I'm sorry, but I have to wholeheartedly disagree with pretty much everything you've written.
First of all, when you say that " [food, water, shelter, clothing and education] can easily be provided for all members of society", I honestly can't see how. To say that is to ignore what you call "the power structure of the society", which, as much we (mostly) ARE in a capitalist society, the power structure comes mainly from national states. Yes, they are intrinsically with private business, but those who are part of your "power structure" are there because they are friends with the rulers, and can enjoy their benefits.
All right, so how can this "power structure" be in the way of welfare distribution? First of all: National states limit free trade, which would alllow a better allocation of resources and [feed, shelter, clothe, educate] more people. Secondly: National States, specially in the third world countries that you say are "slaves because of their loans" (more on that later), cause inequality, first by being ditatorial (like many african states), and then some more with extremely high taxes that don't have any social investment as a result.Theses taxes take purchasing power away from the people, and only serve to finance the "friends of the king".
Even if those things weren't true, what are the logistics of providing welfare for all those people? Who would grow their food, without incentives? Who would teach them, without incentives? Who would clothe them, without incentives? Who would transport all those things around, without incentives? People would only do that if they had incentives, and thoses incentives mean one thing: Money. And freer markets would allow those incentives to be better allocated, giving people producing a reason to produce even more, and people consuming a reason to consume even more.
All that said, you lack the understanding of what "international loans" mean. You can't see national debt as a standalone measurement: They are a method of financing a country, and they MUST be analized by seeing what are the other alternatives. Governments can chose to finance themselves by basically three methods: Debt, Taxes and Money Emission. I won't get in so much details, and none of them are ideal, but I would say emitting debt is the "better" of them. You see, getting into debt do mean you have to pay interest to the loaners, but that's about it: apart from deteriorating your position to investors, your debt level "throw" your obligations to the future. And to quickly explain the other two: Taxes take money away from the population with little chance to see them pay-off socially, and money emission just generates inflation, it doesn't make anyone richer.
So, you are fundamentally wrong when you say that the 40 billion dollars leaving Africa could be used to solve world hunger: It wouldn't even exist hadn't the initial sum been loaned, money doesn't exist in a vacuum: They are going to people and companies who ARE creating value wherever they are located, and helping the world to be a better place by generating this value.
Also, "profits" do not exist in a vacuum. Profits exist to be an incentive to employers to employ people, they are not "opression". And I honestly don't know where you got this idea that 3rd world countries are not new markets to be explored, and "capitalists" don't want to give them power. News for you: Capitalism and technology haven't stagnated. This very platform is a proof of that: blockchain technology would not exist if what you are saying is real. Technologies and markets are evolving faster and faster. New markets are beeing explored, and the only reason it isn't happening faster is because investors are, generally speaking, risk-averse. And the governments in these 3rd world countries are what create most of that risk. Also, internal development is not that easy to do, it is IMPOSSIBLE and utterly ridiculous to blame it all on external debts. In a lot of the so called "3rd world", external debt is not even close to the amount of internal debt the countries have, and internal debts can: a) only be blamed on the government and b) depending on its level in relation to GDP, not even a big problem to begin with.
Also, how are you praising the USSR? Yes, it had and unprecedent industrial progress for its time, but it did it on the back of what you considered so important in the beggining of your text: Quality of life. Yes, you can increase your iron production tenfold when your population doens't even have shoes...
To finish this, I won't even start on how capitalism is, for the time being, the best system we can have, and for one simple reason: it's impossible to plan everything in an economy. Even small things are difficult enough, with lots of unintended consequences, and whole economies are a whole other beast. Take it to a "whole world" level, and oh boy do we have a lot of problems. No "central comitee" can plan what the daily interactions of billions of people determine. That's why free markets matter, that's why supply and demand matter, and that's why prices having the abilty to fluctuate matter.
Your text was pretty and well written, but, in my point of view, it's lacks a better understanding of a lot of concepts, and, by the end, just sounds like some crazy "conspiracy theory" stuff. No, poverty doesn't exist because of capitalism. It exists even though we live in a capitalist society, and its levels are lower because of that. Had we lived under any other system, it would be way higher.
"No, poverty doesn't exist because of capitalism. It exists even though we live in a capitalist society, and its levels are lower because of that. Had we lived under any other system, it would be way higher."
or we could look at historical facts
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'Also, how are you praising the USSR? Yes, it had and unprecedent industrial progress for its time, but it did it on the back of what you considered so important in the beggining of your text: Quality of life. Yes, you can increase your iron production tenfold when your population doens't even have shoes...'
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"reason it isn't happening faster is because investors are, generally speaking, risk-averse. And the governments in these 3rd world countries are what create most of that risk"
yes, that's why we haven't invaded any of them to open up oil markets because we are running out of places to invest in.
Oh wait....
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First of all: Investors aren't necessarily countries, and not necessarily the US. And secondly, this goes into one of the main things I said: Governments are a huge problem. Or do you think the military is privately owned?
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capitalism can not exist without the government. Under capitalism the government is essentially a business, so yes. It is privately owned.
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statistics prove that under a planned economy far less people die, its that simple.
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"Your text was pretty and well written, but, in my point of view, it's lacks a better understanding of a lot of concepts, and, by the end, just sounds like some crazy "conspiracy theory" stuff. "
https://espressostalinist.com/u-s-imperialism-page/
this is all I need to prove that point
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'First of all, when you say that " [food, water, shelter, clothing and education] can easily be provided for all members of society", I honestly can't see how. "
we produce 30% more food than the world needs to survive and yet people are starving. Water is easy, we just need to clean it. Education is easy, we just need more teachers.
