liobits:

johnskylar:

scotsdragon:

crazyeddieme:

apersnicketylemon:

“Capitalism made your-”

No. LABOUR made it. LABOUR made my phone, my laptop, the internet, this website, my clothing, my house, all social media, and everything else. LABOUR makes things, Capitalism doesn’t because economic systems don’t ‘make’ anything, they just determine who gets paid for making things.

LABOUR made all this stuff out of what, exactly?

Well phones and laptops are made out of plastics and rare metals.

The internet is made up of a very lot of devices similar to the phones and laptops called computers that have been networked to each-other.

This website and social media are largely made up of information stored magnetically or optically on the various aforementioned devices, as well as the various electrical signals that get passed between them. 

Clothing is made largely of cloth.

Houses are usually made out of bricks. 

None of them are made out of capitalism or money. 

While that’s true, it’s genuinely hard to find new and inventive arrangements for raw materials with labor alone. Which means there’s a good reason to have a set of people who have time to think about things and try them out without needing an immediate finished product. Capitalism, despite its huge and damaging externalities, has a serviceable way of supporting such activities, and if it is going to eventually be replaced, the replacement should have a way of doing this too.

That set of people is ‘researchers’. Research is a form of labour and all labour deserves to be compensated. Capitalism certainly isn’t the only way to support researchers, let alone the best way. In fact, capitalism supports the production of biased (aka shitty) research since emphasis is placed on profitability instead of utility. ie. A super cheap new method to produce an important medication would be very useful to society, but not necessarily profitable to a company.