All space technologies after 1965 are pretty much improved ripetitions of the original soviet technologies without any true new discoveries.
Probably a better word than “stolen” would have been “copied”.
Edit: fixed typo on the date
Huh?
You do realize that test rockets… fail… right? That’s why they’re tested…
How is it shown time and time again?
Yes there is an ‘invisible hand of the market’. It’s quite plainly visible. When there are multiple groups offering services and employment there is choice.
One company offers refrigerators for 100$, the other offers refrigerators for 70$. Which one do you think people will buy?
The cheaper one, obviously.
And so since no one is willing to buy the more expensive refrigerators, the company making them will have to make a few choices.
1: Do nothing, sell nothing, and earn nothing.
2: Lower prices either enough to be similar to the competitor or lower than the competitor (usually by innovating a cheaper way to manufacture the refrigerator or transport it).
3: Make a higher quality product or innovate and provide a better refrigerator that no one else can provide.
And that is the service side, what about the employment side?
Well imagine that there was two companies that needed the exact same amount of employees to operate their refrigerator factory, and there are only just a few more available workers than either company would need.
One company offers 10$ an hour, the other offer 5$ an hour. Which would you choose to work for? (both companies have the same level of workplace hazards btw)
Well the one offering more money obviously. And so the company that offers 5$ an hour only has a few employees (and they would all be of low quality since the company offering higher wages could pick out the best on offer).
And so the company would be faced with a few decisions.
1: Do nothing, produce nothing, and earn nothing.
2: Offer employees more money or better working conditions.
3: Innovate so that you require less workers and can operate with your smaller workforce.
This is what competition does, it forces groups to offer a better deal, both to their customers and their workers.
There is no such thing as competition within a government. Unless it is at war with another government (exactly why historically nearly every innovation is born out of war), this is the entire reason that the soviets were able to innovate in space flight in the first place, because it was at ‘war’ with another nation (and because whoever could put objects in space would be able to attack their enemy without retaliation with intercontinental ballistic missiles, in this case).
There is indeed no such thing as ethical capitalism. Only capitalism. Which is the best economic system for the people.
It is no coincidence that the industrial revolution, which objectively improved the lives of literally everyone, started in England and had wild success in America, but struggled to find a foothold on continental Europe.
England didn’t have much control over the economy, and so since companies competed with each other innovation flourished in England.
However the monarchies in continental Europe selfishly held on to power over their economies, and were thus able to restrict the industrial revolution, whether intentionally or not.
America at the time had pretty much no control over its economy. Which is why when
the first steam engines and the knowledge to construct them reach the United States the industrial revolution ABSOLUTELY BELGIUMING EXPLODED.
During the 20th century nearly every major commercial innovation has originated from the united states or an individual’s desires to become rich (for example despite originating from belgium Germany, a country which held a large amount of control over its economy, the creator of the computer specifically stated that he invented it because he believed (rightly so) that it would make him rich).
Over the last 200 years since the birth of widespread free market capitalism this has happened to global poverty rates:
This happened to global hunger rates:
And this has happened to countries which try to control their economies:
Every time, without fail, has capitalism improved the lives of the people when it has been implemented.
Every time, without fail, has the lack of capitalism destroyed the lives of people when it has been implemented.
Under Mao’s regime millions starved in the period of a single year. And then it stopped.
How? Did the state make some new economic policy that increased the efficiency of their redistribution and save the lives of their citizens?
No, it happened because of a dozen and a half farmers in a single Chinese village making a deal with their local administrator.
They would give the government the yearly rice quota, but any grain of rice they produced after that quota was made would be kept by the village. And traded (horror of horrors!) for anything that they needed.
In that one harvest, those 18 farmers made quite a bit of rice.
How much rice?
Well more than the entirety of the village in the last ten years of course. combined.
After that the system spread across China, and the markets were liberated. and 800 million people were lifted out of poverty. And with capitalism that wasn’t even truly free.
Nowadays the country is sliding back from its limited capitalist policies, and as it is the suffering of the Chinese people is rapidly increasing.
Oh, but that was simply an example of state capitalism of course, we’ll get it right the next time comrades.
Because even though hundreds of millions of people believed that these were indeed good and just societies and examples of a society free of capitalism right up until the bread lines and the gulags and the famines (after
Which it miraculously transformed into state capitalism) and in many cases the people that claim that they are true anti-capitalists praised these societies right up until the bread lines and the gulags and the famines I know that the next time we will succeed.
Because I know the proper way, and if someone with my exact views was head of the Soviet Union it would not have failed.
Also saying that the soviets are responsible for modern space travel because they created the first space rockets would mean that the fascist Germans were actually responsible, since they originally created and funded modern rockets.
Or that the Chinese are responsible because they created the first rockets of any kind.
