Capitalism & Monopoly

[Gloominary]

Am I right?
It seems to me, monopoly is inseparable from capitalism.
The more corporations have, the easier it is for them to get.
The bigger fish eat the smaller ones, until we're where we find ourselves today, the vast majority of people, the vast majority of time, consuming from and producing for just a handful of corporations.
Today fewer corporations owned and controlled more of the economy than the day before, and tomorrow will be no different.
Capitalism is neither an egalitarian, nor an equitable economy, it's not natural, or organic either, nature abhors monopolies.
At its heart, it's a way for the rich to become even richer, often at the expense of the poor.
Don't let a few fancy gadgets and gizmos fool you, when it comes to the essentials, what really matters: food, clothing and shelter, in 2018 they're harder to come by than in 2008, and if we're still around at all that is, and WW3 hasn't taken place over dwindling, diminishing resources, or the economy, or the environment hasn't collapsed, 2028 will be worse than 2018.
Capitalism doesn't just need to be modified, it needs to be destroyed, and replaced with an economy that's fundamentally socialist and/or syndicalist, or for fuck sake Islamic, and I say that as an atheist, really it doesn't even matter, almost anything is better than what we have today, because what we have today, greed with little-no limits, will surely destroy the place on which we live and are bound.

[Urwrongx1000]

Wrong.

Do you like driving on smoothly paved roads,
In luxurious cars?

Do you like calling people across the world,
Using your shiny mini-computer cell phone?

Do you like more comforts and easiness,
Than ever before in the history of mankind?

Then you owe your Thanks to the 'monopolies' and corporations of Capitalism.


You are biting the hand that feeds you. You should be bowing in reverence instead.

[Silhouette]

Monopoly is inseparable from Capitalism? Right.
And then you have pro-Capitalists arguing against a planned economy because it's a monopoly...

Iterated trading games, even random ones, all tend towards it necessarily. It's not difficult to see how:

The object of "Free Market Capitalism" is for as many transactions as possible to be "consensual" as opposed to "coerced", but when consensual means whoever has the desired object wants to make a profit, they are necessarily going to be selling for more than was paid to employees to create it/provide it. Add to this the freedom to use psychological tricks to create/enhance a demand (advertising) and there is even more potential for profit and on a wider scale. Iterate this necessary case over and over, and you see money steadily flowing into the hands of those who "own" the businesses that create/provide all the things that people want/need in life (whether or not they actually even contribute to the product/service themselves). Iterate this steady flow and eventually all the wealth has pooled in the hands of the few. The few buy out their competitors, and you get these massive companies that own all the "variety" of goods outlets and service providers we see.

Monopoly is the endgame, fact. But let's not have a planned economy to stop this because it will be a monopoly

[Gloominary]

Wrong.

Do you like driving on smoothly paved roads,
In luxurious cars?

Do you like calling people across the world,
Using your shiny mini-computer cell phone?

Do you like more comforts and easiness,
Than ever before in the history of mankind?

Then you owe your Thanks to the 'monopolies' and corporations of Capitalism.


You are biting the hand that feeds you. You should be bowing in reverence instead.

Nearly every benefit has a cost.
Modern tech from automobiles, computers and phones to modern food and medicine has its pros and cons.
Some of it might be worth keeping, some of it might need to be modified, and some of it might need to be discarded.
Ultimately tho, if one of the costs of modern tech, is that we face earth's 6th mass extinction event, than it's not worth it, and we'd be better off had capitalism (which does seem to be one of, if not the best ways to get people to produce and innovate) and modern science were never invented.
I don't think we're living in some sort of golden age, I don't see it that way.
To me there's nothing all that new under sun, we have to work hard, get sick and die just like our ancestors did.

