• SabinStargem@lemmy.today
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    2 days ago

    The way I get downvoted when proposing UBI for free necessities (shelter, basic car, basic food, utilities, healthcare, ect) and using capitalism for luxuries (boats, bigger house, gambling, vacations, ect), it often feels like that neither side of the aisle are happy about conceptualizing a hybrid.

    Much like Newton, I feel that Adam Smith’s writings on Capitalism had limits, because there is only so much that he could observe and measure in his time. Ditto for Marx. Both seem valid, but the question is in what way, and how we can use them to put together a theory of economics that is actually helpful.

    • bent@feddit.dk
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      2 days ago

      Smith’s main goal with capitalism was to create a system to distribute the wealth of the nation to the people of the nation to the betterment of all. In his time feudal lords sat in their huge estates, hoarding wealth and waged pointless war to the detriment of everyone else. Capitalism was a radically left wing ideology for its time.

      • SabinStargem@lemmy.today
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        2 days ago

        I don’t disagree with that. He, like other great minds, had to work with the knowledge and methods available to him in his time. It is our task to stand upon his shoulders and see further, otherwise his efforts would have been wasted.

    • nagaram@startrek.website
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      2 days ago

      The trick is to talk to real actual human beings and not people terminally online enough to know about Lemmy.

      Find a lefty book club and you’ll find reasonable people.