/lit/ - Literature

Yes it propelled the world to the high standard of living we see today

Not for everyone apparently

It is corruption and waste, and we can’t go on like this for much longer.

You want a book rec?

>>14869880
Yes

>>14869856
is fire good?

>>14869856
Good in some ways, bad in others just like everything. But capitalism is how the world is meant to run

>>14869856
>raises everyone from poverty
>gives everyone the best living standards
>constantly makes new innovations
>life affirming and competitive
>makes you take up personal responsibility
NOOOOOOO BUT MUHH GULAGS NOOOOO WHY DOES HE HAVE MORE MONIES THAN ME EVEN THOUGH I AM A RESENTFUL NEET GIVE ME GIBS NOOOOOOO

>>14869880
No, I want your feet pics

>>14869882
Here than

>>14869892
>It’s supposed to be like this
>It’s natural
Shit up.

>>14869893
>It’s the best possible world!

>>14869914
you haven't actually read any of those books you post here, fuck off.

*very serene and wise voice* absolutely not, anon. it sucks ass.

It is if you are smart. It isn't if you aren't.

>>14869918
41% done with this one, yes.

Ofc not read the politics or the republic or Cicero's dialogues. Government exists for the common Good, which isn't understood anymore since postmodern thought is hyperenlightenment rationalist garbage. Materialism does not equal good society.

>>14869941
It isn’t so much smarts, it’s unscrupulous sociopaths

>>14869893
This unironically

>>14869856
For starters, it's fair to say that capitalism itself is still an experiment and it's unclear how it will unfold in the long run. As it stands, it seems to be the most effective way we know of to organize billions of people and allow most of them to live a somewhat reasonable life.

>>14869856
I don't understand Capitalism, so I can't answer that.

>>14869970
>Ass_Pinker_typing_at_computer.jpg

>>14869914
Why isn't it natural? And what would be a natural economic system?

>>14869856
For whom? For what? It has done very little for my people, it has ravaged my culture and those infected by its spirit would sell their own mothers for some scraps. To those few that are in charge of the international hyenas we call corporations and banks it must be quite nice, to those hedonistic upper class twats that feel at home in no city and live some bohemian nightmare of a life it might seem good. But I have no love for it.
>>14869953
But anon, look at muh gdp. Watch me stuff myself with processed slop and grow fat, my grandfather wasn't fat! We're so much more advanced than any people in history! I can coom myself blind to cuckoldry pornography every night before I cry myself to sleep.

>>14869963
Why?

>>14869953
Nice word soup friend. If you weren't mentally underdeveloped I maybe I could explain to you how postmodernism is incompatible with both rationalism and empiricism.

>>14869963
I grant you that not having morals is a benefit to rising but smarts is still needed. One can easily learn an in-demand skill provided they have the brains (and of course a good enough circumstance to learn in).

>>14869984
Collect food and hunt animals

>>14869856
Like anything, it is for some.

>>14869988
>But anon, look at muh gdp. Watch me stuff myself with processed slop and grow fat, my grandfather wasn't fat! We're so much more advanced than any people in history! I can coom myself blind to cuckoldry pornography every night before I cry myself to sleep.
It's almost like you're dumb and only think in low tier twitter memes.

>>14869988
Traditionalists get the rope

>>14869988
Checked.
Is that the fault of the economic system, or is there something deeper? Maybe nihilism?

>>14869871
>standard of living

"...the way that works is that the technoindustrial
system simply defines the term “high standard of living” to
mean the kind of living that the system itself provides, and the system then
“discovers” that the standard of living is high and increasing. But to me
and to many, many other people a high material standard of living consists
not in cars, television sets, computers, or fancy houses, but in open spaces,
forests, wild plants and animals, and clear-flowing streams. As measured
by that criterion our material standard of living is falling rapidly."

--Technological Slavery, p. 164.

>>14869856
It's by far the best system we have.

>>14869879
>>14869880
>>14869884
>>14869932
>>14869945
>>14869988
Retarded commies.

>>14869988
Holy based...

capitalism is neither good nor bad
it's inevitable

>>14869999
quads confirm sheltered tradzoom is borderline retarded

>>14870012
kys

>>14870012
>only took a million years to develop

>>14870001
Both, as in man where the body and the spirit are interconnected so is the larger social organism.
>>14870007
Kaczynski will never stop being relevant.

>>14870059
Stop samefagging

>>14870036
that only seems like an absurd amount of time when you try to compare it to a human's lifespan - capital is not anthropocentric.

