Communism, Marxism, Socialism, Capitalism, What are your thoughts?

[Gorbles]

The thing on UBI I’d be concerned about would be actively encouraging unemployment by people who are able to work. I’ve pretty much seen it in the newspapers where people have quit their low paying jobs just to hop onto unemployment benefits because it pays more than their low paying job. Granted unemployment benefits are supposed to be temporary in nature. I feel that UBI should largely cover expenses you make when purchasing food and transportation to and from work, as a form of supplementary income not a substitute for income from work.

Then comes the other factor of also implementing a UBI to take into account of cost of living in an area. For instance, when comparing the CoL of Tennessee with the CoL of Massachusetts, it’s much expensive to live in Massachusetts because the state (especially if you’re within the Greater Boston Area) is much hire than that then living in Tennessee.

Much like in our current capitalistic setup, if UBI is more appealing than work, then it usually indicates a problem with that work.

There are absolutely challenges to making any form of UBI work without completely tearing down society, but "people might not do jobs" is far too generic to be a useful argument. As I mentioned earlier, at the other end of the scale we're stuck with anecdotes. Neither are reliable in structural terms. But I think it's a safer bet to assume that problems in motivation can be solved without using it as a reason to not have UBI.

History is full of examples of humans choosing to be productive. If large-scale motivational issues are introduced with UBI, I'm willing to bet those issues are symptomatic of other problems than they are UBI itself. And that's assuming said issues are anything more than short-term (i.e. during transition. It's easy to take a week or a month off after working years of 50 hour weeks. But proving that said person would never work again is far more of a stretch).

 

[Zardnaar]

Much like in our current capitalistic setup, if UBI is more appealing than work, then it usually indicates a problem with that work.

There are absolutely challenges to making any form of UBI work without completely tearing down society, but "people might not do jobs" is far too generic to be a useful argument. As I mentioned earlier, at the other end of the scale we're stuck with anecdotes. Neither are reliable in structural terms. But I think it's a safer bet to assume that problems in motivation can be solved without using it as a reason to not have UBI.

History is full of examples of humans choosing to be productive. If large-scale motivational issues are introduced with UBI, I'm willing to bet those issues are symptomatic of other problems than they are UBI itself. And that's assuming said issues are anything more than short-term (i.e. during transition. It's easy to take a week or a month off after working years of 50 hour weeks. But proving that said person would never work again is far more of a stretch).

Depends on how generous the Ubi.

If I could get the equivalent of our pension I would consider retiring in 40s. Basically once house is paid for. Pensions not a lot but I live modestly and don't have rent or mortage.

UBIs also seem similar to welfare. Here we've got universal welfare but have intergenerational welfare dependency.

It's a polite way if saying 3 generations of a family have been on welfare. It's a minority but welfare rates used to be more generous and you could get it aged 15.

School dropout retire age 15 have a kid (sometimes younger than 15), grandmother aged 28.

One family here qualified for all of the top ups, 10 kids got 50 grand a year which at the time was double the minimum wage.

Still poor due to size if family plus rent and medical costs.

Extreme examples and a minority bro he clear. You would probably need some amount of stuck to go with the UBI.

UBI would just be eaten up by increased costs anyway, probably inflation etc.

Money would be better spent on social housing, better schools, expanded welfare net etc.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

UBI would just be eaten up by increased costs anyway, probably inflation etc.

It would have to be adjusted for inflation or the economy have to be changed so that inflation no longer exist, however that is hard to do compared to simply making adjustment.

 

[Zardnaar]

It would have to be adjusted for inflation or the economy have to be changed so that inflation no longer exist, however that is hard to do compared to simply making adjustment.

I'm very sceptical if an UBI. I don't buy into the extreme deregulation side of neo liberal economics.

I do but into the no free lunch concept though.

 

[Hrothbern]

Much like in our current capitalistic setup, if UBI is more appealing than work, then it usually indicates a problem with that work.

There are absolutely challenges to making any form of UBI work without completely tearing down society, but "people might not do jobs" is far too generic to be a useful argument. As I mentioned earlier, at the other end of the scale we're stuck with anecdotes. Neither are reliable in structural terms. But I think it's a safer bet to assume that problems in motivation can be solved without using it as a reason to not have UBI.

