Do those who think capitalism has destroyed the world:

[Deja Q]

We blame capitalism on 'mass shootings' and other various atrocities, as if the world was a wonderful place until Christopher Columbus showed up.

Before capitalism, it wasn't all bliss and flowers and peace either. I wish it was... but it wasn't. There were tribes, there were wars... in some ways it's far better now than it was 500 years ago, 600 years ago, 1000 years ago... 5000 years ago...

Mass shootings are because we go overboard with faux 'individualism' -- and if you tell somebody in public that what hey are doing might be wrong, YOU are the one chastised by everybody for saying something is wrong. Children do learn from their ambient environment. That's what people forget. Indeed, what is the ambient environment we have for our children to develop in? And we let kids and bullies get away with everything; principals can't do much either because the parents might mewl and sue. Capitalism is NOT to blame for that mess. Not one bit. We need to look at ourselves, find out what has worked, what has not worked, and put things to rights. In a phrase, "lack of teaching morals" is the root cause of bullying, mass shootings, et al.

[Captain Hilts]

1. THANK YOU! As someone who saw 1980 Sov. Union and lived in Russia in '93/97...

I find the whole idea that ALL evil has been done by capitalism or those who imitate it to compete with it absolutely LAUGHABLE.

[paulsby]

11. capitalism

has overwhelmingly been a force for good, for progress, and for wealth enhancement.

all this anti-capitalism is ridiculous.

[Captain Hilts]

12. Agreed. At minimum, it doesn't acknowledge the diversity of capitalism. nt

[east texas lib]

2. Uh-oh...

Now you've done it!:o

[xchrom]

3. i'm not sure you can separate out capitalism

from what you're talking about.

we've raised these two as twins.

[Lorien]

4. Well, if you tie climate change in with Capitalism, then yes, it's destroying

us as a species (along with millions of others), but we're not done yet.

[tabatha]

6. I agree.

The health of the planet was better before capitalism.

Yes, there were many tribes and war in the past.
It is the same today - there are tribes (political parties) and war (not all with guns).

Read some of the accounts of tribes that lived in harmony with their surroundings - there were many.

There are many advances in health and prevention --- but some of societies gains come with risks that sometimes cancel out those advances - such as too little sun, too little exercise, too much junk food.

If capitalism could learn to live within the limit of the world's resources, then it could be a good thing. But the basic premise of capitalism --- continued growth --- makes it unrealistic.

[noamnety]

5. What morals does capitalism teach?

(I got mine, fuck all the rest of you all)

You can't separate the morals of our system from the morals our children are being taught. When there were wars, I suspect if you examine the root causes, you will find capitalism at the heart of most of those as well, fighting over control of resources, or control of people who can be used as free slave labor.

Ever notice how extremely rare it is to find a war that was started because people were fighting to share resources equally with other groups?

[Captain Hilts]

7. Read Adam Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiments." nt

[Warren Stupidity]

8. Who is this 'we'?

I realize that your grammar here is faulty, but are you confessing to your own confusion here?

And now to your argument which, in a nutshell, is that brutality existed before the modern world, which for the sake of your argument is 'capitalism', and brutality exists in this modern world.

It is not a good argument. Capitalism and its necessary adjunct industrialization, have produced industrialized slaughter unparalleled in human history. Without capitalism, the closest the world came to the levels of slaughter in the modern world was perhaps the Mongolian conquests of the 12th and 13th centuries. The mechanization of warfare, perhaps heralded by the gatling gun in our own civil war, and total warfare within industrial societies, again arguably demarcated by our own civil war, resulted in the worldwide orgies of slaughter of the 20th century and the state of continuous 'modern warfare' of the current era. Totalitarianism requires capitalism and industrialization. Both totalitarian communism and totalitarian fascism are impossible without the industrialization of civilization created by capitalism.

[mudesi]

9. The Ambient Environment, As You Call It, Is A Capitalistic Society

Duh.

[Mist]

10. The examples you mention (shootings, bullying, etc.) go to a lack of communal sensibility, and

capitalism sometimes seems to be in contradiction to the sense of community.