The Impending Death of Modern Capitalism

Well .... for starters, humans will still need a decision making hierarchy. I'm not an anarchist ...... we need some type of structure for making decisions.

The new hierarchy will not orbit around how much money someone has. So money will be removed from the electoral process.

The #1 priority of humanity in ensuring a stable supply of food, water and shelter. and an environment free of deadly toxins.

Every citizen in the United States will be provided the basics of food, water, shelter, medical care, transportation, computer, high speed internet, telephone and education at no change. Health care will include functional necessities like eyeglasses, dental care and hearing aids.

The mission of society will be to eliminate unnecessary and destructive environmental toxins.

That's means recreational aviation will be severely curtailed. Plastic packaging will be eliminated where possible. We will invest in local fresh food manufacture so that people can go to a neighborhood market on a regular basis for fresh food. Junk food in plastic packaging will be severely curtailed. Citizens will be required to pay a substantial deposit for durable reusable containers for takeout orders and return them to a cleaning center to get their deposit refunded. No more single use plastics especially at supermarkets.

Investments will be made in local communities to ensure that the community has parks, arts and recreation to bind the community together. Each community will elect a local government to ensure that environmental steps are taken to regenerate our natural environment. We need people to become beekeepers and grow the kind of plant life which provides a habitat for them. We need tom teach people how to garden and grow food and their should be community specialists to facilitate this. We need to plant trees. We would benefit from community dining facilities for economies of scale.

Not everyone needs their own vehicle which sits idly for 23 hours a day. We can shrink our vehicle footprint by creating community fleets with uber like drivers. People will be able to use cars for extended vacations upon reservation. Supermarket deliveries will be structured so that 1-2x / week staples will be delivered in a fashion similar to an Amazon delivery.

People will have lots of different types of jobs to choose from. Education, medical care, scientific research, horticulture, agrculture, food preparation, arts, child care, food police and fire fighters, etc. All incarcerated individuals will be given jobs to do in order to rehabilitate them.

Real estate will no longer be privately owned. Due to energy excess, no more large single family homes will be built. There won't be any need for gated communities because there won't be anything to steal.

I would not completely end the positive reinforcement aspects of capitalism. There will be rewards for people who do the jobs which require many years of sacrifice in the way of education or do the jobs which are necessary but most people don't wish to do. Those rewards might be nicer housing with a view or credits to go snow skiing or an oceanfront vacation.

Political interviews of elected officials will no longer be conducted by millionaire anchors who have an oath to the profitability of their employers.

Meat and dairy will be rationed (as they were during WW2).

There's obviously a lot more ... but you get the gist for starters.

i mean it's a matter of time before they have to devalue the dollar right??

the govt being cut down to size , which was the biggest spender to make the economy going and if they just stop printing dollars..

gonna be interesting for sure

To bang the drum yet again. Democratic capatialism as we know it is dying

It relies on the value of peoples labour being exchangable for wealth. As that is evaporating it's game over.

Started some time ago and accelerating fast. Even I might outlive it. I wish some form of democratic socialism was guranteed to replace it but authoratianism seems far more likely. Anarchy is also possible.

tick tock

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

You precious baby.

You're just SO UNLUCKY that only conservatives get banned for speaking their truth. I've never been banned. Victor neither. Only you and the other crypto-libertarian/fascists.

I think the ideas you're asking about have already been discussed (not necessarily ITT, but in general).

- Raising minimum wage to a so-called "living wage"
- Universal health care
- Universal childcare
- Instituting mass transit where possible

Among many other pretty standard ideas. Raise the standards of living of the poor, and NOT ONLY do they live more fully enriched lives, but they ALSO typically become better and happier workers, which in turn improves the health of our economy.

This may or may not be your "shitshow of chronic partisan horseshit for the 100th time", I don't know your politics well enough, but I view what I wrote above as the basic outlines of how a humanistic and proactive government would operate.

Things are going to bust loose at some point imo. I just don't see western civ people to continue sitting quietly while qol continues to erode while the leaders/ultra-wealthy try to escape to/run the world from their little freedom enclaves. Things will go madmax in there somewhere 😀

I think that there needs to be a discussion on how rhe US/world decides to operate under the umbrella of a fragile climate.