They usually are expected to succeed (but you test them to make sure of it), if you expected them to fail then you wouldn’t do a test trial to begin with. Out of an estimated 100 minutes of flight time starship only managed 4 minutes.
American healthcare be like:
Oil companies be like:
Cigarette companies be like:
This assumes a very simplified reality. In the real world companies manipulate their clients to make them believe they are the best and most moral ones (even if they aren’t), in the real world companies that have no governmental controls create vertical monopolies in which they get to decide the prices and the clients have to accept it because there is no other companies that makes that product. Companies without any controls make horizontal monopolies in which they own a great portion of the stores in which products are sold, and if a rival company emergeces then they can just ban them from their stores and they will sell significantly less.
And all of this doesn’t even require a complete monopoly, even just a partial monopoly can cause a lot of damage.
This phrase contradicts itself… You say competition is better because it forces GROUPS to offer better deals, but for the formation of groups you need cooperation.
This phrase is also disproved by society and biology, society is literally based on cooperation, if every human were to compete with each other then we would never have the services of modern society.
Humans are even made of billions of cells cooperating with each other, yet you claim that cooperation is bad and competition is good.
The irony… The irony that you don’t realize that capitalism creates pseudo-monarchies in which the sons of owners of big companies (that do have political power) inherit their companies.
Are you sure that is caused by capitalism and not industralization?
This talks about undernourishment in developing countries not global, and those countries aren’t getting less hunger rates because of capitalism, but because of industralization.
Conveniently leaving out the fact that those countries were corrupt dictatorships which were prime examples of state capitalism. Oh, zenzone
Don’t think that only because you say something that is true multiple times, it becomes any less true. Because it will remain the truth.
American healthcare is one of the most privatized healthcares in the world, it also is one of the most expensives in the world, it also has the highest death rate of any developed country’s healthcare.
Zenzone when he learns that the policies of a country can change and that it isn’t an immutable being:
There is literally no technological innovation in spaceflight after the 1965. The technological principles used in soviet rockets in the 1965 and used in modern rockets are the same.
And in any case they would still be responsible for modern space travel.
(I’ll start at the segment at the bottom since that’s the one I’m on right now).
Yes, there have indeed been no innovations in space flight since the 1960s… almost as is spaceflight was dominated by governments that were not competing with each other, and thus had no incentive to innovate.
Also almost as if a government organization dedicated to spaceflight set back human spaceflight by at least five decades according to the government organization itself.
Yes, it clearly had something wrong with the design. Almost as if testing is supposed to find failures in the design of something before it is actually used so that you can fix those failures without any risk to human life…
Ah yes, American healthcare, the worst fastest most reliable most advanced healthcare system in the world.
What’s that? You have think you cancer in a country with socialized healthcare such as Canada? Let’s get you a free cancer screening as soon as possible.
What’s that? You do indeed have cancer and it’s gotten worse in the three weeks it took to schedule a cancer screening because of how backed-up and underdeveloped the healthcare system is? Let’s set you up with a surgery to remove that cancer.
What’s that? Your cancer has already developed so much that you will be dead in five and a half months when you can get the earliest possible cancer surgery? Guess you better kill yourself, I’ll help.
You’re going to have to be a little more specific with these ones, I don’t really understand the point.
No, other than the idea of there only being two companies in a vacuum (also coincidentally invented by capitalism), it doesn’t.
In the real world monopolies are quite literally physically impossible without severe government legislations.
For example once upon a time there was a steam boat company in New York or some place, and it managed to score a deal with the government that it would be the only steam boat company who could operate in New York.
For the entirety of the agreement the steam boat company stagnated without competition, not innovating in the least and charging customers ludicrous prices for boat rides.
The when another steam boat business was allowed to set up shop in New York, it made several innovations (including switching to propellers and iron hulls) that not only made their ships safer, but faster and cheaper. And the company that did not innovate could not compete.
And thus now steam boats were available to the yuck lower classes.
I can’t believe that competition would cause such oppression!
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?! For the formation of groups you need cooperation?!
Whoever could have known!
Yes, billions of cells cooperating to fight against billions of other cells. Have you ever heard of the evolutionary arms race? What about the Cambrian explosion?
I never said that cooperation is bad, I said that a lack of competition is bad, specifically between groups such as companies.
Countries need to cooperate in order to form, but said country will become backwards and stagnant if it does not need to compete against other countries, because in the real world if a country becomes stagnant and backwards it will be taken over by a nearby, more advanced country.
Thus countries need to innovate in order to stay afloat, but only so long as it is threatened (again why historically technologically innovations result from warfare, WW2 being a truly amazing example).
However there has also been another historic source of innovation, trade routes.
I don’t think I need to say anything there…
And so then the better option is where the government takes all inheritance and uses it for itself?
Also, how would companies ever have political power? And if they did have power, what would they wield that for if the government is not involved in the economy anyways?
Maybe… REGULATING the competition?!
