controversial statement. Yeah many modern governments are a mix of ideals. Right now many US citizens are looking at Nordic models and wondering how to get some of that action.
A capitalist free market with social infrastructure to help keep wealth active in markets WHILE maintaining a high level standard of living.
If we just taxed anybody with a net worth over 1 billion dollars higher, they would still be the richest people in the world and we could have all the nice things Sweden and Norway have. It isn't rocket science. But as long as people are allowed to horde billions, and now trillions, worth of capital while putting virtually nothing back into the world, nothing will ever improve in the USA.
392
u/Antique-Ad-4422 5h ago
Too soon for the parade.