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this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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The reality of capitalist economies has turned out to be: Living in the freest and richest nations the world has ever seen. If you’re too hot you can set the thermostat to cool down and if you’re too cold you can just turn the heat up.
You have ample choices for food, leisure and activity. More than anyone else has ever had in all of human history.
You only need to work a fraction of an hour for a meal, instead of all day long (and often working for days on end and not ever bringing home anything to eat)
You’re the most comfortable any human has ever been. Surviving is so easy for you, you feel the need to complain that ITS NOT EASY ENOUGH.
Tell everyone you’ve never had to experience hardship without telling everyone you’ve never had to experience hardship.
Millions of Americans have to choose between feeding themselves and housing themselves. You are hardly the “freest” country, haha. Richest? Sure just like every other wealthy country, the vast majority of the wealth is held by the people who tell you how to live your life.
Get a grip pal.
What’s your expectation? You want to be the richest man in the world? Do you want everyone to be equivalent to the richest man in the world?
You’re not making any sense. We all experience hardship.
I’m not American, but what I’m talking about applies to Americans, or anyone in a wealthy western country.
The poverty of western countries isn’t even real poverty. What looks poor to you and I is luxurious to true poverty, or to our ancestors.
The fact that you are asking this as an absurd question while not recognizing this is exactly the false prize capitalism promises everybody is kind of incredible.
What’s the line? “No one is America is poor. They’re just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” Which is why some of the lowest earners in our country still somehow think Elon Musk pays too much in taxes.
Seriously, what is your expectation? What standard of living and what level of effort are you not reaching, or are extending too much effort to achieve?
Why is life not coming close to satisfying you? Is it because people have more than you do? Is it because people have less?
I think stating expectations is pretty important.
Me? I want to earn enough to support myself, my family a couple of dogs, have two cars and a house and raise smart and healthy and vibrant children.
I want a lifestyle where I can travel once in awhile, I can pay for the things I enjoy in my leisure time and recreation.
I want to send my kids to summer camp and soccer and gymnastics, I want to buy my wife things she likes for Christmas and birthdays and anniversaries.
If I want all of these things, I have to go out and get them. If I wait for the government to give them to me, they’ll never come.
Now are your expectations in line with, or above or below what mine are? Does it bother you that people have more than you do?
I don’t need a yatch, or my own spaceship. I wouldn’t even know what to do with those things if I did have them.
I’m not sure you’re responding to the correct person as I have no idea what prompted those questions and this has literally nothing to do with what I said. When did I say my life wasn’t good enough? Or anything about the broad standard of living where I live?
It could be, my bad if so.
I’m having a dozen conversations right now and I suspect this lemmy app I’m using links me incorrectly sometimes.
Those advances were not created by capitalism.
They were created during capitalism. Huge difference.
Slavery didn't create agriculture.
Feudalism didn't create brickwork.
Well let’s just say that none of these things were created during communism
...and? That's kind of pointless to say. We're living under capitalism, so of course it happened under capitalism. It can't magically happen under communism if we're not living in communism, can it?
Also, while not communist (though nominally aimed towards it), elsewhere in the world, socialist governments definitely managed to achieve incredible feats of modernisation in starkly short amounts of time. Both China and the USSR went from mainly peasant farmers to industrial giants in mere decades.
People work and create because it's what humans do, under any economic system. What changes is who it's made for and who profits. Under capitalism, it's made for capitalists to profit them. Under communism, it's made for fellow workers to profit the workers.
I sure am thankful for HVAC technology, and the development of science and human technology in general that has been happening since way before capitalism.
I love the agricultural revolution from hundreds of thousands of years ago! And tractors.
Okay now, pre-industrial societies did not work an entire day for a single meal lmao. That's something you'd see in capitalism or slavery. The vast majority of human history did not involve that much work.
Thanks for technological advancements and not-capitalism!
What a boomer statement lmao. Isn't it ironic that you complain about other people critiquing society, and lash out in caps lock? What if I told you that people have critiqued society since antiquity? I highly recommend you pick up a book. You'll learn something or two!
Just a heads up you are both discussing in bad faith and neither of you will make any strides with the other.
You can summarize my argument in two: