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Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

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Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#131

Post by thinkingemote »

danharaj wrote: post #76
golf3 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occupy Wallstreet did happen but it was torpedoed by identity politics, the establishment only permits fervent discussion about gender and skin color.

Occuy Wallstreet was violently uprooted by police action. Your statement is ignorant and in poor taste.

occupy turned into a protest about the right to protest (classic strategy to stop any protest and derail message) and thus was able to be destroyed from outside but it also changed within due to Identity politics which lost many original supporters...however idpol didn't destroy it nor was the movement somehow more acceptable to the authorities when it changed.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#132

Post by jumbopapa »

standardUser wrote: post #114
_ylmx wrote: post #55

I can't understand what people actually have against capitalism. Most of the times when I hear about the problems of my generation much of it comes down to personal choice. You don't have to go to an expensive college, you don't have to live in the "it" part of town, and you don't have to use your credit card. I've heard so many people complain about the injustices of the world, but at the same time they pay twice as…

Part of understanding the debate is realizing that virtually no one wants to abandon capitalism. Just like virtually no one wants an actual communist economic system. When people say they are against capitalism, most of the time they are criticizing the particular implementation. All economies (aside from a few tiny exceptions) are "mixed" economies. Outside of genuinely radical circles, most debates focus on changin…

Yes, but that doesn't change my point. They identify an inefficiency and ask the government to "fix" it, but in reality they were the inefficiency themselves. They didn't use their dollars, time, and/or knowledge to reach optimum productivity.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#133

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

Will_Parker wrote: post #94
golf3 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occupy Wallstreet did happen but it was torpedoed by identity politics, the establishment only permits fervent discussion about gender and skin color.

> the establishment only permits fervent discussion about gender and skin color. Do they? Try making a case that we don't need more than two sets of gendered pronouns in your tech job.

Are you saying tech isn’t establishment? IDK about percentages, but it’s definitely not the 90s anymore.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#134

Post by thehappypm »

corporateslave5 wrote: post #6

[flagged]

You are wrong that most young people are for "unfettered immigration", but you are correct that most young liberals are in favor of having the borders be more open than they are now. What I find paradoxical is that many of the near-and-dear issues to young liberals -- housing prices, rents, public transit, homelessness, health care -- are exacerbated by an increased population.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#135

Post by jakelazaroff »

MildlySerious wrote: post #100

This whole "capitalism bad" debate feels incredibly black and white. I think what most people are really against is the one way street that capitalism established. It's a broken system, and it wouldn't matter if we had any other system as long as it would still be broken and abused. On a global level, there are tax loopholes that allow multi billion corporations and individuals to pay essentially no taxes. This money…

Is it not just as black and white as the whole "socialism/communism is bad" stuff we're fed? People act like Medicare For All would be catastrophically expensive, when even our arguably closest allies in the UK — not exactly a socialist haven! — have the NHS, which seems to work out great. They pretend the Green New Deal would mark the end times for the US, as if the last New Deal's massive investment in infrastructure didn't help revitalize the economy.

But yes, I agree — the idea that best thing to do is dogmatically implement one particular economic system is absurd.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#136

Post by isoskeles »

KirinDave wrote: post #86
isoskeles wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t want Stalinism, but you do want to limit the speech of people who disagree with what you want? Or you just wish and fantasize for it?

> You don’t want Stalinism, but you do want to limit the speech of people who disagree with what you want? Asking for substantive debate free of tragic reactionary propaganda is not "limiting the speech" of people who disagree, it's asking for an intellectually honest forum for a discussion. You're complaining because folks are tired of having important conversations hijacked with slippery slope falacies and the repe…

I wouldn't call the actual experience of a regular person who lived under the rule of the USSR to be any sort of propaganda. But I suppose that's just another way of saying you would like to invalidate anything said by people you don't agree with.

Not that the comment in question was particularly substantive. There is certainly a debate to be had there, but it's already been done a million times over on the internet, so I don't care.

But it is very interesting to read a comment like yours. Not for any reason other than to see the pure rage, saying literally nothing "intellectually honest" about the subject, but rather comparing people you disagree with to conspiracy theorists who believe in aliens.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#137

Post by poidos »

_ylmx wrote: post #55

I can't understand what people actually have against capitalism. Most of the times when I hear about the problems of my generation much of it comes down to personal choice. You don't have to go to an expensive college, you don't have to live in the "it" part of town, and you don't have to use your credit card. I've heard so many people complain about the injustices of the world, but at the same time they pay twice as…

This opinion leaves out many of the parts of living in modern society that go beyond what we can choose. Just as a quick example, in the US, you don't choose to get sick and fall into medical debt -- but capitalism underpins the health system that induces that medical debt (which is a major contributor to poverty [0].)

It seems like you may be confusing the situation of the people in your immediate circle with the larger, systemic problems that are directly related to the accumulation/hoarding of wealth.

To your last point -- the majority of people are not able to simply "make better choices." No one chooses to be born into poverty. No one chooses to lose their job. No one chooses to be ill. It is exceedingly harder, year after year, for working-class people to even have the ability to improve their lives meaningfully.

[0]: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/09/12/medicare-for...

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#138

Post by bigYahnz »

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #53
douglaswlance wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if instead of people protesting against income inequality, they protested against value contribution inequality...

What do you say to people who are protesting against income inequality because they benefit from it and know how unfair the whole thing is? Say I received a million $ from my father (that's income inequality, isn't it?) and now I'm saving all my work income because I can live on my capital gains from "gifts" and watch all my friends work harder and harder to try and earn few extra cents while I'm getting richer doing…

Sounds like a good way to burn through a million dollars.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#139

Post by gen220 »

Maybe I’m naïve, but to me the word “capitalism” is not an “economic policy” that can be changed through deliberate action, but rather a framework of analysis that makes predictions on supply, demand, and pricing in markets that are varying levels of free.

I’m confused when people in my generational cohort say things like “capitalism is unfair” or “capitalism sucks”, in reference to the system of government and benefits we have currently. Every economy has had forces that were usefully explainable with capitalism, even the soviet economy in the 80s. Markets abound, and capitalism is a powerful explanatory tool, so to me “let’s end capitalism” sounds a bit like “let’s end gravity”.

For somebody more in the know, this can’t be what people are meaning, right? Are they just trying to bargain for a “better“ social contract with fewer free markets? Any idea why they associate this with “ending capitalism”?

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#140

Post by jahaja »

isoskeles wrote: post #124
jahaja wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? How did you even manage to reach such a pathetic conclusion?

I asked. I'm open to the possibility that you were just making a snide comment about how you don't want to hear from these people at all. What kinds of comments would you expect in return?

That was the first sentence of my reply. The latter part clearly questions the relevance of the parent comment.
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