Why Socialism? (1949)
<i>The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals.</i><p>This resonates for me in middle age, after rarely having more than $2000 free and clear despite a lifetime of hard work. I&#x27;ve lived movies like Pursuit of Happyness and In Time, but without the financial epifany. All I do is work.<p>If capitalism worked, then prices would get lower over time with increased per capita productivity. We got a brief taste of that for the last time in the late 1990s, but most people stopped getting raises after that, and now duopolies provide nearly all name-brand goods and services. As it stands now, it&#x27;s pretty much over. I don&#x27;t think anyone seriously thinks that homes, vehicles, food etc will ever decrease in price now.<p>We can generally agree on the causes being stuff like regulatory capture and not enforcing antitrust laws. But those aren&#x27;t root causes. The real problem is power imbalance from wealth inequality. To address that directly, we could either provide more wealth to the working class via UBI or redistribute wealth from the owner class via taxation. Note that neither of those have been tried at a national level in anyone under 50&#x27;s lifetime.<p>Which means that the national debt was planned. It represents the share of wealth transferred to the owner class, skimmed from the working class as a result of trickle-down economics.<p>The next 2-3 US elections are going to be really important though. Young people have a chance to democratically vote to substantially raise taxes on corporations and billionaires. This won&#x27;t be so much anti-capitalist as trans-capitalist.<p>I say that because socialism and communism require a roughly 6 hour workday to provide enough labor for the system. But the median value of labor will never rise again, because of AI and automation. Meaning that work hours will increase as pay decreases. Which is self-evidently unsustainable. Which means that the traditional alternatives to capitalism will most likely not be viable, but will still be used as straw men against the political left by politicians to lure in low-information voters.<p>I believe that we passed the tipping point around the time of Bush v. Gore in 2000, when we were set to widely roll out renewable energy and electric cars, but chose not to (see Who Killed the Electric Car). Instead we invaded the Middle East at the behest of the owner class to protect established industries around fossil fuels. We&#x27;re only achieving some semblance of self-sufficiency 20 years later despite capitalism, not because of it.<p>Admittedly, I don&#x27;t have much faith in the political system to correct itself. So I sympathize with the political right&#x27;s sentiment that government bad. But the government is We the People in the US, so that&#x27;s like saying people bad. Which is othering and division. As we grapple with the actual truth of our struggle and stop blaming victims for our collective plight, I have faith that we&#x27;ll solve these problems, perhaps summarily. Until then, I&#x27;m manifesting a more independent&#x2F;off-grid lifestyle in an attempt to provide resources that capitalism has so far failed to provide me beyond a subsistence level.<p>The proof of everything I&#x27;m saying is in the failure of any billionaire to challenge the status quo in a material way. They claim that their money is tied up in stock and they pay themselves a trifle. Yet we watched as Musk made $44 billion liquid to buy Twitter. Their FUD should be a rudder for the rest of us towards real answers and strategy.<p>Now I go back to my toil, hoping to win the internet lottery but knowing deep down that real work is in service to others. My separation from the real contributions to society that I would have made by following my heart is like being poor twice.