this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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I knew someone once who thought capitalism was basically all forms of commerce. Like there was no trade before capitalism i guess. Don't understand how they thought the world worked for most of the last few thousand years.
Course a distressingly number of people in this thread seem to think similarly. Which makes me sad for the world.
Here's the problem: if capitalism is essentially just a remix of mercantilism and industrial manufacturing, then it's not something fundamentally new. If it's not something fundamentally new, then it is not itself going to lead to anything else fundamentally new; that is to say: the belief in a future utopia DEPENDS on a history being an arrow instead of a circle. The more you tie capitalism back to earlier eras, the more you erode the belief that there is something better coming after the Bell riots.
It's all just a remix. Always has, always will be.
Amen, brother. We're trapped in an endless cycle of slavery, beheadings, liberation and creeping servitude. The long arc of history bends not towards justice but back towards itself.
Unfortunately I have to decline that "amen". I take the "brother, tough, bro!
We're better off than before enlightenment hit us... We are in fact better off than humans have been at any other point in history.
My point is: Let's take the bad shit (e.g. wealth and power concentration creep) and work (the "remix") on those parts and try to not destroy the wealth (e.g. ultra low infant mortality rate) we build on the way to here.
Are we better off spiritually or socially? The modern world is emotionally, existentially and socially bleak. Life expectancy does not indicate happiness except to say that people aren't killiing themselves early.
Ask a mother if she would trade half her kids for a natural lifestyle.
But yes, that's the question... I think I take modern life over endless struggles and getting eaten by a lion.
And just to be clear: pretty much all of existence between "settling" and now has been worse in almost all regards compared to now!
If you want what I'm reading from your statement, you have to consider the old style (semi-) nomadic lifestyle that's natural to us
Ask a modern woman if she even wants to have kids.