> Tossing out a system that basically works in the hopes that a complete rewrite will solve all of our problems never works

Does it "basically work" though? You are, for example, aware that profit motives have driven things like:

- the water crisis in Flint, Michigan;

- the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by the United States and its allies in the early 2000s;

- the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest (and the genocide that continues to go hand in hand with it) by ranchers seeking to increase their bottom line;

- the instance by airlines to continue flying completely empty planes all over the EU "to keep takeoff and landing times";

- the refusal to pass a TRIPS waiver for the mRNA COVID vaccine that prevents much of the world from accessing the most effective vaccines in a timely manner (or at all);

- the ongoing exploitation and perpetuation of underpaid or outright slave labor in many parts of the world by countries proped up by western colonial powers intent on delivering luxury items to their citizens at relatively low costs (while still reaping massive profits off those sales);

- etc, etc, etc.

I don't disagree that we need some intermediate solution like enforcing existing anti-trust legislation, repealing anti-union restrictions that outlaw effective labor organizing techniques, actually enacting harsh and swift consequences on companies that continue to destroy the environment (and the people who live in it).

But those are only short term solutions to immediate harms being perpetuated by a system that has for well over a century brought death and destruction to the earth and its people... not to mention what capitalism's ancestors did in the never-ending, blood-thirsty western colonial expansion throughout the globe.

So yes, let's enforce anti-trust laws... but let's not do that and think that alone will solve the myriad problems that have been thrust upon the peoples of the earth by a small number of extremely rich, profit driven people. And let's definitely not claim that the system that props up and perpetuates that behavior "basically works" when for most of the people of the world it patently does not "basically work".

I don't know what the ideal system is. I have my own utopian visions but I acknowledge they'll likely never come to pass. But we _have_ to try something different than what we're doing now. The current global economic trajectory is a deathwish that most people have not consented to.

(Edited to fix list formatting)

user:	kchameleon1234
created:	June 25, 2020
karma:	10