🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@Pat UBI sounds like a wonderful idea. My proposal for an UBI implementation is where we take 75% of the money from every worker's pay check and give it with no conditions asked backed to their employer. That way the employer has more money to pay wages with and naturally will give everyone a raise!

@agora_brewing

I would say no myself. Ideologically pure communism or capitalism has never existed and can not exist. Ideologically pure ideas themselves simply cant exist because the world is far too nuanced. It becomes self-contradictory if you refine the ideas too much.

At best we can have these ideas as central tenants and we may refer to that as capitalism or communism and we just ignore the fact that it isnt "pure" for the same reason we dont expect something to be absolute zero.

@raucao

@Pat

Yea the issues I saw existed long before the pandemic. It seemed to start around 911 onward where fear in general became the typical message from the government.

And yea my experience with central Europe in anecdotal at best.

@roboneko @vulgate

@Pat

This is very true. Though the immorality of the americans isnt about tight resources or lack of wealth, there is more than enough of that going around (though there are issues with it like any nation).

The mental health issues are more about lack of health care that covers mental health, taboos around mental health, and how people are raised. It is a cultural thing mostly accelerated by bad policies in healthcare that prevent access to therapy, which is already far enough behind the curve simply due to the negative image associated with it.

@roboneko @vulgate

@Pat

I will say this outside of the USA there is a much larger portion of decent people. English speaking non-USA countries tend to still have a lot of ick to it but its miles ahead of the USA in terms of decent people... Though I do find central europe to be some of the best people around in terms of being ethically mindful, not that the rest of europe is that far behind.

@roboneko @vulgate

@Pat

Its not the news I am judging the ratio of good people on. Its my personal expiernce.

The USA is like a country wide mental hospital. Almost everyone in it is suffering from such severe mental disorders that no one really has the capacity to be good people.

@roboneko @vulgate

@Pat

I disagree. In america **most** people take advantage. It is just that most of them really want to appear like good people, even to themselves, so they either only do so when they wont get caught, or come up with crazy justifications why what they did is perfectly ok... Very very few people in the USA I have known have turned out to be good people when no one is watching in the long run.

@roboneko @vulgate

@roboneko

There are plenty of perverse incentives that lead to exploitation and corrupting, but none of this is inherent to capitalism and are in fact counter to capitalism.

Ther eis no shortage of exploitation in communism either as we have seen from past governments that are built around this concept.

The fact is people are shitty and no matter what form of government you have people will exploit it and when they do it ceases to be a government built on the ideals of those principles. We need to stop blaming the principles that in their own regard are good in moderation and start realizing people are just shit and will take advantage any time they have power.

@vulgate

@zleap

Yea if 100% of the excessive tax on alcohol went to treat alcoholism then I would absolutely support this.

@mathlover @iankenway

@zleap

To your other point about wealth concentration. I think thats a bit of a misnomer. The way you describe it seems to view wealth as a fixed quantity whereby if one person has too much there isnt enough for others. In fact wealth is not at all a fixed quantity and it is generate in large quantities, and tends to be generated whenever wealth itself moves around or even accumulates.

If a market is truely a healthy version of capitalism then having extremely rich people who own large amounts of wealth in fact would garuntee that large amounts of new wealth are created and owned by the masses, and ultimately this creates a healthy standard of living.

Now that said the USA is **not** a healthy capitalism, so having rich people int he USA doesnt always lead to the level of public wealth generation it ought to in a proper capitalism. But even int he USA this is generally true, the wealthy people generate massive quantities of new wealth for the general populace.

Its a simple concept to understand.. most rich people invest almost all their wealth. If you invest in things that are successful then you are generating new wealth for the businesses and share holders of these new companies. If you are rich you are probably very good at successfully investing. Ergo rich people having control over the majority of the money to invest insures we have new successful companies that represent newly generated wealth in large quantities. In turn that means every little old lady and worker with a 401K is making good money on a healthy economy with a lot of wealth growth.

@mathlover @iankenway

@Pat In technical terms we would call those public utilities or or simply "the commons". And yes a capitalism doesnt really address those in and of itself. Commons are a good example of why an ideological pure capitalism where there is no regulation of any meaningful kind doesnt work. Capitalism is a fine idea for 90% of the stuff we deal with but things like public commons are precisely where you need something more than capitalism to address it.

@vulgate No as covered already that is not the definition of capitalism, it is only part of it. Capitalism defines both the private ownership of wealth as well as the private control of the trade (as in the people engaging in trade are free to make their own terms)

In and of itself it neither leads to corruption or greed, or even exploitation. In fact, should you have exploitation then by definition it ceases to be a capitalism since that would mean the markets are no longer free.

@zleap

That one seems like a hairy one to me. On the one hand alcohol is a bit of a luxury so I get taxing it more than, say, a glass of club soda which is ultimately healthy and you need hydration.

At the same time i suspect the tax here is specifically intended to discourage people from drinking, a sort of punishment tax like we do with gasoline. I'm not so keen on that approach except where the tax is on something harmful. Like with gasoline I'm ok with it because gasoline causes harm and the tax money can be used to repair the damage (though sadly it rarely is but thats another issue)... but drinking alcohol, at least in moderation, is not something that strikes me as something that causes much harm (Again when not abused).

@mathlover @iankenway

@zleap

A company need not give the opportunity to move up if the world you live in is designed in such a way that you have good opportunity to start your own company that can compete with large companies well. In fact what youll find is that the easier it is for a worker to go off and start their own competing business the more it is in the best interest of large companies to provide career advancement opportunities in the first place, otherwise they loose their best workers and drive competition growth.

@mathlover @iankenway