[ternnoburn]

I think it's human nature under capitalism. I think before the 1800s there were loads of different societies that valued things like community and mutual support over "got mine".

This is the fundamental assertion of anarchism -- people generally like helping each other and like feeling useful. If basic needs were covered, we'd use most of our time doing things that felt meaningful, and those things would make everyone's lives better.

[photonthug]

I mostly agree but propose another amendment: this is human nature under late-stage capitalism. Capitalism is pretty great in the beginning / middle, and can go on for a very long time in such a way that the interests of corporations, consumers, labor, and governments are all basically aligned. Late-stage is a very different game in all respects though.

One risk we are facing now is that when most of the people alive have only seen the perversions of unregulated and unapologetic late-stage capitalism, they will think this is what it always has to look like. The impulse to switch to a polar opposite or burn everything down is ill advised but becomes hard to ignore.

[ANewFormation]

So many modern problems can be traced to 1971. [1] That is the year that the US defaulted on our obligations under Bretton Woods effectively ending the system and causing currencies to become completely fiat, enabling governments to effectively print unlimited funny money.

This perverts capitalism so hard because you now end up with tens of trillions of dollars being dumped into the economy in horribly inefficient ways and so behaviors that make one likely to get some of this become far more economically relevant than just making the best product.

Our current economic system is obviously completely unsustainable at this point and may well end up being one of the shortest lived economic experiments ever. That's particularly ironic because, as you alluded to, for most of everybody alive today this is just how it's always been!

[1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com

[zanellato19]

Since the beginning of capitalism involved owning slaves, I find that very hard to believe.

This romanticization of early stage capitalism is awful. What is late stage capitalism? Because civil rights and women rights have been pretty recent in the grand scheme of things, so in that sense Capitalism was upheld and had most of its lifetime in a scheme that crushed the majority of its people I find the theory of:

> Capitalism is pretty great in the beginning

really hard to swallow.