this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2025
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How is this capitalism exclusive?
Not capitalism exclusive, but expected in any system that has strict hierarchy and needs lots of bodies in the lower levels - capitalism needs truckloads of poor people just like petty aristocrats needs serfs. The moment the population of those lower levels start to diminish, they call out for everyone to have more kids.
Maybe if the whole world became equally stratified, at this point is makes far more sense to import workers at the start of their working lives who have already been taught to read and write. Simply provide high enough living standards to compensate for the loss of friends and family and you can get a healthy individual where the capital has already been spent and put them to work
A good example would be the astonishing drop in birth rates in post-Soviet countries. Capitalism, by providing no safety nets, no childcare and no community, makes it very difficult and undesirable to have children.
Plenty of countries have worked hard to provide those things and still have declining birth rates. This take, ignores a lot of the agency that women have won through feminist activism
Famously feminist paradises like modern Russia, Poland or Ukraine you mean? Don't make me laugh, the drops in fertility rates in such countries aren't due to feminism, women now have less rights than 35 years ago in said countries.
I was talking about Sweden, Finland and Canada. Not saying they are prefect, but i am saying that an increase in rights doesn't correspond to an increase in fertility
All of those countries are capitalist, though, how do they invalidate my point about post-Soviet countries?
You're the one who connected falling birth rates to safety nets, childcare and community. I was simply providing evidence that those things don't necessarily translate to an increase in birth rates as might be expected
But we know that both can be major sources of falling birthrates.
I think you accidentally fell face first into my point
We were tasked with showing how capitalism can cause birth rates to fall and find grotesque means to combat that.
And you've shown that how?
The incredible drop in birth rates in post-socialist countries.
What about China and Cuba?
You also haven't drawn a link to how those drops were directly caused by capitalist policies
Both are still socialist, so they haven't had the same economic crisis that going from socialism to capitalism causes.
Secondly, they showed quite clearly that the erosure of safety nets and the general unaffordability of life after the introduction of capitalism is what causec birth rates to drop.
Okay the argument is that the lack of social safety nets and childcare causes a decline in birth rates. Right?
Your argument is that the transition from socialism to capitalism is directly linked to a drop in birth rates? I assume in this particular case you mean the loss of free childcare and social safety nets leads women to avoid having children?
So, in capitalist countries where there is subsidised/ free childcare and more developed safety nets should correspond to an increase in birth rates?
And to expand on that, socialist countries such as China and Cuba should show an increase in birth rates. An i getting this right or am I missing your point
You're confusing several things here that do not all extrapolate from the point that the transition from socialism to capitalism was devastating, and included the erosion of safety nets and social services. Further, capitalist countries like the nordics you referenced earlier fund their safety nets through imperialism, forcing austerity abroad.
It was only proposed in capitalism, so it is.
I guess it's implied that somebody else is making a profit out of the pregnancy, since the mother is brain dead. So if it was a normal thing to do you could imagine clinics perhaps, buying brain dead women and then offering surrogate pregnancies. Or maybe I got it wrong?
No it's that everything is expensive and life is a lot of work but capitalism can't make people fall in love so instead it will try to give birth through corpses.
It's not. It has nothing to do with capitalism. It's some other horror.
Ah yes, the system responsible for the production, allocation and hoarding of every resource and service in our entire civilization, the system that creates every single incentive by which we are motivated or punished, simply must not be responsible for this. It must just be "some other horror."
It's an ethical judgement, not capitalist
What, you think "ethics" is something that exists independently of the social order that creates it? It's capitalist ethics, just like marrying your daughter to some nobleman twice her age in exchange for some cows was feudal ethics.
Your example includes the transfer of wealth in the story and yes I agree it's likely the driving force behind the event.
This OP doesn't have the same pointy capitalist part. It is only being assumed so. I'm not oblivious to the type of community this is but the blind hatred of capitalism is just that. Blind.
Dawg at this point you're just saying words.
What does this even mean?
Love to be accused of being blind by someone who speaks in vague cliches and can't even make a coherent point
I wasn't accusing you directly, and this is social media, not a white paper. The point being that it is easy to just paint "capitalist" on everything and argue how it is bad, however that is a lazy rhetoric and instead feels like just being cynical and fault-finding for the sake of it.
Neither the meme itself or the article it is referring, mention financial gain as the motivator.
I am cynical of capitalism as much as the other, but each story/article should be discussed in good faith with evidence to corroborate any accusation of cause. In this case, I don't agree capitalism is the cause, and if you do, I'm open to discussion if its not in bad-faith.
No, you were just doing it indirectly
Everything that concerns the production, distribution and allocation of goods and services, yes. Because it's the nature of capitalism that it must paint itself onto everything, commodity everything, continuously expand into new "markets", no matter how depraved. Take it up with the economic system that causes this process, not the people pointing it out.
Do you think this hypothetical corpse-breeding industry would somehow not be, you know, an industry? Do you think it would somehow be immune to the all-consuming profit motive that's strangling every other part of life for most of the human race right now? Of course it would be commodified!
Everything? Like everything?
How can anyone have a discussion if you blanket the world in a single argument.
Edit: There are some questionable (more than that, but trying to be polite) surrogate practices in post-soviet countries such as Ukraine/Georgia.
Where I'm from surrogate for financial gain is illegal, and where I'm currently living surrogacy is banned entirely.
What should prevent something like this from occurring in the first place, is ethics, not capitalism. Sure, I agree that any large enterprise in a capitalist environment would be influenced by capitalist tendencies, but the same decisions could be made in a socialist world. That is what makes me say "its not capitalism", as these decisions could be made for a variety of reasons and in this case it doesn’t look to be financially motivated. It may become financially motivated down the line, but you can't blame the economic system at the time.
Damn, sorry to hear about your reading troubles, prayers up🙏
Sigh, I knew you were trolling, but tried not to jump to conclusions. Quick look at your profile and I see you are having several simultaneous bad-faith arguments on multiple threads. I feel stupid for falling for it. Will block and move on.
Barf
"Bad faith is when someone refutes the dumbass capitlalist premises that have brought us to fascism, anyway I will be running away now, making me the victor."
👍
Abusing brain dead people for money is absolutely capitalism
I guess if you assume the worst in people you can make any story fit any narrative.