5 ms·

I could absolutely argue capitalism is a contributing factor, primarily due to alienation and increased demands on labor. Income inequality pushing families to

I could absolutely argue capitalism is a contributing factor, primarily due to alienation and increased demands on labor. Income inequality pushing families to have less spare capacity and money to help their kids. But I think the root causes here are more cultural. When I was coming up decades and decades ago we valued highly educated people, Americas rocket scientists and such. Over time, however, people started thinking education wasn't masculine, that it wasn't cool. Then social media hit the scenes and people started amplifying some of our worst instincts -- anti vaccine, anti intellectualism, pro conspiracy. What used to be your fringe neighbor became someone who could influence online. Add the Vietnam, the gulf war, 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan, and you've got generational trauma of sending generations of youth off to fight. That interrupts a lot of education and when those folks become parents they have different values towards education. Plus, as you describe, schools are a commons. We systematically under pay and under value teachers, while over paying and over valuing admin. And there is an anti collectivist culture in the US now. In labor and in community, there's much less "let me give up my time for the community" and much more "how can I get mine" mindset. I think it's really complicated and a lot of different factors play a part. I don't think there's a single root cause, and it's going to take a while to unwind.

1718627440 1y ago
But we have done capitalism for centuries and this includes the time when education was high and also the rise before, so the problems now can be hardly caused by capitalism per se.
- sniffers 1y ago
  We have had capitalism since the late 1700s, or early 1800s. But I think you and I would agree it's not been a uniform experience across that time. Capitalism evolves and adopts new ideas, and experiences different opposition in different places. Since the early 70s in the US, there's been a very different regulatory and cultural environment for capitalism in the US.
  - 1718627440 1y ago
    Yes, but this only proves my point, that the problem is indeed not capitalism, but regulatory and cultural environment.
    - FloorEgg 1y ago
      Nature uses the same mechanisms that make up capitalism. In other words, capitalism is the most natural system for distributing resources. Note I'm not saying best, or optimal, because best and optimal depend on some subjective value system (that distinguishes good from bad). My point is just that capitalism closely mimics patterns in nature. Some of the communists seem to think that capitalism is unnatural, probably because it produces novel outcomes in human civilization, or maybe because it seems new to humanity (I'd argue humans have been using capitalist systems a lot longer than 300 years)
      - sniffers 1y ago
        You can argue that, but you'd be wrong. Don't confuse mercantilism and trade with capitalism. They are outwardly similar, but very different internally. The fundamental feature of capitalism is the inversion of commodity -> money -> commodity relationship into money -> commodity -> money.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
        FloorEgg 1y ago
        I don't think that's the distinction that matters, more-so the relative development of financial systems and degree of state intervention. Ultimately it boils down to whether you're defining capitalism as a spectrum from proto to modern or as a system with properties surpassing thresholds reached in modern time (post-mercantalism). My point was more so that the underlying mechanisms of capitalism, when abstracted and measured on scales, show up in many places in nature and throughout human history. So it's useful to debate how we can improve our capitalist system, but to do away with it all together is naive and unnatural and unlikely to lead to better outcomes, as it's doing away with distributed competition and coordination algorithms necessary for evolutionary advancement and increasing complexity. We can pick this apart in detail and squabble over taxonomy/semantics but I would just find it interesting and enriching, and unlikely to be invalidating.
philipallstar 1y ago
> And there is an anti collectivist culture in the US now. In labor and in community, there's much less "let me give up my time for the community" and much more "how can I get mine" mindset. Well. We doubled the labour pool with women entering it full-time, but we didn't double the value created. We increased it further with blind-eyeing illegal immigration. Both of those lower wages and increase costs, which mean there's less time available (if only one of you works, then the other has a lot of free time to build community). I'll avoid moron-baiting by stating the obvious that women entering the workforce isn't a bad thing, etc etc, but it does have a certain economic effect, and it doesn't stop at the women who want to work. It pulls everyone in, as house prices are up-bidded by double incomes.
- dh2022 1y ago
  What costs increased because of immigration? If anything immigration helps keep labor costs down in agriculture, restaurants, hospitality, and construction.
  - FloorEgg 1y ago
    Housing... Anything with limited supply...
    - bigyabai 1y ago
      There are over 15 million vacant homes today in the United States. Housing is unequivocally an investing issue, not an immigration one.
      - philipallstar 1y ago
        > Housing is unequivocally an investing issue, not an immigration one. Lots of them are holiday homes, not investments. But the fundamental economic driver that makes them investments is ever-increasing demand.
      - FloorEgg 1y ago
        In any market if you increase demand without increasing supply, prices will increase. For something like housing there are a lot of factors; construction supply chain, construction labor, permitting processes, zoning, private equity/speculation, tax rates, inter-state immigration, inter-country immigration, etc. If you have people immigrating into a localized area faster than housing supply increases, it will increase the price of housing. If you have vacant homes somewhere else in the country than the places people want to be (or where the immigrants are going) then it will have no downward pressure on pricing. There is nothing meaningful in a point that assumes the entire country is one market, as if supply/demand isn't tightly coupled specific locations.

