I laughed when Milton Friedman thinks free market could prevent climate change through climate dividends and carbon tax. Good luck, boyo, your “greed is good” bullshit is what led us to here.
Didn’t know much about the guy except that he’s a Nobel laureate. Happened to come across a YouTube video where a curious college student asks him about how slavery and colonialism contributed to Western wealth. He had an elaborate answer but within it he actually said Britain did not have slaves and America did not have colonies (for the most part).
Nevermind the fact that America absolutely had slaves and Britain certainly had colonies (he was selective on who didn’t have what), Britain absolutely did profit from slavery also.
He added on that Britain spent more on administering colonies than it gained extracting their resources which may be one of the stupidest arguments I’ve ever heard. How can someone that worships at the altar of capitalism not understand that greed was the obvious motivator? Or is it only the motivator when it fits his narrative?
If this is the messaging we get from our intellectuals, what hope does truth have?
Income from India is the main driver of 18 century British naval dominance but even if we exclude India and the sugar growing Caribbean islands, there was tons of British colonial possessions that didn’t directly contribute to the treasury enough to cover expenditures but still benefited the Empire economically and enriched upperclass brits individually. There are maybe a handful of remote islands that could be considered charitable to add to the British Empire; exploitation was the name of the game everywhere else.
Where I’d say Friedman is arguing in bad faith is that the obvious goal of colonialism is value extraction by force or coercion. He may argue that due to inefficiency or resistance it didn’t actually produce significant wealth for Britain but the evidence shows otherwise.
That or he may argue that the East India Company (the origin of multinational capitalism) was not colonialism which would be divergent from historical consensus.
Fun fact, Britain had to create taxes in it’s East African colonies not to raise income but because British economic interests struggled to recruit workers from people who had everything they needed without the British. Forcing them to pay taxes in currency forced them to accept employment to acquire that currency.
We call that extortion in our part of the world. I assume the British call it that today too.
I’d say coerced wage slavery.
From cold hard rationale, Hayek and Friedman makes sense, but they do ignore reality that circumstances always change. Deregulation made sense at the time of 1970s oil crisis as the economy and welfare state stagnated, but we’re now in the age of economic prosperity again, but the wealth is hoarded by the few and act as though austerity still matters.
Not entirely sure about why Friedman’s claim that India was costing the British empire more to maintain, but it has also been repeated in many circles. I suspect that the data is not fully contextualised and repeated as if it’s the absolute truth. An Indian historian countered the narrative, mentioning that if we include the period of private control of India by the British East India company, before India was formally taken over by the British state in 1858, the total wealth plundered from India is about $1 trillion. The term “loot” is Indian origin, which became part of the English language after East India’s violent colonisation. When the British public found out of about the brutal occupation by a private company and were enraged by it, the British state took over the formal administration. But this only happened well after committing crimes against humanity, after a state-sanctioned plunder and massacre that made their private owners and their government enablers rich, while the cost of running another country is taken over by tax payers. It’s an early example of “privatise the profit, socialise the cost”.
There are several estimates. Some as high as $45 trillion.
Friedman’s take has been repeated in many Western circles.
As you’ve mentioned there were multiple members of Parliament who were directly invested in the EIC and made sizable profits. The EIC managed to extract explotative taxation during the Bengal famine of 1770 (promoting starvation) while shareholders increased their dividend from 10 to 12.5%. The massive transfer of wealth from India, the Atlantic slave trade and Opium sales to China essentially built Britain during this era. It was the seed capital of the industrial revolution.
The British Raj took over after the failed sepoy mutiny in mid 1800s. It was at this point Britain introduced the strategy of the ‘civilizing mission’, denigrating Indian culture as a justification to the British public to continue colonization. The British public accepted this. It was the independence movement in India that ultimately secured freedom (along with Nazi destruction of British infrastructure).
As we watch power and wealth slowly drift back from West to East and South, African, Indian and many other voices that speak truth on this matter will be heard more clearly.
Often times Westerners are not open to accepting voices from the global south on these matters and portray them as biased. I usual refer to the writings of historian William Dalrymple (the self admitted descendant of colonists) as a starting point to those that feel morally threatened by this history but want to learn more from someone who doesn’t feel too foreign.
For those that are open to Indian voices, Sashi Tharoor’s writings or his YouTube series ‘Imperial Receipts’ does a good job capturing the history and scale of extraction.
Would you prefer that all economic action be dictated and we all work for the government?
That might actually be nice.
Might just merge corporations with government then. Might be an end to billionaires.
Found a fascist.
And I found a fool
A one day old account defending imperial capitalism. Sure you aren’t fascist.
Wouldn’t that make me an imperial capitalist?
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Collectivizing all production and distribution to satisfy the needs of everyone, ie socialism, is the answer. Not merging corporate and state power, which is the exact opposite.
It doesn’t look like the opposite. It looks the same
It’s the opposite, because in socialism the working classes are in control and production and distribution are collectivized, to satisfy the needs of all. In your fascist example, corporations are entrenched in the state, giving capitalists far more power without collectivizing production and distribution, retaining production for profit.
In both cases you have a monolithic organization running the whole show. What you call it makes little difference. And the people in charge will be of the same type.
No, this is fundamentally wrong, akin to saying NATO and doctors without borders are the same thing. If you erase every distinguishing characteristic and just look at things as “organizations” with no further investigation, you absolutely ruin your viewpoint. I already explained how a wide gulf separates fascism and socialism.
