Kermit's Last Post (Destiny)

by cheapLEY , Sunday, November 03, 2019, 19:33 (1854 days ago) @ Kermit

Here are my cards on the table: I'm a capitalist, but not without some serious reservations. Because humans participate in capitalism and socialism, both can be corrupted by cronyism and greed, as history has plainly shown. That said, I think liberal democratic capitalism is undeniably responsible for a 30-fold increase in living standards over the last 200 years.

There's no denying that. But what's the cost? We have simply exported our atrocities and environmental destruction in service of the almighty dollar.

I am not anti-capitalist, necessarily. I'm very anti-whatever our current form of bullshit is, though. We can do better than a world in which thousands of people are dying every single day because bloodsucking middlemen in the form of private health insurance companies exist. We can do better than allowing massive corporations to avoid taxes and letting billionaires form policy through what amounts to legal bribery.

Greed and corruption are rampant in both socialists and capitalists systems. We need a mixing of the two. We need far more regulation for massive companies wreaking havoc on the world to produce a bunch of useless bullshit that ultimately ends up in the garbage. And we need better social safety nets.

This has strayed pretty far from the origin of this thread. In the grand scheme of things, I don't think Bungie is really the problem. I don't like a lot of stuff about the Eververse, as we discussed last week. I don't have a problem with their physical store. I am a little flabbergasted that they decided it was worth producing a $160 piece of foam, just because I think it's ridiculously stupid, but, whatever, I'm not going to buy it and I'm not going to waste time caring if someone else wants to buy one.

I do just want to call out the confusion at the younger generation embracing socialism, though. How could they not? Look around at what's happening in this country. Wages are as low as they've ever been while companies post record profits year after year and just generally wreak havoc to do it. We can do so much better than we are, and if that means embracing some socialist policies, I'll board that fucking train.