If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
Essential support for under 25s
Essential support for under 25s
Take a look around and enjoy reading the discussions. If you'd like to join in, it's really easy to register and then you'll be able to post. If you'd like to learn what this place is all about, head here.
Comments
what is so wrong in working in the fields?
Did you study this, or invent it?
suerly you can do better than change the subject?
There's a fair bit of theory on "egalitarian societies" - maybe they're all wong, maybe not.
And it was a direct response to your statement - not changing the subject at all.
I guess if you think that human beings are cavemen that can't modify their behaviour, then you have one world view. If you think that humans are capable of adapting their behaviour you have another.
Mine is the latter.
i know from experience how an individual can change but see no signs of it on a lrger scale ...in fact i see the world getting more and more selfish by the day so i'm afraid the theories will remain no more than pipe dreams.
nowt wrong with hoping and dreaming though.
Oh dear oh dear.
I rather think that having control over your own means of production is rather more empowering than being forced to work for a pittance in a factory making trainers for the west.
And if you don't think people are forced (either physically or economically), I suggest you find out a bit more about it...
:rolleyes:
Yes - and?
Do you think calling me pathetic will make it nice, benign and tolerant?
You're crap at the ad homs - marginally better at the debate - stick to the latter, eh?
Anyway, we were discussing "the meaning of work"
Have we got anywhere with it yet?
Haven't you got anymore to say? Are you saying that capitalist society is tolerant and benign?
Criticising modern capitalism without providing an improved alternative is utter nonsense.
Is it?
Says who?
if you can't answer then say so.
you conveiantly move on ...
I don't see what my ideas about the way forward have to do with it - I do have some, and I'm choosing not to share them.
And I don't think anyone has moved on, on this thread. Those who thought capitalism was benign and tolerant at the start of it, still do so. Those who didn't, still don't.
And we definitely haven't established anything about "the meaning of work," which is what the thread really is about, I believe.
saying wood isn't a good material to build an engine with, would surely lead on to why ...and what is better.
Except that there isn't any kind of agreement that there is a problem here, so I don't see any point in discussing alternative scenarios when the majority appear happy with what they've got.
I doubt very much that an alienated, atomised, greedy, authoritarian society is going to turn into anything better ........
As for tolerent... I think that maybe we could look at two areas... One being laws and the other people's attitudes... I mean you can abide by a law and not agree with it, aye?
To be honest I think that the majority of laws in the UK are sound when reguarding equal opportunity and we don't exactly have the death penalty and jail... from what I've read is hardly as bad as say... the jails in Cuba...
However, as far as attitudes are concerned, with papers like the Sun creating smoke screens and blaming our problems on minority groups.... It ain't that hard to see where prejudices arise from.
Is capitalism fair? is it bollocks, but it's the way the UK is. There will always be people on top controlling those less affluent through the media... Thus the working man who earns a fiver an hour and perhaps might be unhappy with the situation he lives will be able to legitimise his pain by picking oin whoever the fat cats are scapegoating at the time... If that makes sense...
Just my opinion.
Subsistence farmers are not empowered, what could make you think this? :crazyeyes
Subsistence farming is the lowest from of economic existence, the vast majority of the people in the world who live in poverty are subsistence farmers.
Western society is rich today because our ancestors worked for low wages in factories, would you rather we were still at the level of the 17th century?
Would you personally rather be a subsistence farmer than do the job you do now? Of course not..........
There are many problems with how developing countries industrialise, many areas where peoples lives could realisitcally be made better but the baisc tenent that to become a rich country like ours then a poor country must go through a phase of industrialisation where workers are likely to be low paid etc is true, and cannot be avoided.......
we had the biggest and wealthiest empire this world has ever seen ...we still live on that wealth to a degree to this day.
by the way ...people are still working in factories for fucking buttons ...fighting for a minmum wage etc etc.
No
Western societies are rich because they industrialised, thus they produced a lot of stuff, which they sold, thus having lots of money....
Plundering resources etc, is no use if you don't have factories etc.
Why do you think Germany (small colonial empire) is richer than Portugal or Spain (vast colonial empires)?
yes but many african countries that were thriving hundreds of years ago are now in ruin
It would also be wrong however to suggest that the state of many African nations is 'all our fault' or that the state of these nations before we arrived was particulalry good either.......
Did anyone suggest that?
The fact remains we take twice as much out in debt repayments as we put in in aid, we continue to plunder raw materials at ridiculously low prices, bring them here, process them and sell them back at super inflated prices.
And we continue to hold whole societies hostage to an economic system whose core values are anathema to their culture.
I challenge you to seperate out any single political development in post-colonial Africa and show that the west had no part in it.
I'm not talking about subsistence farming - I'm talking about people having control over their own lives.
There is nothing inevitable about it at all - collectivisation can work.
Well yes just above the bit of mine you quote?
Yes exactly so the development of industry is vital, thankyou for agreeing.......
What exactly is anathema to which developing countries?
Industrialisation is a requirement of development, the road to riches, this is pretty much a fatc, does matter if it is free-market or communist etc, industrialisation is necessary.......
What kind of control are you talking about?