- Capitalism and Alternatives -
Reply to Claire and others with their ideas
Posted by: Samuel Day Fassbinder ( Pomona Valley Greens, USA ) on September 02, 1997 at 09:34:21:
In Reply to: Don't speak for me! posted by Kevin on September 01, 1997 at 09:57:14:
Thanks to Claire for posting. Claire was trying to show how creativity can bring forth feelings of "pride, entertainment, and gratification, which lasts me longer than a trip to the mall." So it ain't merely to spite the big corporations. And as for "enjoying the drive for efficiency," it might be fun buying cheap stuff at Wal-Mart, as I do sometimes, but it ain't so fun when you're earning minimum wages and the boss tells you to put some pep in your step or you're out on your ass. Sure people enjoy the fruits of capitalism. I do too. That doesn't mean there isn't a downside, nor does it mean that there will never be anything better than the capitalist system in the entire history of Planet Earth, all the way that point a couple of billion years from now when the Sun gets too hot and burns up all terrestrial life. I'm not so arrogant that I assume that if people were free to do what they wanted rather than being required to play sneaky games with money and power and property, that these fruits of capitalism would be replaced by eternal Hell... If capitalism has created the best living for some that civilization has ever known, esp. Americans who make up 4% of the world's population and do 30% of the world's resource consumption, do we owe it our eternal gratitude and an oath never to criticize it in public? I don't think so. I once camped year-round in a forest for a few years, inviting others to come with me on rent strike, in a period where the rents in my area were tripling in the space of a few years. Those were some of the best years of my life, and I didn't really own anything or have a roof over my head during that time. It got kind of lonely at the end, so I moved out. I still feel lonely, not because there is nobody around, here in the suburbs of LA, but because the capitalist system creates so few personalities worth meeting. (This is where Claire is really onto something.) Little kids are the best; they're the least corrupted. Besides buying things like CDs now and then, I also enjoy building gardens in people's back yards and playing games with little kids and going on long bike rides. But that's my current space, and I don't want to prejudge what I should enjoy were I in another social situation, in another space, in another part of the world. The most disturbing thing about the smug procapitalists I see on this Debating Room is their constant blocking out of the thought that things could be better otherwise. I've put forth the idea that we could distribute our wealth according to who needed it, and we could create a world where work was enjoyable instead of drudgery, and I've even challenged my own idea by saying that such a world may not be possible. So far, the only response I've received from Kevin, Zachary Emig, Mike Bednarz, Cara Russell, RWB etc. is that such a world would be a living Hell. Don't you guys have any imagination?
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