History is full of examples of humans choosing to be productive. If large-scale motivational issues are introduced with UBI, I'm willing to bet those issues are symptomatic of other problems than they are UBI itself. And that's assuming said issues are anything more than short-term (i.e. during transition. It's easy to take a week or a month off after working years of 50 hour weeks. But proving that said person would never work again is far more of a stretch).

Having adequate and accessable-affordable schooling and retraining in place for people is very important.
In our fast changing world the traditional education and then 40 years work fitting that education is not functioning that well anymore for many sectors. Demand changes.
And people do change in their preferred choice of kind of work. How the hell can you know good enough at 18 what kind of job profile really suits you ? And if you during the first years know better... can you really change and start unskilled ?
"education permanente"

How many unemployed have a match issue because of their skills ? And for that reason stay unemployed or are unhappy in the job they end up in.
How many people are not clinical "disabled", physical or mental, but are not really able to work more than 24-32 hours a week. At high skilled jobs for good hourly rates you can simple work less hours, and it does not show to statistics.

If you take as society and as government "the right to work" serious most people are happy to work, to join the communal tredmill, and the financial incentive of getting some more from working than from an UBI will do the rest.

 

[Hrothbern]

I do but into the no free lunch concept though.

This is not intended as "ad hominem"
not as emotional burst.
Just to get the load more clearly into you:

Say you yourself will get a car accident when waiting for a traffic light and a car hits you from behind.
You end up with a "minor whiplash", but somehow, despite being under the official clinical treshold, your energy feels drained outside your body... and you end up after some years struggling losing your job, without that formal recognition and certficate of being disabled, and without money from the one who caused the accident.
Your wife had also a job, but your daughter is harrassed (not raped) at the end of a party (not really an exception) and it revives an old scar of your wife: she was abused by an uncle as child. And after this incident she never gets really the old one again. After a depression period she loses her job as well. But that condition she is in is also something that does not really ticks the boxes of your medical-mental welfare system.

People around you walk away because they think you are just softies. You yourself have at least still a story to defend yourself in public. Has your wife a story to tell to neighbors etc ?


Just tough luck ?

Do please be careful with arguments of the kind: "no free lunch"
It pushes an UBI in the punishment zone.

An appropiate UBI functions also as a base level of human dignity and compassion. Whether that is only for a kind of healing period or longer.
And being pragmatical... as a hybrid with a social insurance systyem in your country only good.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Why no one wants to stop free lunch for global corporations? It is totally unfair that they get so many benefits, while everyone else gets nothing. It is quite unfair, I'd say.

 

[El_Machinae]

I disagree that UBI will be sufficient, at least not before there's truly widespread automation. But the problem of people 'not working' sorts itself out pretty quickly, especially if there's no clawback. Unfortunately, not in a way that seems to be approved here.

You have to follow the process through four turns of the wheel after UBI gets passed (and is sufficient to allow people to not work - everything change it the UBI still requires people to work)

(1) The theatre cleaning staff and the millionaire's housemaid quits, because they'd rather play X-Box than do those jobs
(2) People with spending money will now buy the things they want to buy
(3) Movies (the thing that regular folk want) will rise in price because of simple supply/demand
(4) The person who doesn't work will find the stuff they want priced out of reach

There's a big benefit, though, because the number of available jobs will be higher. The millionaire probably still wants to hire a maid, they just need to pay more than they previously did. The guy who's not working still wants stuff, and he's got money to pay people to do it.

There's an early hiccup as movie theatres become dirtier. That sorts itself out. The millionaire loses a maid until they swallow their entitlement. And until people stop wanting what other people make, refusing to work will sort itself out through reduced purchasing power.

There will always be a need for additional services for people who cannot work or who have greater expenses than average. This isn't best addressed by a UBI.

 

[gay_Aleks]

UBI is an attempt to resolve the contradictions within capitalism (is it any coincidence that in the past years after 2008, it exploded in popularity?), by rendering them into problems of distribution. This, unfortunately, ignores the fact that distribution in itself is rooted into the mode of production - i.e, capitalism - and thus, a capitalistic UBI cannot result into a solution of the problems within capitalism, as they're deeply rooted within it, namely, the individualized expropriation of profits that came from socialized production, wage labour, the inexorable need for growth, despite increasingly lacking any real place to go, etc etc. We could go on, but I would frankly recommend just reading Critique of the Gotha Program, instead of all that.

 

[El_Machinae]

I'll have to look into it, and I appreciate the recommendation. My knee-jerk response is that UBI merely acknowledges that currency is super-useful. Any society would be insane to give up the benefits of currency.