Well all right then
Get your eyes checked kiddo
I get this is a meme, but it is trying to talk about something serious. It’s worth saying that fatalist arguments are actually beneficial to liberalism and capitalism. Capitalism is not going to kill us all, humans are exceptionally durable. Capitalism intends to kill us all though, whether through the dehumanization it requires to function or its inability to contend with the material limitations of reality. Climate change mitigation is a discussion around minimising the harm this system causes while it dies, and liberals often subscribe to fatalist narratives because they dont truly imagine a world that is not capitalist as one worth living in.
Yep, that’s why we need to have revolutionary optimism. Right now, incredible strides are being made by socialist countries like China to combat climate change and push for electrification and sustainability.
Calling a country where the means of production are controlled by the upper classes “socialist” is a stretch even before we consider their mixed economy and rampant capitalism.
Public ownership is the principle aspect of their economy, and a working class party has domination over their state. The large firms and key industries are overwhelmingly publicly owned, with massive state owned enterprises forming the backbone of their economy. Private, cooperative, and joint-stock ownership covers mostly the small and medium firms, and the larger of these are heavily controlled and influenced by the CPC.
As for being “mixed,” all economies are mixed, that doesn’t mean we can’t identify what the principle aspect of the economy is. Socialism isn’t a “pure” mode of production, and neither is capitalism, you don’t have X% capitalism, Y% socialism, etc. That’s not how modes of production work.
Saying the public has ownership implies that they have some control of it which certainly isn’t true. It’s more like a Palace economy than anything.
The government is democratically run, and the working class is in control of it. It absolutely is true.
That’s just delusional.
No? China is a democratic country with more people happy with it than western countries:
You’re a delusional, rabid shitlib that is actively towing the line for a invasion of Venezuela by a hegemonic power that has over 200 military bases in the world while playing down the actual efforts of a socialist nation that has succeeded in nearly eliminating homelessness with a higher literacy rate, higher home-ownership rate and higher protein consumed per capita as demonstrable effects of socialist policy meant to assist and uplift the working class of the nation.
A large majority of those in China is a PART of the Communist Party of China and it has one of the highest government satisfaction rates in the entire world, despite the criticisms people can level at it rightfully or not. You tow the line for imperialism, deny the accomplishments of one of the most successful socialist experiments and have the right to call anything “delusional?”
Back to Reddit!
Someone’s got their head buried in the sand. The number of critical problems that are gonna come to a head in the next 20 years that could collectively degrade the biosphere beyond supporting a substantial human population is nuts. It’s not fatalist to say that billions could die and it’s no consolation to the dead and their loved ones that “humans are exceptionally durable”.
Wow, two pompous dudes who assume they know everything but don’t even bother to read.
Nothing you just talked about was said by me. Doomer shit, as in saying “all life will end” or even “all human life will end,” is in fact liberal, settler, bs. It presumes that a world that is not conducive to human life as it exists is not one worth imagining and especially not building. It is a convenient dead end that absolves you of the responsibility to participate in mitigation and reconstruction because, of course, it’s too late and even if it isn’t it will be and capitalism is powerful enough to apparently sustain a collapse of supply chains. It is foolish.
Nowhere did I say people won’t die, I emphasised that they do and actually value the lives of people who will more than some dude who does fucking nothing because I at least recognize that there is a way to mitigate the amount of people who do die. Additionally, I acknowledged that this is not limited to human life. Capitalism will not destroy all life on this planet, this is straight up reality. No, human systems are not equal in power to fucking cosmic events.
Capitalism does try to survive despite the obvious reality that a system dependent on infinite resources cannot exist in a finite material world. It will do so by killing more and more life until it dies, and it will die whether that is from human action itself or the eventuality of a world that refuses to sustain its existence through environmental change and yes, the collapse of crucial ecosystems.
I say humans are durable because we are, do you have any fucking clue how insane this way of life is in the context of life on this planet? Do you have any idea how close humans have come to extinction in the past exactly because of ecological change? You don’t, you refuse to because all of that is terribly inconvenient for someone who doesn’t want life to change.
Grow up and help. I won’t read a response as it’s obvious you didn’t grant me that level of respect.
Settle down, Beavis
Thank God something is taking us out. ＼(_)／
Humans are have been killing each other over pettiest things for millenia before capitalism. So an ~ism is not the root problem
Climate change goes beyond killing each other; it’s killing our planet’s ability to sustain our species.
Okay, let me lay out my thought to you in a longer and more boring way: humans have been idiots with no regard to consequences of their actions throughout their history, so anyone interested in fixing any problem caused by how they act has to replace current population with more evolved (read: mature, intelligent and sensible) one, there can be no other way and wasting time on anger against this or that social framework is very foolish
It sounds like you’re saying the only way to better a society is to replace all its members with ones who already agree with you. If so, I’m not real sure how to help you. Good luck with that.
Where did I say I want people who agree with me? I want more sensible people, and they are sure to disagree with me on lots of things. Buut good luck with your putting words in mouth of other people, if you want to have this conversation this way
Ok then, it sounds like you think the only way to improve society is to replace its members with ones who are “more sensible,” as defined by you. Sorry, but I’m not sure how to help you with that one either.
Lol. Do it again: how about more intelligent and mature?
And beside jokes, you know perfectly well how it is done. You are just afraid to admit it
Buddy has a USSR ghost as his profile picture, I think he has a bone to pick with capitalism specifically.
