Capitalism, Communism and the Socrates Club

[king_of_apathy]

I recently discovered through one of my adult students that there is an English language philosophy discussion club that meet every Sunday at 11am at a Starbucks in Seomyeon (central Busan). It sounded like my thing, and as the rest of the family usually sleeps in on a Sunday it doesn't conflict with anything else I have to go to

Comments

[amw]

I think it's a straw man for full-ass maximalist capitalists to portray people who are critical of capitalism as either full-ass maximalist communists or else secretly pro-capitalism. There are lots of people who believe that capitalism is problematic who nevertheless might agree that a mixed economy featuring privately-owned businesses coupled with decent public services is the least worst path forward for most societies today.

Personally I think what most people find unpleasant about contemporary capitalism is financialization - that is to say people producing and selling nothing at all but still getting rich from dealing in hollow derivatives of things with actual value. Related to that is wealth inequality, because financialization and the legislation that rewards it enables already-wealthy individuals to toy with and grow their wealth in ways that are out of reach of and largely incomprehensible to the average person. This is probably a similar feeling to the one people had living as commoners during times of aristocracy, and it's a complaint of people who live in ostensibly communist countries too - "everyone is equal but some are more equal than others". So when people who live in a capitalist society say that capitalism is ruining the world, I think what they're really saying is that they're not very happy that the rich bastards who have already reaped all the rewards just keep on reaping. Think Bernie Sanders, not Karl Marx.