Comment Re:The only way to fix it is to fix the rewards (Score 1) 75
We don't have to call it communism if it hurts too many snowflake butts. We can call it collective ownership of the means of production or we can say major corporations of a particular size should be majority employee-owned, so as to better include the people who produce the wealth by their labor in the utilization of that wealth for the better of all, rather than it being consumed by the extravagant (and greenhouse gas heavy) lifestyles of the few already morbidly wealthy. Not just RSUs and other tricks of finance to make people think they have real equity in a company, but actual owning, voting shares.
We should definitely shift to renewables and stop looking for more new and harmful ways to get at the last million barrels of oil in a reservoir, etc. The story we're being fed since at least the 80's is that we'd all die without oil. We use it for so many things and processes that we need to continue extracting at such a rate as not to cause a global collapse. So that is what we're doing, exactly as the industry wants to keep profits growing. Capitalism is not democracy. The US and countries that claim to be democracies should keep capital investment out of politics. Capital is short-sighted for the most part, and does not take into account a long-view of what the majority of humans on the planet want, which is to survive as a species. We don't ultimately know how to do that, but we can see what obvious mistakes we're making on the scale of decades and centuries and correct them.
Well, to clarify, since we're. worried about communism versus capitalism, the US is in no way shape or form capitalism. It is a mixture of corporatism and (cover the kid's ears folks!!) socialism. Don't believe it? Tax dollars, quite a few of them in fact, go to things like free laptops and smartphones for the low income, subsidized fuel oil, medicare, medicaid, free food for Women, Infants and Children as well as Food stamps, Section 8 housing, where low income people pay a very small amount per month, while the Government pays the rest. When you are in a 2000 dollar apartment and paying 200 dollars a month, government is picking up the tab. Free or very reduced internet. Free buses for the poor and retired people. If you live in an area without bus service, you can call and get a free ride and return. May older and poor use this service to get back and forth to doctors and other appointments. This even in some very red states.
Doesn't sound much like capitalism to me. I am not opposed to such things. I am not claiming that there are not some economic issues we have. But it creates cognitive dissonance in people that get their facts from our adversaries.
But yeah - there is a middle ground. Collective ownership can work as long as people understand there has a be a group of business savvy people running the business. That said, what I have seen in life is that many to most people don't actually have that savvy.