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A big reason we have so many people struggling to get by is our piss-poor public education system. Kids aren't taught anything about money, and get into the real world set up for failure.
They get into massive school loans, many times not knowing what they really want to study, and most of them never even work in their chosen field.
And the government is largely responsible for that.
Yes, in a way the government is responcible for setting up this situation - of course this situation is due to an attempt to shift government spending away from social programs and towards "business incentives".
The situation you describe subjectivly for students is no different than in the post-war era: many students didn't know what they wanted to do, didn't learn marketable skills etc. But did they end up in debt? No, because the situation was different, more jobs were available at better relative pay and benifits for less work, public education was a priority of the capitalists so they opened it up (this was also due from social movements that fought for equal eduction and and end to segregated eduction etc) and a whole generation of workers went to college unlike their parents. It's a systemic problem, it's due to the interests of the people who run the system (like bill gates, for example, who gave millions to promote the privitization of public education) - they still need skilled workers, they just want us to subsidize it and go into debt which will then make us more willing to work for less and settle for less when we get out of school with massive debts. Would all those students working unpaid internships do that by "choice"? They rarely did in the 60s when you got paid for entry-level jobs!
So student indecisiveness didn't change the laws on student loans making it more appatizing for vulture creditors, Liberal Arts majors didn't cause tuitions to double in California public schools in less than a decade.
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People are not equal to begin with.
Nor should they be, but that's not a justification of slavery or feudalism or capitalism which are not inherent systems, but ways of organizing production and society. So again, this has nothing to do with induvidual differences, this has to do with relations in a particular system which maintain some as masters with lots of social power and others as powerless and dependant on the masters in order to secure a living.
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In reality, it's just a way for people to choose what they want to do, and not be limited by others around them that may not want to work as hard, or have the same aspirations. Really simple actually.
No it's not - that's like saying an atom bomb is a wonderful mode of transportation for B-52 pilots in cowboy hats. Capitalism has never been about "choice" for much of anybody (though the rich and powerful do get some more choice than the rest of us) it's mearly a way of accumulating profits. When capitalism was established and people still had a choice of living off the land or earning a wage, what did people choose: living off the commons or on the frontiers. In England and other places they had to close off the land and close off acess to wild animals (now "poaching") and gathering berries and firewood. They raised armed men to prevent people from gathering food, errected fenses and the tasks that people had done on the same land for thousands and thousands of years were now considered "stealing".
So, objectivly, when people actually had a choice, they did not choose wage-labor without cooersion - ironically from your perspective, cooersion by state power in the interests of the merchants and wealthy owners. Besides if people just really liked their job, then our culture would be different (no hating of Mondays, no chain-resturants called TGIF, no office comedy, no workplace shootings, no demoralization, no rude customer service, no absenteeism, no strikes ever, no theft on the job, and a million other little examples of daily frustration and alienation).
2nd, capitalism is based on competion which means, yes, people hold eachother back and sucess for one means not having a job for another, or among capitalists the big fish eat the little. Even for the big capitalists "choice" comes into it very little - they can choose this or that way to increase profits or they personally or the company altogether are out.
3rd, workers get the least amount of choice at all in this process. Rent's due: find any job or husstle you can.
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Yes, in a perfect world nobody would have to work and we could all just sit home and weave baskets or go swimming. And surprisingly, there are many people genuinely love what they do for a living.
If I was magically transported back to the 1940s, I'm sure without rock and roll or hip hop I could grow to find some jazz I enjoy - however, given the option of other forms of popular music, I don't listen to it at all. The point being that if you have to work for a living, it's only natural to try your best to find an interesting one if you can. If you can't then most people try and make their peace with it - I myself try and find interesting ways to entertain myself and make tasks at work as interesting as I can - I even get a sense of accomplishment from it. But it's not actually fufilling, it's not economically sustainable long term for me as I age, and so on. I make due only knowing that this is my option at the moment.
Work is a necissity, many people like to work on things, be productive and whatnot. The goal isn't to get rid of "work" in the abstract since most of us would still like food and manufactured things and entertainment and so on - our goal is to change the relationship for us as workers to the work we do. Work isn't "bad" because it's hard, it's often hard because that's how someone can squeeze money out of you. It's the squeezing of money and lack of control by workers over what they have to do that's the problem. When people organize production cooperatively and democratically, then I think they will probably be motivated by how to accomplish the necissary tasks in a way that produces quality (since there would be no motive for planned obsolessence) without breaking our own backs.
People do "work" for themselves on hobbies or their home or cars all the time and they figure out a pace that works for them, they do it in a way that please: either fast so they can have more free-time or steadily so they don't strain themselves.
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If our public education system wasn't broken, perhaps more people would be able to profit from their own natural abilities.
No because hireing isn't based on personal skill and aptatude. Did skill-levels just suddenly drop across the board and that's why jobs are scarse in the recession? Or is it that there is no economic incentive to invest and so the way to make money is to sit on what you have until it becomes profitable again and in the meantime, restructure, close-down sections, lay people off, hire new people at less wages for the same jobs since the economy is tough and people will take it.
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Not true. See my above post. You seem to be under the impression that everyone that has a job is miserable.
No, everyone who has a job is exploited and so their efforts and skills no longer belong to them - their efforts and skills go to enrich others while they just maintain.
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And capitalism destroys individuality? I thought you just said we should strive to make everyone equal? I think you have it the other way around..
Yes we should strive to make everyone equal in terms of social power: no aristocrats with god-given rights above us, no capitalists who monopolize the means to survive and force us to beg them hat-in-hand for a job so we can pay our rent to some other capitalist. This is not the negation of induviduality, it is the liberation of all induviduals. The "induvidualism" so often touted in capitalism is nothing but a sick joke: it's mearly the induvidual freedom of the powerful to control the lives of many other induviduals. Go watch some rush-hour traffic or look at all the people who have to wear uniforms or wear their hair in particualr ways and then tell me about the wonders of capitalist "induvidual freedom".
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While it may not be from lack of will, it could likely be from lack of knowledge or experience. Would you happen to know how many of those business owners that had a business fail went on to start a successful one shortly after?
It could be, but even if someone did everything perfectly, most would still fail: why? Because this is how capitalism works - the big fish eat the little fish. Do you want capital to stop circulating? That's what it's all about? How can their be capitalism without constant competition among firms and attempts to control various markets?
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The vision you all seem to be striving for has never, ever been successfully implemented in the world. Because simply put, your vision of communism does not reflect reality. Because human beings have natural tendencies and desires that your "perfect world" doesn't take into consideration.
No, there are many brief examples as well as many more examples of large strikes and movements by workers.
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And while capitalism may not be perfect, even under our lowest standard of living people are still better off than in most third world countries.
?? Capitalism is good because even in the lowest standard of living in some capitalist countries is higher than in most poor capitalist countries?
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If that were not true, why do people keep crossing the border or the ocean to reach the United States? Why don't we ever hear about people immigrating to Mexico, to Cuba, or to Venezuela?
Doesn't that strike you as a little odd?
First, none of these countries are socialist - all three have keynsian policies and two use socialist rehtoric though neither leader of these countries claimed to be a socialist until the US attempted coups against their regimes. I don't know much about Venezuela, but many people do come to Mexico - there's also internal migration within Mexico to the cities. They go to the cities or the border towns or the US for jobs - it's that simple.