this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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It's basically evolution. It's not that we don't get the best things, it's that when something evolves traits that require more energy than they are worth, they inevitably die out. I'm reminded of the film The Man in the White Suit.
It'd be nice to always have the "best" things, but the "energy" to support them has to come from somewhere.
But unfortunately the mechanism that is dictating which traits are carried through and which are left to die out, is capitalism. Not just that, but short sighted capitalism.
I'm not saying maglev is the be all and end all, I'm just saying that this "evolution" is sort of (extremely) fucked.
True. Similarly, unfortunately the mechanism that is dictating which traits are carried through is natural selection. Maybe this metaverse thing has some benefits after all ๐.
The way I see it is, if you have a set of entities all acting in their own best interest, the way they engage with each other is called "capitalism". If a subset of those entities band together to act in the interest of their communal group, the mechanism within the group might be "communism", but how that group interacts with other entities/groups is still capitalism.
It's no coincidence that China, a communist state, is one of the strongest players in the wider capitalist economy. And even if the CCP was 100% benevolent toward everyone, they would still only be able to justify spending that makes sense at the global level. This is why they've opted to no longer buy our "recyclables" as raw materials. Sure it would be nice to always recycle stuff, but it was polluting their rivers, costing them more in healthcare.
At the end of the day, capitalism IS economic natural selection. So I view a government that embraces unchecked capitalism as a government that does nothing.
I think our best chance is if people to view a maglev train (and the benefits it offers) more like going to the moon: it's inspirational. It gives people something to look at and say "look how far we've come" both figuratively and literally. It's not impossible to fund, we just need to all value it so much that we're all willing to divert funds from other places where they probably make more sense, i.e. act in a common interest. But we can't even do that for healthcare so...
While I agree and disagree with several parts of your sentiment, asserting that a mechanism fuelled mostly by the 0.1% or 0.01% of its constituents is "natural selection" feels a bit disingenuous. It's selection, but it doesn't happen by nature. The driving forces behind a lot of the changes that happen are backed by intent (of the players with the most power), not environmental fitness.
And calling China a communist state is a disservice to communism, they call themselves communist but its about as apt as trump calling himself a feminist.
It's interesting to hear you say it doesn't happen in nature as though we are outside of nature. It seems pretty clear that the phenomenon that is currently happening does happen naturally. Natural Selection isn't without local minima/maxima. Rapid environmental changes cause them all the time, and we've seen a lot of change in the last 100 years.
It sounds like you're conflating wealth inequality with capitalism. Those are two different concepts entirely. Capitalism with appropriate limits can lead to healthy competition, and a self-correcting economy without risk of a misguided government accidentally creating a bubble that then pops and hurts everyone. The government should specifically be there to pop bubbles before they become too big, and if they do get too big, ease the impact to its citizens as it deflates. Without the appropriate limitations in place, often times the best "capitalist" option is to buy government influence and cause exactly these kinds of bubbles to happen, benefit from it, and then step out of the way when it pops. Which is where we regularly find ourselves today. The issue is compounded by people using phrases like "just pick yourself up by your bootstraps" to justify a do-nothing government.
I agree with you about calling China "communist", but I was deliberate in my argument. It's not relevant that China is a totalitarian dictatorship, I was using them as an example of an entity that is decidedly not capitalist internally, but inevitably has to be externally.