Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "Is This The End Of Capitalism? | Answers With Joe" video.

  1. Not american here. I mean, north american. Even though I don't really think my country should serve as example to any other, given how screwed up things are here regarding corruption, not to mention how our current politics are basically trying to badly mirror the worst of Trump's politics with heavy far right fake news, FUD and conspiracy theory undertones, as well as playing the victim of a leftist media blah blah, there are a few things I still think we are doing relatively better in comparison to the US in some areas, perhaps. Oh, it's Brazil btw. Yes, we are also being completely screwed up by the pandemic, and for similar reasons. Yes, the Amazon is burning. What we have down here is what some call socio-capitalism, or social democracy. If it's right or wrong, I won't judge... semantics. But like Joe said, it's still a democracy... veering badly to authoritarism thanks to our current president, but still a democracy. Direct democracy, slightly different from US' representative democracy - direct votes, which are obligatory, cast by the population, elects the body of politics. We have a public health system, living along with private. It's trashed, overcrowded, heavily criticized with reason, and the poorest the state is, the worse it gets. So it definitely has caused a division between public health for the poor, and expensive private health for those who can afford it. But it's there, you know? No matter how bad it is, how undefunded, how involved with government corruption schemes and whatnot, the simple fact it exists at all has helped saving numerous lives that can't afford paying private hospital bills. The complaint is that it needs to be better, not that it needs to be extinct. This also helps controlling the private sector. We have private health plans from middle class and up, prices don't seem to be as explotive as what I heard in the US. We also have laws for drugs and medicine that basically allows for life saving drugs to be produced as generic unbranded erm... copies. It is heavily regulated, and arguably it could desincentivize investment in R&D and whatnot, but it has been working well for years now, the drop in prices is very significant, and it has saved money for tons of people and saved lives too for a long time now. It created competition, pricing drugs down to more fair values. I personally use a few generic drugs, no problems. This goes along with a whole bunch of stuff, with mixrd results I guess. Our highways used to be public, but large extents of it became privatized (read better roads with tolls). It's heavily regulated, by which I mean there are strict limits as to how private companies can profit from operations, but it was badly needed as the state of complete disrepair of public roads was a major cause of accidents and fatalities yearly. It's a constant fight regarding fare prices and expected investments for improvement, but in general, it has worked well. Education likewise is part private and part public. Some of the best universities we have in the country are public, and there are strict limitations on what private schools and universities can do to attract new students. Despite also having a big class division there, particularly on schools and pre schools, and despite the country having a huge scholarity problem and in past several administrations we having a huge problem of governments constantly undefunding the entire public school and university system... again, it's there. And in a general sense, I have a feeling it's better than a system that indebts students for a very long time after they graduate. I have personally attended both sides during University. Public state university, then private.... bachelor's degree in CompSci and then Journalism (yeah, I know). Can't really say one was definitely better than the other, though of course as they are on completely different areas of knowledge, it'd be hard to compare anyways. The major problem I see with total privatization leaving no public options around is that despite the constant complaints and potential exploitation of the public system for corruption schemes, underfunding problems, rich-poor division and whatnot, is that if you don't have the alternative, totally private systems tend to quickly become monopolies in the way our current capitalism is set up. There needs to be some sort of counterbalance, flawed as it may be, or things starts spiraling out of control. I also tend to think several of the overly libertarian overly capitalist arguments to be either disingenuous, short sighted, or purposedly misdirective. I don't wanna pay taxes to fund the poor, for instance. See, we live in societies. Individual freedoms certainly are important, but not at the cost of the society you live in. You end up paying one way or the other anyways, because if you are rich and everyone else around you, or your close nit community, is poor... things start happening. Humans living in communities have innate traits for balancing things overtime. It goes from simple feelings of jealousy, up to total civil unrest. Eat the rich. The ideal would be having fully public well funded and well regulated systems without private interference, at least for all services considered essencial, regarding basic human rights. And it exists in some countries. But it's very very hard to get this right, and very very hard to keep and monitor. Make no mistake, I am highly critical of currently operating socialist or communist systems. For my understanding, the general problem is power balance, and idealism. As these systems puts an overreliance on government to balance and take care of everything, it's very easily corrupted, which ends up in totalitarianism. You seek a perfectly well balanced equalitarian society when humans are not made and don't really, consciously or subconsciouslly, want it to be that way, concentrating too much power and money on the hands of a few, the tendency is for those in power to abuse it and keep it all to themselves. This not only explains why totalitarism often happens in socialist systems, but also why monopolies are often built in extreme libertarian capitalist societies. There's always a tendency for concentration and abuse of power and money wherever humans are involved, if left unchecked. It explains why Brazil's political system is also so overly corrupt - weak laws, low education, low active public participation, high bureaucracy, a political system that has been historically changing itself to allow for opaqueness, scams, schemes and exploitation. Corruption in Brazil comes from the times it was a colony. People are always fooled that this or that party, this or that president, this or that system is gonna fix things, but that's just not the way it works. We'd need profound political, societal and cultural reforms. Corruption doesn't end magically when you have an entire structural problem like we have. It's not only about people anymore, it's about the laws, the system, the wages, the way it's all enshrined. But you gotta always analyze critically and seriously the alternatives. There are sects and mad followers of our current president that are absurdly vouching for a military dictatorship. Can you believe that? A fucking military dictatorship, in a country that was wrecked not that long ago by one, in a world filled with countries that were destroyed by military dictatorships left and right, with some of the worst horrendous examples of crimes against humanity commited in them. With an ill informed, power hungry, corrupt, liar on command, no less. Thankfully, they are a minority. Anyways, back in topic, and again... from our past history and current times, personal opinion, I still think the best option is a balanced one. Capitalism seems to match better with how societies currently work, as flawed as it may be. But it needs a series of adjustments, checks and balances to work well. Idealism alone sounds like a problem, independent of what side it takes. Pure libertarian capitalism, as in let the market decide with no checks and bounds, to me sounds as bad as pure communism/socialism, with total sacrifice of individual freedoms for state sponsored forced equalitarianism. At the extremes, neither work, because people don't work that way. Centralizing power, as in electing representatives, works better than some eternal leader, or all powerful party that invades personal space controlling all aspects of life. But it has to be well monitored and kept in check. The advantage of having representatives is enacting real change. If you spread decision power too thin, it ends up in stalemate. Instead of some getting what they want, no one gets anything. Anyways, these are my thoughts on the matter... kinda scattered, but as I am not a US citizen just thought of sharing an outsider's perspective. I have faith in US recovering some balance and doing better in the future, science, education and economic power tends to work well as a buffer. But significant changes will have to come. And it needs to happen because the alternatives aren't great.
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