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I think your genius is blinded by how painful this topic is.

1. To call building stuff and having a concept of possession "capitalism" makes the word "capitalism" totally pointless, robbing it of any definition worthy of a prominent word in a language.

2. Because of point 1, there's no way you actually consistently use the word "capitalism" in congruence with how you're using it here. You must not really uphold this definition of "capitalism." I mean, don't you consider "capitalism" conflicting with "communism," even though in communism people also build and possess things?

3. "Post-communist" sounds like a reference to national actions in the post-soviet region, where no countries have avoided marching towards climate extinction, and countries like Ukraine have ended up first on the chopping block. Human organization has not really been effective at all in the long run so far, except for the few people who actively chose to have it go in the direction of mass death.

Laeserin 1y ago

Communism is when people eventually lose interest in building things because they have no resulting ownership of the thing or tangible personal reward for building the thing. That reward doesn't have to be money, but it should be money or something more valuable than money, like social status, personal comfort and luxury, or attractive mates. But communism never results in rising social status for producers. Quite the opposite.

Communists don't get to define what capital is or capitalism is. Adam Smith predated Marx and Smith was drawing upon historical sources with his description of the different kinds of capital.

All communists did was declare that there isn't any reason to connect the capital with the capitalist. That you could sever the capital and redistribute it, with net-positive results for the wider society. This is simply not true. Communism is painfully inefficient, so capital becomes a consumption good or is left unused and rots. Communism destroys the capital.

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Discussion

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

You're not getting it's not communism that's inefficient, it's humans.

A good country would work fine under a capitalist or communist system because it's just a bunch of good people who happen to prefer one system over the other.

Real countries are into killing and dying and being delusional about fossil fuel.

It also just so happens that communism was the original system and is the only one we've ever had where humans were sorta properly functional. We still all died, but we coped better with it and we weren't finding ways to wipe out the planet (including ourselves). It remains to be seen whether experimenting with other systems leads to more survival or less.

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

Side point - it definitely seems like since communism was the only system we had sociological health in so far, maybe it's the most stable system and the healthy state for us to inevitably return to, but it's clearly not completely stable since we aren't in it anymore.

Laeserin 1y ago

You are confusing communism with lower forms of communitarianism, like the transactions within a family of blood relatives and mates, or within an ethnic tribe. A system that scales decreasingly well, the less sexually or genetically-related the participants are. Communitarianism doesn't sever producers from capital, it just changes the incentive structure for production.

Communism is not a system run on selfish genes advancing their own promotion. It's a bunch of randoms taking other people's stuff.

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

The humans in this world are more into tribalism than any non-tribalist form of capitalism or communism.

A tribe of humans who are into working together and being as chill as possible towards enemies can exist - in fact I see an example: most of the devs building nostr as capitalists, including you. The same could be done without currency or capitalism, assuming we still had computers and people who are into working together.

And either way, it would be great if the people building nostr weren't outnumbered by people who are so naturally tribalistic, they have a hard time understanding the issue with censorship... those people don't let communism scale, and they don't let capitalism price oil high enough, among many other good things they don't allow.

Laeserin 1y ago

Also, any argument that begins with the axiom that human nature is the problem is going to be a non-starter with me, as I believe that humans are made in God's image.

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

Humans are the common link between separate examples of any other problem you could cite.

Like, you could blame technology, but nobody does technology like humans.

If you're sure humans are made in God's image, how has that process lead to these results? That's not meant to be like "you can't answer this question so you're wrong," I'm sure you can find an answer, it's an actual question.

stache 1y ago

Hurumph👊🏽👍🏽👍🏽🌅

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

Look at this as a 2x2 matrix of possibilities:

A1 - A world with good humans that stays in communism forever wouldn't have our problems. In context of something important to you: there could still be religions called "Judaism" and "Christianity" and "Islam" full of people like you who foster community and philosophical discussion.

A2 - A world with good humans that invents currency and capitalism must have better reasoning and intent behind it than the humans in our world, and thus wouldn't have our problems. Again, the big religions wouldn't have holy crusades.

B1 - if you have a world full of humans with RNG-based hatred in their hearts - so powerful they're willing to sacrifice themselves and their loved ones to also kill their randomly-selected enemies - and those people never invent capitalism, they can still use "Judaism" and "Christianity" and "Islam" as names for religions dedicated to killing each other. They can still refuse to look at any numbers related to crude oil. You could still be born with the same name and DNA you have, to parents with the same names and DNA, with the same birth dates, and all the same death dates. A doctor who tells someone they don't have good enough health insurance might be forced to use harsher words like "I don't personally care enough to help you instead of this other person based on your social status," but if we assume doctors save everyone they can, this wouldn't magically change how many they can save.

B2 - And if you take a world of such hateful violent people and they invent currency and capitalism, that's the world we're in, basically the same as B1 with communism.

The painful thing is being the type of human that could live on side A of the matrix, stuck on side B of the matrix, outnumbered by such humans