Political Memes

There is enough out there for everyone to live a happy life. We just have to realize it.

It's a crisis for who will support you in your old age. Capitalism or no capitalism, if you want to keep eating after you stop working, either you store enough literal food in your barn, or somebody else works so you eat.

Traditionally, that's family: your children. Capital/investments/savings, or socialised care, spreads that around the State a bit more (or round the local or global community). But when there are few children and many adults, later there are few working people and many retirees wanting to enjoy life - and you're one of the retirees.

It's a "problem for capitalism" because so many people have invested in capitalism for their retirement, and that could be upended. And because actually-small investments were made, on the basis that constant economic growth means lots will be returned when the time comes.

But it's a "problem for humanity" - all the people who don't have children to care for them and rely on money and financial investments - which both just represent a stake in someone else's work - for the future.

I've written myself into a corner a bit here. Few working adults to many retirees is always going to be difficult, no matter your economic/political system. But logically from my, simplified, argument, the last two paragraphs beckon a third. To recap,

1. Retirement funds: a stake in "Capitalism", to provide for your retirement based on broad economic growth

2. Money: a stake in the total economy, to provide from people's work. Then:

3. A stake in the community, based on being a member of the community. E.g. a citizen - then this is socialism. If there are enough working adults - or bread in the barn - to provide for all the elderly, then all the elderly (you included) are provided for, regardless of whether they have children or saved money or made investments.

But still, if there isn't enough for everyone, everyone suffers. And it's rare to find a community that really wants to care for its elders well, putting in the effort for them rather than people spending on themselves, without outsourcing to 'capitalism' and economic growth.

Captialism can cause low birth rate, but no economic system can survive the decimation of the prime-aged working class.

Even china's seeing low birth rates, but they have a bit more padding.

So phuck but use a condom.

In so many of the contrarian responses I'm seeing, I'm reminded of Fisher:

it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.

That is to say that so many cannot escape the capitalist framework of productive workers supporting the elderly. As though that's the only way society can possibly be organized.

Retirees are not seen as deserving of their reward, but rather a drain on productive labor. It's no wonder that there is so little sympathy for the destitute and homeless when those who've "earned" their leisure are still known as parasites.

Sounds catchy, but I'm not sure this is really true. Capitalism is about owning things, not selling things.

Capitalism is fine with it actually.

The issue is that there will be too many old people and not enough young people to support them.

But old people have most of the money. So, lots of money will still be spent. Capitalism will be fine. Sure, some old people will have no money and bankrupt their children. But capitalism does not care about that.

It would have been a bigger problem before AI and robotics. But capitalism will shrink the workforce faster than birth rates.

I don't think a socialist revolution (or any other sudden overthrow of capitalism) can save South Korea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk

Is it even a crisis for capitalism? Modern day capitalism seeks to eliminate workers, the ideal for the capitalist is to make a factory full of robots with like 10 employees that manage and service them. As factory work dies the population stabilizes (it doesn't shrink, it just stops going up year over year) and the remaining population performs service jobs that can't be performed by AI/Robots or a select bit of high paying factory jobs where robots cannot yet perform the factory task.

In an even more dystopian outlook the capitalists don't even want people for service, they likely would want robot and AI service (waiters, barbers, etc) in the long game to eliminate the need for serfs.

At the end of the day the cry about population collapse and declining birthrates only makes sense when you add a desired ethnicity before the term. Example [White] birth rates or [White] population collapse. Elon Musk isn't worried about the birth rate of Japanese or South Koreans. This whole thing is about racist views on world ethnicity.

And even more specifically, hyper consumerism-driven, wasteful capitalism more than just capitalism itself.

Well regulated and not utterly greed-driven capitalism that gets fairly taxed to support the societies infrastructure that it feeds off is not so bad. If that would ever happen.

No, capitalism always wins and works.