Capitalism sucks! Socialism (Government planned economy) is the best system!

Author: Best.Korea

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Okay, I think I trolled you guys enough, so as a way to say sorry, I will give you actual truth about this world so you no longer have to live in delusion thinking that some fantasy free market is a good system.

There are two undeniable truths in this world:

1. Almost all resources in this world are limited

2. Capitalists are competing to deplete those resources as fast as possible

Think of it with this example.

Lets say that there are 10 people and 100 chocolates.

If each person ate 1 chocolate every day, they would be able to survive for 10 days. Thats planned economy.

Now lets apply capitalist market to this example.

Because capitalists are competing with each other to sell to customers, and some customers want 2 or 3 chocolates a day, it follows that chocolates are depleted much faster due to customer's and capitalist's greed.

But what also happens is that once chocolates drop to low amount, capitalists increase prices so that only the rich people now can buy chocolate. This leaves all poor people without chocolate.

Obviously, capitalists who have a goal to maximize output and with that, profit, cannot at  the same time save resources, because maximizing output is a contradiction to saving resources.

This is an essential flaw in capitalism, because it does not save resources, but depletes them. But is it any wonder that system which gave us polluted food, polluted water and polluted air also gave us resource shortages?
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@Best.Korea
Capitalism sucks for those that suck at achieving to be a capitalist.
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@Mall
Capitalism sucks for those that suck at achieving to be a capitalist.
No, it sucks for capitalists too.

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@Best.Korea
Not all .
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@Mall
From each according to their labor, to each according to their greed.
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@Best.Korea
Almost all resources in this world are limited
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@Savant
Yes, consume more now so you have less later.
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@Best.Korea
Proponents of the theory that we're in the end stage of capitalism cite several pieces of evidence: Growing wealth inequality: Statistics show an increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a small number of billionaires and a stagnation or decline in real wages for other populations.
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@Best.Korea
I'm a capitalist and capitalism doesn't suck so not all.
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Why capitalism helps those who frown or have a sour sore attitude about capitalism?
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@FLRW
Apparently, greed and proper distribution of resources are mutually exclusive.
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@Mall
Why capitalism helps those who frown or have a sour sore attitude about capitalism?
I dont know, you are the capitalist, so you tell me.
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@Best.Korea
Yes, consume more now so you have less later.
Quality of life has consistently gone up since the Industrial Revolution. The average lifespan has almost doubled in the United States since 1860. Internet adoption has consistently increased globally.

Products have also become significantly cheaper to produce and require less resources. Cars have become 35.4% more fuel-efficient in the past 20 years. LEDs last 10 times longer than incandescent lights whilst being far more efficient.
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@Savant
Quality of life has consistently gone up since the Industrial Revolution. The average lifespan has almost doubled in the United States since 1860. Internet adoption has consistently increased globally.
Yes, that means more resources are used.


Products have also become significantly cheaper to produce and require less resources. Cars have become 35.4% more fuel-efficient in the past 20 years. LEDs last 10 times longer than incandescent lights whilst being far more efficient.
One product requiring less resources to be produced does not mean that less resources are used in total.

Thus, we dont see fuel consumption decreasing by 35.4% over the past 20 years. No, the fuel consumption doubled since then, not decreased.

Likewise, we dont see a decrease in the use of light with the use of LEDs, but an overwhelming increase in total amount of light being used, which essentially means that when one product requires less resources, it becomes even more produced, thus increasing total resources being used.

We dont really see resources being saved, but we see that resources are being depleted on a large scale and the amount of almost all resources used increases.

Thus, with the amount of finite resources being used increasing all the time, only one outcome is possible, which is those resources being eventually depleted.
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@Best.Korea
One product requiring less resources to be produced does not mean that less resources are used in total.
No, but it shows that the statement "Almost all resources in this world are limited" is false. And even if consumption isn't going down, that means it will be easier to reduce energy consumption if it is necessary. If we are forced to switch to renewables, for example, that will be easier now than it would have been 100 years ago.

Thus, we dont see fuel consumption decreasing by 35.4% over the past 20 years. No, the fuel consumption doubled since then, not decreased.
Energy consumption per person has decreased in the US since the 1970s. And population size tends to plateau over time in developed countries, so a growing population will not be a long-term problem.

with the amount of finite resources being used increasing all the time
Total resources are going up. The supply of internet, radio programs, etc. has increased over time. Plenty of resources are reusable. It would have been hard to classify something a a resource 100 years ago if we couldn't even access it.
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@Savant

If you look at this simple data, you will see that the amount of resources used has increased significatly over time, even surpassing the growth of population. To put it simply, resources are being used on a greater level than ever, and the more people you lift from poverty, the more resources they are going to use.