>>14869856
We're never not going to be selfish. The poor want what the rich have, but the rich don't want what they have the same way the poor do. If the poor succeed then we will probably get millions of people dying and ecosystems burning again. Check any Communist country like the USSR or China and you will find that they gave zero fucks about the environment.

>>14869856
>"good"

capitaism is without morals

>>14869856
good for...?

>>14870070
>developed by humanists
>not anthropocetric
Any more retarded opinions you want to share?

>>14870074
https://youtu.be/thHcvTDGWvg

>>14869856
No.

>>14869856
Yes.

>>14870102
>America
>not fascist

Not seeing the strawman as the one incorrect here?

>>14869856
No, the countries where living standards are good are capitalist but all they’ve done is make people in other countries do the hard labour. The shitty living conditions haven’t gone away, they’re just somewhere else.

>>14870104
America isn't fascist, but it should be.

It's not perfect but it helps cull the incompetent

>>14869893
Get a load of this brainwashed bootlicker.

it's this glorious all encompassing ever growing and ever improving machine, by the waking eye of god, how could you not love it? yes, it is good.

>>14870122
Nick's having a meltdown again.

>communism
cringe

>>14869990
Ok juden

>>14870012
https://youtu.be/3Uc0mAA8_Q4
Electrolytes Its got what markets crave.

>>14869880
>capitalism doesn't work because people are corrupt but communism which has no checks and balances or accountability unlike western democracy will work because people aren't corrupt and the less checks and balances they gave the less corrupt they become apparently

you are the most vapid psued on this board

>>14870252
Well you're just as dumb it seems.

>>14869990
>postmodernism is complete relativism!

>>14869856
>capitalism
I don't think most people here really understand it

It's a system that has its flaws, but it's the most natural way for humans to exchange goods and most people that criticize it barely understand what it entails. As a purely economical system, it's the best of them all. Mixed economies usually work because they have big competitive markets that they can milk on, not because muh gibbus incentivate the economy or muh redistribushon take people out of poverty.

>>14870007
he's on the right track... but muh nature... you can do much better than that. just simply argue that HUMANS would be better off and by extension nature as well.

>>14869995
And become thoroughly exploited by some handler.

>>14869989
Why do sociopaths get rewarded best in this ruthless system of competition?

>>14870252
Stonetoss?
Well, it figures you’d post here.
Capitalism “works” like a vampire works. I’m just saying we don’t want to die early as a species and should really drive a stake through it.
And read some theory. You don’t know what anarchism is all about yet, so don’t pretend you do.

>>14870385
Do you live in some weird bubble where you cannot be self employed? Where you cannot innovate and be cutting edge without being unscrupulous? Where exactly do you live? You seem to imply that anyone with keenness and skill, wisdom and perception to do well is a sociopath.

Most of /lit/ are pretty young are were only cultured by capitalism (their shitty "schools" and the internet). You gotta give them a couple more decades of bootlicking before they realize.

>>14870340
You have no idea what capitalism is, do you?

>>14870449
The self-employed are still proles, asshat.

>>14869871
not really. a post black death peasant had a better diet, breathed better air, had more truly inviolable rights, better personal cleanliness, and more emotional satisfaction than most will ever have.

>>14870074
>We're never not going to be selfish
based acceptor of truth

>>14870449
>Where you cannot innovate and be cutting edge without being unscrupulous?
This isn't a thing, but it also isn't a thing under any other system. Hard work doesn't pay off, using others in unscrupulous ways does.
>>14870463
Capitalism with critical theorist characteristics is what kids are being taught in school.

>>14869893
I see your point and I don't disagree but plenty of people in the USA live in poor conditions. I do think it could benefit greatly from more control however, not only has capitalism produced some great things, its also disproportionally produced some of the most vile and disgusting.

>>14870340
>capitalism is when goods are traded with money

>>14869856
thinking the modern world is because of an economic system is hilarious

the modern world is due entirely to a handful of completely accidental technological discoveries that revolutionized our entire state of being. The men who realized cycling crops or steam engines or whatever were in no way a direct product of the system of private property. The inability to differentiate between the qualitatively disruptive innovations in tech and the ways human economics or politics can be organized is just another of the endless idiocies our species seems to think its purpose to produce.

>>14869856
Capitalism is a force indifferent to suffering, which to me personally makes it malevolent, but it's not inherently so in intent always. The scariest thing about the globalized economy is nobody is at the wheel.

>>14870483
Unless you went to school 30+ years ago, or were educated in a very good private school in the west, you weren't "taught" anything in school. You were babysitted and conditioned to later be integrated into a market society, which unsurprisingly, most eventually are.

>>14870449
The system rewards to worst best. The nice employer is perhaps sometimes too nice for his own good and loses money. Seems common sense, and so it becomes common practice. The once nice boss starts to make money, stops managing the store and connecting with the employees (Not friends. Not colleagues. Mere business appendages; employees) He hires middle management to fill his position whose job it is to get the most out of these employees, cut costs and boost profits. The nice bosses either change or go out of business. This is encouraged, this is normal. You'd expect the system to do this every time.

Socialists suggest we stop doing it this way.
The way I have shown on several occasions would reward those who make connections and build friendships. The whole system changed, the minds of men would change too. It sounds miraculous what I describe to people, they can't believe it, but it's simple. Getting there is the hard part.

>NNNOOOOOOO YOU CAN'T JUST INVEST YOUR EARNINGS!!!!!
lmfao get dabbed on commies

>>14870532
>your

>>14870536

>>14870543
>yes
please don't use words made by other people for the accumulation of private (you)s

>>14870502
You can be taught to be stupid.

>>14870010
>It's by far the best system we have.
We don’t have a capitalist system we have a mixed system

>>14869871
>90% of the rights that i currently use the most to enjoy life like, pensions, universal education, no more than 8 hour work days, healthcare and high minimum wages are not at all a direct result of endless leftist workers going on strike during the 19th and 20th centuries tired of being exploited

>>14869893
>constantly makes new innovations
>life affirming and competitive
God damn, i really hate when people say this shit to defend capitalism, as if they know anything about how science and tech is affected by capital and corporations.
I could literally write entire pages of reasons why capitalism more often than not makes innovation and tech more difficult to flurish because it works via competition, instead of mutual aid and because its all about rich men waiting to put patents on everything that is tech to fill their pockets.

So when you look at it you then have 5 different labs from diferent companies competing months and years on end, exausting themselves and in a constant state of anxiety from the thought of loosing the competition while they could've reached the end goal of the research in half the time if they helped eachother.

>>14870589
>leftists
>working

>>14870647
Capitalist just means non-working parasite.

>>14870654
Which is ridiculous coming from commies, who consider "having a job" to be exploitation.

>>14870629
Too bad that moving to your utopian world first requires war that eventually only gives more power to the bankers

>>14869884
Yes.

>>14870672
Retard.

>>14870688
No refunds, commie.

>>14870510
dumb post

>>14870010
>It's by far the best system we have.

>>14870102
>>14870647
>>14870672
>>14870713
Midwit speaking in memes and animated comics, I love modern day "discourse".

>>14870674
A lot of communists don't realize their ideology is just packaging to turn the common person into a slave for another capitalist country, until there are no more capitalist countries. Only slaves.

>>14870725
woa bro... take my upvote!

Capitalism is the perfect system in a world occupied by perfectly rational homo economicus people who have omniscience. In the real world, though, it's kinda gay.

>>14870733
dumb post

>>14870738
thats' why we have computers

>>14870740
ironic

>>14870713
Why to polcels think campaign contributions are refundable?

>>14870733
I always get sad when I see people be manipulated by others like this.

>>14870744
you're basically conceding that he's right but trying to pretend like he's wrong. dumb post.

>>14870758
Why do bernouts keep falling for the same shit?

>>14870758
"no refunds" alludes to the irredeemable betrayal of the controlled opposition by their leader, meaning you get nothing back. nice try, retard.

>>14870769
wrong, retard.

>>14870782
dumb post but thanks for admitting that i'm right

>>14870786
ok, american.

>>14870788
>>14870740

>>14870791
american.

>>14869856
https://youtu.be/2yfXgu37iyI

>>14870767
bro... then were all like... slaves... when you think about it...

>>14869871
dumbass

>>14870802
He's right, though.

>>14869856
Graph went up, world is gooder.

>>14870797
Holy fuck

THEY WERENT TALKING ABOUT NUKES

>>14870482
imagine thinking this. guess the first few millions of years of human history didn't happen

>>14870647
>what is class war

>>14870800
Hilarious. The funny youtube man taught you well.

>>14870804
trivially true. our standards of living are higher (according to a certain, very capitalist metric) but this does not mean capitalism is desirable

>>14870819
It's desirable because it works well.

>>14869871
>''''''''''''high standard of living'''''''''''''''

>>14870823
'works well' in what way? cause i ask you to look at the OP and tell me why it (the OP) exists

>>14870825
Why what exists? Motorcycles?

>>14870830
what do you think is implied by the OP's pic anon

>>14870824
>Gold farming on Runescape isn't the most viable way to feed my family
Why even live?

>>14870823
>>14870816

>>14870831
I have no idea, thats why I'm asking what you mean.

>>14870834
China is communist. That's what happens when you live in a communist dystopian hellhole.

The shitflinging on this thread is even worse than /pol/

>>14870836
the trash and filth on the street is meant to elicit disgust, as is the worn-out and unmaintained poster-covered pillar. from this one is expected to make the inference that the OP is, as usual, asking a charge question: 'is capitalism good? (despite the emotions elicited by said image)
'works well' is such a hilariously vague wording that have said absolutely nothing of substance more than something akin to 'capitalism is desirable because i like it'. what if 'works well' doesn't include societies which have suicide nets around factories?

No, it deludes people into rejecting blatant facts when acknowledgement of those facts could hurt stockholders.

>>14870806

I wonder what capitalism would be like if the stock market was banned.

>>14869856
just read marx

>>14870850
A lot better.

>>14869856
capitalism is nothing without globalism. all the 1st world countries can't function without the exploitation of 3rd world. so under this system many suffer for the benefit of the few. westerners take Capitalist Realism for granted but the automation is coming to pop their cute little bubble. so yeah it's good for Western European countries but bad for rest of the world with the exception of few countries.

>>14870845
>what if 'works well' doesn't include societies which have suicide nets around factories?
Then maybe they should try being capitalist, instead of communist.

>>14870860
It worked fine without globalism for centuries. It's just that a bunch of immoral people realized they can save a lot of money by firing off their domestic workers and outsourcing to countries that treat their citizens worse than slaves.

>>14870267
Pretty much what it's become these days.

>>14870810
imagine limiting your thinking to some dogmas of fudged up ideologies. is your argument that there was no selfishness because people lived in primitive communist society?

>>14870510
>muh power of friendship

>>14870778
They don't, dumbfuck.

>>14870781
No idea what you're talking about, faggot.

no and we're seeing the endgame now.

I wish I could have a good conversation on here about this. Just been reading Kalyan Sanyal on how the world capitalist system means that poorer countries will never develop

>>14870900
If they didn't they wouldn't be bernouts.

>>14870904
They'll never develop because they're retarded. That would remain true even without "capitalism".

>>14870873
>It's just that a bunch of immoral people
If you need to use this in analysis, your analysis is most likely flawed.

>>14870873
Western Europeans and later Americans are responsible for forcing capitalism through colonialism on indigenous people who were living in harmony with mother nature from thousands of years.
those 3rd world countries have looked into abyss for too along. they've accepted the western capitalist model and now tides are turning against the west. there's no to blame for the incoming destruction of white men other than white men themselves.

>>14870908
Only trumpcucks fall for the same shit over and over again.

>>14870916
You mean "winning"?

>>14870918
If that word is used the way Charlie Sheen used it, then yes.

>>14870909
And the reason here is white iq > black iq.

>>14869856
I dunno, but what's a plausible alternative?

>>14870909
>>14870921
"""Development""" is retarded. Read the unabomber.

>>14870929
I have, and his conclusions are idiotic.

>>14870889
yes

>>14870934
Enjoy living in a hellscape, brainlet.

>>14870938
Go live innawoods and eat dirt, you retarded luddite.

>>14869856
/lit/ is for the discussion of literature, specifically books (fiction & non-fiction), short stories, poetry, creative writing, etc. If you want to discuss history, religion, or the humanities, go to /his/. If you want to discuss politics, go to /pol/. Philosophical discussion can go on either /lit/ or /his/, but those discussions of philosophy that take place on /lit/ should be based around specific philosophical works to which posters can refer.

>>14870918
nice approval rating

>>14870945
have u considered that the fact the rules keep being broken is a sign they should be changed

>>14870909
wrong.

Developing countries are locked into a global supply chain which means that their labour's surplus-value is exploited and sent to the developed countries

Also illicit financial flows are a huge problem for developing countries.

>>14870810
Primitive communism is a total meme that has literally zero real anthropological support. While primitive people's weren't exactly what we'd call capitalists, there wasn't exactly what we'd call "means of production" in any real sense either. The whole projection of communism onto primitive tribal organization is a total retcon and has no validity beyond the skinless musings of old cranks and spoiled college kids.

>>14870976
>retcon
please please please do yourself a huge favor and unplug from the internet for at least a month

>>14869871
>high graph good, green numbers good
A materially prosperous world doesn't mean shit so long as its people are miserable.