And never mind how increased government regulation and taxes destroys small businesses, which is exactly why almost every large corporation pushes for more government regulation, because they can afford it, they’re smaller competitors can’t.
Are you sure that industrialization is not the result of capitalism because capitalism is what allowed the industrial revolution to spread?
And are you sure that the poverty rates are similar in industrialized countries that don’t have capitalism?
^
What even is state capitalism according to you?
After all I need to know what you believe it to be to disprove it.
Exactly.
Ah yes, because the policies changed overnight even though the country says that it still has the same policies as before and the policies haven’t changed.
Ahem,
Please stop this at once.
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aw man but i was enjoying scrolling past large portions of text (of which i did not read) that seemed like an intense intellectual debate…
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yeah i love reading 2 people who won’t convince each other snarking their way to victory
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Okay, so…
While I agree that whenever communism was attempted, it pretty much always ended very poorly, I have an issue with thee way you argumented this. I have no idea what exactly is happening in this image, but what can be noted is that:
a) the apparent workers don’t look very happy
b) the environment looks dirty and structures poorly constructed
c) the image gives generally off ‘negative vibes’
My issue is that using such images in this way is disingenuous. The exact same thing could be done to argue against capitalism. Example:
And this has happened to countries which set their economies free:
Such argumentation is based on emotions, not facts. It’s basically like saying “oh look at those poor people! You wouldn’t want that to happen to us, right?”, you know, the kind of stuff Republicans pull off all the time. I assume you didn’t mean use a disingenuous argument, but [insert conclusion, I can’t think of one]. Anyways, I think a graph would make for a much better argument.
I wanted to write more and link another video, but I can’t find it.
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Better?
I didn’t think I needed to show a graph or anything since… Well gulags are a pretty well known thing.
Who knows whose fault that is? It is Elon musk’s fault because he literally pushed decisions that were against what his engigneers told him to do.
The only healthcare that most reliably kills the people it should save in all of the developped countries.
Lol, so if nothing controls the growth of corporations the corporations won’t grow to overtakr the entirety of their sector. Sure.
So you want social darwinism? I shouldnt have to explain why that is not very good.
You are acting like countries are corporations, they aren’t. A country doesn’t push for profits, countries (especially just democratic countries) push for the increase of quality of life of their citizens and long term projects.
If there is another country which poses the risk of starting a war, then the country will need to divert its resources to maintaning a standing army.
And uses it for it’s citizens, not itself. Again, countries aren’t corporations.
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Lobbying lol
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A company can use lobbying to stop laws that would affect them, just like oil companies lobby hard to prevent laws that are enviromental friendly. Or push for disinformation campaigns just like how oil and cigarette companies did when they discovered what the consequences of their actions were.
When the state takes the resources and instead of distributing them to help the population it distributes them to the elite.
You can’t disprove that, because that is literally how dictatorships work.
Zenzone when people lie: what? No way bro.
Anyways, there is a small problem with this “companies WANT government intervention” and that is called Adolf belgium.
Now, belgium pushed for the government not to intervene in the economy, claiming that “the law of survival of the fittest must apply to the economy too” and you know who supported him? The owners of big companies did. That’s because in such a system big estabilished companies have an inherent advantage over new ones, exactly like in nature you dont see new kingdoms emerge because the slteady estabilished ones would just outcompete the new ones, the same happens in capitalism.
Lol, belgium is censored
Anyways it’s probably better if we let this drop
… No, not better. You think I don’t know about gulags? I just noticed a bit of, let’s say, ‘manipulative’ argumentation, as the example you gave, the picture from the gulag, is not equal to the previous examples - statistical graphs. I just wanted to explain why such argumentation is rather bad and show what could be done better. If I failed and it didn’t make much sense, then sorry, sometimes I have trouble with putting my thoughts onto paper (or a .txt file equivalent in this case).
Yeah, yeah, but what if someone doesn’t know about them? Your argument would make completely no sense to them! Also, existence of gulags is not comparable to the global economic growth. I would like to say much more, but… We really need to end this nonsense. Like c’mon! This forum is about a fun evolution game! Not arguing which political system is better! Holy Belgium!
ANYMORE REPLY to this discussion will result in a suspension.
Period.
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Honestly I feel like I should get suspended for participating in this… discussion. I feel guilty.
Well tbf political systems would probably become relevant during society, industrial, and space stages.
Not talking politics, just want to make that clear for the thought police!
the magnification array is in space and sends the energy to a specific spot on earth while taking none of the power being magnified.
if the billionaires become trillionaires the middle class will be very small
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Willow, did you not see this?
nope, i skipped from around 30 posts ago to here.
okay yeah that argument definitely didn’t start out that bad. it wasn’t even close to that bad when zenzone started typing for 20 minutes the first time.
Yeah it could have been worse but probably the most dramatic the forum has been in awhile and probably most political(?)