I'm not just a bad American, I'm innately averse to capitalism.

[feuervogel]

One of my classmates at the Goethe Institut remarked frequently how completely un-American I am (he was Swiss/English). I guess this was based on the type of American people see on the teevee or in the movies or on the news, or on vacation I guess, where they're like "USA! USA! #1! #1!" and commence flag-waving at the drop of a hat. And I'm mostly like, "yeah, there's a whole lot of fucked up shit in the States." It's a true statement, and it doesn't mean that I hate America, no matter what the Limbaughs and Becks and their ilk were saying during the Bush years.

Pretty much every European I talked to was horrified, appalled even, that people can't afford basic medical treatment or go bankrupt after a medical emergency. Because in their countries, health care is cheaper and/or subsidized through taxes. They're also gobsmacked at how much university tuition costs, since a year's tuition at the average European public university is on the order of hundreds of Euros*, and UNC Chapel Hill is up to $9000 or so for in-state students. And that's one of the cheapest state schools in the country. (Out of state students pay almost double that.)

*In 1996/97, when I was a student at Philipps-Universität Marburg (Germany), a semester's tuition was DM180 ($100 at the time), and it included a semester pass for all local and regional public transportation services, which meant city buses, regional buses, and regional trains. I could take the train to Frankfurt/Main for free. (Blah blah paid for; a single-ride ticket on the city bus was DM2. You do the math.) From Frankfurt, I could go anywhere in the world (seriously; Frankfurt Airport is the largest on the continent). (ETA: And German students get interest-free loans (BAföG) to cover things like room & board & books.)

So the American ideal of rugged individualism, which leads way too easily into "fuck you, I got mine," is one I don't identify with or understand on a gut level. People should cooperate and work together, not stomp on each other and kick the guy you're climbing over in the teeth while trying to succeed.

I don't like games predicated on dicking your buddy (Illuminati! and Cosmic Encounter are the two that come to mind first). I don't like "humor" that's based on putting other people down, even if it's "just in fun." All too often, it's not used "just in fun," rather to actually insult or belittle the recipient; there's a reason it's called being the butt of the joke. (I don't enjoy "roasts," either.)

It's a mindset I don't understand on a fundamental level.

Comments

[feuervogel]

If humans were angels, I'd be on your side. We'd all work together and share and not be propertarians and help each other out, and it'd be sort of like Anarres. But we're humans, not perfect, and I don't believe in humanity's innate goodness (and definitely not the innate goodness of boards of directors of companies) enough to leave everything up to the kindness of strangers.

(Do I believe government is perfect? Hell no. But I believe that, at present, it's the best we've got to keep poison out of our food and schools funded. Can it be better? Hell yes.)

[intravenusann.livejournal.com]

I don't think humans need to be perfect, I mean there are a lot of social ills in all the places I think of when I think of how government fails.

It's just that where you've seen how capitalism lets people down and socialism can work out to benefit a large number of people, I've seen capitalism lift up places that were stuck in the fact that government was so big and controlled everything.

I think capitalism motivates people to do good things even if it's against their will, because they're getting something out of it. But that's because I've seen government totally unable to keep poison out of food, keep schools funded, keep the power running, keep the water clean and running, etc. etc. etc. because it was bloated, corrupt, and filled with nepotism and stagnancy. I never lived to see it become deadly, but I was raised and educated by people who had lived to see government turn bloody on its own people. Do companies have their competition assassinated? Probably, actually, and I just haven't heard of it.

Different backgrounds lead to different perspectives and different answers to the question of how to make the world we live in better.

[feuervogel]

I don't advocate pure socialism; that would never work (and, in fact, the only examples of applied pure Marxism-Leninism have been through totalitarian efforts, which runs counter to Marx' philosophy). I don't think the government should own all businesses. (I'd like it if the *workers* owned the businesses, through a co-operative model. I generally prefer to patronize small, local businesses for that reason.)

Yeah, government is bloated and sucky and full of nepotism; if I were in charge, it'd be a lot more efficient. I obviously can't speak to the history or culture of Guam, so I'll take your word on that. And I'm still pissed about the cat food laced with melamine (imported from China, and not inspected by the ... USDA? FDA? because the GWB administration gutted their funding, so they didn't have enough staff to handle it), and I think GWB's exercise in nation-building and revenge was a dick move when he started it.

I believe in workplace safety standards, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and regulations that protect workers and consumers. Historical evidence suggests that corporations and their CEOs, Boards of Trustees, etc, aren't going to make these things out of the kindness of their heart (Triangle Shirtwaist fire, The Jungle, elixir sulfanilamide...)

Are there problems in the FDA? Good lord, yes. Gutted funding is one of them. For most of the drugs that have had a lot of post-marketing problems, the investigation shows that the manufacturers aren't giving the FDA all the data and are hiding the bad studies. It's a big controversy in the medical field, because drug companies fund the drug studies that are published in JAMA, etc, and they won't write up the studies that show the drug in a negative light. (There's also a question of whether the journals reject articles that don't show a positive or neutral result. Which is problematic, to say the least.)

So even *with* regulation designed to protect people, corporations can still weasel around them. I don't know what to do to fix that, but I know that "take away the regulations" isn't the answer.