I'm a socialist and a syndicalist.
In many ways, capitalism forces us to be productive and innovative whether we want to or not.
If workers were in more control of their production, and reaped more of the benefits, we wouldn't have to be as productive and innovative, it would be more optional, as it should be, artificial scarcity is a great evil.
If it's more optional, we could produce, innovate and progress more carefully, more cautiously, which is how we should be progressing, if we should be at all that is.

[Gloominary]

Monopoly is inseparable from Capitalism? Right.
And then you have pro-Capitalists arguing against a planned economy because it's a monopoly...

Iterated trading games, even random ones, all tend towards it necessarily. It's not difficult to see how:

The object of "Free Market Capitalism" is for as many transactions as possible to be "consensual" as opposed to "coerced", but when consensual means whoever has the desired object wants to make a profit, they are necessarily going to be selling for more than was paid to employees to create it/provide it. Add to this the freedom to use psychological tricks to create/enhance a demand (advertising) and there is even more potential for profit and on a wider scale. Iterate this necessary case over and over, and you see money steadily flowing into the hands of those who "own" the businesses that create/provide all the things that people want/need in life (whether or not they actually even contribute to the product/service themselves). Iterate this steady flow and eventually all the wealth has pooled in the hands of the few. The few buy out their competitors, and you get these massive companies that own all the "variety" of goods outlets and service providers we see.

Monopoly is the endgame, fact. But let's not have a planned economy to stop this because it will be a monopoly

Syndicalism, which I also propose, is the antithesis of monopoly.
You can have a completely free, competitive market, in fact much freer and more competitive than the one we have at present, but redefine property, so it's impossible to monopolize, or for a few people to own tons and tons more than they need, and/or personally, physically use.
Small businesses would remain as they are, big businesses however would have to be partly or fully syndicated, unionized.

And democratic socialism can also be practiced in such a way, so as to support small businesses more than it does state businesses, or state businesses can be diverse, and compete with one another, like you could have several, or dozens of schools of medicine, all supported by the state, and consumers, from which to choose from, instead of just one.

And ultimately democracy means we all have a say in it, even if there's only a handful of state run corporations, so even still it's against monopoly, in that sense.

Furthermore, I am for powering down our economies, for localizing and greening.
I am a national ecosocialist-syndicalist, and more of an isolationist, not a globalist.
My socialism has little-nothing to do with mainstream socialism.

[Karpel Tunnel]

Humans invented stuff and developed it. Since this has been organized through corporations in the last couple of centuries, one can argue that corporations did this. But it could have happened via other types of organisations of human inventors and workers, so I don't buy that. The status quo often looks inevitable and obvious and the only choice. Corporations get charters and the government used to revoke them if they were criminal or problematic in some way. But that stopped. It's a priviledge and revoking should return. We should, at the very least, have caps on corporate size and these caps could be very low down. Small flexible entrepreneurs, rather than these dinorsaurs tramping on whatever they feel like.

Corporate structure allows middlemen to make money off no labor. It currently allows ratios of payment that would have seemed obscene, even by CEOs, back in the 50s and back when roads were being paved with government funding, perhaps even workers being government employees for that matter.

Corporations don't have hands or intentions and they don't feed us We feed us, and this, now and for many years now via organizing ourselves in corporations. That was the pattern many of we organized ourselves to carry out OUR work and OUR innovations. It's like if me and my friends create an app sitting on chairs in a certain pattern in a room decide we didn't come up with the app, the chairs did. Not, not the chairs, the pattern of the chairs in the room. We send our profits to a Platonic chair form. Oh, you fed us chair pattern. Don't move those fucking chairs, it is the only way to come up with apps, you commie bastard.


We can do this other ways and we don't owe the non-living corporations anything, them being abstractions and not living entities, despite the horrific corporate personhood idea that, well, is idiocy itself made law.

I don't mind some people making more money than others.

