From my observation, if the western world would just mind its fkin business, the rest of the world would be happy and we wouldn't be thinking about WWIII.
I do hope one day that everything of everything gets declassified. Rip that bandaid off and prepare the guillotines (for all the oppressors and transgressors of humanity).
Happy without the horrors of the western world's education, sanitation, medicine, science, technology, liberalism, or democracy?
Sounds great! I'm sure you'll really enjoy sustenance farming. If you're lucky, you can get married at a young age and experience the joys of as many children as you (or your wife's) body will bear.
The western world's quality of life requires endemic poverty in most of the rest of the world to be sustained. That poverty is created by western financial institutions and western militaries, which have built and enforce a global system of unequal exchange, where the trade systems between western and nonwestern countries are favorable to the western ones, to the tune of siphoning trillions of dollars from the nonwestern world every year.
It's really very simple. If capitalism worked, why hasn't it worked for the hundreds of countries that have done it for the past century in central and south america, africa, and asia?
Capitalism isn't a magic antidote. Nor are all iterations of it successful. It really depends on the government keeping corruption under control, keeping monopolies from forming, keeping regulatory capture from occurring. Also, capitalism is just an economic system. There's also political systems, legal systems, financial systems, military systems, all sorts of other government functions.
Capitalism is actually working pretty well in Asia. China is doing tremendously better since they introduced some capitalism into their socialist system, creating a mixed economy. Their growth has lifted a lot of people out of poverty. Other Asian economies have performed very well. Look at Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and (at least prior to Chinese takeover) Hong Kong.
Latin America and Africa have a lot of complex problems, many stemming from years - or even centuries - of colonialism, military conflicts, social issues, endemic corruption, bad economic policy like "printing money" and trying to spend their way out of inflation, thereby creating hyperinflation, etc. Expecting an economic system to magically fix all the incredibly complex and even seemingly intractable issues in a society is quite unrealistic.
It really depends on the government keeping corruption under control, keeping monopolies from forming, keeping regulatory capture from occurring.
So, Capitalism's success depends on the government preventing Capitalism from doing the things that it always inevitably does? Great system you've got there.
Great? Maybe not. The best we've found for economic development and continued economic growth? So far, yes.
All systems have strengths and weaknesses. All economic systems require intervention to prevent bad actors from exploiting them. If you think communism doesn't, it's because you aren't actually familiar with it.
Again, I highly recommend that you read about twentieth century USSR and China, especially the early days of Mao, Lenin, and Stalin. Because you don't seem very familiar with communism for someone named after Karl Marx.
It's always easy to find a very specific group of people that are having a horrible time, that doesn't mean that on average, humans live better and safer than in the entire history of humanity. Sure, the last 10 years saw a bit of a down turn, but thing are still way better than, say, 40 years ago.
I guess it's hard to remember how really hard life could be
Idk man it’s really not a competition. AI powered automated genocide and industrialized genocide are both horrible in their own way and to me absolutely dystopian nightmares. Same way how China uses AI to track every aspect of their citizens lives + also genocide.
No-one is saying that all is fine. Yes, there are loads of big issues right now, but we're still living better and safer than 99% of all the humans that have ever lived. We are not living Ina dystopian world.
The youngest people in the society don't understand that anything is even wrong. The rich folks have a vested interest in people being more afraid of foreigners and domestic terrorists than any government malfeasance. And the working class is so occupied with simple survival that they see no real opportunity to revolt... until something really falls off the rails, at which point the military moves in to suppress dissent with maximum bloodshed.
You either find a way to cope or live your life worrying about something ultimately out of your control. As long as I'm voting and spending my money thoughtfully then I believe I'm doing enough.
Food insecurity is something outside of most people's control, last I checked, humans can only cope without food for about a week before death sets in.
is that what you think you're doing? being empathetic? you are all making yourselves miserable and refusing to look at anything in a positive light. blame the system, blame the man, blame capitalism, fine - - what are you going to DO about it? fuck your empathy, do something or start living well
cuz news flash, posting memes like this does NOTHING for the people starving.
Bold of you to assume I just sit on lemmy all day posting memes. Actually join in a bunch of volunteer service events throughout the year, some through work, other times personally. I also encourage others the vote for candidates who are more likely to bring about positive changes for our society.
So, yes I am being empathetic, and that empathy does actually drive me to take the steps I can take to make other people's lives better. But at the end of the day, all of this work can very quickly be for naught unless we simultaneously fix the overarching systems in place that led to the unnecessary problems people suffer.
You try to help people locally - that's great! I didn't initially get that you were saying "Perspective isn't enough." Action is definitely important. When is it enough, though? (There's always more people to help.) Can it *ever *be enough, without the shift in perspective alongside it?
Yeah I do help locally, I'm lucky enough that I have the means and ability to help others. But that still doesn't change the fact that people can't just cope and hope their way out of food insecurity. Plain and simple, every single one of us needs food, our bodies and minds will go through great lengths driving us to find food, we literally cannot turn off the neural pathways that tell us we're hungry and that we need to eat. You can't "positive thinking" your way put of an empty stomach while your body breaks itself down for energy.
