[ExI] Capitalism, anti capitalism, emotional arousal

Henry Rivera hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu
Thu Nov 10 12:03:39 UTC 2011


Wow! How interesting it is to see everyone get all worked up about Zero State's development of an ideology, which I might add is still a work in progress. My view is that capitalism is a means to an end which will become obsolete after a certain tipping point. There is nothing anyone can do about that, so in this sense Zero State is just ahead of the curve in explicitly welcoming this. An attempt to show that a political system can function without capitalistic values is worthwhile. "Unfettered capitalism" could improve things in the interim but will eventually become obsolete politically as well. The target of current contempt as I see it is systematic oppression of millions of people facilitated by capitalism as it currently exists driven by greed. Consider the data released this week in the US indicating 16% or 49 million people in the US live below or near the poverty line, which is $22,000USD for a family of four. Can anyone really defend that in this modern age particularly in a first world country? On the other hand, people working within the current system will argue their accumulation of wealth is fair game; they are playing by the rules (which they helped to create I might add, which is the nature of oppression and built into the system in the US where there is little to limit financial influence of legislators by the wealthy relative to Europe for example). Zero State is taking the position that the logical solution is a new system that doesn't facilitate the rich getting richer by rewarding greed and oppression. Anyone who read Amon's whole statement will see this is not an anti free trade position. It's more about the activity of free trade as it functions in our current political system. Calling that anti-capitalist certainly pushed some buttons and will likely change based on recent discussion. As I said the development of this new ideology is a work in progress. Contribute. It's your future too. If the direction of Zero State is not your cup of tea, propose and implement your own solutions to compete. Complacency and tolerance of oppression is despicable to me.
-Henry




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