Philosophy and socailsm.

[Anonymous No.14670995]

What's /lit/ view on socailsm?
Why people who study more /lit/ oriented fields tend to favor socailsm?

[Anonymous No.14671013]

>>14670995
Based Economics and fields that actually understand money

[Anonymous No.14671015]

>>14670995
thats too many times for it to be a mistake

[Anonymous No.14671022]

>>14671013
yeah i wonder why economics majors in the west would favor capitalism

[Anonymous No.14671027]

>>14670995
>people who study the economy end up being disgusted by socialism
it's almost as if...

[Anonymous No.14671028]

>law/criminology
literally nothing in common in these fields.

[Anonymous No.14671029]

>>14671022
Yeah I wonder why societies that benefitted from capitalism and saw other societies benefit from capitalism like capitalism

[Anonymous No.14671030]

>Believing it works in theory
vs
>Knowing it doesn't work in practice.

[Anonymous No.14671041]

Because /lit/ people often fall for aesthetically pleasing narratives that scratch certain itches for them. The problem is that said narratives are often at odds with reality.

[Anonymous No.14671145]

>>14671029
if this had merit every major on there would have the same dispersion as economics majors

[Anonymous No.14671161]

>>14671029
i saw china and russia benefit from communism but i dont favor communism

[Anonymous No.14671181]

>>14670995
>falling rate of profit - correct
>labour theory of value - correct
>labour alienation - correct
>surplus value extraction - correct
>private property is bullshit - correct
>historical materialism - correct


Why wouldn't you be a Marxian socialist?

[Anonymous No.14671183]

>>14671161
Russia fell apart under communism
China benefitted when Deng made it more capitalist

[Anonymous No.14671192]

>>14670995
I don't like capitalism, but I wouldn't want to live in a country ran by anthropology majors either.

[Anonymous No.14671216]

>>14671181
Literally none of that is correct, Marx’s ideas have all been discredited by economists a long time ago the same way alchemy or astrology has been discredited. Stop being an ideologue and pick up an economic textbook.

[Anonymous No.14671230]

>>14671216
All of what I've said is obvious if you weren't an ideologue. Marxism is not a dogma but a critique based on facts

[Anonymous No.14671235]

>>14671230
don't argue with liberals like >>14671216
it's useless.

[Anonymous No.14671236]

>>14671181
This is bullshit.
>>14671230
It isn't.

[Anonymous No.14671244]

>>14670995
Socialism is "on the right track" towards the solution and I say that as a formerly conservative guy. No fucking shit unfettered capitalism isn't the best system to live under. Socialists are people who recognized this, but they fell for an ideology instead of further pursuing the truth/better solution.

[Anonymous No.14671252]

>>14671236
Lenin - three components of Marxism

>https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm

Scientific socialism and its ability to adapt to the conditions rather than stay dogmatic is what makes it powerful. Materialism > idealism

[Anonymous No.14671284]

>>14671027
>it's almost as if...
Economists don't actually know shit about how money works but figured out a system for artificially disrupting natural processes of economics, which is the only reason our current version of capitalism hasn't collapsed on itself.
Friendly reminder that capitalism has almost globally failed three times, and it was non-free-market, heavily regulated (read: anti-capitalist) government intervention that saved it. Capitalism is one bad market day and one government who refuses to step in away from failing, and it has been since the 80's. Our entire economic system is supported by purely synthetic mechanisms which completely defy the handful of economic laws that economists have been able to tease out of mathematics, philosophy, and the sciences.

>>14671161
>>14671183
>communism = socialism
For the love of god, my fellow Americans, please learn the difference. NO (read: zero, none, not a singular instance) socialist nation has existed on Earth. No where have the workers owned the entirety of the capitol and the means of production, and Communism is not and cannot be socialism.

>>14671183
>china is remotely capitalist
Having a command economy is not remotely capitalism by any stretch of the imagination.

[Anonymous No.14671300]

>>14671013
>never went to uni

Go get an econ professor that makes you buy his book for class and never teaches from it.
Econ classes are propaganda mills.

[Anonymous No.14671301]

>>14671216
>discredited by economists
Economists using faulty logic, fundamental misinterpretations and misapplications of mathematics, and an incapability to recognize their purely synthetic system doesn't represent any of the axioms they claim to have.

Marx was wrong about a lot of shit, but he wasn't wrong about any of those other things. EVERY industrialized nation has seen the workers attempt to seize capitol - it was purely synthetic action on behalf of criminal organizations, the owners, and governments working to violently suppress the workers that kept capitalism alive throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. Had it not been for that violent suppression of workers during the late nineteenth and early 20th century, we'd already have socialism.

[Anonymous No.14671309]

>>14671183
Russia was under 70yrs of constant war.
US gave up on China. And surprise surprise China had enough peace to prosper.

