[ftxbro]

> "Eventually only a few people will do all of the farming with an army of tractors, and everyone else will be lying in poverty begging for food."

I mean 1) yeah kinda and 2) I feel like this is unironically an argument against capitalism.

[oh_sigh]

If it was an argument against capitalism, it is a clearly erroneous argument, since we can see that Americans are not lying in poverty begging for food relative to the past, despite the fact that farms have been largely mechanized with tractors.

[ftxbro]

> "If it was an argument against capitalism, it is a clearly erroneous argument, since we can see that Americans ..."

Yes because the USA has pure capitalism and not anything like small farm subsidies or food stamps or school lunch programs or any social welfare programs.

[oh_sigh]

I never said the USA has pure capitalism. In fact, what society has pure capitalism? Do we need an argument against a system that has never and probably will never be implemented in the world?

[ftxbro]

You're right, no pure capitalism is possible and therefore arguments against the bad aspects of capitalism are invalid.

Anyway, maybe the reason "Americans are not lying in poverty begging for food relative to the past" (to whatever degree that is true or not) would be because of the aspects of American government that aren't capitalist.

If you are on board with analogies, consider like a government system called "orphan crushing" with two main pillars: one is that they crush every orphan and the other is that they give free lunches. Imagine that someone says that maybe we shouldn't crush orphans. Then someone rebuts that by saying, well everyone likes the free lunches we get here so the "orphan crushing" system of government must be good. Besides, a pure "orphan crushing" government has never been implemented and never will be, so do we really need an argument against it?

[oh_sigh]

Is there a clear connection between orphan crushing and free lunches, like there is between industrializing farming and abundant food availability?