I'm So Pessimistic About The Future

AretnaP

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I honestly do NOT see a future that moves towards better information (health related or otherwise) in a capitalist society. I think once a drug company has their hooks sunk in to a product it's over. I believe that they will fight tooth and nail to keep their treatments selling.

I believe with all my heart that if a great, yet cheap solution for a problem comes about when there are already "solutions" that benefits capitalists more, that the companies will do everything they can to keep their sales afloat. I have little faith in the ability of legit information to rise to the top when things are being sold to for that problem already.

I can understand saying Peat is wrong about this or that little thing but to say Peat would miss the mark on something as big as the economy is crazy (in my opinion).

There is an old black metal musician named Varg Vikernes (I'm sure many of you know him) who makes YT vlogs. I don't agree with much that he says, but he made a point in one of his vids that I feel was very legitimate. He basically said that yes, all of the countries that claimed to be communist weren't actually communist, but that's what happens when you "try" communism. You may say that the USA is not truly capitalist but rather "crony-capitalist" or "fascist" but this is the system you get when you "try" capitalism.
 

Pointless

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In a free society, when people are allowed to experiment with health strategies (like we do) and we find better and cheaper ways of accomplishing things (like we do) then big pharma becomes obsolete. Doctor's adapt or get shut out. It's a question of human progress and not "trying" an economic system.
 

Prosper

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He basically said that yes, all of the countries that claimed to be communist weren't actually communist, but that's what happens when you "try" communism. You may say that the USA is not truly capitalist but rather "crony-capitalist" or "fascist" but this is the system you get when you "try" capitalism.

It's not about trying, there's been more than enough of trying in history. It's the necessarily unaccounted human factor. It's about using a naive sketch to construct an unimaginably complex system and expecting it to function well.

Communism, capitalism and all other economical or ideological concepts are based on almost arbitrarily approximated and mostly disregarded rules of reality. It's not like when you know how to calculate the sides of a triangle using ancient rules of trigonometry which are everlasting and always relevant because the mechanisms they describe point to very fundamental qualities of the reality itself. And those rules are just for a static triangular shape. Now imagine creating a theory that, in addition to accounting for everything that can generally go wrong within the system it is describing, is mathematically precise enough to adequately predict the actions and potential corruptability of any individual, in any context, and then we can start talking about whether this or that system is better.



You know the saying "communism is great, but only on paper"? Well, that's true for everything we have come up with so far. The best we can do is to wing it while focusing less on ideologies and more on trying to perceive and fix the real problems.
 

tankasnowgod

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There is an old black metal musician named Varg Vikernes (I'm sure many of you know him) who makes YT vlogs. I don't agree with much that he says, but he made a point in one of his vids that I feel was very legitimate. He basically said that yes, all of the countries that claimed to be communist weren't actually communist, but that's what happens when you "try" communism. You may say that the USA is not truly capitalist but rather "crony-capitalist" or "fascist" but this is the system you get when you "try" capitalism.

I remember my middle school social studies teacher stating "There is no capitalist or communist countries, every government is on a scale of socialism." The biggest difference I can see in your argument is that pure, free market capitalism wouldn't have any centralized control. In fact, the less control, the more capitalist a society truly is. As far as trying communism, I have no idea how it could possibly work without a centralized authority. The term "Anarco-communism" always seemed like an oxymoron to me.

I pretty much agree with the point that Pointless made earlier.
 
OP
AretnaP

AretnaP

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In a free society, when people are allowed to experiment with health strategies (like we do) and we find better and cheaper ways of accomplishing things (like we do) then big pharma becomes obsolete. Doctor's adapt or get shut out. It's a question of human progress and not "trying" an economic system.
A society could be non-capitalist and completely free. My problem is that once a society becomes capitalist the most powerful corporations can influence the government.

"Fascism is capitalism in decay" as some have said.
It's not about trying, there's been more than enough of trying in history. It's the necessarily unaccounted human factor. It's about using a naive sketch to construct an unimaginably complex system and expecting it to function well.

Communism, capitalism and all other economical or ideological concepts are based on almost arbitrarily approximated and mostly disregarded rules of reality. It's not like when you know how to calculate the sides of a triangle using ancient rules of trigonometry which are everlasting and always relevant because the mechanisms they describe point to very fundamental qualities of the reality itself. And those rules are just for a static triangular shape. Now imagine creating a theory that, in addition to accounting for everything that can generally go wrong within the system it is describing, is mathematically precise enough to adequately predict the actions and potential corruptability of any individual, in any context, and then we can start talking about whether this or that system is better.



