I just don't understand what I'm supposed to do with these "capitalism is the ruling class" drive-by comments. Like.. so what? I like my iPhone and getting bread from the grocery store. I like that in America as flawed as it is I can post funny pictures of the most powerful person we elect. Many people hold up capitalist countries like Sweden or Norway as examples of good governance, yet they also serve their "capitalist masters". What am I supposed to do here? Not vote? Demand that we dissolve the government?
Why would you need to do anything? I mean, unless you're a hardliner anarchist, you accept that there always will be a class of people in power. Whether they buy the power with money, seize the power with violence, get it handed to them due to being born in a certain family matters little, in my opinion. The important part is setting up a system where the powerful cannot abuse their power to the detriment of society and where the lower classes have some basic rights guaranteed. Before you do set up a system like that, you unfortunately need to first educate the lower classes enough for them to realize that they want and need such a system in place. And that's the hard part, a main issue when talking about some Asian democracies, and a thing you're missing, I think.
I agree with what you wrote, but I'm not sure why you would think that I'm missing anything.
I think many who post comments alluding to this nebulous capitalist ruling elite would say that education of lower classes is tainted by capitalist dogma and therefore would be invalid. Who writes the textbooks? Capitalist businesses seeking to make a profit. Who approves the textbooks? Oh the capitalist ruling elite. Etc.
The reason I am asking these questions is because I keep seeing drive-by comments about "capitalism" and "ruling elites", and I'm trying to understand what other countries out there have different ruling elites (or none) and what the call to action is. Some complain that the "people" aren't in charge and instead it is these capitalist masters/elites. Are there any countries where the people are actually in charge? What does that mean for the people to be in charge?
Or are people just trolling and trying to aggravate others with these types of comments?
Because your other comments were rather light in content, you know? It's hard to piece together a full picture of what you mean without you taking the time to actually write it down... :)
To be perfectly honest, I can't help you here - I have no idea what does it matter whether the ruling class is capitalist, aristocratic, teocratic, military, or whatever other ways of getting power there are. Maybe people think that some ways of getting power are... I don't know, inherently better in the moral sense? Is that really important?
I think what matters is how the ruling elite behaves. The drive-by comments about how it's capitalism that makes workers in SK miserable are severely misguided, in my opinion. Reading - as a hobby - about history of East Asia, I would say it's the opposite: the ruling class became capitalist, without really changing their behavior, or (the most important part) the reasons underlying their behavior and acceptance of it by society at large.
I thought you're missing that bit, because you focused heavily on the ruling elite being this or that, while I think the topic here is not about what it is, but what it does, and how the other people view and react to what the elites do. You mentioned America/USA, so I wanted to point out the huge difference between the thinking of the majority in the "land of the free" on their minority elites vs. in South Korea and some other Asian countries.
Because I don't see a huge difference between capitalists or other kinds of elites, I missed the reason why you focused on that part of the argument. At best, I thought the comments about evil capitalists were a kind of virtue signalling (look, that's what capitalism wants for all of us! we need to do something! or something like that). I don't think anyone did that to aggravate anyone or you personally, it's just that people often don't have the 2 cents to add to the discussion, but still want to do it, so they borrow a talking point (a dime a dozen) and throw that in.
I guess you can cry about apple removing the flag icon? I don't know what you want. I'm just answering a question you asked.
You asked this: "Who is the ruling class in non-capitalist countries? "
I answered this: "For any country, ask yourself whose interest the government/military/media/etc exists to serve. I'll give you a hint. It's never 'the people'. In capitalist countries, it's to serve the interest of capital. In monarchies, it's to serve the interest of the monarch. In communist countries, it's the serve the interest of the party. God knows what north korea is. A communist monarchy?"
My response wasn't about capitalists or capitalism. My response was about the ruling class for any country. You are so agenda driven you only see what you want. You asked a question, I answered and you are crying about what other people wrote. Not what I wrote.
Have you considered exercising the right to found a new nation? Or exercising the right to peacefully revoke consent to be governed? Or perhaps abandoning preferences so that your likes/dislikes aren't so determined by capitalism?
> Have you considered exercising the right to found a new nation? Or exercising the right to peacefully revoke consent to be governed?
Like as in have I considered actually doing it? No not really. As far as I know there's no new land in the world where anyone can lay a claim to. All of the world's governments have claimed all land in the world, so to found a new nation you have to create a new monopoly on violence for a given geographic area, and that's hard to do.
> Or perhaps abandoning preferences so that your likes/dislikes aren't so determined by capitalism?
So I don't see how this is connected to your other sentence. If you replaced capitalism with government then I think that would make sense. Bringing capitalism into this doesn't make any sense to me.