Whether we want it or not, AI is going to dramatically change how labor works in this country, as well as the improtance of govt services, all while attempting to lower our collective footprint in the process. It would be nice for example, ilthat when AI replaces some human work, that qe could tax that additional revenue and use that money to both supplement the income of those who lost their job and increase the govt services, but we dont know its going to work, other than it xould work in theory.

The things you mentioned seem like perfectly reasonable requests, but also mentioned that youd prefer that amazon seizes to exists - which id argue wouldnt be very compatible at accomplishing some of thosr particular requests considering their role at potentially and effectively transporting goods around the world in a machine operated world - but i could be wrong about that so change my mind.

Bert a while back, which i guess could be either of you guys, adgocated for much lower prices combined with higher paying wages, and when he was counted with some basic supply and demand arguments, he stormed off into an anti west, holodomor denier rather quickly. There have been many other threads like that and those people are free to make their points here. I could argue that there is some iron fist authoritian tells in the OP and if I am wrong about that rhen i will directly applogize to him for that but i guess id prefer for the coversation to start at the finish line of the politcal angle and work for solutions from there - which is why i keep asking for them.

First, go up to post #51 and you will see the solutions that you asked for. If you don't read the responses, then you won't see them.

Second ..... Mother Nature itself is the brutal "iron fist authoritarian" you speak of. The rules which govern our survival are embedded in nature.

We need leadership which governs from that perspective. If rich people insist on their privilege to add unlimited pollution to the shared environment, then the government must be led by people with the authority to deny them that privilege.

It's no different than a parent / child relationship. As a 5 year old, if you want to eat nothing but sugary snacks and stay up past midnight watching cartoon, then you need an "iron fist authoritarian" to ensure that you have a balanced diet and adequate sleep.

In reality, nature has two modes. Authoritarian or anarchy.

Today, with respect to protection of the environment we all share and are dependent upon .... we have anarchy. The number of people who have jurisdiction over the shared global atmosphere is ZERO.

So ... no need to apologize to me for incorrectly seeing me as an iron fist authoritarian. You might be better to thank me for a willingness to be that.

I did read post 51

... you started with promising food water and shelter while eliminating deadly toxins. Sounds great.

eliminate plastic toxins, locally grown food, no processed **** to save money at the cost of human lives and the environment to boost the bottom line - also good.

Elect a local leader to ensure that those steps take place - okay, well obviously that may not be possible in a society where we vote for what we want and the those folks may disagree with you.

Then you stated that everyone doesn't need their own vehicle. Are we banning private ownership of vehicles and only allowing community fleets? That seems like you might lose some votes if we are still operating in a democracy and I'd imagine that the overwhelming majority, myself included, would be against that. So is it straight to reeducation camps or what solution do you have from there? So how do you go about enforcing that if it doesn't get community approval?

...jobs, great!

No more homeownership... please explain how that is going to work in practice in 2025 in the United States?

...no more millionaire anchors and even rationing food, if needed, seem fine as well.

Some of those ideas seem perfectly reasonable and more importantly, possible under our current system, but they are absolutely blended in nicely with thoughts that involve "unquestioning obedience to a particular leader and subordination of individual freedoms" which absolutely straight fascism.

Let's begin with your definition of fascism as one in which individual freedoms are subordinate to ANYTHING and let's acknowledge that according to your definition nature itself is fascist.

According to your definition, Abraham Lincoln was a fascist because his work led to the loss of individual freedom to own other human beings.

America's institutional liberty has been perverted to include the individual liberty to add as much invisible pollution (carbon dioxide and microplastics to name a few) to the environment as we wish. Nature's fascist response is to kill us.

For those whose priority is for our species to survive, they will accept the subordination of individual liberties like private car ownership which has existed for 0.03% of human history. To the extent that you insist on defying nature, then you are basically inviting nature to steamroll us. It's like playing a game of chicken with a Prius against a fully load 18 wheeler whose steering is locked.