But current capitalism includes a lot of making money for not doing labor AND fiat banking where banks can loan out unreal money and this then creates money they can then invest. The hallucinated money they loan out must be repaid or they possess your real objects and businesses and property. This puts way too much power in the hands of people who are not making a fucking thing. It also creates all sorts of unreal distortions out there in the economy. If someone wants to work their ass off and this entails them getting more compensation or someone else comes up with something more useful that what I come up with, I don't mind them having more money. But note the name capitalism. Capitalism is not coincidentally heavily focused on capital, on how to make money via ownership rather than work or inventing. I also would not completely close this off, but it is not a good way to focus an economy. And the capitalists now have more VOTE not the little 'votes' humans get, more influence over foreign policy, more control of media and thus what is taken as obvious and inevitable and who we should go to war with. etc.

So we think it must be so, because the people who benefit from it being this particular, oddly skewed and damaging form that it is nowadays, have the power to tell us this is it. This is the way it must be or you'll be living in Gulags. The utter void of creativity and false dichotomy worship is amazing.

And then other people locked in the system, even without much power, parrot the capitalists'
'truths'
and tell the rest of us that we owe abstract non-living entities for what we have all managed to do.

Brainwashed supernatural ideas about how things must be. We don't owe these ghostly contracts a thing.

Nor do we need to accept the parastical relations they set up. Fucking X factor Idol contests held at the society level, culling for talent, then claiming they are responsible for it.

[Urwrongx1000]

we face earth's 6th mass extinction event,

So Capitalism and Monopoly is bad because all 7 billion humans are going to die in 10 years??

Bad argument, I don't buy it.

Capitalism and Monopolies are propelling the human population to new heights, people are living longer than ever before, people are healthier than ever before, the entire planet is thriving and greener than ever before. Everything is going in the right direction, and still fear-mongers and doomsday prophets claim that "we're all going to die!!! AHHH!!! REEEEEEEEE!!!" It's all bullshit.

Just because you are going to die, doesn't mean the rest of humanity is going to die. Doomsday prophets want to take humanity down with them, into their own downward spirals. It's solipsistic. The solipsist thinks "because existence is nothingness, because there is no faith, because there is no hope, so it must be for everybody else!"


Nope, it's just you who is bleak, hopeless, lost. The rest of humanity is fine. In fact, the rest of humanity is doing better than it ever has, in the past 100000000000000000000000000 years.


Humanity is doing better that it has in 100000000000000000000000000 years.

Think about that a minute.

[Silhouette]

Petty pedantry alert (for fun and info): 100 septillion years ago is invalid, the universe is not quite 14 billion years old, homo sapiens are less than 500,000 years old and homo sapiens sapiens less than 50,000 years old.

Glass half full, humanity collectively has move wealth than ever and poverty as a whole is reducing massively.
Glass half empty, not all demographics are benefiting from this in proportion to others, many are having their access to this increased overall wealth frozen and even reduced.

There's good and bad, and there's relative extents of both.

We're greener than ever before? I seem to remember deserts are growing in size and unless something huge has changed we're still cutting down rainforests far quicker than we're restoring them, sea levels are rising and they have more and more rubbish thrown into them, huge coral reefs are dying, certain cities in the world don't have safe air to breathe, but yes - renewable energy is on the increase and fossil fuel usage is cleaner. What is the net overall increase or decrease? I would be very surprised if we were more green than ever before, but yes, at least there are valid glass-half-full arguments. Complacency due to them is a bad idea though.

The real question, which I don't think is clear at all, is whether all the glass-half-full facts are because of Capitalism.

Has Capitalism been around while many modern improvements have happened? Of course, to various mixed extents in different places. That's not the same question though, and it's not proof that all other possible economic models would have been worse had they been in place instead.

In my estimation, many aspects of the kinds of Capitalism we're seen have been highly valuable, but I also believe that such benefits aren't guaranteed to last uniformly just because they were appropriate over a certain time period. These things need constant revision, and alternatives need to be tried and tested relentlessly - just as in all other parts of nature.