 

[gay_Aleks]

You are correct, in a sense. Currency, in a lower stage of socialism, would by necessity have to exist, though presumably not quite in the form that we know today. Marx suggests labour vouchers, essentially representing, well, amount of labour worked. WIth that, one can then redeem certain goods and services. [Link to the Critique.]

 

[Hrothbern]

UBI is an attempt to resolve the contradictions within capitalism (is it any coincidence that in the past years after 2008, it exploded in popularity?), by rendering them into problems of distribution. This, unfortunately, ignores the fact that distribution in itself is rooted into the mode of production - i.e, capitalism - and thus, a capitalistic UBI cannot result into a solution of the problems within capitalism, as they're deeply rooted within it, namely, the individualized expropriation of profits that came from socialized production, wage labour, the inexorable need for growth, despite increasingly lacking any real place to go, etc etc. We could go on, but I would frankly recommend just reading Critique of the Gotha Program, instead of all that.

There can be more than 1 motive for an UBI indeed. They can come from differing factions of society that are in power and ideological conflict indeed.
Similar to for example a military whether or not including conscription. And BTW the ability to have support for conscription one of the drivers for general voting rights for males in Europe.

Big Corporate including protective political factions can also benefit. It's why I made this remark in my post on UBI:

UBI has also the risk that it is only used by rightwing to be able to say to "the people": "you've got what you wanted... we've got a social safety net in place... snore on in complacency"

I am quite sure this aspect was not part of the equation when UBI was put in place in 1965 in the Netherlands, but I can see in current global discussions that this aspect is there.
And that's also why keeping your UBI high enough is important and you need governmental mechanisms to keep that level visible. The CPB I mentioned in that UBI post.

This all still does not exclude that an UBI can go into the direction of generating "Bantustans" where you can "store" people containing the risk of uprisings.
Big Corporate together with high levels of automation will only really need people as voting flock and consumers.

You can also say that the military benefits of conscription in the nation building and military expansion-protection phase between 1800 and 1950 were a driver for general voting rights... humans were needed in the military competition between nations, needed for war economy production of military equipment, needed as cannon fodder.working by humans functions the same way... we were are all needed and got all a share in the pie in government power with all of us voting.
But how needed are we now, the many of us, for miltary warfare ?
You can say very much needed because of the needed power of the economy to produce ever-better weaponry. And the Robocops have not yet replaced the common soldiers and armies. Although the drones get fast better.
So far so good.
But what if Big Corporate decides that nations are only a theatre and real wars between them do not happen anymore unless they are in reality wars between factions of Big Corporate ?

Key is: "will humans be needed"

The black scenario is that humans are first parked in "Bantustans" and when no longer needed and no longer able to cause uprisings are marginalised out of meaningdul existence at some total amount in a couple of "Bantustans" in some National Parks.

 

[Birdjaguar]

That's not correct for at least the HRE area of Europe.

Nobles were desperate for money as the tax on peasants with land was easily outpaced by the tax potential of industrious activities in towns by guilds.

That tax was only "allowed" by the Burghers of the towns when they got privileges back that step by step increased the independency of the towns and its burghers. Many of those were irreversible as it turned out.

And feudal punishment like they were used to apply to peasants did not work for towns, guilds and burghers (burghers = the people with the right to live in a town)
Simply because Land has little need of capital assets andpeasants can be easily replaced. => There was little knowledge, workers, assets destroyed by destructive punishment. Max damage one year harvest.

For towns this is a completely different story.
Guilds are based on knowledge, and killing Guild burghers is like killing the goose with the golden eggs.
And even ransacking, burning a town as punishment does not work well, because that would destroy the assets of industrious activities, the tools and working stock. Only the gold etc would be of value for the feudal attacker.
The net effect of ransacking a town as punishment would simply be getting for a long period less tax because new tools would be needed first and the knowledge disruption from killing experienced craftmen would also cause a long term tax reduction.

One of the first privileges asked for and handed over by Feudal for some tax were town walls, mostly because feudal had yet another war and needed suddenly a lot of money. The non-war base tax was mostly not high. A reserve so to say for the war taxes that made more capital as long as it was reserve.
And a town with town walls attracted knowledgable guild members and capital assets (tools, stocks) of other less protected towns. The town walls protecting against thiefs, bands of thieves and marauding troops without a war.
The privilege of a market was high on the priority list as well, because this gave more inter-town access to trade, and more exchange of knowledge synergies.
Having a cathedral with relics and perhaps that local miracle a real boost to the economy of a town.
Having city rights, having the right to wield justice on your own town burghers was a further protection of your knowledge (your burghers). And your burghers were entitled to the law of their home town when they committed crime in another city !

