Is Capitalism self-destructive?

Not David

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I don't necessarily know if I have a solution - I don't think Marx's solution is anything close to good (as I don't believe economic systems can ultimately change selfish human nature), and I don't trust the government to be for our best interest, considering not only the amount of people in history that have utilized government for the stifling of dissent when actual problems occur and ignoring those problems (that's not to mention that such stifling includes mass murder e.g. the Stalinist purges), but even the absolute bureaucracy that becomes apparent in most societies today with executive agencies and government-provided services, in which very little gets accomplished due to a lack of incentive.

But still, I often times think that many of the problems in our society that we have are a direct result of our corporate economic system, and that it is self-destructive for only causing these problems and much more.

Ideally, what we would want is a balance with a government who can objectively see what is morally good for people to regulate these businesses when they become sociologically harmful to a great extent physically, mentally, or spiritually - but the problem is there that in our society, there is no moral authority to make decisions on what is actually good for people or not, nor is the government independent of businesses, in which businesses can have special interest politicians get elected due to excessive amounts of money, for the benefit of the business and not the benefit of the people. Plus, the problem here is that to what level is something "sociologically harmful" can be contestable - I mean, are fast-food chains sociologically harmful?
A good example is Hollywood that has produced movies which promote immoral behavior, I would say it could be difficult to censor the media nowadays in the US, and few people notice the harm of the media.
 
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Not David

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The reason why most systems fail is because they assume everyone will have everyone else's best interests at heart.
Capitalism kinda works because it doesn't make that assumption.
Current consumistic society proves the opposite.
 
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renniks

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I’ve kind of come to the conclusion of this political opinion, and I was wondering if anybody here could challenge this opinion, or if anybody would want to suggest a solution to these problems, especially in light of the growth of globalization.

For one, while Marx was wrong on many things, I don’t think he was wrong when it comes to how Capitalism would eventually fall. Marx posited that Capitalism would only produce innovation, which leads to more efficient means of production. I.e., the replacement of the worker with technology. This in turn reduces the demand and supply of skilled labor, and labor in general, while leading to a much more concrete divide between the workers and the employers, with the wages of workers going down as the rich get richer. This cycle inevitably leads to horrible living conditions and standards, which leads to a collapse of society through either functioning or mass revolts, which Capitalism can’t function in.

For two, another way I see it as self-destructive is the feeding into passions through the services, products, and marketing that Capitalism supplies. Many people seek to find out why our society is so broken - why families are so broken, why there is a collapse in religiosity; why divorce is so high, why adultrey is so high, why abortion is so high - why why why. I think that a massive part is Capitalism itself, which feeds into our passions. Why do we sex everywhere? Movies, commercials, billboards, etc. The internet, a product of Capitalist society, makes voyerism an act of booting up the computer and typing in an address. What about drug usage? Delicious and addictive foods like fast food and sodas and caffeine? The projection of perfect people, which forces teenagers and women especially to have psychologically ill perceptions of what it means to be skinny, what it means to be beautiful, what it means to be sexy. Superman’s dead by Our Lady Peace sums up this specific problem pretty well. The comforts of technology leads to laziness and the lack of discipline; who needs to even leave their room when they got the internet?

And these pleasures work because man is a fallen creature, prone to temptations that offer immediate gratification - at least, those who follow the broad path and not the narrow path. These products of passion induction only lead to pure Sodom and Gomorrah - a society of animals. Is the introduction of homosexuality as normative really that surprising, when immoral application of sexual gratification was introduced by our society as normal by Capitalism and it’s products? Why should homosexuality not be seen as good if adultrey is not seen as bad? And Capitalism only further cements the process by advertising “Pride month” everywhere, further feeding into our passions and earning more money. Why should I follow religion at all when it mandates audacious requirements that are so counter intuitive to our pleasure society? Why do you think so many churches - most noteably, Catholicism - have eased the ascetic requirements put on the lay people? Simple - to prevent apostasy and prevent the fishes from leaving the net, in light of our comfort society pushing hedonism, the opposite goal which religions like Christianity, religions like Islam, religions like Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. wish to accomplish - restriction of passions for some greater goal.

Thus, society collapses.

Thoughts?
Seriously? Marx's ideas led to slaughter and oppression. You think areas that are capitalist have less sin? Your whole line of thought is laughable.
 
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TheLostCoin

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Seriously? Marx's ideas led to slaughter and oppression. You think areas that are capitalist have less sin? Your whole line of thought is laughable.