[Anonymous No.14671311]

>only major that actually engages with it tends to have a more positive view on it

gee I wonder why this is the case

[Anonymous No.14671314]

>>14671300
I’ve never experienced that problem in Econ, only in soulless gen ed classes like low level history courses

[Anonymous No.14671317]

>>14670995
socialism is fucking ass when put into practice, that is hardcore socialism. most countrys in the developed world have some aspect of socialism in them and are for the most part better off for it.

[Anonymous No.14671323]

>>14671317
The ultimate pseud take. Pick a side, coward

[Anonymous No.14671334]

>>14671323
i personally hate communism and socialism (i.e i love my freedom)

[Anonymous No.14671350]

>>14671027
economics is fake

[Anonymous No.14671356]

>>14671181
Wrong
Unproven and marginalism makes more sense
Unprovable
Completely wrong
Unprovable opinion
?
>>14671300
I did and it was necessary reading that nobody did

[Anonymous No.14671359]

>>14671334
Is it freeing knowing that you're one lay-off and medical emergency away from being in horrible debt for the rest of your life? But hey at least you're free to chose whatever brand of potato chips you want. Damn, I love freedom.

[Anonymous No.14671362]

>>14671350
Cope
>>14671309
So has America
>waaaaahh muh USA
If anything the USA helped China through trade and opening up patents

[Anonymous No.14671366]

>>14671311
>economics doesn’t engage with socialism
Bruh
>>14671359
>if bad things happen you feel bad
Wow what a take

[Anonymous No.14671375]

>>14670995
/lit/ oriented people are theory oriented people, it seems obvious

[Anonymous No.14671383]

>>14671350
>it doesn’t believe in my ideology so it's fake
>>14671311
>who are the Marxists in economics
>who is John Romer
>what is market socialism

[Anonymous No.14671395]

As a former econ major (changed to marketing two years in) I can say with confidence that your average econ major has little to no more knowledge about why "socialism is wrong" than any other major. You learn very little economic theory. Most of your time is spent with models that, very transparently, don't necessarily capture how the real world works on a 1:1 basis. And then you spend time learning about the models, not the theory.

I'm sure things are different for graduate students, but the chart doesn't specify. .If you ever meet a graduate from an economics bachelor's program who says that "socialists don't understand economics," ask them what they mean and watch them freeze.

[Anonymous No.14671402]

>>14671284
>I, who read the works of old white men, knows economy better than economists. And also, non capitalism is when the governement does stuff.
EPIC

[Anonymous No.14671405]

>thinking the only alternatives to liberalism are "big tent" homo-communism and "my landlord legally owns me and fucks my ass" libertarianism
>not being a right-wing socialist

[Anonymous No.14671429]

As a former philosophy major (changed to English two years in) I can say with confidence that your average philosophy major has little to no more knowledge about why "capitalism is wrong" than any other major. You learn very little capitalist theory. Most of your time is spent on people that, very transparently, don't necessarily capture how the real world works on a 1:1 basis. And then you spend time learning about the people, not the theory.

I'm sure things are different for graduate students, but the chart doesn't specify. .If you ever meet a graduate from an philosophy bachelor's program who says that "capitalists don’t understand morals" ask them what they mean and watch them freeze.

[Anonymous No.14671449]

>>14671013
>fields that actually understand money
>accounting
>anything but a very well paid excel monkey who helps his masters get away fiscal fraud.

[Anonymous No.14671455]

>>14671449
To indulge your cynicism, if he understands how to defraud, would he not understand money?

[Anonymous No.14671468]

>>14671455
Is not even cynicism, pic related.

The list is so big that I wasn't able to fit it in a single screenshot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PricewaterhouseCoopers#Controversies

Also knowing how to fake entries in a balance sheet doesn't make your political opinion more relevant, so no.

[Anonymous No.14671477]

>>14671468
Yeah well that’s one firm. Also, Relevancy is not the issue

[Anonymous No.14671497]

>>14671366
Economics is science so

[Anonymous No.14671501]

>>14671405
this. im surprised noone in america has openly ran as socially conservative and economically far left with an isolationist fopo.

[Anonymous No.14671546]

>>14671497
Exactly to my point

[Anonymous No.14671561]

>>14671375
oriented specifically towards retarded theories it seems

[Anonymous No.14671562]

>>14671561
Based

[Anonymous No.14671575]

>>14671383
>I don't know about Europe or whatever but most Economic courses treat Marxism as more of a historical side note

[Anonymous No.14671580]

>>14671575
Fuck I didn't mean to green text

[Anonymous No.14671584]

>>14671244
What's the correct track? Nazi corporativism? Distributism? Anarcho primitivism?

[Anonymous No.14671588]

>>14671395
Based marketchad

[Anonymous No.14671621]

>>14671244
Capitalism is the best system its just been corrupted by Marxism. Look at California for example. Easily the most leftist state yet also the worse living conditions and largest class gap.

