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gdpr-28941066 In reply to Emeres [2015-01-09 06:51:45 +0000 UTC]

Capitalism has its pros and cons just like any other economy. But it can't really be fair to say any other intelligent life form is more or less intelligent than humans. I'm counting on human's inevitable visits to various exoplanets to confirm or deny it (at least one of them has to harbor life), by which time, unfortunately, we'll both most likely be dead. A shame...

But this mall reminds me of Gallente Prime, just without all the wavy lines and green paint.

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Emeres In reply to gdpr-28941066 [2015-01-09 09:29:21 +0000 UTC]

I should have been more specific then, my bad. Any life form capable of interstellar travel, which I too quickly assumed and associated here, should know better. The probability of such achievement without a sustainable economy seems to be zero. But again, my assumption of the topic was a little misaligned, thank you for pointing that out. You refer to capitalism, but do not specify which capitalism[s implementation] it is you are referring to. The present economic system is highly inefficient by design, the social structure differs just as much from place to place, but overall their combination is plainly miserable everywhere. Over the history of humankind it went through different stages in different places, but the underlying concept of taking advantage of each other for profit, stayed the same: inefficient, unsustainable and ethically questionable. We might find out at some point in time, yes. But certainly not with help of the current system.

Interesting point you raise. There are actually some researchers hoping in delaying death long enough to get research to the point where it get be delayed once more, and so on. We are supposed to reach that level of technology and progress in medicine in near future, so some of us may actually have this possibility.

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gdpr-28941066 In reply to Emeres [2015-01-09 21:46:17 +0000 UTC]

I should have specified what kind of capitalism, my bad. Mixed capitalism (some government intervention), like what is used in the US, has benefits like a free economy where anything can be sold (the mixed part comes in bans on stuff like cocaine, etc.) which gives the people lots of options. The private firms in a capitalist economy are likely to take advantage of the global market, so manufacture low in other countries and sell high where they're based, creating trends and/or cheaper products for the people. And of course, capitalist markets hardly run out of a product for long; there will always be stuff imported. Then you have things like how easy capitalist economies are to bottleneck and monopolize, it creates wealth inequality among those who own firms and those who work at them. But the most inefficient factor is that a millionaire who receives another million dollars from his job is not as affected as if the public transit or health care (struggling systems in the US) got that million dollars; that's a byproduct of the wealth inequality, it creates an elite social class that controls the majority of the wealth (which has its own ups and downs).

While there's no way to tell if any interstellar civilization has gone through the same history that ultimately brought about capitalism in the West, I'd like to think that they did away with currency, because it certainly is possible (however unlikely it would be).

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