To make a point about capitalism causing poverty, you don't even need to look outside of the USA's borders. If someone dies because they can't pay a medical bill, in a country that has the means to help that person, then that's blood on capitalism's hands. No need to make it any more complicated than that.



I didn't expect you to suddenly become self-aware after reading my post, so carry on.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/21/usa.venezuela

To be clear, I’m not defending these failed states. I’m just not sure how you can truly believe the US has not been actively working to undermine them since their inception.

Historically, this is an absurd perspective. In no pre-modern society, be it ancient China, Greece, Rome or the European monarchies during the Middle Ages was there ever a sense of entitlement of the individual against the general public to be provided healthcare or welfare.

A failed coup attempt does not explain Venezuela's economic woes though. And it's not like communist states never tried to mess with the capitalist West. The Soviet attempts at undermining or subverting the West were just as numerous and extensive as the West's attempts at doing the same to them.

I'm not sure anyone is arguing that this isn't the case. It is simply not the reason why communism has failed. The Soviet Union and the United States were in direct competition. They routinely tried to undermine each others respective interests. The Soviet Union collapsed because its model was no longer tenable. Chinese communism did not fail because of American interference, to the contrary, the Sino-Russian split ensured that the United States was seeking to prop up China as a counterweight to the Soviet Union. Chinese communism failed because it was an inferior system of economic development, one which the ruling communist party willingly gave up in order to ensure their own survival.

This post was edited by bogie160 on Jul 16 2021 10:40am

healthcare is indeed the chink in capitalism's armor, as farming is IMO the chink in communism's armor.

It's fine to say that capitalism does not solve for every societal problem, and hold it to account for that. But if we are to be fair, we need to hold other models to account for when they fail to generate the economic growth necessary to solve for those same conditions. And if we measure one against the other, it becomes clear that capitalist models come out far, far ahead.

Wrong lol

Rome had the grain dole, hospitality to those who were down on their luck was expected in most of human civilization. Communities were tight-knit. Similarly, price controls on bread were massively important for a lot of human history.

Welfare goes back literally thousands of years.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Jul 16 2021 10:56am

What passed for healthcare in premodern times is not relevant to modern societies. I also doubt there were any treatments in premodern times that cost 15,000 hours of labor to pay for.

Rome had a food welfare system in place for its poorest citizens, since food was the largest personal expense in pre-modern times. The Roman conservative moment was notorious for making campaign promise to abolish it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae

Ancient cultures in the Americas allowed all members of that society to eat. Under the Azteca and Zapoteca it was not considered theft to take maize to eat from someone’s farm as long as you did not take more than you can hold.

Puritan settlers in New England typically made sure nobody in their community starved and it was common practice to help others build shelter.

Christian Europe until relatively recently relied on the Catholic institutions to provide a safety net for the poorest citizens.

Explaining a joke usually makes it less funny.