[Anonymous No.14671662]

>>14671621
think i may have found the world's biggest brainlet

[Anonymous No.14671670]

>>14671662
Until you point out how that is wrong your comment is pointless

[Anonymous No.14671749]

>>14671670
not anon you are replying to but cali is not marxist. woke capitalism is not marxism, welfare is not marxism. non-brainlets recognize that marx and those influenfed make accurate critiques of capitalism but that his solution was retarded and fails miserably every time, altho cali is not an example of this

[Anonymous No.14671754]

>>14671429
Hmmm!
Seems based.

[Anonymous No.14671768]

>>14671216
falling rate of profit is in a neoclassical text book, profit tends towards zero in market outside of monopolies.

[Anonymous No.14671789]

>>14671768
Globalization, globalism (cheap labor), imperialism all support the falling rate of profit

[Anonymous No.14671813]

>>14671749
>California isn't leftist
dumbest thing Ive heard all week. Its literally the most leftist place in America

[Anonymous No.14671821]

>>14671813
is this b8?
cali is liberal, liberalism =/= marxist. even most us marxist groups care more about liberal idpol than marxism

[Anonymous No.14671828]

>>14671813
>dumbest thing Ive heard all week. Its literally the most leftist place in America

Leftism is not liberalism. Go back to /pol/ ziocuck

[Anonymous No.14671876]

I suspect that literary majors don’t actually know as much about socialism, or communism, as they think they do, but I can admit as someone with who went to undergraduate and graduate school for Economics that it is quite a delusional field of study and I regret having wasted so much time on it. The study presupposes certain assumptions about capitalist economics which have never been and cannot be proven demonstrably true or false, but yet they continue to be assumed as if they were fact. I’ve heard that economists have physics envy and I think that’s true. For one, it dresses itself up as a STEM field with its use of statistics, but really isn’t STEM. It just does this to reinforce upon its own validity as a field. Another aspect is how it treats these assumptions as if they are just quite obvious laws of the universe, but in reality they are not and these things either don’t hold up or are flexible at best. In the American academy at least, Economics study in 2020 equates to New Keynesian Capitalist indoctrination and really nothing more. I say regrettably having wasted many years on it that it’s a field not particularly worth even studying, especially given the fact that the Emperor has no clothes so to speak and actually functions best as a sort of pseudo-intelligence test (because it is rigorous) for upper and upper middle class students who just want to make money (which likely contributes to this bias also). I myself am actually at a point of considering starting all over in undergraduate in my late twenties because the whole field feels so worthless and self-assured. I see no future in it. That’s been my genuine experience.

[Anonymous No.14671945]

>>14671584
economies (and societies etc) are dynamic complex systems. There is no single "best" solution because the best optimal solution is depending on the exact situation you are in at any given moment.

Systems which seem like they can deliver a reasonable baseline of welfare and mitigate the damage that unexpected shocks and changes bring would be a safe choice, even if not always literally "best" in some moment.

At the moment, it looks like social democracy or centrist consensus-based corporatism fit that bill best.

Fascist corporatism is insane because it rests on a delusion of singular action by a leader channeling the "will" of the nation, which is obviously stupid and only makes sense in a war economy (hint: why the fascists kept trying to start wars). Anarcho-primitivism obviously was a fine equilibrium for many millenia, but you cant just turn the modern world back into that so it obviously is not the right track for now.

[Anonymous No.14671960]

>>14670995
>Socailsm
>Not once, not twice, but three times
How come?

[Anonymous No.14671967]

>>14671828
This. When will these retards will realise this?

[cunt No.14671975]

>>14671013
>that actually understand money
How is socialism bad with money?

[Anonymous No.14671979]

>>14671501
It would never be allowed to win within your two party system. In Europe however I'm fairly certain that it would win elections but anyone who takes on such a position is branded an evil nazi akin to a satanist. It's like a forbidden political platform.

[Anonymous No.14671993]

>>14670995
The best part is how few philosophy majors choose "not sure."

[Anonymous No.14672006]

To answer op’s question;

It’s because of a bias towards socialist literature carried on down from the professors of academies.

[Anonymous No.14672050]

>>14671284
>>communism = socialism
>For the love of god, my fellow Americans, please learn the difference. NO (read: zero, none, not a singular instance) socialist nation has existed on Earth. No where have the workers owned the entirety of the capitol and the means of production, and Communism is not and cannot be socialism
Read theory brainlet socialism is the transition to communism

[Anonymous No.14672591]

>>14671876
Very high IQ post

[Anonymous No.14672605]

>>14671013
(((Economics))) is pseudoscience.

[Anonymous No.14672632]

>>14671284
Bingo. I’m not a communist, but you’re right about Economists. It’s the science of market speculation.

[Anonymous No.14672809]

>>14671181
Communists HATE this book.