No, but it shows that the statement "Almost all resources in this world are limited" is false.
I dont see how.

Even if you make cars use 35% less fuel, it doesnt change the fact that fuel is limited.

And even if consumption isn't going down, that means it will be easier to reduce energy consumption if it is necessary.
It means quite the opposite.

If consumption goes up, it means the finite resources are being depleted faster, thus you will run out of them faster, thus have less time to figure out an alternative, and a faster depleting of the alternative as well.

If we are forced to switch to renewables, for example, that will be easier now than it would have been 100 years ago.
It would be easier to save resources, so you dont have to switch to renewables, not that you can switch to renewables any time soon, since not even countries sponsoring renewables have lots of renewable energy. Thus planned economy is superior, since it makes finite resources last longer.

Energy consumption per person has decreased in the US since the 1970s.
I dont know why are you resorting to cherry picking time fallacy. Your own source says that energy consumption in USA today has increased more than double than it was in 1960, despite population not increasing by double since 1960. So if energy consumption per person is higher now than it was in 1960, despite all the switching to renewables and all the improvement in efficiency, it shows that we dont see any resource saving in capitalism, but only in Socialism.

Total resources are going up. The supply of internet, radio programs, etc. has increased over time. Plenty of resources are reusable. It would have been hard to classify something a a resource 100 years ago if we couldn't even access it.
Plenty of resources are not reusable. Going from commercial fertilizers to fuel and coal. Even plastic, which can be recycled, just becomes more expensive since its much harder to recycle plastic than to produce it.

Even renewable energies suffer, like solar energy may be renewable, but the materials used to produce solar panels are limited and not easily recycleable.

To put it simply, if you had a finite resource, would you rather use it up as fast as possible, or distribute it correctly over time? Because Capitalism doesnt do the latter.
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@Best.Korea
Even if you make cars use 35% less fuel, it doesnt change the fact that fuel is limited.
Total number of miles you can drive/utility from the fuel is not limited and can increase.

If consumption goes up, it means the finite resources are being depleted faster, thus you will run out of them faster, thus have less time to figure out an alternative, and a faster depleting of the alternative as well.
Those alternatives have only been developed under capitalism. North Korea is not leading the world in clean energy. The graph you linked to shows a huge growth in the use of nuclear energy. We have an alternative, and it's much easier to switch to now than it was before.

Your own source says that energy consumption in USA today has increased more than double than it was in 1960, despite population not increasing by double since 1960.
You can see that energy use is plateauing from the graph shown. In 2020, U.S. per capita energy consumption dropped to the lowest level since 1965, so picking 1970 as a year is not cherry picking.

Plenty of resources are not reusable. Going from commercial fertilizers to fuel and coal. Even plastic, which can be recycled, just becomes more expensive since its much harder to recycle plastic than to produce it.
Renewables are extremely expensive and have only become less expensive recently thanks to innovation. The cost of solar has reduced 400 times since 1970. Socialist countries cannot afford those advancements because they are basically broke.

To put it simply, if you had a finite resource, would you rather use it up as fast as possible, or distribute it correctly over time?
We won't need coal in the future once nuclear becomes good enough. A better question is this: would you rather try switching to renewables in the UK today, or in North Korea?
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@Savant
Total number of miles you can drive/utility from the fuel is not limited and can increase.
The fuel is limited, which means even if you double the efficiency, the fuel is still limited and thus the total number of miles you can drive using that fuel is limited. Utility is also limited, since it cannot increase by much.

Those alternatives have only been developed under capitalism. North Korea is not leading the world in clean energy. The graph you linked to shows a huge growth in the use of nuclear energy. We have an alternative, and it's much easier to switch to now than it was before.
Yet North Korea uses much much less fuel than United States.
USA uses 20% of world's fuel, despite being 5% of population. So if USA represents anything, it is  over-consumption of finite resources, not any resource saving of any kind. Nuclear energy is not unlimited either, and its much more difficult to manage, since accidents equal disaster and more it is used, the more disasters there will be.

