[unity1001]

The current economic system - capitalism - and the philosophy and behavior patterns that it enforces on people. I saw how the system changes a society first hand when the free market ideology took over the society I grew up. People started to compete with each other, everybody was pushed to make more money, a 'good' career, the youth were pushed to study hard for getting good jobs to acquire such good careers, even as the society started to prioritize monetary/wealth gain before everything else. Social relations, from friends to relatives get loosened as everybody was immersed in his or her own survival and self gain. Worst impacted were the youth, who were pushed to drop social concerns and work harder to secure their future. It caught the youth in their early teenage years by them being pushed to prioritize studying and success over any social relation.

So, in such a society, you enter a rat race very early in your life by starting to study hard for qualifying for a good college, and it chains forward from there on while destroying any social connections that you might have built. You already move to another city when going to college. Then the college itself quite short, merely 4 years, without enough time to create and solidify bonds. That is if the students can even find enough time to socialize in between the classes. Whatever bond was forged gets immediately broken by people moving to different cities, regions or even countries after graduation, to maximize their income and career chances.

By this point the person is already hampered in the social department. Not only he or she was not able to socialize with his or her peers and the system already forced him to isolation and alienation from the peers to compete, but also because his peers have been brought up and educated with the same competitive mentality, the human social traits that our species have developed are already hampered or repressed. The peers are competition, not people to cooperate, collaborate, less, live together to support each other. The co-workers or acquaintances frequently leaving their jobs for a better opportunity somewhere does not help - you know that even if you hit it off with some person you met in your job or locale, that person can move away tomorrow in a flash. Which makes you further wary of creating any social bond that can be broken by next week.

When the entire society is taken over by this mentality that enforces its behavior patterns, there is no escape - everybody is in a fight for survival or bettering his or her circumstances. Its a societal level alienation of people from each other and from what makes us humans a social species.

[Dracophoenix]

> By this point the person is already hampered in the social department. Not only he or she was not able to socialize with his or her peers and the system already forced him to isolation and alienation from the peers to compete, but also because his peers have been brought up and educated with the same competitive mentality, the human social traits that our species have developed are already hampered or repressed. The peers are competition, not people to cooperate, collaborate, less, live together to support each other.

Students did the same in the Soviet Union. Graduation exams sorted not just who got which universities (if any at all) but which subjects they would spend their time in. Competition didn't disappear behind the iron curtain.

> The co-workers or acquaintances frequently leaving their jobs for a better opportunity somewhere does not help - you know that even if you hit it off with some person you met in your job or locale, that person can move away tomorrow in a flash. Which makes you further wary of creating any social bond that can be broken by next week.

In the Soviet Union, you never knew when your friends and family would "disappear" either. Many Soviet citizens lived in a state of fear that they'd be next. That also makes you wary about who you associate with.

[pjlegato]

It should be noted that, empirically, all other economic systems that have been tried are even worse than capitalism as far as people's perceptions of their existence.

Capitalist countries have border guards to keep foreigners from coming in illegally. Socialist countries have border guards to keep their own people from escaping.

Capitalism does not enforce behavior patterns. You are free to opt out and be poor and not compete with others, if you want. You can be homeless, or subsist on minimum wage, or go on welfare benefits, and many do.

Compare this to socialist economic systems, where opting out is illegal and classifies you as a social parasite. "Being unemployed" is a felony that gets you ten years in a forced labor camp. "Complaining about how it is unfair that you are not allowed opt out" is also illegal, and also gets you a stint in the labor camp. That's "enforced behavior patterns."

[dragonwriter]

> It should be noted that, empirically, all other economic systems that have been tried are even worse than capitalism as far as people’s perceptions of their existence.

The modern mixed economy, which has displaced the system for which the name “capitalism” was coined during the early to middle 20th century in virtually every place that it existed at the time the term “capitalism” was coined for the dominant economic system of the industrialized portion of the West in the mid-19th century, has, empirically, not been worse than capitalism as far as people’s perceptions.

If you compare only precapitalist systems and Leninism and its derivatives, you’d be right.

> Compare this to socialist economic systems, where opting out is illegal and classifies you as a social parasite.

The modern mixed economy is the closest (though not a very close) thing to a socialist economy system that has been tried on any large scale basis (its even the closest thing – though again not a very close thing – to a Marxist system, despite Leninists trying to claim the name.)

Vanguardist elite authoritarian state capitalist command economies are not socialist, and not (despite the aspirational claims originally made for them) empirically an effective way of bypassing the need Marx identified to go through a period of private capitalist development on the way to a socialist system.

[panaffa]

You hit the nail right on the head

[unity1001]

> It should be noted that, empirically, all other economic systems that have been tried are even worse than capitalism as far as people's perceptions of their existence.

That's patently false. Socialist implementations like the USSR's lifted people from mud huts and being barefood to apartments and space age within the same generation. The only reason that it ran out of steam was because the US, who controlled 75% of world's resources at the time, started an all encompassing economic warfare and arms race to starve it of GDP by forcing it to allocate all to defense. Which is not something hypothetical or anything interpreted by historians - we have the Kennedy administration' internal memos and planning that envisaged this plan and implemented it. If ANYone did even a fraction of that to the US, the US would initiate a nuclear war as can be seen from the various examples during the Cold War. That the Soviets were way too less aggressive and they let themselves to be starved out of GDP has been a fortune for the human civilization for averting nuclear war.

> Socialist countries have border guards to keep their own people from escaping.

That's also a flat out lie that the system propagates to protect itself: Castro opened the doors of Cuba and told anyone who didnt want to stay to f... off in mid 1980. Yet the Cubans are there, except from a few who still think that the Muriel boatlift law is still in effect and they will be getting tens of thousands of dollars in US taxpayer money if they step into US soil from a boat. Otherwise they could just fly in. All the immigration from Cuba has been a few hundred thousand people, most of them people who had a good time during Batista and their relatives. Thanks to US taxpayer money, of course.

You could also leave the USSR at any time by paying back the free education and other services that the state, therefore the society, has given you for free. Which is not even an option in the US, for example - if you are born poor you just stay poor instead of someone giving you anything free.

> Capitalism does not enforce behavior patterns. You are free to opt out and be poor and not compete with others, if you want. You can be homeless, or subsist on minimum wage, or go on welfare benefits, and many do.

First, welfare benefits dont exist in capitalism. They are part of social democracy, first advocated by the socialists in the First Socialist International. So that's not the argument you want.

Second, all that you said do sound like enforcing of behavior. "You dont have to participate - you can just starve". Sounds utterly sociopathic.

> "Being unemployed" is a felony that gets you ten years in a forced labor camp.

There is no such thing anywhere. Don't make up falsities for argument. Doing the same in any country during wartime gets you the same kind of repercussion, including the 'democratic' ones who have all those written in as 'emergency laws'. If any rando like you ever knew what the 'emergency laws' in the most democratic countries involve, you would swiftly lose all the farcical illusions that you had about 'democracy'. Unfortunately such knowledge requires either special interest, or doing service in any NATO country's military or paramilitary tasked with enforcement of such laws. So that the masses like you can remain in blissful ignorance about the legal system that they live in...

...

So basically capitalism is the best system solely because people like you believe in a lot of falsities and lies. Which is of course the only way to sustain a system that kills people when they cant pay for healthcare etc...

[NicoJuicy]

You prefer Holodomor?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor