The technological advancements were in large part due to the large scale growth of industry under capitalism. Although lots of bloodshed and suffering was involved in the process, and without leftists fighting for reforms, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy its fruits today.
The mass availability of the internet, and many other pillars of infrastructure are a result of capitalism. And these developments definitely have increased living standards for the majority of humans, even ones in third world nations (The popular image of a destitute country with rampant poverty is extremely rare these days.)
Capitalism was most responsible for underdeveloping the global south. Europeans genocided the indigenous Americans and needed a large supply of labor, so they used their (at the time) minor technological advantage to trade high-demand commodities exclusively for slaves in Africa. This depressed African development and skyrocketed European development, and this expanded in colonialism.
Capitalism was progressive as compared with feudalism, yes, but it’s been socialist economies that have been most responsible of eradicating poverty. If you remove socialist countries, poverty has gone up in the last century.
I fully agree with the first part. Countries with already developed industry and trade got the boost, and that’s the major reason for the large difference in development between Underdeveloped and Developed nations.
If you remove socialist countries, poverty has gone up in the last century
I don’t get it. Remove in what way? Too vague to carry any meaning.
If you mean their political, economic, and ideological impact on surrounding nations then yeah, obviously. But the socialist countries themselves had to adopt some form of capitalism to continue to grow economically (see: china). The countries that didn’t move away from central planning eventually collapsed (eg. USSR*).
*I understand how the cause of the USSR’s collapse is not soley the inefficiency of central planning, but even if the country was allowed to continue unimpeded, it would have collapsed because of that one reason.
There’s several misconceptions here, but I’ll get to them after addressing the poverty point. When I said “when we remove socialist countries,” I mean the absolute poverty worldwide has only gone down when you include socialist countries in that statistic, if you only include capitalist countries then poverty goes up, because poverty has increased in the combined capitalist sphere. That’s not vague, it’s clear-cut, poverty has reduced in socialist countries by a dramatic extent (largely in China) while poverty has increased in the rest of the world overall.
Onto the misconceptions. Markets and private property are not themselves capitalism. What distinguishes capitalism as a system from socialism as a system is whether private ownership or public ownership is principle, ie covers the large firms and key industries at a minimum. The USSR had some small degree of private property, and so did China even under Mao and later the Gang of Four. China opened up their capital markets to foreign investment while maintaining control of the large firms and key industries, and rely heavily on central planning to direct the economy. They are in the earlier stages of socialism, as shown here:
The reason for adopting controlled markets for the smaller and medium firms is because that form of ownership better suited China’s level of development. Public ownership works more effectively at higher levels of development, so it’s like a controlled fire for heat before replacing with an electric system when the tech advances. Out of control, the fire can be destructive, but by maintaining control of the large firms and key industries you maintain control over the rest of production.
As for central planning, that’s not why the USSR dissolved, and was actually one of its greatest strengths. The economy grew rapidly and consistently throughout the USSR’s existence:
Instead, what happened is that reforms such as those under Gorbachev created economic and political division against central planning, as well as problems such as nationalism in some of the SSRs and SFSRs, as well as the fact that the USSR had to dedicate tons of resources and production to maintaining millitary parity with the US Empire despite also needing to recover from the devastation of World War II.
There’s absolutely no basis for the idea that central planning induces collapse, China relies on it heavily as do other socialist countries like Cuba, and even megacorporations these days rely more on internal planning and minor cyberbetics than price signals as was traditional for earlier capitalism.
So no alternative explanation? You should at least point me to some resources that say otherwise.
I fully acknowledge the wild ecological harm and rising inequality that capitalism has brought with it. However, even Marx had written about the system’s capacity for the advancement of industrial technology and productivity.
Centrally planned economies like the ones of the USSR and similar 21st century socialist states do not work. They would never have enabled the vast distribution and rapid development of technology like we see today. Lemmy itself is a product of capitalism.
Planned economies do work. Using the USSR as an example, they achieved tremendous economic growth surpassing the vast majority of capitalist economies, all while under intense sanctions and invasion.
The USSR and other socialist economies have been some of the most rapidly developing countries in history.
Lemmy itself is not a product of capitalism, either, FOSS can be used by capitalism but largely sits outside that.
They do, to a certain extent. Once an economy begins to grow more and more complex, the intensity of calculations needed increases proportionally (edit: proportional may not be the right word here).
A large part of the USSR’s workforce was dedicated to economic planning at the time of its collapse, and it was projected to reach 50% by the 2000s.
They intended to solve this with computers, but there’s reasons this wouldn’t have worked:
A: Economic calculation involves NP-Hard problems, where the complexity can increase out of nowhere.
If you needed to perform 1600 calculations one day, next week the number needed could jump to 36000. (NP-Hard problems are also common in route determination programs used by delivery apps to devise optimum routes. If you increase the number of locations from 10 to 11, the computations needed to calculate an optimum route increases staggeringly, and it keeps getting worse the more complex you make it.)
B: Making the economy more complex makes the calculations needed more-than-exponentially extra intensive and numerous. If you introduce computers into the mix, more people are free to do other things and make the economy even more complex. It’s a really fast vicious cycle that doesn’t end well.
And in all of this, I haven’t even mentioned the corruption involved in bureaucracy
This is generally not true, the Economic Calculation Problem is a made-up excuse, same with the idea that 50% of the USSR’s economy would be dedicated to planning. Administration and planning is important, but it isn’t the kind of thing that overwhelms the economy. Megacorporations like Walmart and Amazon already employ economic planning over price signals to great effect, and socialist economies are still rapidly advancing, especially China, even though it relies heavily on central planning.
Corruption happens in capitalism, too, it isn’t something especially worse in socialism.
The technological advancements were in large part due to the large scale growth of industry under capitalism. Although lots of bloodshed and suffering was involved in the process, and without leftists fighting for reforms, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy its fruits today.
The mass availability of the internet, and many other pillars of infrastructure are a result of capitalism. And these developments definitely have increased living standards for the majority of humans, even ones in third world nations (The popular image of a destitute country with rampant poverty is extremely rare these days.)
Capitalism was most responsible for underdeveloping the global south. Europeans genocided the indigenous Americans and needed a large supply of labor, so they used their (at the time) minor technological advantage to trade high-demand commodities exclusively for slaves in Africa. This depressed African development and skyrocketed European development, and this expanded in colonialism.
Capitalism was progressive as compared with feudalism, yes, but it’s been socialist economies that have been most responsible of eradicating poverty. If you remove socialist countries, poverty has gone up in the last century.
I fully agree with the first part. Countries with already developed industry and trade got the boost, and that’s the major reason for the large difference in development between Underdeveloped and Developed nations.
I don’t get it. Remove in what way? Too vague to carry any meaning.
If you mean their political, economic, and ideological impact on surrounding nations then yeah, obviously. But the socialist countries themselves had to adopt some form of capitalism to continue to grow economically (see: china). The countries that didn’t move away from central planning eventually collapsed (eg. USSR*).
*I understand how the cause of the USSR’s collapse is not soley the inefficiency of central planning, but even if the country was allowed to continue unimpeded, it would have collapsed because of that one reason.
There’s several misconceptions here, but I’ll get to them after addressing the poverty point. When I said “when we remove socialist countries,” I mean the absolute poverty worldwide has only gone down when you include socialist countries in that statistic, if you only include capitalist countries then poverty goes up, because poverty has increased in the combined capitalist sphere. That’s not vague, it’s clear-cut, poverty has reduced in socialist countries by a dramatic extent (largely in China) while poverty has increased in the rest of the world overall.
Onto the misconceptions. Markets and private property are not themselves capitalism. What distinguishes capitalism as a system from socialism as a system is whether private ownership or public ownership is principle, ie covers the large firms and key industries at a minimum. The USSR had some small degree of private property, and so did China even under Mao and later the Gang of Four. China opened up their capital markets to foreign investment while maintaining control of the large firms and key industries, and rely heavily on central planning to direct the economy. They are in the earlier stages of socialism, as shown here:
The reason for adopting controlled markets for the smaller and medium firms is because that form of ownership better suited China’s level of development. Public ownership works more effectively at higher levels of development, so it’s like a controlled fire for heat before replacing with an electric system when the tech advances. Out of control, the fire can be destructive, but by maintaining control of the large firms and key industries you maintain control over the rest of production.
As for central planning, that’s not why the USSR dissolved, and was actually one of its greatest strengths. The economy grew rapidly and consistently throughout the USSR’s existence:
Instead, what happened is that reforms such as those under Gorbachev created economic and political division against central planning, as well as problems such as nationalism in some of the SSRs and SFSRs, as well as the fact that the USSR had to dedicate tons of resources and production to maintaining millitary parity with the US Empire despite also needing to recover from the devastation of World War II.
There’s absolutely no basis for the idea that central planning induces collapse, China relies on it heavily as do other socialist countries like Cuba, and even megacorporations these days rely more on internal planning and minor cyberbetics than price signals as was traditional for earlier capitalism.
lol no
So no alternative explanation? You should at least point me to some resources that say otherwise.
I fully acknowledge the wild ecological harm and rising inequality that capitalism has brought with it. However, even Marx had written about the system’s capacity for the advancement of industrial technology and productivity.
Centrally planned economies like the ones of the USSR and similar 21st century socialist states do not work. They would never have enabled the vast distribution and rapid development of technology like we see today. Lemmy itself is a product of capitalism.
Lemmy is made by communists.
Planned economies do work. Using the USSR as an example, they achieved tremendous economic growth surpassing the vast majority of capitalist economies, all while under intense sanctions and invasion.
The USSR and other socialist economies have been some of the most rapidly developing countries in history.
Lemmy itself is not a product of capitalism, either, FOSS can be used by capitalism but largely sits outside that.
They do, to a certain extent. Once an economy begins to grow more and more complex, the intensity of calculations needed increases proportionally (edit: proportional may not be the right word here).
A large part of the USSR’s workforce was dedicated to economic planning at the time of its collapse, and it was projected to reach 50% by the 2000s.
They intended to solve this with computers, but there’s reasons this wouldn’t have worked:
A: Economic calculation involves NP-Hard problems, where the complexity can increase out of nowhere.
If you needed to perform 1600 calculations one day, next week the number needed could jump to 36000. (NP-Hard problems are also common in route determination programs used by delivery apps to devise optimum routes. If you increase the number of locations from 10 to 11, the computations needed to calculate an optimum route increases staggeringly, and it keeps getting worse the more complex you make it.)
B: Making the economy more complex makes the calculations needed more-than-exponentially extra intensive and numerous. If you introduce computers into the mix, more people are free to do other things and make the economy even more complex. It’s a really fast vicious cycle that doesn’t end well.
And in all of this, I haven’t even mentioned the corruption involved in bureaucracy
This is generally not true, the Economic Calculation Problem is a made-up excuse, same with the idea that 50% of the USSR’s economy would be dedicated to planning. Administration and planning is important, but it isn’t the kind of thing that overwhelms the economy. Megacorporations like Walmart and Amazon already employ economic planning over price signals to great effect, and socialist economies are still rapidly advancing, especially China, even though it relies heavily on central planning.
Corruption happens in capitalism, too, it isn’t something especially worse in socialism.