1718627440 1y ago

But we have done capitalism for centuries and this includes the time when education was high and also the rise before, so the problems now can be hardly caused by capitalism per se.

sniffers 1y ago
We have had capitalism since the late 1700s, or early 1800s. But I think you and I would agree it's not been a uniform experience across that time. Capitalism evolves and adopts new ideas, and experiences different opposition in different places. Since the early 70s in the US, there's been a very different regulatory and cultural environment for capitalism in the US.
- 1718627440 1y ago
  Yes, but this only proves my point, that the problem is indeed not capitalism, but regulatory and cultural environment.
  - FloorEgg 1y ago
    Nature uses the same mechanisms that make up capitalism. In other words, capitalism is the most natural system for distributing resources. Note I'm not saying best, or optimal, because best and optimal depend on some subjective value system (that distinguishes good from bad). My point is just that capitalism closely mimics patterns in nature. Some of the communists seem to think that capitalism is unnatural, probably because it produces novel outcomes in human civilization, or maybe because it seems new to humanity (I'd argue humans have been using capitalist systems a lot longer than 300 years)
    - sniffers 1y ago
      You can argue that, but you'd be wrong. Don't confuse mercantilism and trade with capitalism. They are outwardly similar, but very different internally. The fundamental feature of capitalism is the inversion of commodity -> money -> commodity relationship into money -> commodity -> money.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - FloorEgg 1y ago
        I don't think that's the distinction that matters, more-so the relative development of financial systems and degree of state intervention. Ultimately it boils down to whether you're defining capitalism as a spectrum from proto to modern or as a system with properties surpassing thresholds reached in modern time (post-mercantalism). My point was more so that the underlying mechanisms of capitalism, when abstracted and measured on scales, show up in many places in nature and throughout human history. So it's useful to debate how we can improve our capitalist system, but to do away with it all together is naive and unnatural and unlikely to lead to better outcomes, as it's doing away with distributed competition and coordination algorithms necessary for evolutionary advancement and increasing complexity. We can pick this apart in detail and squabble over taxonomy/semantics but I would just find it interesting and enriching, and unlikely to be invalidating.

philipallstar 1y ago

> And there is an anti collectivist culture in the US now. In labor and in community, there's much less "let me give up my time for the community" and much more "how can I get mine" mindset. Well. We doubled the labour pool with women entering it full-time, but we didn't double the value created. We increased it further with blind-eyeing illegal immigration. Both of those lower wages and increase costs, which mean there's less time available (if only one of you works, then the other has a lot of free time to build community). I'll avoid moron-baiting by stating the obvious that women entering the workforce isn't a bad thing, etc etc, but it does have a certain economic effect, and it doesn't stop at the women who want to work. It pulls everyone in, as house prices are up-bidded by double incomes.

dh2022 1y ago
What costs increased because of immigration? If anything immigration helps keep labor costs down in agriculture, restaurants, hospitality, and construction.
- FloorEgg 1y ago
  Housing... Anything with limited supply...
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    There are over 15 million vacant homes today in the United States. Housing is unequivocally an investing issue, not an immigration one.
    - philipallstar 1y ago
      > Housing is unequivocally an investing issue, not an immigration one. Lots of them are holiday homes, not investments. But the fundamental economic driver that makes them investments is ever-increasing demand.
    - FloorEgg 1y ago
      In any market if you increase demand without increasing supply, prices will increase. For something like housing there are a lot of factors; construction supply chain, construction labor, permitting processes, zoning, private equity/speculation, tax rates, inter-state immigration, inter-country immigration, etc. If you have people immigrating into a localized area faster than housing supply increases, it will increase the price of housing. If you have vacant homes somewhere else in the country than the places people want to be (or where the immigrants are going) then it will have no downward pressure on pricing. There is nothing meaningful in a point that assumes the entire country is one market, as if supply/demand isn't tightly coupled specific locations.