George Takei: "When history looks back on this period, people will ask..."

[Silent3]

66. The only examples are the ones that a lot of people seem to think "don't count"...

Last edited Thu Sep 17, 2020, 02:11 PM - Edit history (2)

...and that's former communist countries.

I do not use the terminology "non-capitalist system" to refer to specific countries. When people talk about the supposed evils of capitalism, isn't it inherent that they think a "non-capitalist system" would be better? So that's just a generic term for any system that abolishes capitalism, real or hypothetical.

Even the social democracies of the current world (that we'd do well to emulate in many ways) have large capitalist components to their economies. That's just capitalism with good regulation and progressive taxation on top of it.

China is communist in name only right now. Crony capitalism with a lack of democracy best describes China at present.

So I'm afraid the only actually-enacted examples of non-capitalist systems (so long as we aren't going too far back in history, to things like feudalism, say) are the ones plenty of people scream aren't fair comparisons: Soviet-style communism. Off the top of my head, the only current country somewhat in that mold is North Korea -- not a country worthy of emulation in any way, shape, or form.

Maybe Cuba counts too, which is nowhere near as fucked up as North Korea, and maybe even gets a thing or two right, but Cuba is still not a great place to point to and say, "Look how much better life is when you get rid of capitalism!"

Which means that when people scream that this social ill or that human rights abuse or the other colossal fuck-up of some sort is the fault of capitalism, they have only their imaginary, hypothetical non-capitalist utopias to compare to when they act as if abolishing capitalism would somehow make everything better.

It's not my burden of proof to provide examples of these non-capitalist systems which supposedly are the proof that getting rid of capitalism makes the world better. It's the anti-capitalism complainers who have that burden.