[Anonymous No.14673093]

What's funniest of all is that western marxists abandoned their economic endgoals in the 50s and 60s when it became clear that capitalism produced better wealth for ordinary people and the chinese and soviet economies were struggling terribly. The new left started all the gender, race etc crap to focus on social issues, and now the same people who bought into that narrative are ignorant of the reason for it, blindly supporting the economic system discredited even amongst marxists.

[Anonymous No.14673129]

>>14670995
Socialism is based

>>14671013
Economism is faggotry

[Anonymous No.14673146]

>>14671768
Economic profit, yes. Accounting profit, no. And it has always been this way, it isn’t a new thing.

[Anonymous No.14673151]

>>14671546
Utilitarianism is literal shit bruv

[Anonymous No.14673158]

>>14672809
pinker is a commie you idiot

[Anonymous No.14673188]

>>14671323
That kind of retarded absolutism is credible only if you actually believe ideologies are substantial metaphysical entities. Actual policy always rest on a variety of practical choices, have fun collapsing your entire economy because you chose to copypaste your monetary policy from a century-old ideology textbook.

[Anonymous No.14673202]

Look at all the fucking centrists in IR. My peers are a bunch of melts.

[Anonymous No.14673208]

>>14672809
>Needing to read (((Steven))) Pinker to refute marxist nonsense

[Anonymous No.14673210]

>>14671013
Based Philosophy and fields that understand ethics and politics.

[Anonymous No.14673230]

>>14673210
>Philosophy and fields that understand ethics and politics
>ethics and politics
Nice spooks

[Anonymous No.14673295]

>>14673230
Based stirnerposter

[Anonymous No.14673302]

>>14670995
I would never discuss about politics, especially socialism, with an American. They are so lost they don't even know what it means most of the time.

[Anonymous No.14673306]

>>14670995
>those who need socialism to fund their profession strongly prefer it

hmmmmmmmm, I wonder why is that

[Anonymous No.14673552]

>>14670995
anybody who still supports capitalism in currentyear is either a retard or a shill

[Anonymous No.14673635]

The centralized distribution of goods is ridiculously inefficient in comparison to the price coordinated distribution of capitalism. Most socialists recognize this which is why they try to incorporate the market into their design but that only results in a more inefficient capitalism. If you want to create wealth and avoid the occasional famine or resource deprivation, there's really no choice.

On a social level every criticism I've seen of market economics will also apply to socialism. The atomization of society, pollution and abuse of the environment, lack of respect for worker safety, and so on. In many case these things are actually worse under socialism so as far as I'm concerned there's no good reason to be a socialist. That doesn't mean I'm a globalist either, I support free local markets with certain international barriers to trade. In other words, Americans should make everything Americans use.

[Anonymous No.14673670]

>>14671876
Based. What are you switching to?

[Anonymous No.14673674]

>>14671405
>thinking the only alternatives to liberalism are "big tent" homo-communism and "my landlord legally owns me and fucks my ass" libertarianism
It sounds like you don't understand either position, and you got your education from /pol/ memes and not from actually reading books.
>not being a right-wing socialist
No such thing. National Socialism is only "right-wing" in contemporary eyes because it's raycis. There is literally nothing right-wing about a secular, modernist, nationalist/populist, and collectivist totalitarian state, unless you were to go off the (((modern))) definition of right-wing, which just showcases your lean into modernist faggotry and reliance with leftist historiography and understanding.

[Anonymous No.14673676]

>>14671945
>Fascist corporatism is insane because it rests on a delusion of singular action by a leader channeling the "will" of the nation, which is obviously stupid

[Anonymous No.14673700]

>>14671030
Proof?

[Anonymous No.14673780]

>>14671301
Demand curves slope downward

[Anonymous No.14673781]

>>14673674
>There is literally nothing right-wing about a secular, modernist, nationalist/populist, and collectivist totalitarian state,
That's not what the nazi state was you retarded faggot.

[Anonymous No.14673799]

>>14673700
Name a single socialist state that succeeded without capitalism>>14673781

[Anonymous No.14673832]

>>14671359
>Cororpate socialist healthcare system able to act monopolisticly thanks to gov regulation and protection
>Free market potate industry give me gud cheap fud
Yeah sounds like we need to allow some more competion into health care to force that price down.

[Anonymous No.14673860]

>>14671395
Socialism dosen't work because it relies on goverment intervention to regulate the market. This happens already in the US, it's called lobbying I belive. This creates a game where which ever player has the most money is able to create regulation that benfits them and no one else. This creates monopolistic industries that hurt the vast majority of the population. If goverment is made of individuals focused on self gain socialism can not work.