[Urwrongx1000]

Those who are slave-minded, nihilistic, look at existence as inherently negative. They project their own inner-constitution outward, to the world, to objects, to other people. To the Nihilist, there is no hope, there is no faith, there is no progress, there is no evolution, and all actions are futile. However, their actions everyday contradict this, as they obey their own instincts and reflexes. It's more of a moping-attitude, a depression, an inner-weakness.

[WendyDarling]

Capitalism and Monopolies are propelling the human population to new heights, people are living longer than ever before, people are healthier than ever before, the entire planet is thriving and greener than ever before. Everything is going in the right direction, and still fear-mongers and doomsday prophets claim that "we're all going to die!!! AHHH!!! REEEEEEEEE!!!" It's all bullshit.

Heights as in skyscrapers and jets. Are people living longer though? Didn't ancient Greeks live into their 80's too as documented in their written works? I'm not buying that we live longer in terms of years per se but more of us survive birth with modern medicine aiding sick infants. With all the man-made foods/chemicals, GMOs, and preservatives, are we healthier with an unprecedented rise in mental health challenges from eating disorders (anorexia/obesity), to gender identity crisis, to rising suicide rates? If people were healthier wouldn't they be happier and better adjusted to modern life? What do you mean the planet is greener with the ocean pollution choking off eco systems and deforestation bulldozing land based ecosystems away? Progress equals unprecendented pollution that is piled miles high and long in landfills the world over. Progress needs to cease and desist before the tipping point of our environment on a planet of finite resources reaches the point of no return, the well's run dry.

[Gloominary]

Capitalism and Monopolies are propelling the human population to new heights, people are living longer than ever before, people are healthier than ever before, the entire planet is thriving and greener than ever before. Everything is going in the right direction, and still fear-mongers and doomsday prophets claim that "we're all going to die!!! AHHH!!! REEEEEEEEE!!!" It's all bullshit.

Heights as in skyscrapers and jets. Are people living longer though? Didn't ancient Greeks live into their 80's too as documented in their written works? I'm not buying that we live longer in terms of years per se but more of us survive birth with modern medicine aiding sick infants. With all the man-made foods/chemicals, GMOs, and preservatives, are we healthier with an unprecedented rise in mental health challenges from eating disorders (anorexia/obesity), to gender identity crisis, to rising suicide rates? If people were healthier wouldn't they be happier and better adjusted to modern life? What do you mean the planet is greener with the ocean pollution choking off eco systems and deforestation bulldozing land based ecosystems away? Progress equals unprecendented pollution that is piled miles high and long in landfills the world over. Progress needs to cease and desist before the tipping point of our environment on a planet of finite resources reaches the point of no return, the well's run dry.

Thanks for this thoughtful post, I find myself agreeing with you more than anyone else on this forum, overall.

[Silhouette]

Those who are slave-minded, nihilistic, look at existence as inherently negative. They project their own inner-constitution outward, to the world, to objects, to other people. To the Nihilist, there is no hope, there is no faith, there is no progress, there is no evolution, and all actions are futile. However, their actions everyday contradict this, as they obey their own instincts and reflexes. It's more of a moping-attitude, a depression, an inner-weakness.

Those who are master-minded, overlooking and controlling, look at existence from both positive and negative angles. They project their own inner-constitution outward, to the world, to objects, to other people. To the master, there is hope and faith, there is reason to doubt hope and faith, there is progress because the bigger picture is seen, there is evolution, no matter how futile things may seem upon sufficient analysis.

[Gloominary]

I don't have the time or energy to write long responses like I used to right now, I have to figure out how to make them briefer.

[Gloominary]

Those who are slave-minded, nihilistic, look at existence as inherently negative. They project their own inner-constitution outward, to the world, to objects, to other people. To the Nihilist, there is no hope, there is no faith, there is no progress, there is no evolution, and all actions are futile. However, their actions everyday contradict this, as they obey their own instincts and reflexes. It's more of a moping-attitude, a depression, an inner-weakness.

