Would the future be now if it wasn't for capitalism?

Would the future be now if it wasn't for capitalism?

All "sci fi" tier technology is possible but at the cost of xxx billions or trillions of dollars.

such as anti-matter and mass drivers

why is this? and would say a different economic model just get rid of cost?

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marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/12/project-cybersyn.html
lockheedmartin.com/us/ssc/mars-orion.html
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Capitalism got us to this point. How would another system even theoretically do better? Does everyone just throw their excess money into research and development?

>dude warp drive xD
This is why we need a free market, so scientists who know what they are doing can accumulate capital and invest it in something that is actually feasible without having to ask someone with no understanding of it for permission.

Go ask Veeky Forums how much a contemporary anti-matter and mass drive would cost.

Sure, you could just enslave millions of people and force them to produce the materials needed and have a team of scientists whose payment for their work is they get to keep living. That would cost you very little. I'm sure in your fantasy world you would be one of the guys in the government palace and not in the slave mines or working for the glory of the state at gunpoint.

Don't be silly. Science needs regulation or things could turn nasty.

shit man, planned economies a-la state capitalism literally got people into space before capitalists did, in literally

Imagine if America had more state funded projects into great things. Like continued space funding. Or medical research. Or national laboratories.

That's essentially "nationalistic" economy.

They have all of these things already.

The only thing that worked about project cybersyn were the telex machines that have less computing power than an iphone today: marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/12/project-cybersyn.html

not but like imagine if they spent the whole military budget on NASA

remember when dumb amerisharts defunded the national science foundation, national institutes of health, DARPA, and every other research agency because muh Jesus

And also remember when they shut down all the private sector research at SpaceX and Lockheed Martin and other aerospace firms into these areas and shut down all the quantum computing research at IBM

But they're in a greatly underfunded state right now.

Those are only funded in small sparks by great political upheaval.

Lockheed Martin spends extra cash from its weapons contracts on this kind of R&D, ex: lockheedmartin.com/us/ssc/mars-orion.html

I agree that it's underfunded, but it's not like we aren't doing anything in it and the rest of the world is ahead of us

But then the rest of the world would need their own militaries.

gas the aliens space war now

not only that, but global mineral supply chains that enable most high tech research to happen would also fall apart without the US military defending international trade

You are an idiot.

...

none of the things they put in space came back alive

A general free market, not an ancap meme market.
Many soviet generals and party elite were competent enough to understand the basics of space exploration and how it might benefit the military, they could build and test a new rocket or fighter jet prototype to confirm that the engineers aren't bullshitting them and they could pour most of the capital resources of the country into it, however they could not manage the development of something like cancer drugs where trials can last a decade, they have no idea what they are looking at through a microscope and sometimes might not work despite being worth the risk. Like voters they don't understand it and would never allow it or they would give resources to someone like Lysenko who only tells them what they want to hear.

A free market was never designed to be a utopia, it doesn't completely eliminate corruption and incompetence, what it does is protect highly intelligent and educated scientists and their property from the masses who would throw a tantrum like a chimpanzee and destroy their laboratory just because they feel like it, it's human nature, also in some ways our culture glorifies and tries to justify this behavior. Science is also pretty utilitarian so it is not an ordeal for them to obtain the necessary capital.

No one in a free market in their right mind would invest in a jet powered biplane crop duster, however someone in the politburo thought it was a good idea and had their engineers build one then obligated their industry to manufacture them.

They worked, however they weren't very efficient.

how do you think the modern era started
the steam engine and textile machines were invented by private individuals, not government research agencies

>and would say a different economic model just get rid of cost?
No, that's retarded. The cost is still there - all the work, all the materials, all the research - it's just harder to measure. It's just less relevant if you have a communist or other dictatorship, because it either gets done or doesn't get done and how much it costs isn't necessarily a major factor.

>Would the future be now if it wasn't for capitalism?

We'd still have feudal lords and a military elite, stomping over tradesman and craftsman, technology would be about 200 years back in terms of development and a state religion would mandate most of your lives.


Nation states would not exist and territories swapped over border disputes and wars.

Central authority would have cycles of being dis empowered and absolute.

Most probably industrial revolution would be severely limited pre-19 century china for a reference.

On the other hand we'd still have swords floating around, so that's a plus.

USSR technical prowess was at a cost of the general population and any edge they had subsided in the 70ties, vehicles, trains, computers, factories... everything produced was sub-par compared to the west, as an eastern european I can confirm it

while people were waving flags for the glorious cosmonauts, they did not have score of basic commodities stored to be purchased and were looking at the west abundance with awe

god damn geans and trainers were considered high status clothes because the glorious communism did not have the knowhow and the will to make it's own


seriously, go fuck yourself

lol.

Me? The guy who says that Russia didn't win the space race?

The Soviets did pretty well for themselves with space/rocket technology. In many eyes they had a better space program than America.

At the cost of lower living conditions. Not worth it. It was more of a very expensive advertisement regarding communism.

Cybersyn was shit.

money is just a measurement for work, changing the economic model would change the amount of work needed. Also, it seems that capitalism is beneficial to technological progress.

t. Pinochet

It really was shit. Technologically impressive, but practically useless.
And yeah, as a Chilean, I have to admit Pinochet did nothing wrong.