[Anonymous No.14673866]

>>14673860
You literally just describe why capitalism must fail

>fairy tail no interventionism cannot exist
>all capitalism exists under governments
>eventually successful capitalists install cronies and begin gaining monopoly profits
>they knock out competitors
>now you're in modern america

This is the inevitable result of capitalism that can never be stopped, altered, or fixed. Socialism is just a mechanism for the people to interrupt this process by redistributing ill-gained capital back to the masses.

If you disagree you are a stupid retard.

[Anonymous No.14673973]

>>14671876
>assumed as if they were fact.
I’m an Econ undergrad and even I know this is false. The models are the best representation of the economy that we have, thus they are what a lot of the focus of Econ is on, but like science, they are not assumed to be fact. Science is simply the best explanation of the world that we have, and change at any time (phlogistion, miasma theory, geocentrism to name a few). Now, it is incredibly unlikely that the foundational theories of the modern world are incorrect, such as heliocentrism, germ theory, evolution, atoms and so on for science, and the laws of demand and supply, marginalism, and so on for economics, so this is not to say that everything is hotly contested in science, but economics has been around for so few years that there are less foundations to build upon. This does not discount economics at all.
>New Keynesian Capitalist indoctrination
And physics is New Einsteinian indoctrination, your point?

[Anonymous No.14673990]

>>14673866
Does socialism mean to you redistribution of wealth or does it mean workers owning the means of production?

[Anonymous No.14674009]

>>14673866
Why isn’t every company worker owned if it is better for them to be so?

[Anonymous No.14674165]

>>14674009
Because it's better for capitalists to own the companies instead of workers, hence the internal contradiction of captalism.

[Anonymous No.14674172]

>>14674165
Better for whom? If for the capitalists, what is stopping worker-owned industry?

[Anonymous No.14674214]

>>14674172
I just said it's better for CAPITALISTS to own industries. It would be better for workers to own them, but they can't both be owners at the same time.

[Anonymous No.14674234]

>>14674214
How are the capitalists stopping workers from owning industry?

[Anonymous No.14674260]

>>14674234
To start a company you need to make a huge investment. It's almost an impossible feat for workers since they posess the smallesta mount of wealth in the capitalist system.

[Anonymous No.14674279]

>law
>highest proportion of don’t knows

Surprising

[Anonymous No.14674280]

>>14673990
It means whatever the fuck. It's a completely elusive term that means whatever the fuck the speaker wants it to mean.

[Anonymous No.14674315]

>>14671975
The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.

[Anonymous No.14674320]

>>14674234
Price floor and tooling

Did you not take high school economics?

[Anonymous No.14674332]

>>14674260
Wealth equality itself is a stupid thing to be concerned with but household income is the absolute dumbest measure of it. Younger people tend to rent and live by themselves but that doesn't mean they're poor, it just means they aren't married and don't live with other income earners. The fact that single people can live in a house by themselves is a sign that we're a wealthier society even though it does lower the average household income.

[Anonymous No.14674335]

>>14674234
With the use of police, sometimes militias and in the worst cases armies, as well as legal systems in which all kind of property is protected, can be indefinitely amassed and endlessly exploited to amass more property.

See who benefitted most from the French and American revolution for instance.

[Anonymous No.14674337]

>>14674320
So you’re saying more capitalism would fix the problem? Hmmmmmmmm...
>>14674260
>what is pooling money
>what is the entire point of a loan
>what are investors

[Anonymous No.14674346]

>>14674332
You're right, we should include total wealth and not merely income, the figures would get even more lopsided.
And even most economists recognize income inequality becomes a serious past a certain threshold.

[Anonymous No.14674347]

>>14674346
Yeah we need a country where wealth is equal like Ukraine

[Anonymous No.14674364]

>>14674346
Total wealth doesn't change anything either since younger people will naturally have accrued less wealth than older people. It's not a surprise for an old man in America to be worth hundreds of thousands despite working low end jobs all his life.

[Anonymous No.14674365]

>>14672809
Pinker is an unironic socialist and has even said Communism would be viable during a post scarcity society.

[Anonymous No.14674378]

>>14674347
>wealth inequality above a certain threshold is bad
>therefore near-perfect equality should be prioritized above all else

>tsunamis are bad
>therefore we should always make sure water flows as little as possible

Nice way to twist my words while raping logic.

[Anonymous No.14674407]

>>14674009
Worker coops exist and are generally much better to work for than other types of companies.

[Anonymous No.14674414]

>>14674378
?
>>14674365
But it would

[Anonymous No.14674422]

>>14674407
Then what’s the problem?

[Anonymous No.14674466]

>>14674364
Even in that case it would be a problem if wealth turned out to be excessively concentrated in the hand of old people. Depending on the situation it could hint at a demographic imbalance or a decrease in the ability of younger generation to accumulate wealth. The point is no single figure is going to be entirely satisfactory, and you can always find a way to explain why the figure is natural and unsurprising (it's only natural people who inherited or amassed a large capital would be in a better position to invest efficiently that people with no capital living paycheck-to-paycheck, etc.).