Those who are master-minded, overlooking and controlling, look at existence from both positive and negative angles. They project their own inner-constitution outward, to the world, to objects, to other people. To the master, there is hope and faith, there is reason to doubt hope and faith, there is progress because the bigger picture is seen, there is evolution, no matter how futile things may seem upon sufficient analysis.

I don't think in terms of master versus slave, I think in terms of people who're temperate in many-most things, much-most of the time, versus people, and civilizations who go to extremes, and consume and sophisticate themselves into oblivion.

But I agree, ideally we ought to be able to see both the bad, and good in everything, and decide what to do accordingly.
That is not necessarily resignation, altho it could be, I am not necessarily against suicide.
What it is, is assessing the facts to the best of your ability, and how you feel about those facts, what your values are, before deciding the best course of action, which potentially could be anything, it depends on you and your circumstances.
For me that means choosing to be a minimalist.

[Gloominary]

@x1000

So Capitalism and Monopoly is bad because all 7 billion humans are going to die in 10 years??

Well that's a gross exaggeration and simplification of my position, but I do think there's a good chance we're going to go extinct, or at least plummet back into the dark ages, within the next century or two, if we don't clean up our act, which I doubt most of us will unfortunately, but still I'm putting it out there.
And the scientific community is in agreement with me, at least on this, I'm certainly not in agreement with them on everything.

Bad argument, I don't buy it.

Well it wouldn't be the first time civilization collapsed, see the Mayans, see Rome, see the lesser known Greek dark ages AKA the bronze age collapse.
Even if we're ultimately 'progressing', which I doubt, it's at the very, very least going to be a bumpy road up, history has clearly indicated that much, but we can probably help mitigate those bumps, by slowing dowm, treading carefully, which we have obviously completely and utterly failed to do, thus far.

From climate change, to a coronal mass ejection, from a super virus, to global nuclear and chemical warfare, from the eradication of forests/wildlife, renewable and non-renewable resources, to our arguably declining physical and mental health, many, many threats loom on the horizon, and these threats are not far fetched, not at all, we came that close: ___ to all out nuclear warfare with Russia during the cold war, really it's practically a miracle it didn't happen.
The collapse of this civilization is practically inevitable, every civilization that has ever existed has collapsed or at least significantly declined at some point, often after over-expanding economically, militarily.
What's far fetched is the notion that we're it, we've arrived at the end of history, that we can now disregard all the lessons of the past, significant military, environmental and economic conflicts and challenges are now behind us, each generation will enjoy a higher quality of life and standard of living than the previous, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that is the real fantasy so many our indulging in, wholehearted and mindedly giving themselves over to.

I'm not saying modernity is all bad, what it is, is a double edged sword, it's something we have to wield with the utmost, the utmost caution, care and restraint, or we will surely perish.

[Urwrongx1000]

Heights as in skyscrapers and jets. Are people living longer though? Didn't ancient Greeks live into their 80's too as documented in their written works? I'm not buying that we live longer in terms of years per se but more of us survive birth with modern medicine aiding sick infants. With all the man-made foods/chemicals, GMOs, and preservatives, are we healthier with an unprecedented rise in mental health challenges from eating disorders (anorexia/obesity), to gender identity crisis, to rising suicide rates? If people were healthier wouldn't they be happier and better adjusted to modern life? What do you mean the planet is greener with the ocean pollution choking off eco systems and deforestation bulldozing land based ecosystems away? Progress equals unprecendented pollution that is piled miles high and long in landfills the world over. Progress needs to cease and desist before the tipping point of our environment on a planet of finite resources reaches the point of no return, the well's run dry.

More crying, moping, depression, the-world-is-going-to-end clap-trap.

I don't buy any of it. Now, in the year 2018, July, is the highest humanity has ever reached. And we're still going upward. Still improving. Still progressing. You're blind to all the positive aspects of life.

Not my fault. Not my problem.

[Urwrongx1000]

Those who are master-minded, overlooking and controlling, look at existence from both positive and negative angles. They project their own inner-constitution outward, to the world, to objects, to other people. To the master, there is hope and faith, there is reason to doubt hope and faith, there is progress because the bigger picture is seen, there is evolution, no matter how futile things may seem upon sufficient analysis.

You do have to look at both sides, yes.

However in threads like these, it's too easy to see the positions...or the negations.

So many perspectives and "beliefs" are built on hopelessness, despair, fear. I don't buy it. It's a bad argument, at the very least. Watch this....

[Urwrongx1000]

Well that's a gross exaggeration and simplification of my position, but I do think there's a good chance we're going to go extinct, or at least plummet back into the dark ages, within the next century or two, if we don't clean up our act, which I doubt most of us will unfortunately, but still I'm putting it out there.
And the scientific community is in agreement with me, at least on this, I'm certainly not in agreement with them on everything.

"scientific community is in agreement with me"

It must be bad science then. I prefer History. History shows that mankind, now, is the greatest it's ever been. Could you drive a car, in the year 1000 AD? Could you text somebody across the world on a cellphone in the year 500AD? Could you cure a huge variety of diseases, in the year 500BC? No, no you couldn't.

History is on my side. You can have "science".

Well it wouldn't be the first time civilization collapsed, see the Mayans, see Rome, see the lesser known Greek dark ages AKA the bronze age collapse.

The thing about history is....old societies didn't really "collapse". They just changed their names, re-wrote the history books a little bit. Most of the people today are remnants of the same people 2000 years ago. There are still "Mayan" people, still Roman, still Greek. The thing is, the names change, slightly, and people think there was some kind of "mass extinction" X years ago. There wasn't. It's just propaganda.

Many of the same cultures/ideologies that dominated 2000 years ago, survived to this day. Why else are most Modern people Christian/Jewish ("secular humanists")?

Coincidence?

No.


There are no "mass extinction events". It's just fear-mongering.

[Zero_Sum]

Poor people deserve their poverty and fate, God commands it and capitalism is the closest thing to divinity in action or human organization. It is the natural expression of God's will and nature.

Poor people are poor because they've turn away from God and the legitimacy of authority.

If you reject capitalism you reject God and nature where you deserve to be an outcast of both.

In my opinion the best kind of capitalism is a neo liberal one that is moderate but also guided by a laser drone military style of defense. It is also multicultural and multiracial in general. We Jews I think predominantly support this kind of social political structure internationally. A kind of political structure that takes the best of liberal and conservative philosophy together. It is the structure of all of North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand,and the whole of the western world. It is obvious this kind of social political structure is superior and more workable than all others where it should be the future destiny of the entire planet. Capitalist neo liberal democracy is the future of the world and if we ever had a singular global government for the well being of all humanity it would be just that.

Someday in the future countries like Russia and China will come to know this......

They'll come around eventually in being onboard with the global program of success.

[Urwrongx1000]

Poor people deserve their poverty and fate, God commands it and capitalism is the closest thing to divinity in action or human organization. It is the natural expression of God's will and nature.

Poor people are poor because they've turn away from God and the legitimacy of authority.

If you reject capitalism you reject God and nature where you deserve to be an outcast of both.

In my opinion the best kind of capitalism is a neo liberal one that is moderate but also guided by a laser drone military style of defense. It is also multicultural and multiracial in general. We Jews I think predominantly support this kind of social political structure internationally. A kind of political structure that takes the best of liberal and conservative philosophy together. It is the structure of all of North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand,and the whole of the western world. It is obvious this kind of social political structure is superior and more workable than all others where it should be the future destiny of the entire planet. Capitalist neo liberal democracy is the future of the world and if we ever had a singular global government for the well being of all humanity it would be just that.

Someday in the future countries like Russia and China will come to know this......

They'll come around eventually in being onboard with the global program of success.

If you enjoy watching porn on a modern computer then you're a secret-Capitalist at heart.

Are you being a hypocrite?

[Gloominary]

Poor people deserve their poverty and fate, God commands it and capitalism is the closest thing to divinity in action or human organization. It is the natural expression of God's will and nature.

Poor people are poor because they've turn away from God and the legitimacy of authority.

If you reject capitalism you reject God and nature where you deserve to be an outcast of both.

In my opinion the best kind of capitalism is a neo liberal one that is moderate but also guided by a laser drone military style of defense. It is also multicultural and multiracial in general. We Jews I think predominantly support this kind of social political structure internationally. A kind of political structure that takes the best of liberal and conservative philosophy together. It is the structure of all of North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand,and the whole of the western world. It is obvious this kind of social political structure is superior and more workable than all others where it should be the future destiny of the entire planet. Capitalist neo liberal democracy is the future of the world and if we ever had a singular global government for the well being of all humanity it would be just that.

Someday in the future countries like Russia and China will come to know this......

They'll come around eventually in being onboard with the global program of success.

[Gloominary]

@1000

"scientific community is in agreement with me"

It must be bad science then. I prefer History. History shows that mankind, now, is the greatest it's ever been. Could you drive a car, in the year 1000 AD? Could you text somebody across the world on a cellphone in the year 500AD? Could you cure a huge variety of diseases, in the year 500BC? No, no you couldn't.

History is on my side. You can have "science".

Scientists like Weston Price have conducted research on primitive agrarian and hunter-gatherer societies.
As far as they were able to ascertain, they were just as happy as we are, healthier, and lived more leisurely lives.
Primitive agrarians and hunter gatherers probably didn't suffer from as many diseases as early moderns did and moderns do.

The diseases that plagued early moderns like tuberculosis and typhoid have been cured, or at least kept at bay for now, thanks to improvements in nutrition, hygiene, and I say this with a great deal of reservation: antibiotics and vaccines.
However, we've merely traded them in for more autism, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

If life span has increased, it's largely because infant mortality (which helped keep population growth in check mind you) has decreased, not because the people who made it passed infancy are living much longer now than before. And thanks to population growth, thousands of species have died, and many more, including possibly our own, will follow, and both our non-renewable, and what ought to be our renewable resources are being depleted.
We're essentially turning this planet into a desert, and WW3 may be fought over dwindling food, oil and other critical resources.

Computers, phones and cars haven't made our lives obviously better, computers have made us more autistic, avoidant, fatter, lazier, and while this next one is controversial, there's a growing body of anecdotal, and academic evidence suggesting radiation from computers and phones may be damaging our brains, and other organs.
Cars have made our world fatter, lazier, noisier, smellier, smoggier, more hectic, they're one of the leading causes of death, and they're expensive to fuel and maintain.
These technologies have their pros and cons, and if a coronal mass ejection wipes the computers and electronics we're now dependent on out, and/or if humanity doesn't do something soon to solve climate change, then perhaps it'd've been better if we never invented them, or at least if we never come to rely on them so much, if they not so pervasive.

Now that being said, I'm not suggesting we turn back the clock all the way to the iron age, the bronze age or the Neolithic, there are some nice things about modernity, and we have gotten used to this way of life.
I am, however, suggesting we at least put on the breaks, and reassess things, because if we don't, we probably won't survive.

[Gloominary]

Poor people deserve their poverty and fate, God commands it and capitalism is the closest thing to divinity in action or human organization. It is the natural expression of God's will and nature.

Poor people are poor because they've turn away from God and the legitimacy of authority.

If you reject capitalism you reject God and nature where you deserve to be an outcast of both.

