/lit/ - Literature

>>6825400

Before college they never knew that anything else existed so they get excited

Mostly because capitalism creates an environmental, spiritual, and cultural wasteland while disproportionately benefiting sociopaths on Wall Street who just manipulate voodoo numbers for a living.

When you stick a lot of functionally literate young people into a single institution and they discover that there are alternatives to statism, a lot of them pursue whatever alternate ideologies they are offered just for the sake of novelty or to prove the world that they are special snowflakes who have totally outsmarted existing ideas and institutions.

Then sooner or later they'll discover that alcohol costs money which isn't handed by daddy for all eternity and become statists.

University is typically where people read Das Kapital for the first time.

>>6825400
GUARANTEED REPLIES

>>6825400
The dominant ideology is that capitalism is the only economic system. When this facade is broken, students feel so liberated that they rush to explore the new and unknown.

>>6825624
I don't really think that's the case these days. Most people of my generation in my area seem to have went through that phase during the end of middle school/beginning of high school where I live.

>>6825643
Okay

>>6825421
Yeah, Communism is party central

>>6825415
This.

A better question is why so many professors do

>>6825400

>implying wood, granite, and rubber can't be effectively nationalized in any sensible socialist society

>>6825676
Why does it have to be one or another? Both systems are rather unpalatable.

>>6825421
this, really, but this thread will ignore this point for easy targets. global capitalism is so obviously unsustainable it's laughable that people actually believe otherwise. like, it's just absurd, you have to either be poorly educated or straight up shutting your eyes and putting your hands over your ears. the environment is going to shit, cultural diversity has grayed into a cesspool, people are feeling more socially estranged by the generation and wealth disparity is increasing tenfold each passing decade. The next few hundred years at least are going to be really tough.

>>6825400
>we'd have no pencils without capitalism

Jesus Christ you're retarded.

>>6825698
Yeah, it's pencil city down in Cuba /sarcasm

>>6825676
communism isn't the opposite of capitalism. ridiculous that people are uneducated enough to think there are only two ways an economic system can function.

one thing communism does have is hypothetical sustainability. that's something it has that capitalism doesn't, as capitalism at it's core is based off of one economic system getting the better end of a trade against two other economic systems. Communism has it's weaknesses, such as any amount of corruption dissolves it and it's more difficult to set up a system for people to work hard and pursue difficult fields, but it isn't inherently unsustainable like capitalism is.

Capitalism is basically something imperial countries with lots of guns and their allies can benefit from for a couple hundred years before everything deflates and falls apart.

>>6825400
it breeds a sentiment that means Joe public doesn't have to consider much beyond how much it costs to fill their tank with gas

>>6825706

>http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/296130.php

>>6825738
The doctors can't diagnose anybody with HIV because they don't have any fucking pencils

>>6825747

ayyy

>>6825400
I can tell you my personal history, i became a communist when i was 14 and grew out of it when i was about 17-18(now i'm 21), i think puberty played a role tbh but mainly was because i had a marxist history teacher and i kinda fell for his ideology. It's very easy to be seduced by the left ideology with all the social rightness that is attributed to it, especially when you're young.

And my teacher's generation played a big role in my country(Brazil), a dictatorship was imposed by the US and the youth fought really hard in the 60s and 70s, Che guevara was huge aswell . Just in general marxism is a lot stronger in Latin America, because we're basically US colonies and we had a real revolutionary figure(Che guevara).

That's pretty much it, my teacher got spanked by the military while fighting for his freedom in the dictatorship and i admired that so i became a communist aswell. Then i turned 18 lol.

Because uni. students who put any thought in the matter tend to understand that Capitalism depends on belief in an infinite universe in order to justify the vague end of indefinite, competition-based economic growth.

which is fucking childish

>yeah /pol/ is such a dumb nazi circlejerk lol
>us /lit/ are all intellectuals

>>6825778

What's the alternative system that gives similar economic incentives to develop technology which is the requirement to keep up or improve our current standard of living, whilst dealing with the issue of finite resources?

>>6825847

Engineering student here. Technology doesn't make the world a better place.

At best it makes better phones (which are really just devices for tracking people at this point) and allows you to shitpost on 4chan.

>>6825400
Marxism is the phase that comes between veganism and binge drinking.

>>6825847
market socialism comes to mind

>>6825863
I'm a marxist-vegan-binge-drinker, when will I grow out of it?

>>6825847
a system that rewards technological innovation instead of promoting a marketplace in which innovations are immediately patented (and thus arbitrary value assigned) or kept private, not encouraged, or even quashed in favour of the more profitable 'current' technology.

capitalism is against technological advancement UNLESS it changes profit margins for the owner.

with regards to your post - see global warming, climate change denial, western oil investment, the oil industry, lobbying.

of course, to imagine a scientific utopia evolving from a capitalist economy is ludicrous. from our current system there isn't a step by step pattern of 'reform' i can imagine to result in this.

>>6825747

>>6825861
technological development in a capitalist economy != technological development in any other system.

