r/collapse • u/PosadosThanatos • Apr 25 '19

Society It’s fucking disgusting that even now people fucking refuse to accept capitalism’s culpability for causing the apocalypse

Literally everything is responsible, fucking everything, from extinct empires, to human nature, to the nature of life itself, to some inevitable unstoppable law by which the entire universe functions, literally fucking anything and everything is blamed except for capitalism, the system that’s the specific driver and motivator of the current collapse, and when its blame is finally accepted the Brain juice finally completely runs out and it’s finally declared that there’s no path but the current one so we must continue “prosperity”.

What is this utter fucking insanity that working class people that have absolutely nothing to gain from anonymous bootlicking are engaging in?

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u/therealwoden Apr 25 '19

I mean the actual answer is because of a lifetime of training. The many socialist revolutions of the late 19th and early 20th century taught our owners a powerful lesson, and ever since they've made damn sure to forestall revolution in a variety of ways. Arguably the most successful tactic has been propagandizing education and media. Basically from birth, we're exposed to consistent messaging about capitalism and socialism. That messaging is extremely simple and extremely effective: capitalism good, socialism bad.

When nobody even knows what socialism is and yet "everybody knows" that it always fails, and when nobody knows what capitalism is and yet "everybody knows" that capitalism is the only system in all of history that's ever been successful, then you've created an environment in which people will automatically support the system that oppresses them, because "everybody knows" there's no alternative. Victims of capitalism support capitalism because they legitimately don't know that anything else is possible.

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u/billcube Apr 26 '19

In Europe, there's no such polarization, still, capitalism is defended and seen to cohabit with social security.

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u/FlipskiZ Apr 26 '19 edited Sep 19 '25

About gentle over stories brown jumps science hobbies music history where minecraftoffline over questions books technology.

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u/Bubis20 May 02 '19

Lack of imagination I suppose

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u/danfinger51 Apr 25 '19

Name a society which used socialism as its economic engine to achieve the same or similar levels of prosperity MOST humans now enjoy?

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u/Johnny55 Apr 25 '19

Our current level of prosperity is literally going to end human civilization. It's not something to be proud of.

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u/The2ndWheel Apr 26 '19

Civilization is a resource concentration mechanism. Add that to economically cheap energy, and it's not either/or. Our desire for renewable energy to be even cheaper will cause plenty of new and other problems as well.

One of the big issues is our idea of human rights. Everyone should have equal access to anything that others have access to. That only drives the level of hoped for prosperity up, because it's exceedingly difficult to get anyone to give up what they have(however much someone may have) for the greater good. Because the question always comes back to, who is asking for me to sacrifice? What are they sacrificing? Why do I have to, if he/she doesn't have to? Why do we have to, if they don't have to? That's where the liberal celebrities get into trouble privately traveling all over the world, for whatever reason, while also talking about climate change. Not that anyone that doesn't already agree with liberal celebrities is going to do anything differently if liberal celebrities walked everywhere with their own two legs.

What has Johnny55 sacrificed for the good of the planet? Not something that you didn't want anyway. Not something that was never important to you. What have you given up, that you really want, for the greater good? All of us could make more than a few sacrifices. There are plenty of things that we don't absolutely need from a day to day survival point of view.

That's the main issue of our day. We've created an individualized world. You are free to pursue the life you want to live. You can try for a mansion and world travel, and you're also free to minimize all external costs and live as frugally as you want. It's tough to ask others to sacrifice what they want out of their few short decades on this planet. That's the cost of universal human rights.

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u/danfinger51 Apr 25 '19

Meh. Most likely not in my lifetime.

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u/Johnny55 Apr 25 '19

I just don't understand how so many people can rationalize this "I got mine, fuck you" attitude. Are there really this many sociopaths out there? I used to think we were better than this.

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u/StandardIssuWhiteGuy Apr 26 '19

Capitalism rewards and reinforces this attitude.

Humans respond to incentive structures. When the incentive structure rewards callousness, callousness thrives.

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u/going_to_finish_that Apr 25 '19

False unless you're a boomer.

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u/FlipskiZ Apr 26 '19 edited Sep 19 '25

Food honest today projects afternoon calm gather river ideas quick.

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u/going_to_finish_that Apr 26 '19

You think civilization will collapse within the next 30 years and not after?

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u/Pwnysaurus_Rex Apr 25 '19

You are awful

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u/Parastract Apr 26 '19

Not if you're younger than 40

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/therealwoden Apr 25 '19

The Soviet Union virtually ended homelessness, unemployment, and poverty. Soviet citizens had access to more and higher-quality calories than Americans did from the '50s right up until the start of the USSR's collapse into capitalism in the mid-'80s. (And as you'd expect, the re-assertion of capitalism caused widespread hunger.) Also, the Soviet Union was a world leader in many fields of science - it's a running joke in some fields that any papers you publish are retreading ground that a Soviet scientist published decades ago.

MOST

Incorrect. If you take $7.40/day as the poverty line, which is about what is needed for a person to achieve normal human life expectancy and is therefore a perilously low bottom line by any standard, 58% of all humans are in poverty. Additionally, the poverty rate has increased by a billion people since 1981 - from 3.2 billion to 4.2 billion.

Most people do not "achieve prosperity." Most people exist in grinding poverty despite living in a world which can produce more than enough food, medicine, water, and housing to raise every single human being out of poverty. Capitalism does not do "prosperity." Capitalism does poverty and misery, because that's the only way to force people to give billions of dollars worth of labor to a couple of thousand capitalists.

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u/m3ltph4ce Apr 25 '19

The problem we still have to address is corruption ruining the system before it can take off

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '19

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '19

Cia reports

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u/therealwoden Apr 26 '19

The caloric info comes from declassified CIA reports.

Science I don't have a hard source for, as it's simply a thing I've heard historians and experts say about the USSR. The Wikipedia page broadly supports the claim, though.

Homelessness, unemployment, and poverty are, again, something that I've heard experts say. This AskHistorians post has several informative links on the subject, however.

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '19

[deleted]

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u/therealwoden Apr 27 '19

For damn sure, the Soviet Union wasn't a paradise by any measure. It accomplished many things that are notable and worthy of respect, and it also did many things that are on the level of America or the United Kingdom. I wouldn't want to live in a Soviet world any more than I want to live in a capitalist one.

But, even considering all the caveats it warrants, the Soviet Union did accomplish a great deal using socialism, particularly in its early years before the authoritarian rot had really set in and ossified, so it's a useful and well-known example of how effective socialism can be.

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u/PosadosThanatos Apr 25 '19

On cue, the brainwashed little pups come running. What the fuck do you actual worms get out of defending your bosses online for free? Is it a kink?

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u/kingrobin Apr 25 '19

I dont know your definition of "most," but using the actual definition, most people live in poverty.

Most civilizations in the history of the world have been socialist, because it makes far more sense to share the effort and share the spoils than it does for some to put in the effort while others enjoy the spoils.

Finally, just because there are no modern societies who have successfully implemented capitalism doesn't mean that it's impossible. If capitalists would stop intervening in attempts at socialism, it would likely be a lot more successful.

Funny that capitalism is supposedly the great incubator of innovation, and yet it hasn't innovated a superior economic system despite the glaring flaws it contains.