You know the saying "communism is great, but only on paper"? Well, that's true for everything we have come up with so far. The best we can do is to wing it while focusing less on ideologies and more on trying to perceive and fix the real problems.
I think I know what you're saying but still believe it's a good idea to try and predict what will happen in the world, even with as many factors at play as there are.

When there are many powerful people who's only concern is profit it's not hard to imagine that bad things could result.
I remember my middle school social studies teacher stating "There is no capitalist or communist countries, every government is on a scale of socialism." The biggest difference I can see in your argument is that pure, free market capitalism wouldn't have any centralized control. In fact, the less control, the more capitalist a society truly is. As far as trying communism, I have no idea how it could possibly work without a centralized authority. The term "Anarco-communism" always seemed like an oxymoron to me.

I pretty much agree with the point that Pointless made earlier.

Capitalism is when the means of production in a country are privately owned. When a country is socialist that means the means of production are owned by the workers. Instead of having a boss tell them what to do the workers would own the factory (or wherever they are working at) democratically. The United States is NOT like this, nor are most of the countries that have claimed to be socialist.

Communism is not an economic system, but rather a state of a society, "classless and stateless" is the most basic definition of communism.

Communism was originally a plan to slowly get rid of the government over time, even if it didn't turn out that way. Karl Marx himself referred to the stone ages as "proto-communism" because in the stone ages there was no currency, no class, and of course no state.

"Anarcho-communism" isn't the oxymoron, "anarcho-capitalism" is, this is why most anarchists don't consider ancaps to be real anarchists.
 

tankasnowgod

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Capitalism is when the means of production in a country are privately owned. When a country is socialist that means the means of production are owned by the workers.
So are the workers not private citizens? If so, that is again a case for private ownership.
 
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Rising inequality has led to a permanently impoverished and chronically sick underclass. This should improve over time, but at the moment it's a crisis of sorts.

Rich people can only be so unhealthily because they eat out a lot, which at the very least means they're consuming somewhat well-rounded meals. This combined with good medical care means they do just fine even if they're not well-informed about health.

Poor people, on the other hand, can find themselves eating horrifically if they're poorly informed on health. Often their diets are sky high in PUFA and missing essential vitamins and minerals -- a deadly combination. Then combine that with no health insurance...
 
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Pointless

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Workers should be able to acquire stock in companies they work for and become involved with company decision making, but a move to state-run socialism or anarchism would be a disaster. And I have travelled to and lived on various anarchist communities.
 

Ideonaut

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In a free society, when people are allowed to experiment with health strategies (like we do) and we find better and cheaper ways of accomplishing things (like we do) then big pharma becomes obsolete. Doctor's adapt or get shut out. It's a question of human progress and not "trying" an economic system.
This is simply not true. If it were, big pharma would already be out of business. As James Galbraith has said, "the market" left to itself is criminogenic. We had plenty of evidence for that in banking in 2008. Greenspan had said he thought the bankers could regulate themselves adequately, only to recant later. I generally agree with AretnaP above. I believe that some free markets are good within an economy, but what will work best is a strong overseeing element of socialism and socialist guidance. It sure works well in China! Some segments of the economy should be in public hands, like the military, roads, and certainly pharmaceuticals. Ha-Joon Chang explores this well in his books.
 

Queequeg

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I would just second the OPs point that our health freedom is under attack. I would argue that the greater dangers comes from government interference than from the free market but since we are all moving down the slippery slope of socialism I share his pessimism.

If you look into what's happening with respect to the UN's Codex Alimentarius and its restrictions on access to supplements you would be shocked. Canada in particular has removed thousands of supplements for sale. This is coming to America soon. You may have noticed that they are ramping up the anti-vitamin propaganda. I am sure it will get worse.
 
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Richiebogie

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Some of my friends think pharmaceuticals and standard cancer care is great and represents the latest in science. If something is not quite right about it then in time it will be corrected!

To them the medical establishment are the experts and reading studies that go against the status quo is not something I should be doing.

