So, this is a long time coming, but I think there needs to be a long standing clarification given my views going back to 2016 on this blog. When I started this blog, I often framed things from leftist perspectives. Now, to be fair, I always acknowledged that I never wanted actual socialism and merely wanted to reform capitalism, but with actual socialism becoming a more popular perspective as of late, I want to distance myself from explicitly anti capitalist rhetoric.
Look, it's not capitalism I hate. It's jobs. It's forced labor. it's exploitation. As far as I see it the root cause of capitalism's evils is wage slavery. Leftists will agree with this in a vague way, often screaming about how work isn't voluntary and we're all slaves, but let's be honest, they don't wanna free people from work, they just want to at best make it more democratic and at worst put the institutions of production under direct state control, which hasn't worked well in the past.
But let's be honest, from the get go, my problem was always the asymmetry of certain markets, and how certain institutions weren't voluntary. If things aren't voluntary, they lead to abuse, period. It doesn't matter how you try to cover up and lessen the abuse, the problem of capitalism is inherently abusive relationships. If you solve the abusive relationship problem, you solve capitalism's problems.
Socialism is sold as an answer to those problems, but socialism doesn't free people from coerced or abusive relationships. it just offers a restructuring of institutions that's better on paper but in practice may still be very flawed and abusive. And as long as socialists don't advocate for work being voluntary in the first place, I don't care how "democratic" their system is, it's still abusive to me.
The fact is, work just sucks. I was going to write something about this tonight, and how it doesn't matter how work is organized, as long as it's coercive, it's going to suck, but I just couldn't find a way to frame it properly in such that it's an interesting article with a main thesis and supporting points rather than a random stream of consciousness. And honestly, it doesn't matter what system work exists within. Capitalism, socialism, they're all bad, they're all exploitative, they're all evil, as long as people are subject to abusive relationships that they can't walk away from. The only way to truly liberate people is to give them the ability to say no. If you give people their basic needs and the ability to say no, then capitalism is no longer abusive. Employers can't exploit workers who can readily walk away from bad jobs. Sellers of goods and services have no power as long as people have leverage and can walk away from bad deals. As long as employers have to compete with the idea of having "no job", and that being a viable and potentially attractive option, employers have to vie with each other to actually attract talent to their firms.
You see, the problem with capitalism is often capitalism doesn't have enough competition. As long as people are forced to participate, that means that certain institutions can leverage that fact in ways that lead to abusive relationships. But if you eliminate that aspect of capitalism, I really don't have an issue with it.
Leftists would instead argue capitalism can't be saved and has to be replaced. But then they support "socialism". And while market socialism can give people more power within a market system, it's still not as much power, in my opinion as the power to say no has. And hard forms of socialism that have the government owning the means of production? Well, do you really want the government in control of everything? because if they were, that's a monopoly, and they can be far more abusive than even the worst capitalist employer. because with employers you can quit. Even if it means propertylessness. In communist countries the only quitting is death or fleeing the country. And many countries, in the event of the latter, might instead inflict the punishment of you leaving on their surviving family. I've heard of China, for example, threatening college students who go to college overseas with such implied threats. They'll use any leverage as they can.
I mean, that's the thing about government. It's not the size, in terms of raw dollars for example. It's the overreach over one's life. You dont want the government to be able to inflict systemic violence on you, just as you don't want an employer to do so. You want a government big enough to stop others from abusing you, and to perhaps give you universal safety nets, without otherwise intervening in your life.
That's what my call for UBI, medicare for all, and human centered capitalism is about. UBI gives people money, but doesn't tell people what to do. Medicare for all, gives people healthcare, but doesn't tell them what to do. I'm against telling people what to do. I'm for liberating people from coercive relationships so others can't tell them what to do.
Capitalism's big problem is the job market, but that market can be solved with UBI, not necessarily socialism. Capitalism can be saved by UBI. Not necessarily socialism.
It's not capitalism itself that's the problem. It's the coercive aspects of it, which can be resolved without throwing out the entire system. The "left" doesn't have the solutions to capitalism. The "center" does. And by center, I mean, people of broadly socdem style ideologies, of which human centered capitalism and social libertarianism are still among them. As in, they're not hardcore capitalist, nor are they hardcore socialist. They tend to lean capitalist, but solve capitalism's flaws without abolition.
I mean, I don't care about the means of production and blah blah blah. I just wanna have UBI, healthcare, and otherwise be left alone.
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