So you need to get as many reliable figures as you can, assess what the situation is and from that decide collectively what you want to do about it. You can decide that the current level of wealth inequality is too great even if everyone's standards of living have been improving, or you can decide this level if inequality is fine and we need to focus on the minimum standard of living or whatever.

Right now it seems many people if not a majority think the inequalities are too great even in most developed countries. There's no hard economic law that says they must be wrong in that case, and it's not like you need to go full collectivisation to mitigate the unbalance.

[Anonymous No.14674476]

>>14674414
Reread >>14674347. Implying that extreme inequality is bad doesn't entail striving to emulate a country were inequality is greatly reduced but everyone is poor, unlike what the passive aggressive "so you want everyone to be like Ukraine" suggests.

It can entail trying to keep inequality within a reasonable threshold or simply preventing it from growing much further.

Can't believe I have to spell out something that simple on a website were people are supposed to be literate.

[Anonymous No.14674514]

>>14674466
Wealth being concentrated in the hands of old people is not a problem precisely because they're old, meaning they're going to die sooner rather than later. We agree that no statistic is sufficient to say that wealth inequality is a problem so why not just get to the heart of it and explain to my why, in principle, people having different levels of wealth is a problem. Why is some people having a lot of money a problem? We're not immortals so nobody can hoard that money away in a cave for eternity.

This talk of people being concerned about wealth inequality doesn't move me because I think those people are confused and misguided by misleading statistics and fallacious arguments. Maybe there's also some envy involved but the fact that neighbor has more money than does not bother me in the least. My life is better simply by living around people who have a lot of money.

People are who rich and remain rich are that way because they know how to invest money wisely. They're usually much better at doing this than the people who are less wealthy than them so I don't any reason to change that. Their investments benefit me indirectly so society is its best when those "best investors" are choosing which things are worth investing in. We would be worse off if that money was given to somebody like me because I don't know how to invest.

[Anonymous No.14674579]

>>14674476
>It can entail trying to keep inequality within a reasonable threshold or simply preventing it from growing much further.
And in doing so ends up like Ukraine. What a dummy you are

[Anonymous No.14674580]

>>14670995
>What's /lit/ view on socailsm?
I only care for the National type.

[Anonymous No.14674613]

>>14670995
>Average philosophy major IQ: 129
>Average accounting major IQ: 110

>>14671395
>ask them what they mean and watch them freeze.
How to PHILOSOPHICALLY DESTROY anyone using ONE SIMPLE TRICK invented by AN UGLY OLD GREEK GUY

[Anonymous No.14674622]

>>14674514
>Wealth being concentrated in the hands of old people is not a problem precisely because they're old, meaning they're going to die sooner rather than later
That doesn't help people complaining right now about inequality when in practice that "sooner" is 15 years or more. Especially if the cohort of old people is inordinately big (see: baby boomers). And longer life expectancies make the wait longer.

>why, in principle, people having different levels of wealth is a problem
For me it's a problem per se, but as said above, many economists think it's a problem when it gets big enough, especially because it reduces demand in most sectors and thus profit and thus ultimately wages which further reduces demands, etc.

Another aspect which might sound silly but is important, is simply that people care about it and tend to view it as a problem. That kind of mass perception can have political and economic consequences in the long term as it affects voting, buying, working and perhaps even hiring behavior. Mass insatisfaction is a problem even if it isn't rooted in reality. You can try to make people accept inequality, or you can try to make inequality appear less glaring by a variety of ways, including actually reducing it. Whichever combinaison of those is most fitting with your means, political doctrine and constraints.

>I think those people are confused and misguided by misleading statistics and fallacious arguments.

See above. Sure most people don't understand much of economics, but you can't really stop them from wanting other people's stuff and resenting people being much richer than them. Especially when they work or worked hard for decades, when they have children whose future is uncertain, when they make the products whose sale enriched the rich, especially in a society of consumption where spending and owning is seen as positive and where there is so much to do with that money, especially in a culture that peddles upward mobility, enrichment through hard work, and the search of happiness through the acquisitin of wealth as core values.

If you add that the inequalities are or seem to be rising (though that seem to be very slowly reversing since 2016) and soon many people at the bottom will start to feel that their turn will never come and that the game they've supposedly be playing is rigged.

And in a sense they're right, our economic model rests on growth, production, global trade and consumption, it runs on people wanting stuff, working for stuff, using it to get more stuff, and consequently feeling bad when they don't get stuff, while at the same time mechanically increasing the share of stuff that goes to people who already have a lot of stuff. Thus frustration naturally piles up, eventually to dengerous levels.

Hence the need for regulation in some form, regulate inequality, or regulate people's perception of inequality. But you can only do so much against the irrational instincts that your system rely upon.