'technology' is a broad as fuck term. a smaller/moreefficient/generallyimproved microchip has obviously many implications, if the current socio-economic climate is in smartphones and apps, then thats where itll be implemented.

if you believe "technology doesnt make the world a better place" then you dont belong in this century, you belong in a nunnery.

>>6825861

All technological development doesn't significantly improve the standard of living, but technological innovation is a necessity for it. If you have a ton of copper and assembling a fridge requires a kilo of it with less developed techonology as opposed to 200 grams with more developed method, it's a no brainer that you need the latter technology in order to give a larger amount of people the chance to own a fridge.

>>6825864

I am unfamiliar with the term, can you sum it up how it differs from full state controlled socialism and social democracry (which I see as just one variation of capitalism).

>>6825400
Walmart coordinates millions of people, and tons of goods, around the world. They do this without the need of a market and price system.

>>6825400
>quietly coordinates
coordinates yes, but surely not quietly

>>6825932

>if you believe "technology doesnt make the world a better place" then you dont belong in this century, you belong in a nunnery.

Well, I don't believe humanity makes the world a better place, and your criteria is standard of human living.

>>6825948
>this is what il/lit/erates actually believe

>>6825643
>implying that middle schoolers or high school freshmen could even attempt to read das kapital

lol wut. i think you mean they skimmed the wikipedia articles for communism and the communist manifesto

>>6825400
Because capitalism as it is implemented in our society is fundamentally broken.

Which doesnt mean it cant be fixed, but its understandable that other systems start having a great deal of appeal when the system you live in is shit.

Capitalism as a tool for increasing economic productivity is just fine by me. The issue is the way that this wealth is siphoned off by those that control capital (and the accretion of capital).

Pay moneylenders proportionate wages.

>>6825400
>we're in a capitalist system that works! Therefore it is in no way broken! And the best possible answer!

Also, pic related.

>>6825985
My issue is when economic productivity is the only metric of success considered worthwhile.

That is a thing I would kill for.

And not just once either.

>>6825913

Patents are a concept that are necessary in an environment where multiple actors are able to gain something from technological innovation without to it's development. If there are no patents it essentially means that there is less of an incentive to innovate at all or the innovation has to be in a form where other than the developing actor is capable of utilizing it. Patent law in particular is something that could use fixing, especially in the US, but I don't think the concept is fundamentally flawed.

>capitalism is against technological advancement UNLESS it changes profit margins for the owner.

It's more like capitalism gives economical inventives to develop technology if it can be potentially monetized. Individual actors (stock owner, industry worker etc.) can be for or against technological development depending on how it affects their interests and this is something that essentially no political system can fundamentally change, there's always going to conflicts of interest between groups and some of those conflicts are resolved or left unresolved in a manner that cause harm in the long term for a wider demographic.

Some of those examples you mentioned are caused by path dependancy, which is also something that isn't exclusive to capitalism. For example, the technology that utilizes fossil fuels has been around for so long that it has created both highly efficient techonology on it's branch and institutions that protect the interests of the industry, which means that even though that it's clearly necessary to switch off from that path in the long run, it is hard because alterative sources of energy hasn't been around long enough to establish the same sort of commited interest group.

>>6825400
Capitalism will literally lead to civilization's downfall. The model of trying to fulfill unlimited desires with limited resources is obviously unsustainable, especially considering the 7 billion people (and more to come) that are currently on Earth.

In the 21st century we may finally reach a tipping point and the whole system will come crashing down.

Working towards solving this issue isn't just wishful thinking by leftists - it is, ultimately, pragmatic.

Universities select for left-leaning people, implicitly.

In university, you frequently live in a dorm or an apartment. Everything is shared. Living and recreation spaces are shared. Kitchen space and dining services are shared. Bathrooms are shared.

Right-leaning people prefer to have their own spaces, which is why there's a consistent urban/rural divide. This is also why conservative cities tend to have worse public transit systems. While most conservatives won't explicitly state this, they'd prefer not to share amenities.

Universities attract left-leaning students because they're designed for left-leaning students.

>>6825400
I don't think they ARE Communists, not really.

I don't intend this as a no-true-scotsman thing, it's just that I think a lot of them are way, way more along the mental lines of Rudyard Kipling as described by George Orwell. Of course, you're free to find fault in Orwell's analysis, but the point I'm going to pull from it is that they, like Kipling, have relatively decent living standards but still see the major injustices going on both in their native society and on a global scale through the usual middle-upper class vectors: education, information, and so on.
They cleave to Marxism, Communism and so on because at first it sounds incredibly appealing - but in their heart of hearts I don't really think they 'want' it, so to speak. They want the injustices to end, surely, but only think they're opposed to capitalism because they see the dynamic as Inherently One or The Other, when really there are whole swathes of middle-ranges of arguable efficacy that don't swing hard into either capitalism or communism. When things happen in-and-of the system, they will tend to celebrate it regardless of what it might mean regarding moving towards one or the other end of economics.

>>6826071
Yes, dorms are meant to just train little socialist comrades. Congratulations, you figured out the plans of Jewish-Illuminati cabal.

/pol/ please leave

>>6826134
Chill out lad, I don't think it's a controversial statement that universities tend to be more communitarian.

>>6826134
Work on your reading comprehension.