cross-posted from: https://piefed.zip/c/politics/p/1090319/highly-recommended-video-capitalism-is-not-natural-i-would-like-your-thoughts
Let me start by saying that I thought this interview was great, and highly encourage you to watch it in its entirety and share it with others.
I think a lot of “anti-capitalist” videos and discussions you see are geared towards the people who are already left leaning. But this interview discusses it from an economic perspective, and is communicated in such a clear and pragmatic way, while also being extremely charismatic and interesting to listen to.
I don’t mean to upsell this video so much, but I just thoroughly enjoyed it and highly recommend it. If you are a very “pro-capitalist” person, id love to hear your genuine thoughts on the matter (not a debate or argument, just your genuine and well meaning thoughts - as I’m genuinely curious).
As someone who doesn’t have any particular problem with capitalism, and thinks all the handwringing over it is largely misplaced… I’m not watching a 40 minute interview where someone I’ve never heard of talks about something I don’t care about.
I can’t stand people like her.
She makes the bizarre statement that the ability to tax individuals in a capitalistic market economy and also feed and house everyone are mutually exclusive.
She also implies the welfare would somehow be accomplished in a world without private ownership AKA ether anarchy or otherwise complete public ownership by the state, which is demonstrably false.
She is the reason nobody takes socialists seriously, with her fringe extreme beliefs. The world would be better if she stopped wasting her time on complete economic and government restructuring into an imaginary utopia which we have attempted over and over to create, unsuccessfully, and instead helped the rest of us tax the rich, update our election process, hold bad people accountable, and fund those necessary services.
Interesting take, I respect your opinion, even if I don’t agree. I’d be interested in your take of having workers being able to have a say in where tax money is actually spent (I forget the term she used), that they are advocating for in Tulsa Oklahoma and is a system they use somewhere in Latin or south America (was it Argentina or something?).
Wait, what? What’s being advocated in Tulsa? I live here and haven’t heard this. Didn’t find anything in a search, either.
Tulsa is a gerrymandered red city in an all red state that’s been conservative for a very long time. I find it hard to believe we’d ever experiment on a liberal policy, sadly.
I’d be interested in your take of having workers being able to have a say in where tax money is actually spent
So we invented this cool system for that a few thousand years ago called “democracy” where people vote on the policies they want to see enacted in order to properly represent everyone as equals. If more people are participating in that then great news.
If I looked at the video and interpreted in the most positive way, I did not hear that.
I understood taxation should be distributed differently in her view, the resulting funds should be distributed differently, and that people should be able own a house and have food. She clearly wants shared housing (but that was a side track and it could be fractional ownership I suppose but you could hear a different thing too).
She also seems to hold the opinion that capital is overvalued in the current system and work is undervalued. I guess that’s hard to say, a person without any tools will not be able to build a truck so I reason machines are quite an important part of the mix. But maybe the logical contribution of capital should be disconnected from its societal value. We could tax capital a bit more and work a bit less, for instance.
I’m no professor in economics or anything and she’s only one of them, so perhaps the current situation is perfect, but I do feel wealth distribution is a bit skewed today.
See thats a good stance, those are good opinions, but they don’t oppose capitalism. What you wrote is capitalism, making small adjustments to a capitalist system is not what people like her are promoting. Her ideology is that private ownership itself is a source of evil. She was very clear about it.
Yeah, I can hear it that way too. Thanks for sharing your interpretation.
I guess I’m not so triggered because it looks like the movement is towards change from the current system rather than violently overthrowing it. I hear it as “the current capitalism is bad”, somewhere she calls it industrial capitalism. “People can’t afford a house over their heads” sounds to me like a goal to make that happen. Perhaps she has a different view on what afford means than I do because it indeed doesn’t need to mean possess.
In today’s sensationalist tendencies I half expect people to make quite extreme statements to express even the smallest desire for change.