Same goes for evidence that the Sandy Hook massacre was a stage play, or man on the moon was a simulation, or that the world is not getting warmer due to CO2 emissions... Evidence does not matter to my friends because we are not the authority!

They forget that in science at school and uni we would perform our own practical experiments to verify the theory we were learning.

This democratisation of science is what we all should be doing. Who can we blame if we do not check if the experts are inept or trying to defraud us?
 

tankasnowgod

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This is simply not true. If it were, big pharma would already be out of business. As James Galbraith has said, "the market" left to itself is criminogenic. We had plenty of evidence for that in banking in 2008. Greenspan had said he thought the bankers could regulate themselves adequately, only to recant later. I generally agree with AretnaP above. I believe that some free markets are good within an economy, but what will work best is a strong overseeing element of socialism and socialist guidance. It sure works well in China! Some segments of the economy should be in public hands, like the military, roads, and certainly pharmaceuticals. Ha-Joon Chang explores this well in his books.

Here's the problem with your argument. You claim that free market's don't work, and then cite the failures in markets that had centralized regulators as examples of your point. Greenspan ran the Fed, which controlls banks. Banks aren't currently allowed to issue their own currency (although they were and did in the 19th century). They also had to be regulated by the FDIC.

Big Pharma is protected by the FDA, DEA and USDA. Also, there is the Schedule of Drugs. None of these things would exist in a truly free market.
 

Ideonaut

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I would argue that the greater dangers comes from government interference than from the free market
The "free market" as some kind of ideal is a myth--nonexistent. Economist James Galbraith tells this like it is. If you let people do whatever they want for money, they can and will lie, cheat, steal, kill--be thoroughly corrupt. Here's testimony to that: Dr Peter Gøtzsche exposes Big Pharma as organized crime There are dangers from both sides.
 

tankasnowgod

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The "free market" as some kind of ideal is a myth--nonexistent. Economist James Galbraith tells this like it is. If you let people do whatever they want for money, they can and will lie, cheat, steal, kill--be thoroughly corrupt. Here's testimony to that: Dr Peter Gøtzsche exposes Big Pharma as organized crime There are dangers from both sides.

And if you give people the power to govern others, they can and will lie, cheat, steal, and kill--be thoroughly corrupt.

According to R.J. Rummel, the number of deaths from Democide (which is deaths by government) is over 169 million people in the 20th century, and that figure does not count combatant war deaths.
 

burtlancast

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Queequeg

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The "free market" as some kind of ideal is a myth--nonexistent. Economist James Galbraith tells this like it is. If you let people do whatever they want for money, they can and will lie, cheat, steal, kill--be thoroughly corrupt. Here's testimony to that: Dr Peter Gøtzsche exposes Big Pharma as organized crime There are dangers from both sides.
Though I agree with a lot of what you are saying, keep in mind that there aren't any perfect real world applications of any political or economic system. There are no Platonic Ideals in the real world, only approximations. So yes the free market can be corrupted, and is unfair, and causes people to be overly selfish, but at the same time it also allows for the most freedom, the highest standard of living, and the greatest process to unlock human potential and creativity ever imagined. The free market harnesses the power of self interest to benefit everyone. The poorest people in the US still have a much better standard of living than the average Venezuelan, Cuban or any other truly socialist or communist country. The answer is to reign in what has become monopoly/crony capitalism, not to completely reject the system, and push it towards freer markets with the knowledge that you can never get all the way there.
 

jaguar43

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Here's the problem with your argument. You claim that free market's don't work, and then cite the failures in markets that had centralized regulators as examples of your point. Greenspan ran the Fed, which controlls banks. Banks aren't currently allowed to issue their own currency (although they were and did in the 19th century). They also had to be regulated by the FDIC.

Big Pharma is protected by the FDA, DEA and USDA. Also, there is the Schedule of Drugs. None of these things would exist in a truly free market.

Removing those "centralized regulators" won't remove the corrupt and criminal activities of businesses and corporations. Because the root cause of those activities lies in the making money system; not in the bureaucratic nature of government. Government agencies are "captured" by large corporations through different mechanisms. But removing them won't change the nature of why they committed crimes and corruption in the first place.

If everything was left to the "free market" then the estrogen industry and seed oil industry would outcompete other "industries" due to public relations, marketing and advertising (which they do presently, but with the help of government agencies). The idea that the "free market" would adjust to what is morally and scientifically right is extremely naive.
 
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