In my opinion the best kind of capitalism is a neo liberal one that is moderate but also guided by a laser drone military style of defense. It is also multicultural and multiracial in general. We Jews I think predominantly support this kind of social political structure internationally. A kind of political structure that takes the best of liberal and conservative philosophy together. It is the structure of all of North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand,and the whole of the western world. It is obvious this kind of social political structure is superior and more workable than all others where it should be the future destiny of the entire planet. Capitalist neo liberal democracy is the future of the world and if we ever had a singular global government for the well being of all humanity it would be just that.

Someday in the future countries like Russia and China will come to know this......

They'll come around eventually in being onboard with the global program of success.

This is a philosophy forum.
You need to at least make an attempt to justify your positions with evidences and/or inferences.
Saying my God approves is not philosophy, on this forum it's spam.
Please refrain from spamming my threads.

[Urwrongx1000]

and lived more leisurely lives.

Nope, travelling 20 miles a day by foot is not "more leisurely" than travelling 800 miles by day in a car or more in a private jet.

Try another argument?

[Gloominary]

@1000

The thing about history is....old societies didn't really "collapse". They just changed their names, re-wrote the history books a little bit. Most of the people today are remnants of the same people 2000 years ago. There are still "Mayan" people, still Roman, still Greek. The thing is, the names change, slightly, and people think there was some kind of "mass extinction" X years ago. There wasn't. It's just propaganda.

There's some truth to what you say.
Take the people we know today as the English.
The English were originally a mysterious pre-Aryan people or peoples, then they were conquered by the Celts, and adopted Celtic language, identity and many of their customs, then they were conquered by the Romans, and adopted theirs, than finally by the Anglo-Saxons, and adopted theirs, which's where the English language and the name England or Angland, land of the Angles, comes from.
They were also conquered by the Normans, but the Normans didn't leave as big a mark as their predecessors.

So what happened, was the original demographic nearly wiped out every time they were conquered?
For the most part no.
It was largely a change of the ruling class, or a merger of the old ruling class with new old ruling class, and a change of language, identity, some customs and so on, not so much a genetic, biological change.
Studies seem to indicate the inhabitants of the British isles haven't changed much genetically for millennia, which's also true of most European peoples, and many peoples all over the world, but not true when it comes to native Americans and Australian Aborigines, they were nearly exterminated culturally, and biologically in North America and Australia.

Now all that being said, civilizations do collapse, some times due to warfare, famine, plague and so on, and while overall world population has been growing for millennia, we've gone through periods of significant world population and regional population decline before, often accompanied by technological decline, most famously the dark ages proceeding Rome, and in all certitude will again.

Many of the same cultures/ideologies that dominated 2000 years ago, survived to this day. Why else are most Modern people Christian/Jewish ("secular humanists")?

Coincidence?

No.

There are no "mass extinction events". It's just fear-mongering.

Well you're entitled to your opinion, but according to paleontologists, there have been 5 mass extinction events, where 90%+ of species were wiped out in the blink of Gaia's eye, and many scientists are saying we're headed for another one.
Now that concerns me, and I don't think you could reasonably say my concerns are unfounded, but you may believe as you wish.

As for cultures and ideologies, well many have come and gone too, anarchism, communism and fascism came and went, in the main.
Capitalism is still with us, but heavily modified.
European, North African and West Asian paganism went extinct, barring a few recent, paltry revivals.
Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, and various Uralic and Siberian peoples, thanks to Russian expansion, nearly went extinct, both in cultural, and biological terms.
The Scythians, Sarmatians and other white peoples, thanks to Mongolian and Turkic expansion, of central Asia went extinct culturally, and nearly biologically.
Zoroastrianism and Gnosticism, once world religions rivaling Christianity and Buddhism in numbers, went extinct, in the case of the latter, and nearly in the case of the former, they're down to 10s of thousands now, when they were once 10s of millions.
Legalism and Mohism went extinct in China, and the philosophical schools of Europe like Epicureanism and Stoicism went extinct.
According to paleontological estimates, something like 98% of species that've ever existed, are now extinct.
Unfortunately extinction is the rule, survival the exception.