=> key is that once these walls were in place feudal punishment got a big hurdle. Big enough even for towns to make ad hoc alliances with other feudal Lords when attacked by their own Lord. Semi-irreversible.
Tightly ruled ?
yes
Every burgher was obliged to comply to an avalanche of town rules and regulations, including duties in time and money to keep up the town wall and defenses.
Burgers not complying were banned from the town. Becoming a burgher in a town had BTW a huge hurdle. If you did not have something to contribute to a town in terms of money, assets or knowledge you did not become a new burgher.

The emancipation of the burghers start early in medieval period but around 1200 and certainly around 1300 the burghers revolt is in full swing in many parts of Europe.
There where these revolts happened earlier in time the GDP per capita skyrockets. Areas with stronger feudal power like centralist France got relatively backward in exactly this period starting in 1200-1300.
There where silly feudal wars were a hazard for rural and too small or undefendable villages, these wars skyrocketed urbanisation (Milano an early in time example).

This all happens long time before the industrial society except for those countries where the burghers revolt did not or did hardly happen. Russia the extreme example of going from feudal almost directly to industrial.

BTW If the factory workers revolution would have been as succesful in the end of the 19th century as the burghers revolution in 1300, we would be living in another society by now.

But yeah... the burghers revolution was based on knowledge, on local self-determination, on creating economy. And their foe, the feudal elite, doing nothing except status luxuries and wars, best comparable to the current corporate shareholders.

Your Dutch ancestors took another step in the rise of market based capitalism in 1602 when the created the Dutch East India Company (VOC). It was the first Government sponsored, global, stock company that set the standard going forward and provided a model for global companies today. Of course the government sponsorship is lessened or gone today. (Huawei is closest to VOC today in that it presents itself as a private, for profit company abroad, but is an arm of the Chinese government at home). The British East India company followed in its wake. They were the first multi nationals and many more sprung up in the ensuing centuries. By the time the industrial revolution hit, the big blocks of how to manage the more complex economic environment were already in place. The late 19th C industrialists added more to the mix.

 

[Crezth]

I disagree that UBI will be sufficient, at least not before there's truly widespread automation. But the problem of people 'not working' sorts itself out pretty quickly, especially if there's no clawback. Unfortunately, not in a way that seems to be approved here.

You have to follow the process through four turns of the wheel after UBI gets passed (and is sufficient to allow people to not work - everything change it the UBI still requires people to work)

(1) The theatre cleaning staff and the millionaire's housemaid quits, because they'd rather play X-Box than do those jobs
(2) People with spending money will now buy the things they want to buy
(3) Movies (the thing that regular folk want) will rise in price because of simple supply/demand
(4) The person who doesn't work will find the stuff they want priced out of reach

There's a big benefit, though, because the number of available jobs will be higher. The millionaire probably still wants to hire a maid, they just need to pay more than they previously did. The guy who's not working still wants stuff, and he's got money to pay people to do it.

There's an early hiccup as movie theatres become dirtier. That sorts itself out. The millionaire loses a maid until they swallow their entitlement. And until people stop wanting what other people make, refusing to work will sort itself out through reduced purchasing power.

There will always be a need for additional services for people who cannot work or who have greater expenses than average. This isn't best addressed by a UBI.

This is a good critique of UBI in general because the actual problem isn't so much the lack of income as the lack of income specifically from working. Without a sturdy minimum wage (which in most of the USA for example I would contend is anything but), UBI is just a life support check from the state. It's better than nothing - many people would take it - but the real issue at hand is that working people don't make enough for working.

 

[El_Machinae]

I don't like the minimum wage because of how reggressive it is. There's nothing saying that the national basic income should leave you in poverty, it's just that lack of work on your part will eventually cause luxuries to be priced out of your range. And honestly, I don't know how much I care about that. We will always need a different safety net for those who cannot work. And until ubiquitous automation, we need to differentiate those who don't want to work from those who do.

The job guarantee is an alternative to minimum wage, and as long as the tasks are useful, it's not a terrible idea. The key word being that the tasks are useful, or else it destroys any productivity that would actually be more efficient.

