this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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Capitalists would argue that between capitalism and socialism, capitalism is the one that better accounts for greed, as it generally has laws to con strain it but otherwise uses it to generate all the production that's the hallmark of modern society, division of labor, economy of scale, technological advancement, etc. Socialism doesn't really deal with greed, it just sort of wishes it away. That's why so many societies that have started down the socialist path have become at best poor and at worst authoritarian murder factories like the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Chavist Venezuela, the Khmer Rouge's Cambodia, etc.
Communism quite literally exists to mitigate greed, and there is nothing stopping Capitalist countries from becoming authoritarian Murder Factories like Modern Russia, The United States, Britain, France, Belgium, and countless other examples of colonial powers that have exploited and murdered native populations. Billionaires get arrested and taxed all the time in modern China. While they almost never suffer the same fate in Capitalist countries.
No European country or the US is anything like Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Orders of magnitude different.
They don't get arrested for the reasons you or I would arrest them, they get arrested for crossing the CCP. Billionaires do face punishment in the capitalist West.
Literally no economic system or political science yet has managed to prevent the internalised drive for familicide or authoritarian violence funnily enough, one can only hope that rationality prevails over bad thoughts, but not on the basis of civilization or self preservation, but through the collective conscience of humanity coming to understand how best to maximize the available entropy and energy within society to produce the most jobs, the most utility, the most potential sex, the most systems of funding and all other human desires.
Consider thot the US is a very rich democracy yet has many school shootings, Saudi Arabia has had to deal with corrupt funding of terrorists, China uses AI to bait people into crime and arrests people on false charges and then plays catch and release while Israel funds Hamas, imports overseas Jews and then exports violent "settlers" into the Palestinian borders.
Consider that even millionaire dictators who go on holiday will occasionally commit mass genocide. All of these bad things... Are not going to disappear because of capitalism, but we can at least say that they would become more foreseeable and preventable in a world where we have movies or stories that discuss our present these monstrosities to light
Given the choice between greed with poverty vs greed with wealth, I choose greed with wealth aka capitalism. Like I said, capitalism at least does some good with the greed. Socialism, etc. pretends it can make greed go away, but it obviously can't.
Sidenote, a vanishingly small portion of people in the US are killed or injured in school shootings. They're obviously bad, but when comparing societies on the societal scale, they make basically no impact.
Have you looked at Soviet Russia? They went from Feudal Backwater to Man in space within 43 years. Then Socialism was illegally overthrown against the will of the Soviet People, and all metrics fell, (Child) Prosecution, life expectancy,... There is no choice between Wealth or poverty you are born into one or the other and you are just lucky you are born in the West. Socialism always created better Economic outcomes for most people at the same level of Development as Capitalist countrys.
Everyone went from feudal backwater to something else in that era. The US was poorer than Argentina per capita. That's not really saying that much. It's also not saying that much because of course if you have a strong central authority you can divert resources from more valuable production toward national pride vanity projects like a space travel. What really matters is how productive your economy is, how much it can produce for its society, and on that front the US defeated the Soviet Union soundly.
I have nothing against a space program, I just don't see that as a very strong indicator of the success of a society.
The US wasnt feudal in 1918, they where never Feudal. And they had a lot more industrial development than russia. Servdom in Russia was abolished in 1861. The US was always better economicly (for white people) because they had this industrial headstart, they werent destroyed in WW2 and the US had colonies and fought very hard to keep them. Panama, Chile,.... If you want to compare a Capitalist countys with socialist ones at least pic one with a similar development level. You will soon find out that Capitalism only works for the heads of countys that are exploiting less developed countys resources and labour. Some scraps fall from the table down to the general population but only as much to keep them from revolting.
The space race on both sides created a lot of inovation that laid the ground work for among other things Computers and Satelites today.
And there is a declassified CIA document from 1983 that says that the soviet diet was potentialy better than the USs. That chaned drastically after the return to "Freedom" in Russia.