Renewables are extremely expensive and have only become less expensive recently thanks to innovation. The cost of solar has reduced 400 times since 1970. Socialist countries cannot afford those advancements because they are basically broke.
Socialist countries with proper planning dont even need those advancements, since North Korea uses fuel in a way that it can last far longer than USA on finite resources, so it would have far greater time to come up with alternative. Also, many scientific advancements happened in Socialist countries. The Soviet Union was the first one to make ICBM. But what you are doing is making another mistake in assuming that capitalism is responsible for some great advancements in renewables. No, its the governments in Europe and USA which invested a lot in renewables to make them a bit more cheaper by taxing non-renewables more. You would never see that if it was up to capitalism.

You can see that energy use is plateauing from the graph shown. In 2020, U.S. per capita energy consumption dropped to the lowest level since 1965, so picking 1970 as a year is not cherry picking.
It is cherry picking, and for more than one reason. One, you are comparing capitalist USA in 2020 to capitalist USA in 1970, but ignoring Capitalist USA in 1960.
Its obvious that energy consumption was lower in 1960, so I can say that energy consumption increased since 1960 in the USA.
You are picking a specific time period to make argument, which is cherry picking because you are ignoring other periods.
But to make matters worse, you are comparing capitalism to capitalism and concluding that capitalism is better than capitalism. Its a nonsense argument irrelevant to the topic. If you compared capitalist USA to North Korea,  you would see that USA even today has far greater fuel consumption per capita than North Korea does, which means that capitalism spends much more finite resources over time than Socialism does.
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The fuel is limited, which means even if you double the efficiency, the fuel is still limited
It's only limited if you don't have enough innovation to make renewable methods more affordable. Even then, it's easier to get more utility total by making the system more efficient. Fuel rationing doesn't get you more utility overall, it just stretches it thinner and lowers living standards now.

Yet North Korea uses much much less fuel than United States.
Meaning it doesn't get much utility from fuel, nor is it likely to in the foreseeable future. Even if North Korea's current standard of living is sustainable, it's a very low one.

Nuclear energy is not unlimited either, and its much more difficult to manage, since accidents equal disaster and more it is used, the more disasters there will be.
Nuclear energy is safer than fossil fuels and getting even safer with increased innovation.

Also, many scientific advancements happened in Socialist countries. The Soviet Union was the first one to make ICBM.
That's a military advancement which doesn't do much to increase the standard of living. (The US outperforms them on military anyway.)

No, its the governments in Europe and USA which invested a lot in renewables to make them a bit more cheaper by taxing non-renewables more.
That relies on a free market that can respond to tax incentives in an efficient way.

which is cherry picking because you are ignoring other periods
Cherry picking would be taking one data point, but I'm taking a wide range of data points (50 years) and picking the most recent 50 years to get a gist of what the trend is like under the current rate of advancement.

you are comparing capitalism to capitalism and concluding that capitalism is better than capitalism
I was responding to your claim that capitalist countries "consume more now so you have less later" by showing that the US is able to reduce the amount consumed per person.

capitalism spends much more finite resources over time
There's not much value to saving finite resources if you can't use them to improve the country's quality of life. And capitalism has increased the amount of viable resources, since solar and nuclear power were less viable hundreds of years ago.
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@Best.Korea
A capitalist can kill the goose that lays golden eggs, (Short term gain)
They can also let it live and continue to profit from it. (Long term gain)
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@Lemming
A capitalist can kill the goose that lays golden eggs, (Short term gain)
They can also let it live and continue to profit from it. (Long term gain)
Capitalists choose short term gain. 
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@Best.Korea
They 'can, doesn't mean they 'have to.
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@Savant
It's only limited if you don't have enough innovation to make renewable methods more affordable.
The renewable arent as reliable, as explained before. Solar and wind power cost a lot to be done on large scale. Besides, it takes resource saving to make the best use out of renewable ones as well, something you already admitted capitalism doesnt do.

Even then, it's easier to get more utility total by making the system more efficient. Fuel rationing doesn't get you more utility overall, it just stretches it thinner and lowers living standards now.
Fuel rationing means fuel is distributed properly over time, for example on important tasks only, such as for military or food production. It is better to use 99% less fuel than simply improve efficiency by 35%. You would need to improve efficiency by making cars use 99.99% less fuel to just become equal to planned economy in resource saving.

Meaning it doesn't get much utility from fuel, nor is it likely to in the foreseeable future. Even if North Korea's current standard of living is sustainable, it's a very low one.
The argument is not about current standard of living, but about saving resources. Its an equal of saying that you are richer because you will use more wealth sooner and run out of it faster. Thus, the argument is about which system makes better use of resources, and as we can clearly see, capitalism depletes finite resources much much faster. Even if Capitalism increases standard of living, it does so at great expense of finite resources and does not distribute them according to priority, but according to customer's demands and it serves richer customers first. So not only does capitalism depletes finite resources faster, but it does not distribute them in a correct priority. Even if we take survival of society or military competition, it makes no sense to race to deplete fuel as fast as possible. For both military and survival of society, it is better if fuel is distributed so it lasts much longer.

