Re:I wish GPT4 had never happened
by arrosenberg on Sunday April 09, 2023 @03:40AM
(#35500720)
Capitalism caused the genocide of untold native populations in Asia, Africa and the Americas, famines and environmental destruction around the world, destroyed the stability of most of Africa, the Middle East, Central and South America, and it has pumped so much carbon into the atmosphere that we have irreversibly altered the climate of the entire planet.
I'm not a Marxist or a proponent of LTV, but I do always get a giggle when people act like Communism caused the worst disasters in history. They're not great, to be sure, but at the Communists were mostly killing their own people instead of externalizing it to the entire planet.
Are you aware of the utterly catastrophic environmental devastation caused by the Soviet Union, and to this day by Chinese state industries? This is the problem with undemocratic centrally planned systems, with state controlled media. Complete lack of accountability.
Re:I wish GPT4 had never happened
by arrosenberg on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @12:07PM
(#35527158)
Yes? I’m also aware of the catastrophic destruction that democratic, capitalist countries have done with no accountability - are you?
It happens that the labour theory of value in central to Marx but it’s not exclusive to him. Adam Smith indulged a lesser form of it in one of his uncharacteristic slip ups in economic theory. However it is in Marx that it achieves its most vertiginous heights of absurdity, and through his disciples that the most damage was done by it.
There is a direct causal line from the LTV and some of the direst economic disasters in human history. The most egregious case, despite some strong rival examples in Soviet Russia, is probably Mao’s Great Leap Forward which among other things fetishised steel production. Production creates value and steel is the most important economic product, so everybody should make steel.
It’s the damage the LTV caused itself that I was talking about. Communism is a political project associated with it but not directly what I had in mind.
As for innovation, I’m all for it. Capitalism maximises individual freedom by putting ownership of capital and rights of self determination of labour directly into the hands of citizens. By maximising individual economic freedom it maximises opportunities for economic innovation. This is why free market capitalist economies are so creative and dynamic.