[Anonymous No.14674631]

>>14674579
Yes because obviously inequality can only be as high as it is now, it wasn't ever lower in thriving economies, especially not between 1945 and 1971, in fact there are only two kind of possible economies in the world, current US economy or current Ukrainian economy. Thanks for opening my eyes.

[Anonymous No.14674639]

>>14673973
I’m just stating my experience and my opinion. My point is that Economics is not Physics and Physics is not Economics, no matter how much the Economists would like to insist it is so. Unlike, Physics these “assumptions” in Economic models that were referring to are dynamic and thus, the models themselves are inherently dynamic, but all too often this little footnote is ignored and the messaging becomes a state of fact rather than theory. Luckily, you don’t have to take my word for it as this subject has been written about for quite some time.

https://aeon.co/ideas/few-things-are-as-dangerous-as-economists-with-physics-envy

https://www.edge.org/response-detail/26756

[Anonymous No.14674678]

>>14674622
I don't know why you keep talking about economists who believe that wealth inequality could be bad if it was severe enough. We don't know what that point is and you agreed that we don't even know ho to measure it in a non subjective or misleading way.

People can perceive that wealth inequality is a problem all they want, but that doesn't make it so. I made an argument that our society is better when the most skilled investors have more capital to work with. Are you going to respond to this at all or just continue harping on about some theoretical point where wealth inequality actually could become a problem?

[Anonymous No.14674685]

>>14673670
Maybe Engineering? I’m not sure. I’ve left the program and I don’t really have an interest in continuing graduate study in anything closely related. The one good thing about studying Economics is that I don’t really have to worry about having a job-winning degree anymore. I would love to study classics since that field has been a deep interest of mine for years, but that would mean starting over so I don’t know.

[Anonymous No.14674692]

>>14671027
>socialism for services
>capitalism for products
>nationalists for government
same view i've always had desu

[Anonymous No.14674697]

>>14670995
>Why people who study more /lit/ oriented fields tend to favor socailsm?

Because intellectuals want to live in a society where intellectuals control everything, ie socialism. Classic scribe mindset

[Anonymous No.14674699]

>>14674692
whoops meant to reply to the OP. oh well doesn't matter

[Anonymous No.14674748]

>>14674514
>>14674622
I guess the TL;DR of my above post is: those issues are large-scale and deep seated. People can tolerate inequality when the economy is growing massively, it's easy to have job, and/or there is a sense of national duty to contribute to the economy. All that more of less applied to Western Europe for some time after WWII for instance. But this is no longer the case and now we have to make choices between various economic regimes, or various balances between wealth inequality, security of income, general economic stability, etc. And some of those choices are going to penalize some people more than others. The question is who will get the worst of it, and who will make the decision. In democratic society this should be a collective choice informed by a fair political debate, but I guess that only works in a very theoretical democracy.

It's easy to blame poor people but they are, after all, only after their economic interest, like the rich. It is easy to blame the rich but they're only the ones who happened to benefit from the current system (and I'd argue much more for generationnal and conjectural reasons than out of sound investment practices, you simply don't choose to be 18 when the New Deal starts kicking in).
Note also that learning how to invest is easier if your parents are already practiced inverstors, and much harder if you're born in a working class environment where everyone starts working low-end wages and having children early. In some households you hire smart people to invest your assets for you, in others you have to worry about getting three meals a day. Sure the working class youngster could put off having children and get an education, but that would be 1) an unusual choice among his peers 2) something removed from his usual sphere of concern, while a kid born wealthy enough doesn't even have to think about hiring an asset manager, it's already a given before he can even talk. And 1) and 2) are two very powerful disincentive. The importance of mimicry and habit in human behavior can hardly be overstated. It's all quite mechanic really.

As for investors benefitting you, that's true to an extent, but it's also true to a nonnegligible extent that their collective behavior can at times have dire consequences for your economic prospects. This is the whole question of "moral risk" in finance, it's a thing that cannot be avoided in a growth-based economy: sooner or later there are more promises of profits than real profits made, and someone has to suck it. Sometimes that someone is you, even if you didn't partake in the game of promise. What happened in 2008 is a stellar example. A combination of systemic instability, overconfidence and unprofessional behavior in a few key areas (yet among people who were near-universally regarded as trustworthy) creates a huge collective loss, yet unevenly shared.

[Anonymous No.14674791]

>>14671181
>Historical materialism
>Correct
Please kys. I know that you haven't opened up one history text in your life

[Anonymous No.14674813]

>>14671029
yeah I wonder

[Anonymous No.14674822]

>>14674678
>I don't know why you keep talking about economists who believe that wealth inequality could be bad if it was severe enough.
You want me to pretend every economist think inequality doesn't matter instead ? The viewpoint I'm talking about is hardly niche.

>We don't know what that point is
We've already seen countries go past that point in Africa and South America.