Nuclear energy is safer than fossil fuels and getting even safer with increased innovation.
Nuclear energy is not unlimited, and accidents which happen from it put the country at risk. This is especially so in war zones or in case of attacks on a country. Nuclear accident makes areas unusable for decades.

That's a military advancement which doesn't do much to increase the standard of living. (The US outperforms them on military anyway.)
Your original argument was that Socialism has no advancements, but as we can see, ICBM was an important advancement made by Soviet Union. Besides, before Socialism, Russia was backwards irrelevant country. Its the Socialism which turned it into a superpower.

That relies on a free market that can respond to tax incentives in an efficient way.
It relies on government intervention first. If it was up to free market alone, fuel would be used much more and solar panels would be much more expensive.

Cherry picking would be taking one data point, but I'm taking a wide range of data points (50 years) and picking the most recent 50 years to get a gist of what the trend is like under the current rate of advancement.
Cherry picking means taking one and ignoring the rest. You are taking 50 years but ignoring 70 years. Its a fact that USA uses more resources now per capita than it did in 1960.

I was responding to your claim that capitalist countries "consume more now so you have less later" by showing that the US is able to reduce the amount consumed per person.
USA didnt reduce the amount consumed per person when you account for last 70 years, but even if it did, it would be a strawman of my argument. It doesnt matter if you even reduce consumption by 10% over 50 years, because you are still consuming far more per capita than a planned economy, thus you will have less later while planned economy distributes resources more evenly over time. It is like in the given example at start. Even if you reduce eating chocolate from 4 per day to 3 per day, that is still much more than 1 per day, and thus such resource will last shorter than it would on 1 chocolate per day system.

There's not much value to saving finite resources if you can't use them to improve the country's quality of life. And capitalism has increased the amount of viable resources, since solar and nuclear power were less viable hundreds of years ago.
Actually, there is. First, the military can only run on fuel. Nuclear tanks and planes, or tanks and planes which run on electricity are nonsense which cannot be made use of in war. Since known oil sources will run out in 30 or 40 years
(Mostly thanks to capitalist's race to deplete them, and this is even when hoping that fuel consumption in the world wont increase anymore like it did so far. Under North Korean system, the same fuel resources would last for over 1000 more years), it makes sense to save fuel for the military. It doesnt make sense to waste fuel on a mass scale, because it means your military will run out of fuel, and it makes transitioning to other forms of energy more difficult, because even in USA you would have to replace over a hundred million fuel cars with electric cars, which places even greater drain on resources. So not only does Socialism make fuel reserves last much longer and its military being in better position as a result, but even renewable energies are better used in socialism where they are distributed for farming and military production first and not controlled by the wealthy. Simply said, in Capitalism, the wealthy decide how to distribute resources, and saving resources is not something they did so far.
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@Lemming
They 'can, doesn't mean they 'have to.
They dont have to, but so far thats what they did.

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@Best.Korea
A farmer owns a piece of land,
He sells crops for money (Capitalism),
He wants to live on his land and keep living his way of life,
He wants his son to live on the land and keep living his way of life,
He takes care of the land so he can keep living his way of life,
And his son can keep living his way of life.

There 'are people who do this.
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@Lemming
Well, so far all we had was mass use of resources, pollution of food, air and water. Maybe some people in capitalism save resources and care for clean food, air and water, but capitalism as a whole doesnt.
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@Best.Korea
Define capitalism.
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@Lemming
Free trade economy, market economy.
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Capitalism is often thought of as an economic system in which private actors own and control property in accord with their interests, and demand and supply freely set prices in markets in a way that can serve the best interests of society.
The essential feature of capitalism is the motive to make a profit. As Adam Smith, the 18th century philosopher and father of modern economics, said: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”

Ideally the capitalist produces good product at good prices with good service,
Since the customer is also free to buy or not.

Capitalists still exist within society,
And so over time are often required to fall into guidelines,
Such as no child labor.

Capitalism 'can be bad,
When capitalists cut corners or treat employees badly,
But ideally such businesses don't thrive.

Capitalism to my view, is a fairly neutral term, that can go either way.
. . .

How do you define Socialism?