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Where is this food located? Who is going to distribute it? How are they going to distribute it?
How are you going to clean the water? How are you going to distribute it?
Who is going to teach the teachers? Where? For how much time? Are you going to force people to be teachers by gunpoint?
None of those problems is easy. All of them take a lot of coordination and effort by a lot of people.
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"Where is this food located? Who is going to distribute it? How are they going to distribute it?"
why do the specifics matter? #1 we throw away most of it, #2 whoever we want #3 probably vehicles designed to ship food
we have the resources, that's all that matters
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I am not part of the design team. We have the resources, that has been proven and that's all I need to prove.
I do not need to figure out the specifics myself.
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"How are you going to clean the water? How are you going to distribute it?
Who is going to teach the teachers? Where? For how much time? Are you going to force people to be teachers by gunpoint?"
#1 produce tools to clean the water, #2 use our fucking resources to make some
The ussr had more doctors per capita than the usa. It turns out if you give people the opportunity instead of just watching them starve to death or forcing them to work with inefficient machines we can get more done and people can do other stuff
and no, I will not do it at gun point. That's what you capitalists do. You hold every starving worker at gun point, just to keep him away from the food made for the higher classes in first world countries.
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".Theses taxes take purchasing power away from the people, and only serve to finance the "friends of the king"."
the capitalist takes far more purchasing power from the worker than taxes
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Can you please explain how are they taking purchasing power away from the workers?
I can explain what I said. "Capitalists" pay wages, people use those wages do consume. Taxes take way part of their wages, so they can consume less, and this lessens their quality of life.
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A worker goes to work to produce resources for humanity. A capitalist controls the property, and thus demands everything the worker produces. He then gives the worker a portion of what he produces back in something you call a wage. To sum it up, the worker pays the capitalist to labor much like he pays the government to labor through taxes.
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You have a deeply flawed view of how value is created. Despite what Marx wrote, value is not added through labor; it is subjective, and value is given through utility. Perhaps you should start trying to understand this. Try to look up "utility value".
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value is the socially necessary labor needed to produce something. The utility value does not matter, for a very simple reason. We can fucking make more of something if we need more.
The value of an object is what it takes to create if we can create objects based on need instead of profit for the rich lmao
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"Who would grow their food, without incentives?"
nobody, economy can not function without incentives, do you think I'm stupid?
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I don't, but I do think you are wrong. Without a capitalist society, what would those incentives be if not a gun pointed to our heads by the rulers?
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are you stupid? The incentive would be what the workers themselves produce, instead of the small scraps they are given today.
In capitalism the gun to the head is starvation, although in third world countries it often literally is a gun to the head.
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"Also, "profits" do not exist in a vacuum. Profits exist to be an incentive to employers to employ people, "
other way around m8, the owners need the workers for a profit while the workers don't need the owner to work. (Under capitalism, all they need is the permission, they still have the ability either way)
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I never said that owners don't need workers. I just said that the profits are the incentive they have to employ them. I think you misunderstood me. And yes, technically workers don't need owners to work. But then, how would they get paid?
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'But then, how would they get paid?"
the money the capitalist pays the workers doesn't come out of nowhere, the workers themselves produce their own wage and a massive profit on top of that. Without an owner the workers would get what they produce, which is far more than their wage.
The owner is only paid because he has control. They are thieves and leeches
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"To finish this, I won't even start on how capitalism is, for the time being, the best system we can have, and for one simple reason: it's impossible to plan everything in an economy. "
ah yes, because McDonalds can't predict how much meat to send to one of their stores. Our entire economy is planned already, the only difference is who gets the profit
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Oh my god, are you really comparing the microeconomic level of a company with that of a COUNTRY, or the WORLD? Yes, McDonalds can do that because they have less stuff to worry about and in a way smaller scale than any country in the world. This kind of planning start to present a lot of problems on bigger scales.
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"Oh my god, are you really comparing the microeconomic level of a company with that of a COUNTRY, or the WORLD? Yes, McDonalds can do that because they have less stuff to worry about and in a way smaller scale than any country in the world. This kind of planning start to present a lot of problems on bigger scales."
they have businesses over the entire world lmao are you stupid. Stuff can be planned at a local level.
"because they have less stuff to worry about "
and we have buisinesses making cloths, that's more for the captialist class to worry about, the world today can't exist according to you
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Stuff is planned at a local level. That's called "market forces". Without them, you'll probably end up being ruled by some central comitee, like your beloved USSR.
And no, I don't think I'm stupid. However, I'm starting to think you are, given the levels of your answers and how you fail to go deeper than the surface level on any comment I make.
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"you'll probably end up being ruled by some central comitee, like your beloved USSR"
"And no, I don't think I'm stupid. However, I'm starting to think you are, given the levels of your answers and how you fail to go deeper than the surface level on any comment I make."
you are the one who thinks wages to pay the workers magically come out of nowhere
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"Stuff is planned at a local level. That's called "market forces""
delusional lmao.
"We need more x to do y" is planning
"I will pay x for y, if you happen to have it" is not planning, that's market forces.
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I agree with most of what you replied. I wrote a response to the OP here: https://steemit.com/anarchy/@richhersey/my-live-thoughts-and-response-to-a-communist-post
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