 

[Hrothbern]

Your Dutch ancestors took another step in the rise of market based capitalism in 1602 when the created the Dutch East India Company (VOC). It was the first Government sponsored, global, stock company that set the standard going forward and provided a model for global companies today. Of course the government sponsorship is lessened or gone today. (Huawei is closest to VOC today in that it presents itself as a private, for profit company abroad, but is an arm of the Chinese government at home). The British East India company followed in its wake. They were the first multi nationals and many more sprung up in the ensuing centuries. By the time the industrial revolution hit, the big blocks of how to manage the more complex economic environment were already in place. The late 19th C industrialists added more to the mix.

Yes
The first decades of the Dutch VOC are BTW amazing. The Tulip story is ofc widely known, but there are many more events and aspects that are less known. Like not paying dividends for the first 20 years, pushing for fast growth, needing all the time more ships and people. In effect making VOC shares a kind of paper currency with increasing value on top of the normal currenct accesable to all. Many shares were owned by commoners at the start.
At the Amsterdam wheat market whole harvests of the next summer in North Poland and the Baltic States were traded in the winter before. That wheat needed also to feed the Amsterdam population. The surrounding rural area not having the capacity to do that. Urbanisation in Holland was already past the max of the ofc low crop yields of regional soil at that time.

But here a nice one of the VOC: founded in 1602, already in 1610 naked short selling was banned.
Showing how fast gaming the system can develop and also how swift the Stock Market, the college of mayors (17 people) of Amsterdam, reacted.

Amsterdam of 1600 is BTW a completely other Amsterdam than 1300 where industrious activities started with on top a growing Hanseatic and Baltic trade. Amsterdam has become a banking and stock market bastion with many store houses and imo the economical potential of available techs at that time and urbanisation-alphabetisation, synergies, etc was almost saturated.
1600 is the start of an almost stagnating economy at already a very high level from the enormous growth between especially 1450 and 1600. The rent seeking and capital gains from 1600 onward were not able to add really much economy in terms of GDP per capita anymore from the normal economy. What was added was more a compensation from lower prices of the existing economy from growing competition from England and France. But the VOC was very important to protect the seas for all the existing and growing trade by ships: the VOC paid directly its own army and fleet.

From Investopedia:

What is Naked Shorting
Naked shorting is the illegal practice of short selling shares that have not been affirmatively determined to exist. Ordinarily, traders must borrow a stock, or determine that it can be borrowed, before they sell it short. So naked shorting refers to short pressure on a stock that may be larger than the tradable shares in the market. Despite being made illegal after the 2008-09 financial crisis, naked shorting continues to happen because of loopholes in rules and discrepancies between paper and electronic trading systems.

Understanding Naked Shorting
Naked shorting takes place when investors sell shorts associated with shares that they do not possess and have not confirmed their ability to possess. If the trade associated with the short needs to take place in order to fulfill the obligations of the position, then the trade may fail to complete within the required clearing time because the seller does not actually have access to the shares. The technique has a very high risk level but has the potential to yield high rewards.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/nakedshorting.asp#:~:text=Naked shorting is the illegal,before they sell it short.

Here what happened in Amsterdam:

1610 First rules for stock trading
Thanks to the VOC, Amsterdam had the worldwide first in stock trading. As a logical continuation of this, Amsterdam was also the first to deal with the downside: speculation and price manipulation.
A "placcaet" from 1610 of the States General forbids to speculate on a fall in the share price of the VOC. As far as we know, this is the first stock trading law ever.
Today we would be talking about a ban on naked short selling. A phenomenon that is still relevant in the 21st century. A trader sees that the price of a fund shows a declining line. He sells the shares of the fund at the current price, but does not yet own them. Only when he has to deliver does he buy the shares, which will hopefully have become cheaper. In short, he sells them at yesterday's high price, and delivers them at today's low price.
The 1610 ban was prompted by the activities of Isaäc le Maire, once a major shareholder and director of the VOC, until he left it after a fight. He felt that the VOC spent too much money on the equipment of the fleet and looked too little at the interests of shareholders. In that sense, he was a pioneer in corporate governance. He therefore wanted to establish a competitive shipping company, but the government did not allow this. The VOC's commercial monopoly should not be broken.
After that he formed an investment company (“de Groote Compagnie”) with others that showed many characteristics of present-day hedge funds. Naked short selling was supposed to bring him a profit, but above all he wanted to negatively influence the price of the VOC share in this way. The government intervened with the "placcaet".
https://www.beursgeschiedenis.nl/moment/eerste-regels-voor-de-aandelenhandel/

here that "placcaet"

