God I’m gonna get downvoted to hell for this aren’t i, but i still want to know. What system would we replace capitalism with once it’s gone? True communism doesn’t really seem achievable given how it’s turned into something else every time we’ve tried it. Socialism seems a bit more reasonable as we have societies already with socialist structures in place (albeit coexisting with capitalist structures). Are there any other systems I’m unaware of that we would plan on implementing?
We would need some plan, because if we were to put every business owner at the end of a rope it’d still leave something akin to a power vacuum. stuff would need to be created at that exact moment but the people hadn’t yet developed the structures to do so in the wake of the businesses who had done it before. A situation like that is just begging to reverse all of the work it took to get there. Capitalists and even probably feudalists would be itching to take up control over the means of production first chance they got. So what would we plan on implementing first, before they got the chance?
The ultimate end result looks a lot like Star Trek. A fully automated, post-scarcity, fully post-capitalist society.
The question is simply what the stepping stones are to getting there. The fact that you can’t just throw out what we have overnight is precisely the point I was making.
There’s no one right answer to the question, but a lot of very smart people have some very good ideas.
The easiest starting point is to look at what everyone most obviously needs. Some basic requirements can easily be laid out; everyone should have housing, sustenance, healthcare, education, and sufficient monetary resources to meet any other basic needs (including emotional and psychological wellbeing; ie, access to entertainment, the time and money to socialize, etc). These are the basic requirements of freeing humans from the yoke of capitalism, so we should endeavour to build a society where these needs, are met for everyone. A government is the most efficient system we have found for organizing resources at scale, so there’s no obvious reason not to continue to have one.
Mechanisms will be needed to prevent individuals maintaining control over capital, because we’ve learned that that very clearly doesn’t work. Nationalizing everything is one approach, but we can also look to strong (most likely mandatory) unions, or the use of worker owned co-ops (Mondragon in Spain is a fascinating example).
God I’m gonna get downvoted to hell for this aren’t i, but i still want to know. What system would we replace capitalism with once it’s gone? True communism doesn’t really seem achievable given how it’s turned into something else every time we’ve tried it. Socialism seems a bit more reasonable as we have societies already with socialist structures in place (albeit coexisting with capitalist structures). Are there any other systems I’m unaware of that we would plan on implementing?
We would need some plan, because if we were to put every business owner at the end of a rope it’d still leave something akin to a power vacuum. stuff would need to be created at that exact moment but the people hadn’t yet developed the structures to do so in the wake of the businesses who had done it before. A situation like that is just begging to reverse all of the work it took to get there. Capitalists and even probably feudalists would be itching to take up control over the means of production first chance they got. So what would we plan on implementing first, before they got the chance?
The ultimate end result looks a lot like Star Trek. A fully automated, post-scarcity, fully post-capitalist society.
The question is simply what the stepping stones are to getting there. The fact that you can’t just throw out what we have overnight is precisely the point I was making.
There’s no one right answer to the question, but a lot of very smart people have some very good ideas.
The easiest starting point is to look at what everyone most obviously needs. Some basic requirements can easily be laid out; everyone should have housing, sustenance, healthcare, education, and sufficient monetary resources to meet any other basic needs (including emotional and psychological wellbeing; ie, access to entertainment, the time and money to socialize, etc). These are the basic requirements of freeing humans from the yoke of capitalism, so we should endeavour to build a society where these needs, are met for everyone. A government is the most efficient system we have found for organizing resources at scale, so there’s no obvious reason not to continue to have one.
Mechanisms will be needed to prevent individuals maintaining control over capital, because we’ve learned that that very clearly doesn’t work. Nationalizing everything is one approach, but we can also look to strong (most likely mandatory) unions, or the use of worker owned co-ops (Mondragon in Spain is a fascinating example).
Simply talking about “communism vs socialism” is far too reductive. Post-capitalist economics is a vastly more complex field. It’s been over a century since Marx. I suggest checking out Unlearning Economics on YouTube (https://youtube.com/@unlearningeconomics9021?si=947khNPxgU7OppRQfor) some really good introductory material. If you want a more advanced introduction, McMaster University hosted an excellent lecture series (https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzLUWMt2NZLRmKY_kEiLc-hvOcyOlgE4N&si=4O-Z7tphB5BUcrYu)