[bravoyankee]

A culture can stop being capitalistic and consumer-driven without becoming a fear driven dictatorship.

Do you equate spending money with freedom and civil liberties? Is that the only way for you and I to be free, is to buy things?

[rfrey]

Economic liberty seems to be a precondition for strong civil liberties, although certainly not sufficient.

Also, class mobility seems to be most likely in a society with high economic activity, since there is a lot of demand to be filled and therefore the opportunity to fill it.

[creatrixcordis]

The criticism is: economic liberty, mobility blah blah, you need discipline at the individual level to balance that. Good education from parents and the eco-system you take part in, but i guess that is under your "certainly not sufficient" bit, but i believe that discipline takes you farther even in a not so ripe economic situation, i've seen joyful people in poor conditions, i've seen people bettering themselves in no to ripe conditions

i think this is the classic problem of people trying to fix their situations from the outside in, instead of from the inside out, ex: better economic situation = better people, but that is clearly faulty logic, i think it should be more like better people = way better economic situation

but then again why would a system that depends on its economy so much enforce such an idea: "better people", better people doesn't make enough money as it stands for them, that is why they don't put that in their ads instead of "buy this because of (some bullshit reason here) messaging" because "buy this because of this fucked up reason we created for you" makes more money, period,

politicians don't give a fuck about you and me man, they care about numbers, because of their vantage point, the ones that do end up getting wiped out, as we have seen throughout history, just like this new awesome movie lincoln shows "man wants people of all races to be free" get asassinated because of people with no self-discipline and no fucking compassion that were mostly focused on themselves

history really explains a lot about us, and so far it looks like we really haven't learnt too much

i wonder to think, what would the world be like if people in current power positions would actually be altruistic, sounds like a pipe dream to me

[creatrixcordis]

Haha mommy when i grow up i want to be the perfect consumer, just like you!

[rfrey]

I don't understand your criticism.

[mseebach]

Yes, the only way you can be free is to be free to produce, buy and sell things. And to do a million other activities that other people might not find virtuous.

[hamoid]

The only way? I can conceive freedom without any buying and selling of things.

[mseebach]

Yes, you can choose not to trade, you can even agree within a group that there will be no trading in the group. But if you coerce other to refrain from any trading they wish to engage in without hurting you, they are not free.

The fundamental axiom is that you own your own body. It follows from there that you own the output of your body. Trade is fundamentally the voluntary exchange of this output for other people's output. Preventing this exchange amounts to denying you the right to dispose of the output of your body, thus denying you ownership of it, thus denying you ownership of your body.

[bravoyankee]

I'm all for producing and exchanging goods, but with a deeper respect for nature and to the mutual benefit of all.

Most decisions being made about your water supply and the limited natural resources in your area do not include your input and are not for your benefit. That is the face of capitalism today.

[philwelch]

> A culture can stop being capitalistic and consumer-driven without becoming a fear driven dictatorship.

Do you have an empirical example of this?

[bravoyankee]

I'm not an expert on alternative economies (sorry) but I can name a capitalist consumer-driven society that is controlled by fear of their government.

[mseebach]

> I'm not an expert on alternative economies (sorry)

You don't have to be an expert, but you did assert that is was possible. That usually implies some level of empirical evidence.

> but I can name a capitalist consumer-driven society that is controlled by fear of their government.

So can I, but luckily correlation doesn't imply causation.