 

[Zardnaar]

This is not intended as "ad hominem"
not as emotional burst.
Just to get the load more clearly into you:

Say you yourself will get a car accident when waiting for a traffic light and a car hits you from behind.
You end up with a "minor whiplash", but somehow, despite being under the official clinical treshold, your energy feels drained outside your body... and you end up after some years struggling losing your job, without that formal recognition and certficate of being disabled, and without money from the one who caused the accident.
Your wife had also a job, but your daughter is harrassed (not raped) at the end of a party (not really an exception) and it revives an old scar of your wife: she was abused by an uncle as child. And after this incident she never gets really the old one again. After a depression period she loses her job as well. But that condition she is in is also something that does not really ticks the boxes of your medical-mental welfare system.

People around you walk away because they think you are just softies. You yourself have at least still a story to defend yourself in public. Has your wife a story to tell to neighbors etc ?


Just tough luck ?

Do please be careful with arguments of the kind: "no free lunch"
It pushes an UBI in the punishment zone.

An appropiate UBI functions also as a base level of human dignity and compassion. Whether that is only for a kind of healing period or longer.
And being pragmatical... as a hybrid with a social insurance systyem in your country only good.

That's not what no free lunch means.

It means someone somewhere pays for it.

Example if you tax the rich to fund a Ubi it's not free the rich paid for it.

If you borrow money for tax cuts future taxpayers pay for it.

If you reassign government spending from health to UBI taxpayer money still pays for it. Also opportunity cost.

If you print more money you get inflation etc.

Someone somewhere somehow ultimately pays for it.

I'm not opposed to government providing a free lunch to kids, healthcare etc but ultimately the taxpayer pays for it.

Even if you go outside and find a free lunch of berries the cost is the time you spent doing so or opportunity cost.

 

[Hygro]

You are correct, in a sense. Currency, in a lower stage of socialism, would by necessity have to exist, though presumably not quite in the form that we know today. Marx suggests labour vouchers, essentially representing, well, amount of labour worked. WIth that, one can then redeem certain goods and services. [Link to the Critique.]

I’m really skeptical of a system of money that’s simply clunkier and less sophisticated.

 

[Lexicus]

This is a good critique of UBI in general because the actual problem isn't so much the lack of income as the lack of income specifically from working. Without a sturdy minimum wage (which in most of the USA for example I would contend is anything but), UBI is just a life support check from the state. It's better than nothing - many people would take it - but the real issue at hand is that working people don't make enough for working.

The real problem with UBI is the potential for the value of the payments to be inflated to nothing.

Your Dutch ancestors took another step in the rise of market based capitalism in 1602 when the created the Dutch East India Company (VOC). It was the first Government sponsored, global, stock company that set the standard going forward and provided a model for global companies today.

It's amazing to me that you can say something like this and still be convinced that capitalism is a good thing. I mean...you know what the Dutch East India Company actually did, right? You say it provided a model for today's multinationals, and that is absolutely true, but I'm not sure if it's true in the way you mean...

 

[Birdjaguar]

It's amazing to me that you can say something like this and still be convinced that capitalism is a good thing. I mean...you know what the Dutch East India Company actually did, right? You say it provided a model for today's multinationals, and that is absolutely true, but I'm not sure if it's true in the way you mean...

The VOC and East India Company did terrible things and together they ran huge pieces of the world economy for many years. My post wasn't about whether or not such companies were good or bad. It was about how the fundamentals of modern stock companies and global companies had their roots as far back as 1602. I was moving @Hrothbern feudal post forward a few hundred years. Exploitation and slavery were not invented by the VOC or EIC. They just legitimatized them in a new way. They gave people a new way to be greedy and cruel. The evils of the past are done. I'd rather focus on what can be now and in the future to make things better.

The last 400 years have brought globalization, capitalism, industrialization, and socialism together and in the process improved the QoL all across the globe.And now we have added digital technology to the mix. No, It has not all been pretty or even nice, but the world has never been a generally nice place for people for the past 8000 years or so. We are our own worst enemies (and best friends). We each have to weigh capitalism in the balance adding the good to one side and the bad to the other. You probably find it difficult to see how anyone could find substantial good in capitalism; the facts are clear! Well, maybe.