feanoreldar
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Jul 29, 2024 8:26 AM
feanoreldar
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uzetaab
It's not really capitalism's fault. The people in power are who to blame. No system works because you have to be ruthless to get to a position of power. And ruthless people are, well, ruthless.
StarmineRendezvous
billy3890
Luxury clothing brands literally burn their clothes to maintain scarcity and to maintain their high price tags. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/17/17852294/fashion-brands-burning-merchandise-burberry-nike-h-and-m
IMakeLotsOfReferencesAndRemakes
Not just luxury. Plenty of fast fashion brands too throw out about 90% of the clothing they make. Landfills full of new clothing that we wasted energy and time making.
HorseonaBike
inferno34
Grow, hunt and raise as much food as you can. Also not all meals need to be 5 star
LittleAzie
Sorry, but this isn't really helpful for most of the problem, and is a symptom where it shifts the blame onto the individual. It is estimated that we produce enough to feed 1.5 times the world population, but because of the system a lot of that food goes wasted because it doesn't get bought.
Thornaxe
Capitalism is fire. Pretty good way to heat your house, but only if you have robust safeguards (eg a stone fireplace). Absent those safeguards, it’ll burn the whole thing down.
prosper020
NGL, my first thought was “bro, capitalism is not fire! It actually kinda sucks!” Then I read on and realized it was a metaphor. A good metaphor.
Thornaxe
Out of control fire very much sucks. And I think that’s where we’re at currently.
NayaTaylor
Check out the dumpster outside staples, Best Buy, any large electronic establishments
IMakeLotsOfReferencesAndRemakes
That is a quick way to get arrested though.
RAB806
rokucitymayor
And when people begin to starve, it becomes more profitable
doomedtogrow
This is a fave not just on the 29th
demosteness
Is this drawing from Chris Ware?
ericfoxx
Eat the capitalists instead!
trumpypumpyinyourrumpy
Life hack. Dont eat
somewhatparanoidpanda
That’s a very literal “life” hack
kahooki
Speedruning life with just one simple glitch!
Littledirtybirdyfeet
This isn't capitalism or all of prior human history prior to capitalism, wouldn't have had people starving to death
Littledirtybirdyfeet
To be clear, the woes have always been due to political instability and the haves seeking to control and gain more. Doesn't matter what economic system is in place, politics will fuck it up.
cepacolusmaximus
greedy rat bastards* will fuck it up by placing themselves at the top of any hierarchy and subjugating those below them.
Being able to tell them to fuck off without murdering them is pretty much the whole idea behind democracy.
alaest0r
Politics is unavoidable and necessary. Psychopaths craving authoritarian powers while normalizing insane and dangerous rhetoric is the issue with it.
gesel
Exactly. Capitalism, more generally free markets, are simply a semi automatic method of optimally allocating resources, a task far too complex for deliberative decision making which is why large deliberative economies have always failed. And while there are glaring failures in free markets that fundamentally require robust deliberative regulatory patches, it has worked flabergastingly well. Humanity flourishes under free trade and collapses when trade contracts.
mbus
That's very "econ 101" sure, but what about e.g. free trade allowing companies to find countries with the loosest labor standards and worst quality of life and hiring barely-better-than slave labor (if you're lucky!) so they can sell products cheaply in wealthy Western nations. Look at iPhones and Foxconn. What about rent seeking? Pollution? The externalities of free market capitalism are existential threats to human flourishing. It just took us a while to reach that scale.
farfie
There's also a vested interest in both government and business to keep those places cheap and politically unstable with regards to workers unionizing. So helping workers with their endeavours is important.
Littledirtybirdyfeet
Corrupt* government catering to corporate interests, which doesn't refute what the other person was saying that capitalism needs some fetters.
farfie
I was adding to their point, not trying to counter it. Capitalism absolutely needs fetters. But food production is abundant to the point that the EU, because of subsidies, exports sugar and condensed milk to African countries where we manage to undercut their local production. It fucks up their markets and makes them dependent on us rather than independent. There's no point for them to produce milk if they can't sell it. I hope we can at some point abolish capitalism, but I don't believe it.
RedClaws23
You have a point but have made it ineffectively. We have only advanced technologically into a post-scarcity world after the rise of capitalism, which is what the post discusses.
Scarcity did lead to other systems of oppression and extortion before capitalism, yes. Which is a valid point. It is, however, not relevant to the discussion of a post-scarcity world in which it is feasible to produce clean water, healthy food, sustainable power, and housing for every person on the planet.
zombiejedediah
We're post-scarcity mainly because of science.
That industrial manufacturing has happen & enabled transnational capitalism to become more powerful than nation states is because we've let it.
But the foundation of that rise is also science.
RedClaws23
Again, you've made a point but it doesn't seem relevant? The post (and my comment) are about the toxicity of capitalism in a post-scarcity world, not about what led to a post-scarcity world. I don't disagree with you about anything
randomanal
Except for the whole intentional scarcity thing.
Littledirtybirdyfeet
Except for all the homogeneous agriculture and the chemicals causing soil degradation, droughts, disease, and lack of access to the global market for a lot of countries that could contribute their crops.
randomanal
What does that have to do with the fact that we globally grow enough food to feed 1.5 times the current population and don’t because it’s not profitable?
Littledirtybirdyfeet
Food scarcity in developed nations may be due to profit maximization, but it does nothing for food scarcity globally that is driven by other factors.
randomanal
What other factors? Besides the factor that it’s not profitable to the people who could do it?
YeastInfectedWhiskerBiscuit
OK, no profit. Starve people. There goes your work force. You've also just lost the entirety of a possible profit instead of 25% after all was said and done.
Trumpisanonce
I see you're a very short term thinker. You should fix that about yourself.
alaest0r
Money isn't fundamental to society, it's just the easiest thing that happens to work. Based on the whole overabundance + starvation thing, I'd argue that it doesn't work so well and that we should be looking towards something else. But that's irrelevant for now because our civilization can't stop poisoning and killing itself while squabbling over petty tribal mindsets even within the same nations. We're infants with nukes who need to grow the fuck up.
leodavinci1
That's not "capitalism" though... it's politics, religion, and politics dominated by religion.
DahPrincess
Tell us you don't know what happens in the food industry without telling us. Farms are required to grow a certain amount of food, whether it's sold to a consumer or not. The extras (we're talking entire harvests here) are destroyed. Not donated to food banks. Not turned into animal feed. Not composted. Destroyed. We're already spending the money/resources to grow enough food to feed everyone. Why is it ok to destroy it SOLELY for profit? People are already starving under this system.
cheesedogs
How is it destroyed?
IMakeLotsOfReferencesAndRemakes
https://refed.org/food-waste/the-problem/ Landfill, incineration, or left to rot.
AxeDropper
That’s not how it works. For starters farmers aren’t required to do anything. They choose to grow or raise certain crops or animals because (they hope) that is what is most profitable for them. Everything they produce is a commodity and priced entirely on supply and demand.
DahPrincess
Independent farmers maybe. But govt subsidized and corporate owned farmers have no say in any of it.
AxeDropper
Yes they do. Government farm subsidies exist to either increase production of a particular crop or to help stabilize a particular crop price. Subsidies may encourage a particular crop, but they don’t dictate it. Also, I would say the vast majority of farms, even the small independent farms and property owners, are incorporated as L.L.C.s as a way to protect the owner’s estate as well as other tax advantages. Should a person end up in a nursing home their assets can be sold and exhausted very 1/
AxeDropper
quickly. Mostly what people think of “corporate farms” are nothing more than family farms that have grown into enormous operations. The ones that I’ve worked with function as a business in a manner more similar to an airport than what the typical farm does. Their land management and crop production selections can be mind boggling for outsiders, but I can assure you that absolutely nobody is dictating to those guys what they have to grow.
There is one exception I’m aware of, farmers who 2/
AxeDropper
I haven’t the time, or care enough, to explain how wrong the rest of your post is. But I will say this, you’ve obviously never seen hogs feasting on a pile of excess / expired Hostess cupcakes.
DahPrincess
Yes, animals can very well eat the remainder of unsold food, but that's not as profitable as burning, poisoning, or tossing it in late stage capitalist America
AxeDropper
Your logic is flawed. Why pay someone to burn or poison (why?) when you can simply trash it? Or, instead resell it as livestock feed.
brazzy42
It doesn't sound like you have to faintest clue how the food industry (or any industry, really) works, actually. Farms are "required" to grow a certain amount by WHOM exactly? And explain please how destroying entire harvests is supposed to generate profits. Fact is, a lower percentage of people are starving today "under this system" than ever before in the history of humanity.
IMakeLotsOfReferencesAndRemakes
By the corporations who own them. Like 90% of farms in USA are managed by them. And if there is a surplus of supply then the price has to fall. Also its not a lower percentage than all of human history. For one we only have limited hard data on that but even in the time we do have its fluctuated https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/WLD/world/hunger-statistics Its trending down but certainly not in line with how much we have increased production.
brazzy42
You're still not making economical sense. If you have an oversupply, yes, that's bad for prices. But selling at lower price or finding other uses still gives you *some* return, while destroying everything gives you nothing. Unless the price is so extremely low that it would be more expensive to ship to consumers than what they're willing to pay... and capitalism has made shipping to consumers quite cheap indeed.
IMakeLotsOfReferencesAndRemakes
It does make economical sense.... to the people who want MONEY. They are not in it for SOME return they want MAXIMUM return. And that means no selling "ugly" produce and not creating so much supply it cuts their prices as well as not donating it cause then the poor would eat cheaper too. And then the loss "problem" is compounded for them cause shipping more food costs more money too. Instead of taking that relatively minor financial hit though they did the math and ran laughing to the bank.
IMakeLotsOfReferencesAndRemakes
https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment This one actually has the completed 2022 data.
brazzy42
Note how for every single region the share of undernourished people is lower in 2022 than in 2000. The trend would be far more pronounced if the data reached back farther.
IMakeLotsOfReferencesAndRemakes
No. No moving the goalpost. You said that EVER BEFORE. Which was simply not true. Its not even at its lowest in this millennium. And maybe... but there is no proof to back up such a claim. The fact is that the amount of food we produce is enough to feed billions more people than is even on the planet but the average food waste in the world is 30-40%. Here is the link for the USA's food waste numbers. https://refed.org/food-waste/the-problem/