this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
930 points (94.5% liked)
Lemmy Shitpost
26840 readers
3364 users here now
Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content.
Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!
Rules:
1. Be Respectful
Refrain from using harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic: e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion.
Refrain from being argumentative when responding or commenting to posts/replies. Personal attacks are not welcome here.
...
2. No Illegal Content
Content that violates the law. Any post/comment found to be in breach of common law will be removed and given to the authorities if required.
That means:
-No promoting violence/threats against any individuals
-No CSA content or Revenge Porn
-No sharing private/personal information (Doxxing)
...
3. No Spam
Posting the same post, no matter the intent is against the rules.
-If you have posted content, please refrain from re-posting said content within this community.
-Do not spam posts with intent to harass, annoy, bully, advertise, scam or harm this community.
-No posting Scams/Advertisements/Phishing Links/IP Grabbers
-No Bots, Bots will be banned from the community.
...
4. No Porn/Explicit
Content
-Do not post explicit content. Lemmy.World is not the instance for NSFW content.
-Do not post Gore or Shock Content.
...
5. No Enciting Harassment,
Brigading, Doxxing or Witch Hunts
-Do not Brigade other Communities
-No calls to action against other communities/users within Lemmy or outside of Lemmy.
-No Witch Hunts against users/communities.
-No content that harasses members within or outside of the community.
...
6. NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that is NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that might be distressing should be kept behind NSFW tags.
...
If you see content that is a breach of the rules, please flag and report the comment and a moderator will take action where they can.
Also check out:
Partnered Communities:
1.Memes
10.LinuxMemes (Linux themed memes)
Reach out to
All communities included on the sidebar are to be made in compliance with the instance rules. Striker
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Don't make it about our species. It's capitalism
Existed before Adam Smith
Adam Smith was much more critical of capitalism than he is given credit for. For example, Adam Smith was critical of rent seeking and landlords. It would be somewhat accurate to replace Orangutan with Adam Smith in this meme.
Yes Capitalism is supposed to be pro-worker/anti-rich
Hence my comment about people still paying to live before adoption of capitalism
Supposed by whom? The rent-seeking behavior that Smith criticized was largely brought about by enclosure; the process of enclosure was foundational to capitalism.
This is ahistorical, before enclosure the peasantry had substantial rights to live freely on the common land.
I suppose it does depend on what is meant by ‘pay to live on this earth’. If you just mean that people have to work to take care of themselves then, sure. But that’s not really what this meme is referring to. If it was then the orangutan would be ‘paying to live on this earth’ as well.
Adam Smith is the inventor of capitalism specifically his criticisms that you cite are about the systems we had prior
Are you just wrong for the sake of it?
He wasn’t criticizing a system that was built based on his writings because it hadn’t happened yet
Adam Smith did not ‘invent’ capitalism. No single person can invent an economic system. He made some early observations and normative assertions about a set of economic relations that were forming independent of him.
So the economic system we had prior to capitalism was feudalism. The common lands that I mentioned were apart of the feudal system. The system of landlords and rent-seeking were and are apart of capitalism. You can just look around… we still have these things. You do understand that right? Unless you’re saying our current system isn’t capitalist.
Yes, true capitalism has never been tested
But it doesn’t matter because the lesson to take away is that in any system the people with power will modify it to what we have now
For socialism
Was the system that the peasantry lived under in the commons the same as what we have now?
Ok?
The quote you just gave is from famous socialist George Orwell from his book Animal Fram. Which is critical of the structures the Soviet Union created.
But your comment is actually in direct contradiction to Orwell’s actual more nuanced point. His point was not that every system devolves into capitalism… he was himself a socialist who fought along side communists in the Spanish civil war after all. His point is that we need to think critically about the structures we’re creating to ensure they’re serving egalitarian ends. Something I agree with Orwell on.
The original reason why I commented was because it didn’t seem you were engaging in the same project of critically examining economic structures in the way Orwell was and the way Smith was. Though I would love to be proven wrong.
I think you should think more critically about what people tell you about Adam Smith and George Orwell.
Globally…if you are living better than that then you’re in the high earners tier
Yes, glad you can keep up…now try to use a small amount of critical thinking and question why that was?
Did socialism not work because of capitalism? Did capitalism not work because of capitalism? Did feudalism not work because of capitalism? Did mercantilism not work because of capitalism?
Of course not, you would have to be an idiot to argue that…or that Adam Smith argued against capitalism
It’s because of the bourgeoisie class that will always change the system to their benefit. And replacing the people in that class with new ones doesn’t change that
Capitalism is pro-worker.
Capitalism is based on voluntary exchange. It is defined by the so-called “free market”, which is word for “a situation in which nobody cooperates economically without their own consent”.
And that's the problem, because everyone is coerced to do that if they want to survive. And those, who own the means of production, the capital, the companies, are those who have the power to exploit those who don't. And they do.