>changing the economic model wouldn't change the amount of work needed
sorry, my bad

>practically useless

It's no surprise that you are indeed a Pinochet supporter.
The importance of project Cybersyn lay in the fact that it could constitute a new paradigm for the planing of the socialist economy that may have been more successful than the Soviet economic model. That's why the US and the Chilean forces that they backed didn't want it to go into fruition.
Of course if you are a politically biased Pinochet supporter you will never admit that.

Yes, I know what it was supposed to do, but the fact is that such a system has been useless.
And no, the US and the Chilean opposition opposed the government as a whole because it was a disaster, not because of some shitty useless technology.

"All sci-fi tier technology is possible" Nah

Capitalism solely focuses on profit, so probably better under socialism.

>what are mutually beneficial outcomes
Making a more fuel efficient automobile will make you more profits as people will buy it to save money on fuel and most importantly hurt the competition which will pour money into fuel-saving technology so that they could compete with this new fuel efficient car you just produced. No, this isn't the perfect system nor the most efficient and it has its own problems but it literally works compared to anything else ever tried. In socialism you get because there's no self-selection process and ultimately breeds inefficiency and wastefulness to a much higher degree. Maximizing profit means being as efficient as possible, within the confines of the law, with the resources at your disposal. Again, it's not perfect because its used by humans and humans are not a hive mind, they're everything from greedy, power hungry to overly empathetic or full blown psychopaths so to expect it to be perfect is retardation in itself.

Now, in theory, a centralized system that can take each and every variable in account (for all intents and purposes- a God) will be more efficient, there would be no parallel research (competition), all the resources would be allocated and used with 100% efficiency and everyone would take the common interest above their own. In real life, they end up getting run by Stalins, Hitlers, Pol pot's, etc. People literally have to be retarded to advocate a change to this shit. At least people 100 years ago couldn't turn back and evaluate 100 years of socialism in numerous different states and time periods and say "yup, we should try again"

>in many eyes they had a better space program than america
All of those eyes happen to be tankies

If you'd actually know some history you'd know that nothing propels discovery and advancement like trade. So yes, you need capitalism.

>science is utilitarian
The scientific method is not a philosophy

We get a NEW flipping iPhone with more luxury than ever every year and you retards are whining about not living in the future?

It literally is.

>you could just enslave millions of people and force them to produce the materials needed
Like we already do, under capitalism?

Yeah, these capitalist fat cats locked me in this labor camp hell hole, send help

I was referring to contemporary examples like DRC or Uzbekistan. Western companies buying resources from dictators and stateless warlords who literally force people to mine and harvest resources for no compensation. Speaking of your reply, many south asian sweatshops are forced labor camps.

I like how capitalism is at fault for someone breaking the law (both international and local), as if warlords and nobility are a capitalist phenomenon. Top kek.

>muh sweatshops
Good thing communist China doesn't have them.

>capitalism is at fault
It is, capitalists are aware of the exploitation and misery that goes on in those kind of places. It's their money that keeps the various opressors in power. They even prefer the arrangement because it keeps the prices of resources and manufacturing low. Capitalists even get their money back because those same parties that provide cheap production are also customers for things like technology and infrastructure.

>It's their money that keeps the various opressors in power
No, the people there do, their dictators do. Not 'capitalism'. Its not the fault of capitalism that their wealth is being stolen by someone trough force as if in their absence wealth will cease to be stolen.

>muh conspiracy theories about how capitalism is keeping shitholes down

As a capitalist you should be familiar with supply and demand. If not for the capitalists, who would the dictators and warlords do business with? They don't have the industries or markets to make use of the stuff they're producing, a lot of stuff is only a valuable export because western companies wanted to mass produce something.
>muh conspiracy theories about how capitalism is keeping shitholes down
The IMF is real and its effects on poor countries are well documented.

>Good thing communist China doesn't have them.
>China
>communist

good meme

Supply and demand is not a capitalist phenomenon you dolt. Moreover you insists its my fault, for buying chinese goods, and not the fault of people who are directly exploiting and forcing them into their state of affairs as if their exploitation will stop when the demand ceases, as if the people who are exploiting them are doing it for the sake of exploitation and not to further their own material gain and would continue to do so regardless of 'capitalism' but instead of farming cocoa they'd just have good old fashioned slaves and servants in their mud castles. Thus you even fail to understand the inherent problem of any system-that of being run by humans who are flawed and capitalism is literally the best thing to have happened to humanity.
tl;dr You're an idiot.

>isn't my kind socialism so isn't real socialism
>>>/pol

Let me quote myself:
>As a capitalist you should be familiar with supply and demand
I shouldn't have to explain something like this to you, but I am implying that capitalists accept the existence of supply and demand, not that they invented it. Anyway, let's go back to the original argument in , the claim that without capitalism people would be made to work at gunpoint, like slaves, in inhuman conditions and so on. This is of course incorrect, because those practices still exist and have been integrated into capitalism. That is, capitalism expanded into these places and found the favorable conditions that could serve it. Wherever capitalists did not play a part in the creation of the oppression or exploitation, they still chose to take advantage of it. This has actually made things worse, because now what used to be local circumstances have become parts in abstract global economic processes. The workers at the very bottom have even less power over their situation. Capitalism doesn't do shit for them except provide more abstract explanations for why they have to be treated like shit.

What? There's a clear definition of socialism, modern China doesn't count into it. USSR definitely does though, in all variants of it even if it failed in the end.

It's a framework from which to derive certain truths, but it doesn't say that it is the end all, be all of reality.

True.

>There's a clear definition of socialism
t. illiterate marxist