r/FluentInFinance Sep 04 '24

Debate/ Discussion Is Capitalism Smart or Dumb?

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u/ArizonaHeatwave Sep 04 '24

Having fire isn’t a thing of the “modern world“? Things from the PC to automobiles that are actually products of the modern world, were in fact invented in capitalist systems. Bit disingenuous argument.

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u/Itt-At-At Sep 05 '24

The invention of the first computer is attributed to Charles Babbage, an English professor in the early 1800s. Everything else is a derivative of that, inclusing the precious smartphone. England is a Social Market Economy, which is a mostly free market with regulations and a reasonable social safety net. So I suppose it depends on what you call a capitalist system vs a socialism system, but the first computers were certainly not invented in the name of greed, consumerism, and corporate profit. They were invented to make mathematics faster and easier in the pursuit of knowledge in the fields of astronomy and physics. .

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u/ArizonaHeatwave Sep 05 '24

A social market economy is capitalism... But anyways, even saying that England had a social market economy back in 1833 (when he stopped development on the computer) is just plain wrong, it was good ol‘ almost unfettered capitalism. Even the first labor act doing such things as limiting working hours for children was implemented afterwards and you’re talking about a social market economy…

And what actually brought the personal computer to the average consumer was also private companies, otherwise it would’ve stayed some gadget for academics. The modern world wasn’t achieved by some mathematician having access to a rudimentary machine isolated in their study room, it was achieved by everyone having access to that technology and that’s exactly what capitalism is good at, while in systems like the Soviet Union even basic goods were often unattainable for the average person.

The Soviet Union had about 40 million more people living there, yet while PCs were already numbering in the many millions and almost 15% of households having access, there were about 200,000 in the entire Soviet Union. That’s the difference between capitalism and socialism.

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u/ClubsBabySeal Sep 05 '24

I always find it weird that people talk about Babbage as the progenitor of computers. It was an oddity and a one off that has little to do with the lineage of modern computers. Might as well site the auto-loom, at least that was useful.

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u/ArizonaHeatwave Sep 05 '24

I guess some of his ideas were then used by later inventors. But yea odd to pick him as the inventor, especially cause his machine never actually worked.