Because the assumption that your “dreams” are to make as much money as possible
It’s worse than that. Most people dream of the financial freedom to pursue their interests. Making as much money as possible is the common theme, but it is a means to an end. People dream of vacation homes and sports cars and parties and material things, for sure, but those material things are tied to interests. People want to relax, and have fun, and engage in hobbies, and have loved ones. The insidious lie is that we must all earn the right to have those things.
The more insidious part is they want you to think they HAVE earned their vast wealth. They have not. They never have.
I think the dream has become so far off and unachievable that the material representations of it (houses, cars, parties) replace the actual goal itself. We’ve put the cart so far in front of the horse that we’ve forgotten the actual purpose of the cart.
Well, and I would say even basic necessities have become so far out of reach that they replace the dreams. People long for not being victims of scams and predators, a place to exist without cost, food, and safety.
Wouldn’t this be the case for any system that we could live under? There are always things that are needed to be produced (like food), so the system would have to prioritize those before allowing for more less-important things (like art and such). The amount of stuff that is needed to run modern society is pretty huge, so the positions that are left open for art and such would be pretty small, since those aren’t required for the existence of the system you live under. Of course they are needed for societal stuff, but that doesn’t matter if everyone dies of hunger due to a lack of farmers.
The only way I see this changing is to automate the tasks that require the most amounts of humans to do that job, thus opening more places further up the “importance pyramid”. And by importance pyramid, I mean the hierarchy needed job, where the lowest is the most important for the continued existence of the system and the top is less important.
Here’s examples of my argument for the two main political systems that seem to be around here (socialism and capitalism).
Under capitalism supply and demand would steer us to make the important stuff before the less important stuff, since if there’s no people to buy the products that are made, there’s no point in making them. So the markets steer towards the more important stuff. Of course we could go around and around on the semantics of this way of thinking, but that’s the simplified version of this.
Under socialism the same laws of supply and demand would apply, but this time it isn’t the “invisible hand of the market” who makes the decision, but the state, the councils, or whatever ruling structure is in your flavour of leftism. There’s just no getting around the demands that current society makes in order to run properly.
So it all boils down to supply and demand. There’s is always going to be less demand for art when compared to food or medicine.
You have so many concepts wrong I don’t know where to begin… Socialism is distinctly not when the government controls part of the market.
The entire point of the post is that capitalism creates gross incentives that do not line up with life’s needs… and you try to retort with, “but life has needs tho…” You have successfully failed to understand the entire point.
Maybe that’s why you still say utterly wrong things like, “Under capitalism supply and demand would steer us to make the important stuff before the less important stuff…” Which is EXACTLY THE OPOSITE of what is being said in the post. Congratulations on literally missing every aspect of the point.
There is a third option, which Prof Wolff calls “21st century socialism”, which is to force all companies to be worker-owned cooperatives. Kind of a best-of-both-worlds, since I think leaving everything up to the state (mass centralization of decision making power) will inevitably lead to corruption, and leaving power in the hands of the owner class will also inevitably lead to corruption.
