Ugh, Capitalism
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Ugh, Capitalism
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Re: Ugh, Capitalism
#2>Not all complaints about society are ridiculous, of course. But this particular one always was. The person spouting it was always a disaffected loser.
I found the article reasonable as a whole, but this line stuck out at me. 'Losers' are just people who aren't doing very well out of the current social and economic system. Of course they are more likely to complain about society than winners! Discounting critiques of society than come from losers is a little bit like discounting movie reviews from people who didn't like the movie. Or to put it another way, it's like feudal lords discounting critiques of Feudalism because they always seem to come from gross stinky peasants.
Re: Ugh, Capitalism
#3It has been said the opposite of communism is not capitalism but math.
Re: Ugh, Capitalism
#4Should lead with the comic, which is a good synopsis.
Re: Ugh, Capitalism
#5It has been said the opposite of communism is not capitalism but math.
By someone with a poor grasp of all three.
Re: Ugh, Capitalism
#6> Rare as they may be, some people actually are writing detailed critiques of capitalism as an economic system. Good for them, even if I think they tend to be wrong more often than right. I hope they keep going.
So even if a person has a well thought out argument against capitalism, Johnson dismisses their thought automatically.
Interesting.
Most of the article focuses on how the individual doesn’t understand capitalism and can’t define it.
Fair, that’s the average person though. The average person hasn’t had the academic training or study to articulate every aspect of the economic model.
What the average person does have is experience with capitalism. They might not know what alienation means, but they’ve experienced it.
They might not know exactly what it means for their boss to make a profit off their labor, but they know they’re the ones making the company money, while not seeing profit sharing.
It’s easy to be a commentator and say “the average person doesn’t know what they’re talking about”, when the average person is just trying to make ends meet. I don’t like how Johnson is “punching down” in that respect.
Re: Ugh, Capitalism
#7i find playing these semantic games (you dont actually mean capitalism! other nominally capitalist nations have fixed !) far more meaningless. everyone knows this is about the american economic system. you can mentally substitute in "corporatism" or whatever else you think is the real issue. the point of the complaints is the general malaise and economic dissatisfaction that forms today's zeitgeist; discuss that instead
Re: Ugh, Capitalism
#8> Rare as they may be, some people actually are writing detailed critiques of capitalism as an economic system. Good for them, even if I think they tend to be wrong more often than right. I hope they keep going. So even if a person has a well thought out argument against capitalism, Johnson dismisses their thought automatically. Interesting. Most of the article focuses on how the individual doesn’t understand capital…
it's a perfect encapsulation of the issues with the American "left." as if the issues people face and the complaints they have are invalid because they can't articulate them. and then they wonder why they alienate voters.
Re: Ugh, Capitalism
#9The old capitalism vs communism discussion again. I'm sure we'll get it sorted out this time.
In hope of sparking some new thoughts, I've just realised that this is one of the subjects where you don't get that "enlightened centrism" thing happening.
Presumably because there's a fairly well defined outcome where the rich get all their stuff taken off them. And so if you meet in the middle then you end up with some kind of modern social democracy, which your average enlightened centrist doesn't want.
Re: Ugh, Capitalism
#10The author and I experienced School of Rock very differently. Dewey Finn is a bit of a loser at the start, but he's still the coolest guy on screen. All his foils seem overly self-serious and/or very unhappy with their lives. We like Dewey, we don't like Ned (even though we relate to Ned).
The rant about Shamu and the ozone layer is just Meditations On Moloch[0] distilled into an emotional outburst. The thing is, he's right about those things. It is infuriating that we do bad things for money, and it's important to care enough to get mad about them and do stuff to effect change[1].
0. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/