>you agreed that we don't even know ho to measure it in a non subjective or misleading way.
I agreed that no single simple statistics would be sufficient, that's not the same thing. Statistics are always somewhat misleading, but they can still be useful.

>People can perceive that wealth inequality is a problem all they want, but that doesn't make it so.
Except mass perceptions matter in economy. When the director of the FED makes a declaration you can be sure it will be listened to by every well-informed investor and most well-informed CEO in the world, and you can be sure the general perception of the FED's intention will start rippling through the economy even before the FED actually implements any real measure. The perception that a bank is likely to go bankrupt can, in some situations, create mass panic movement that will effectively make it go bankrupt (it also happens to other financial institutions, see the near-bankruptcy of LCTM for instance, it was saved just in time by the FED, by it still lost billions).

> I made an argument that our society is better when the most skilled investors have more capital to work with.
It's better for some time but it periodically collapses and nobody can really predict when or how hard, though some make pretty good guesses at time. Again, see the case of LCTM above. It had two Economy Nobel Prize winners on staff and was raking up stratospheric profits for a few months before it imploded.
Note also that "more capital to work with" must have a limit, else you'll give 100% of the money to the best investors and the economy would stop before they would have time to invest it. You'll grant me that some mesure of balance or natural distribution is possible, the question is, what is the ideal rate, and what mechanism of redistribution are you going to use ? That's, as I said, a political question. You can't just brute force it through maths or expertise, because the maths is essentially unrealistic (I've been briefed on the assumptions the most common models rest upon, they're unrealistic even by the admission of those who use them), and the expertise frequently leads to blunders, as all human expertise periodically do in such complicated matters.

[Anonymous No.14674827]

>>14670995
So the smartest people favor socialism. Interesting...

[Anonymous No.14674833]

The only honest answer in this is "not sure" based lawfags
If you have a definite opinion on something as complex as this you're a delusional idiot who is just another manifestation of the type of destructive retards constantly chimping out through history. Notice how every successful, revered leader always have ideologies extremely difficult to pin down if they had any at all but just reacting to circumstances. Your ideology is a cope for your low iq brain unable to understand the fluid complexities and nuance of reality

[Anonymous No.14674835]

>>14674827
STEMfags BTFO.

[Anonymous No.14674837]

>>14674315
That's not how socialism works

[Anonymous No.14674842]

>>14674827
why do they always leave out architecture in these charts?

[Anonymous No.14674847]

>>14674842
No clue. I imagine they'd do well. Architecture is the most based degree there is. Wish I were an architect.

[Anonymous No.14675049]

>>14674827
Accounting is lower on this than special eduction! I find this both funny and alarming.

[Anonymous No.14675086]

>>14674827
Is this really surprising considering the GRE hardly contains more advanced math, which STEM is mostly made of, and tons of writing and reading comprehension, which STEM is lacking in?

[Anonymous No.14675108]

>>14675086
Cope. The real lesson here is that overspecialization is intellectually stunting.

[Anonymous No.14675115]

>>14674827
Are you trying to imply IQ is a socialist plot to control the world or something?

[Anonymous No.14675187]

>>14673973
Science is NOT a "best explanation for things".

Science is a method for gaining information about the world by making falsifiable claims in a way that allows others to perform controlled experiments to verify those claims.

Economics is garbage because you can't do that. Models are created to 'fit' past data retroactively, and you can't run realistic experiments to try to falsify the claims.

[Anonymous No.14675943]

>>14670995
The humanities majors just have the knowledge and verbal abilities to carry the Western intellectual tradition of the past few hundred years to its logical conclusion, Communism. This isn't a problem with them per se, it's a problem with their priors.

[Anonymous No.14676133]

>>14670995
Mostly brainlets who don't understand economics. The smarter ones typically support socialism-esque systems because they believe that community structures that support self actualization must be socialist even though that would mean a less productive economy.

[Anonymous No.14676754]

>>14675187
>Models are created to 'fit' past data retroactively
Where else would the models come from? Thin air?

[Anonymous No.14676762]

>>14674631
Never did imply any of that you strawmanning illiterate dummy

[Anonymous No.14676785]

>>14675187
>”I think that if people are given a lump sum of money each month, they will pay the money forward to other members of the community and everyone will benefit.”
https://sevenpillarsinstitute.org/universal-basic-income-empirical-studies/
How is the Kenyan study not exactly what you just described for science?

[Anonymous No.14676799]

>>14676754
Models should predict

[Anonymous No.14676834]

>>14676799
They do that too

[Anonymous No.14676840]

>the fields where people get jobs and make money are not socialist
>the fields where they don't are

hmm smells like cope

[Anonymous No.14677838]

>>14676754
I think you misread him. He didn’t say the models are created FROM past data. He said they’re created TO FIT past data, meaning the models are flexible and perhaps not good models?