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Is It Time to Talk About Post-Capitalism in America?

forwardblog.substack.com

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Re: Is It Time to Talk About Post-Capitalism in America?

#6
"Millennials are the most informed..."

Millennials have least overlap with a living example of Communism. A turning point in Orwell's life came when he visited USSR. There's no USSR for a millennial to visit and validate his/her theories, College campus politics doesn't challenge them enough.

Re: Is It Time to Talk About Post-Capitalism in America?

#7
post #6

"Millennials are the most informed..." Millennials have least overlap with a living example of Communism. A turning point in Orwell's life came when he visited USSR. There's no USSR for a millennial to visit and validate his/her theories, College campus politics doesn't challenge them enough.

Orwell was opposed to the USSR when he realized their imperialism, not when he realized that socialism was a bad idea.

In any case, there are living examples of socialism right now. They are small in scale, but seem to be better than capitalism. Millennial socialism is also much closer to the socialism of George Orwell in any case, because it is much more libertarian than that of the 1900s.

Re: Is It Time to Talk About Post-Capitalism in America?

#8
What about this alternative:

Capitalism where you can't amass more personal wealth than $100M.

The only reason I would think you would need more money than that is if you wanted to push ideas that the population would not vote for.

I have much more faith in people closer to issues solving them with more good faith and efficiency than unelected billionaires being effectively philanthropic.

I would rather see more rich people relaxing with their wealth than trying to outmaneuver every last civil liberty we have for an extra dollar. Even better if they use their wealth to make their local community better. That way, there are actual human interactions between those making suggestions and voters.

Makes a good environment for natural competition as well.

Would we have a worse quality of life because of this? Important question, but my gut says no.

I'm all for civil liberties, but uber rich people can get away with weird things because they can ignore all the "no's" and essentially bribe decision makers.

Re: Is It Time to Talk About Post-Capitalism in America?

#9
post #6

"Millennials are the most informed..." Millennials have least overlap with a living example of Communism. A turning point in Orwell's life came when he visited USSR. There's no USSR for a millennial to visit and validate his/her theories, College campus politics doesn't challenge them enough.

You've got 1.4 billion living examples on the other side of the ocean.

Re: Is It Time to Talk About Post-Capitalism in America?

#10
post #5

Capitalism seems like it could do an OK job if we priced in more externalities like resource extraction (e.g. fee for taking oil out of the ground) and pollution.

That would not fix the issues of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, exploitation, and so on. But it would be an improvement.
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