Nature is an absolute fascist bully. Does not negotiate. Has zero loyalty to humans.

I'm not fully sure about what I expected, but, "Exchanging Social Credits toward a nicer home or a beachfront vacation for doing society's dirty jobs" was not on my Nut Nut bingo card. Admittedly, that would've been a pretty big box.

No need for gated communities, "...because there will be nothing to steal" is absolutely on my crazy Envirowhacko bingo card, though. Dismantling the global economy does come with a supply side problem.

I thought he was just an old tree-hugger. This guy is in comic book villain territory.

My guy, you're going to have to cull the human herd by more than mother nature could ever hope to if you want to get enough people on board with going back to subsistence farming as the primary way of life.

Plus, on what planet have you automated enough of the workforce to provide everyone with, "free food, water, shelter, medical care, transportation, computer, high speed internet, telephone and education" but NOT automated all the jobs on your subsequent list of occupations people will be able to choose from? Also, food police? LOL! I can definitely see how you'd need to employ armed goons to control the meat and dairy supply in your scenario. You can pry the milk and steak from my cold, dead hands.

Reread it carefully ….

It’s like lets condemn a secular law that goes against religion because it would be discriminatory vs religious people , disregarding the fact that religions are discriminatory to begin with o0….

Well identifying that private car ownership has only existed for .03% of human history in order to make a case for the subordination of Indvidual liberties of people driving their vehicles is quite the take but lets role with it anyways ... at least we getting further down the road here.

Considering you seem to acknowledge that taking away peoples privately owned cars and homes would be a widely un popular proposition, how would go about, in practice, executing this without public approval?

Are we going to be extending our fleet service to accommodate everyone's current need for work, shopping and leisure or are we going back to a much earlier point in time? I assume Amazon and Tesla would working hard in this format but aren't they going away too?

depriving ownership of land houses and cars seem like returning to slavery under a kind of feudalism regime .

Maybe but standard of living is going to shoot up in just about all respects. People may just give up on demeacracy and pledge allegience to their new 'kings'. Those unhappy with it will have to suffer until things change again - could be a long time.

Formula71 talks of taxing AI/etc and most likely that will be done. But the owners will keep getting richer and democracy will collapse because people hate it and will increasingly desperately vote against it.

The alternative is for us all to be the owners. Later anotehr laternative if the tech is advanced enough might be for government itself to become irrelevent because our personal tech does everything. We might enter some viable anarchic utopia. Or we might be extinct.

It will be another **** show - but I specifically acknowledged that you personally made some points that I thought had merit.

Like I mentioned before, I have a serious issue particularly with both Amazon and Walmart and how they conduct business, but more importantly, how they suffocate their competition which in turn limits our options in many more ways than just shopping and work. Covid unfortunately accelerated that.

But they've got the super-efficient logistics, a massive supply chain with the tech to offer the lowest prices in relation to any other business model. The bottom 99% of folks have a huge need for something like Amazon and while we do need to tax them more and use that money as some form of UBI or really anything else than the statues quo, they offer a service that is in high effective.

My point is that finding successful ways to improve the standard of living of the bottom 99% is complicated and isn't solved with generic heart warming anti cap one liners.

But instead, we are arguing on reasons to forcefully take away everyone's personal vehicle.

The alternative is to stop enforcing IP laws (or rather, ditch them) that have no basis in actual reality and are a violation of actual freedom.

Which btw is what China just did with deepseek, proving how cheap it actually is to do AI if you remove insane regulation (yes, IP is insane regulation).

the alternative of socialist ownership of data centers and compute is that if you put the government of the Sahara in charge of the desert it runs out of sand pretty quickly.

government is obscenely, disastrously terrible at doing things. AND it get captured every single time anyway.

it would never be "us" owning it, it would be a self serving mandarin class that unlike the capitalists, you can't even control by shifting your consumption to the alternative.

it isn't if production grows rapidly , which is the assumption under most AI-takes-over-the-world scenarios.

It will be cheap, everything will be very cheap. That's why the sol will shoot up.

