Does everyone get to have as many children as they like? Does everyone get an equal share of the food and land? How do we decide who lives and who dies without capitalism ....
Or do we assume we will have (practically) infinite resources sometime soon?
We already produce enough food per day on the planet, such that if everyone had an equal share, we'd all become morbidly obese very quickly.
In the US, we already have so much wealth and productivity that we're well past the "who lives and who dies?" question...except that what we make and own is so deeply imbalanced that yes, people do die for lack of medical care, heat, cooling, and so on.
So...my thinking is, capitalism already isn't doing a very good job at deciding who lives and who dies (i.e. because it suggests that not everyone lives).
"everyone lives" will only work if we continue to produce enough food and if the population growth does not exceed that food supply.
You say capitalism is wrong because it does not allow "everyone lives". Why is "everyone lives" an option? If everyone lived we would run out of space ...
We are not past that question in the U.S.
Unchecked population growth is not sustainable. How do we check that growth?
>Unchecked population growth is not sustainable. How do we check that growth?
By making people rich enough that they stop having so many damned babies because they can soundly expect the first one or two to survive infancy, and because they don't need seven children for farm labor.
In 1st-world economies (the only ones suggesting a basic income) its checking itself. Germany, Japan, France, the USA have negative population 'growth'
Oh get off your high horse. Because, by definition, they have the economies that can afford it. You can't just have whatever you wish for; it has to be practical and achievable.
I see it as a progression of technology. We used to see a bright future of automation, robots and leisure. Now we label it unemployment and call it a problem.
I was not witness to that "used to see a bright future" ... I have been worried about the machines replacing us for some time myself.
Not because I'm worried about being bored, but because I'm worried about who controls the finite resources.
>>>> We refer to the question: What sort of creature man’s next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be. We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race. In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race.
Emotional pseudo-scientific claptrap. You don't like your robot, you get a better one. Who cares about inferior or superior? Different is good enough. One built to serve the other.
Well, of course if suddenly farms stopped producing (they won't), or the population exploded (it isn't), then suddenly we'd have food scares again. That's not happening now, and it seems unlikely it will happen again.
As for running out of space...no. Just, no. In the U.S.? Run out of space? I don't even know how to make sense of that.
And one quick note--I didn't say capitalism is "wrong," just that it isn't doing a very good job at being an economic system that supports life, though some like its liberty (e.g. those who don't have to worry about food and shelter) and some like how it lets them pursue happiness (e.g. those in a position to pursue it, instead of having to work 3 minimum-wage jobs).
(Though, in fairness, if you read my other comments here, you'd see that I don't have a particularly charitable view of capitalism--like one of those old guys said, useful servant, destructive master, or something like that.)
Or do we assume we will have (practically) infinite resources sometime soon?
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