doodcool612 t1_j7ex79c wrote
> “A land flowing with milk and honey—desalination and carbon-capture fed by the unlimited energy of Solar-Wind-Battery systems. Agriculture and supply-chain-infrastructure powered by end-to-end automation. Disease and disability mitigated by the confluence of gene-editing and robotics—the possibilities are endless, and the list goes on and on.
> “That itself, is what could be called Utopia; the coming world of our next century—and any and all who disagree are either deeply pessimistic or simply uninformed…
Capitalism isn’t going to give us a utopia. For one, capitalism only puts resources towards towards problems that can be monetized. For example, there is a huge incentive not to cure diabetes. Insulin is extremely cheap to produce and diabetics have no real choice but to buy. It’s not “stupid” or “uninformed” to suggest that utopia is not right around the capitalist bend or even just that there might be some slight tweaks that could get us there faster.
I think it really comes down to this Dionysian/Apollonian argument. The idea that anybody who suggests compassion is just some envious charlatan who is by definition weaker than some super competent ubermensch is just so full of assumptions. The causal reasoning as to how these resentful leaders with their forgiveness - barf! - and selflessness - yuck! - turn society into Swiss cheese deserves criticism.
bildramer t1_j7fdcwp wrote
Whose incentives? The capitalist solution to someone doing that (overcharging, not solving problems when it's cheap and cost-effective to solve them) is simple: undercut them. The only way to prevent that is if the FDA intervenes, which it does; in other countries insulin is like 50x cheaper.
doodcool612 t1_j7g9iv0 wrote
I’m not talking about insulin. There is sometimes an incentive under capitalism to shift research money towards developing band-aid products that can be sold repeatedly. The OP made an extremely broad claim that requires way more evidence than is available. For capitalism to literally solve scarcity, there can be exactly zero counter examples. If even a single problem is more profitable to band-aid than to fix, his whole starry-eyed prediction fails.
At some point, when we ignore things like barriers to entry and imperfect competition, we stop talking about reality and start wishing. I can’t build a pharmaceutical lab in my garage. That’s just not how capitalism works. Even with zero regulation, we’d still have barriers to entry that create imperfect competition. Is it possible that regulations are one of many complex factors causing the insulin market to be semi-monopolistic? Sure. But even if the incentives were perfect, there is a wealth of literature in behavioral economics that suggests incentives are not destiny. This is a classic problem where creating a dedicated program whose priority can be long-term public good and not short-term profit can boost a weakness in our current system.
Perplexed_Radish OP t1_j7hegzi wrote
https://themodernexistentialist.substack.com/p/slavery-oppression-and-the-economy?s=w
> Agency is required for Work to be done. When Work is done, it creates Value—because Value is, in itself, an expression of Agency; a piece of Lifespan which has been used and consumed in order to create something that’s considered valuable. In other words: > > Agency is Value… because it is Valued, because it can be transformed into Labor—into: > > Work which has been done. > > Thus, Agency itself—one’s effort and one’s time—is quite literally what we’d call… Human Capital. > > Value is created when Agency is expended. And so, we—human beings—trade our Labor and our Lifetimes in order to create or obtain Resources: the things which we need to survive. > > In this way, Agency is converted into Capital, and is thus stored as things-of-Value—as things which are judged as Valuable by a collective human Subjectivity. After all, it took someone else’s Labor—the investment and expenditure of their human Lifeforce—in order to create or obtain them.
Sure, I would agree that it’s true that capitalism prioritizes dedication of Agency toward problems which are capable of generating the most Value.
While it’s true that diabetics (or any individual or group for that matter) can face exploitation in the Darwinism of a capitalistic system, it is also equally true that in a socialist system any Value which is created must still be made through Labor—and where does the Labor which will fund this Value come from? Or rather, perhaps more appropriately: from whom will we take the necessary Agency with which we’ll then subsidize this new distribution of Value?
If you succeed in securing Capital to fund your social policy, then you get Western Europe; if you fail, then you get Venezuela. But then, let me ask you this question: How has Europe sourced the Capital which funds its progressive social policy?
Do you think that the most expedient method for achieving stable socialist society is by immediately implementing total progressive social policy in the absence of sustainable resource generation? I’m interested to hear what you think a viable solution might be.
doodcool612 t1_j7hj4hb wrote
I think that’s a bad definition of value. Is child labor valuable? No. No amount of coal or whatever is ever going to make up for the horror of living in a society that could treat its children that way. Even in purely utilitarian terms, child labor is just not valuable. There’s an externality to cruelty that has to be factored in.
If capitalism funnels resources towards band-aids instead of cures (and I get that you might not buy that point yet), then it’s not “dedicating Agency towards problems that generate the most Value.” It is overwhelmingly more valuable for society if diabetes is cured. Imagine all the diabetics currently chained to their dead-end jobs because they can’t afford private insurance getting to start their own businesses and compete.
The problem I have with this argument overall is the extreme flattening of everything into binaries. If you get the capital, you’re Europe. Otherwise, you’re Venezuela. It just doesn’t fit with how these achievements actually get done. Like somebody had to pay for government-subsidized education. And we are ALL richer for it. Every single one of us is better off for having a better informed electorate. Competition is better now that the poor have the education to compete with the rich. There are amazing benefits to public health when everybody has to take chemistry or biology or whatever.
Did we have to SOLVE SCARCITY to outlaw child labor or get public education? No, this “we’ll get around to it later when capitalism fixes everything” rhetoric is just too convenient. It fails to interrogate whether capitalism is actually fixing those things and overlooks the grey areas in between where we can make marginal progress.
SingleUseJetki t1_j9qfd0c wrote
Western sanctions and coup attempts didn't exactly help Venezuela either.
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