A few become kings.

I think you are playing a bit of demagogue here.

You very well understand that the case for subordination of individual liberties is based upon the well being and longevity as a whole as a result of those liberties being malignant to the well being and longevity of our species.

I am merely pointing out the 0.03% to identify that a social system which is constructed around an apex value of individual liberty (as opposed to species longevity) is a passing and unsustainable fad in the big scheme of things. In your selfish perspective of your own lifespan, that unsustainable privilege is the norm and zooming out to the malignancy of that privilege is probably beyond your emotional pay grade.

I absolutely understand that removing these liberties will be unpopular and historical precedent says that it won't happen voluntarily. It will be violent and ugly.

The slaveholders in the US South of 200 years weren't going to give up their right to own people voluntarily. It needed a war. The Russian czar didn't give up his power voluntarily. It needed a revolution. The French and British were not going to walk away from the terms at Versailles voluntarily. So we got a war and a Holocaust.

The young people who are inheriting the bag of **** our selfishness are going to be angry.

What would you say to them ? "I'm sorry, but my ego required that my name be on the title of the car I drive ? " Is that an essential element of your masculinity or something. Why is that such a dear concept to you ?

You aren't advocating for seat belt laws here. We are on the cusp of fully electric vehicles only, laws requiring new vehicles to be so, solar and wind energy, energy efficient heating and light and you want to unilaterally break down an astronomically large subset of the way we freely move and operate in a global sense on the behalf of your ideas while admitting it would become violent and angry.

Can I assume that we are at the part of the discussion where you'd acknowledge that society essentially needs to be burned down at this point considering that you agree that your ideas are highly unfavorable (whether right or wrong) and the change couldnt happen peacefully?

Once we burn the **** down? How do we accomplish your particular goals from that point in time?

At no point did I mention the return to subsistence farming or the abandonment of nitrogen fertilizers which require fossil fuels to produce. Food production will still largely be industrial in the near term unless we elect to let billions of people die all at once.

And I grasp that historical precedent involves removing malignant liberties upon the pain of death. Your clinging to your milk and steak is no different than the slaveholders clinging to the right to own other human beings. Your stance is identical to that of a historical slaveholder and your karma is equivalent.

Are you that obtuse that you don't know that we rationed meat and dairy during WW2 ? That this is already quite well precedented ?

Your forecast of your privilege needing to be pried from your cold dead hand is prescient. That's the way privilege like that has always been removed. People don't volunteer to give up their destructive habits.

Your statement that we need some miraculous automation breakthrough in order to feed everyone for "free" is nonsensical. We already have the power to feed everyone. We do it every day already.

We simply have to change the resource allocation method.

Instead of paying with cash, each citizen will be allotted credits to choose among the available item which will be sufficient for good nutrition. Fritos ? Pepsi ? Poison on the inside and poison on the outside in the form of the plastic packaging. Sorry .... gonna eliminate that.

Amazon's distribution network would be nationalized in the event of a national emergency. Every citizen would be registered and local community captains would be available to ensure that national directives are carried out at the local level.

Our lives would no longer be private and we would no longer be little Gods allowed to operate in world's which were disconnected from the well being of the world at large. We would effectively return to our community roots of our ancient ancestors who live and thrived in packs.

We would still have internet and arts and sports and universities with research and well equipped hospitals for everyone to benefit from. But we won't need stockbrokers, yacht salesmen , insurance executives. We'll need beekeepers and tree planters and FEMA workers. The coming generation will have the task of cleaning up the detritus from the Boomer orgy. Genetically engineering organisms that consume plastic.

Collapse will create a demand for responsible grownups. Not the current leadership which is effectively no more sophistication than a pack of high school students who want to be in the in group and be popular. The current leaders of the US are just grifters with no experience dealing with real difficulty.

Sorry to disappoint you .... but maybe you read up on US history during WW2 and understand that your perception of your privilege is an illusion. You aren't that brave to die for steak and milk. You'll accept it because everyone will. They did before and they'll do it again.

You're just in the denial and bargaining stage of grieving dude.