>>14870962
You're presupposing a value onto these resources that fundamentally does not exist without Europeans seeking to extract it. When you look at African countries following the exit of foreign investment there is nothing but a vacuum for others to fill. This is the same struggle that China is having in the Congo. You're literally projecting organizational capabilities that you don't even have onto a people whom you don't understand and then calling all of their efforts to better themselves exploitation because they don't fit your sheltered ideal of what these countries should be doing.

It's always so striking to me how few of these people with communist sympathies ever have any actual expertise (or even interest) in resource management despite their entire ideology being built upon this claim that all the world's excess value is being extracted from the gaps between the lines. This is fundamentally misunderstanding how value works and assuming it to be this static thing that doesn't change as labor is put into it. Capitalists don't extract value, they fundamentally create it, and until communists are able to come to grips with that, their critique of capital will always be completely hollow.

>>14870929
>being unironically anarcho-pritimivist

>>14869856
Capitalism is. Once it wasn't. It won't be again.

>>14870962
>surplus value

>>14870992
It is a retcon though. The whole thing is a projection of a modern ideology onto a fundamentally anti-modern mode of existence in an attempt to add some sort of continuity to the way we interpret their being. Instead of seeing modernity as this aberration from the majority of human existence, we're assigning a modification of a modern mode of thinking onto a constructed group of people who do not operate in a way that modern organizational vocabulary properly describes.

>>14871024
I wasn't arguing against your claim, I was recommending you leave the internet for a month because you've started to adapt shitty tvtropes-esque vocabulary and clearly need a time out to detox.

>>14870992
Not a valid argument he's correct kys

>>14870976
>Primitive communism is a total meme that has literally zero real anthropological support.
lol this is simply not true. read david graeber or take an introductory anthropology class on hunter-gatherer bands

>>14869856
Properly regulated and in the interests of the people, sure.
Pic related, no.

>>14871013
Not an argument.

>>14871030
Take a break.

>>14871029
>tvtropes-esque vocabulary

How the fuck would a word as broad and universal as "retcon" be considered co-opted by TV Tropes? that's like saying that "portmanteau" is Wikipedia-esque vocabulary.

>need a time out to detox

How the fuck is TV Tropes toxic?

>>14871039
It is. You support being an ape.

>>14871010
If they knew anything about resource management, they wouldn't be communists.

>>14871048
Nerd culture is a brain disease. Get out before it is too late.

>>14871055
>if they knew anything, they wouldn't be communists.
ftfy

>>14871032
The closest thing to evidence for primitive communism that is ever produced are the horizontal organization structures that are argued to have been present on the Ivory coast in Africa. Almost all tribal organizations are based around elder leadership managing the rites and actions of young men who then risk their lives to hunt and provide for themselves and their families. To call this communism misunderstands both communism and tribal organization.

>>14871055
read jerry cohen please

>>14870816
Why are you posting pictures from a oligarchy/capitalist country? What does that have to do with anything, midwit?

>>14871057
You're delusional. And also on 4chan.
kys hypocrite

>>14871065
>Almost all tribal organizations
you've already outed yourself. tribes are not the same as bands in anthropological vocabulary
bands are pretty much by definition communist. they are characterized by strong egalitarianism, anti-heirarchial norms, mobile lifestyle (resulting in war and wealth accumulation being basically non-existant) and gift economies. this is basic anthropology 101

>>14871066
>marxist
No point.

>>14871096
he's a marxist that knows bourgeois economics well but rejects it for sound reasons

>>14870935
Making babies is selfish.

>>14869871
High stnadard of McDonalds.

To avoid killing a thread for a simple question, is this book about impartial economics or does argue Marxist ideas?

Worth reading to understand Marxism?

>>14871179
No, It's pretty outdated you have to read Deleuze to understand Marxism

>>14871184
I can't take this seriously. Deleuze is arcane French post structuralist lore, not a book required to understand basic economics.

Free markets work, people often look at them and complain about hierarchy but hierarchy is natural and springs forth within literally every society because men are not created equal.

>>14871329
>hierarchy is natural
how so?

Why does the right always accept the labels leftists make for them? Capitalism is a false framing and a tool of bad faith.

>>14871334
Because people aren't equal.

>>14870104
>the 56% country
>fascist

>>14869856
No, corporate capitalism and liberalism are tearing the world apart. It’s better than communism though because I can disagree with and avoid capitalism’s negative effects. In communism if be starving or in a camp for not being pro-state enough

>>14870104
America is a communist country.

>>14871343
>Because people aren't equal
how so?

>>14871367
I wish.

Oh fuck. This picture is from my country