Yes. It did. Did you read my post in toto, where I said that "Marx was wrong on many things," or my later post, where I criticize Marx's ridiculous idea that human nature can be changed via economics, and acknowledged that the Stalinist purges prove that trust in government isn't an ideal alternative either?

Capitalism - if we refer to capitalistic countries from the Industrial Revolution onwards - led to such horrible living and working conditions for the worker that the South (the Southern States in America) was able to use such horrible conditions to justify slavery - at least slaves have food, shelter, and better working conditions than the worker did!

I think that all systems, when created with a level of genuine intent by a person, have some degree of truth in it, even if such a truth is .000001% there. Theistic Satanism may be 99.999999% false, but that .000001% that's true is the acknowledgment of a God and a devil.
 
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Lukaris

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I think capitalism ceases when businesses become multinational corporations. On a national & local basis, capitalism is probably the best model. It is, I believe, the values of the people that will determine if a society is generous, greedy or (most likely) conflicted.

Marxism is a disaster.
 
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peregrinus2017

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In chapter eight of his book 'Freedom of morality', Christos Yannaris speaks about pietism, and how it relates to capitalism and much of our Western view. This chapter is available online, just search up "Pietism as an ecclesiological heresy", and it should come up with an Orthodoxy today link.
 
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TheLostCoin

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It’s the ideal, but, monarchy is no longer an option in the western world, sadly. I agree.

I think more than any of this, is if Monarchy were to come into re-existence for some reason (God only knows - I mean, while I doubt it, who could've predicted the Soviet Union would've collapsed so quickly?), there would have to be accommodations to our own societal structures. We can't just re-establish serfdom, forbid women from owning property, and allow an oral-tradition Constitution.
 
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Yekcidmij

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If Capitalism is sustainable for an indefinite period, the Kingdom of God would use a similar structure.

But no, the Kingdom of God is more or less socialist.

There is at least one critical difference between the here and now and eternity. Here and now we live in a world of scarcity in resources; not only in natural resources and money, but in other more intangible resources like time, energy, physical capacity, moral capacity, mental capacity, and life itself. Presumably, in the resurrection, scarcity won't exist, or perhaps it will exist but will be such that it's negligible in effect. So I'm not sure it's really useful to draw too many conclusions from comparing those two states of existence.
 
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timewerx

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There is at least one critical difference between the here and now and eternity. Here and now we live in a world of scarcity in resources; not only in natural resources and money, but in other more intangible resources like time, energy, physical capacity, moral capacity, mental capacity, and life itself. Presumably, in the resurrection, scarcity won't exist, or perhaps it will exist but will be such that it's negligible in effect. So I'm not sure it's really useful to draw too many conclusions from comparing those two states of existence.

Capitalism is mainly sustained by population growth.

Continued population growth is a problem concerning long term sustainability. Although there are countries that seem to thrive on Capitalism despite stagnant population growth but they're also trading with countries with high population growth and some of these countries have quasi-socialist economic systems in terms of distribution of wealth. They are still capitalists but their taxation, social welfare programs, etc, aim to reduce income gap between the rich and poor and some have managed to eliminate poverty among their citizens.

Even living creatures cannot sustain continued rates of cell division / cell reproduction after they have reached adulthood. Cells that do are cancerous in nature.

God commanded man to multiply in the beginning but not in all time. At some point we only need to sustain a reasonable population size. By the time of Jesus, it has become much more preferred to multiply by means of the Gospel instead of physical reproduction by building families.
 
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Euodius

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Yes. It did. Did you read my post in toto, where I said that "Marx was wrong on many things," or my later post, where I criticize Marx's ridiculous idea that human nature can be changed via economics, and acknowledged that the Stalinist purges prove that trust in government isn't an ideal alternative either?

Capitalism - if we refer to capitalistic countries from the Industrial Revolution onwards - led to such horrible living and working conditions for the worker that the South (the Southern States in America) was able to use such horrible conditions to justify slavery - at least slaves have food, shelter, and better working conditions than the worker did!

I think that all systems, when created with a level of genuine intent by a person, have some degree of truth in it, even if such a truth is .000001% there. Theistic Satanism may be 99.999999% false, but that .000001% that's true is the acknowledgment of a God and a devil.

Yeah, and Marx wasn't opposed to Capitalism because it was of the same root of revolution and necessary for his evolutionary end/telos. That continued with the Libertarians (an ideological offshoot of communism) which holds capitalism as a means to that end. Some, like the Rockefellers have understood capitalism and socialism to be the carrot and the stick to the end/telos.

The end/telos is best described by Fr. Teilhard de Chardin J.S. as the coming of All into the One... the return of all into the monad that we will co-evolve into/with God.
 
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