Fuufu no Hiketsu wa Banshaku Desu - Vol. 2 Ch. 12

[MangaDex]

 

[EggMiner]

My heart stopped for a second when she said "I don't have much time". I thought the author was going to add some terminal illness or something similar.

 

[outinthegardener]

I too see their work-life balance as making it difficult to have kids. Unless you want them raised by maids or to stay home alone all the time.

Besides, they'd really have to cut back on the booze, and that's the only thing keeping their marriage together. "I don't just want alcohol, that's childish. I need it. And when you need something, that's a responsibility." - Meatwad

Don't replace your responsibility to alcohol with responsibility to children!

 

[DemonHide]

There's a lot to unpack here, but we won't go too deep into it. Long story short, the feminist lie of direct competition with men has taken its toll, and there's also the lack of single-income sustainability in no small part due to the doubling of the workforce. Many women step back in their 30's, wanting to be mothers and wives when they realize they've gotten no deep fulfillment and are stressed all the time. Men, meanwhile, shrug off the vast majority of physical and mental strain doing much harder, much more miserable work, though that also wreaks havoc on our bodies and our health. Society did not create the roles, it merely abstracted them so they could be malleable - only to realize that the square peg no longer fits in the round hole.

 

[kngpjn]

With their work-life balance state, hardly spent time together even tho they already married for 6 years (?), having a child isn't really a good idea. Not good, but not bad either. Ofc there will be some change over time from when she's pregnant until raising the child. But the question is, is the change of their situation leads to a better of marriage life or worse marriage life ? Having child at their state of life is like two edges sword and like a big gamble for their marriage life.

 

[outinthegardener]

There's a lot to unpack here, but we won't go too deep into it. Long story short, the feminist lie of direct competition with men has taken its toll, and there's also the lack of single-income sustainability in no small part due to the doubling of the workforce. Many women step back in their 30's, wanting to be mothers and wives when they realize they've gotten no deep fulfillment and are stressed all the time. Men, meanwhile, shrug off the vast majority of physical and mental strain doing much harder, much more miserable work, though that also wreaks havoc on our bodies and our health. Society did not create the roles, it merely abstracted them so they could be malleable - only to realize that the square peg no longer fits in the round hole.

I think I disagree with everything you've said.

1. The doubling of the workforce didn't harm sustainability: it was the ownership class not wanting to pay people for a fair day of labor. Look at how much they tried to suppress wages when only men were hired to do certain work. Look at the history or unions, strike breaking, and labor militancy. Industrial labor conditions in the 1870's improved because workers bled for them. The peak of conditions for labor was during the 1950's, and they've been decreasing ever since. This is because Capital wants to exploit labor for profit.
2. Women stepped back from the workforce because there was an expectation of unpaid labor; childcare, sex work, emotional care. And this was only possible while wages were high enough to support single income families. Many working class families don't get this privilege.
3. No Fulfillment? Stressed all the time? That's every working class person who is a bad day away from homelessness, working under capital dictatorships.
4. Men do more physical and mental strain during work? I don't think it's unique to men. Everyone feels strain selling their labor, when it's the only option.
5. Society absolutely created the roles, because society is a dictatorship of capital. Everything is judged by its profitability to Capital interests, instead of its use or enjoyment by everyday people. That's where the misery comes in.
6. The need for Profit is an abstraction that distorts positive distribution of resources. We overproduce nearly everything to justify profits, while we could cut cut back on profit and distribute resources equitably to provide for everyone. Scarcity is intentional, money is fake, the cruelty is the point.

 

[Bireus]

There's a lot to unpack here, but we won't go too deep into it. Long story short, the feminist lie of direct competition with men has taken its toll, and there's also the lack of single-income sustainability in no small part due to the doubling of the workforce. Many women step back in their 30's, wanting to be mothers and wives when they realize they've gotten no deep fulfillment and are stressed all the time. Men, meanwhile, shrug off the vast majority of physical and mental strain doing much harder, much more miserable work, though that also wreaks havoc on our bodies and our health. Society did not create the roles, it merely abstracted them so they could be malleable - only to realize that the square peg no longer fits in the round hole.

I think I disagree with everything you've said.

1. The doubling of the workforce didn't harm sustainability: it was the ownership class not wanting to pay people for a fair day of labor. Look at how much they tried to suppress wages when only men were hired to do certain work. Look at the history or unions, strike breaking, and labor militancy. Industrial labor conditions in the 1870's improved because workers bled for them. The peak of conditions for labor was during the 1950's, and they've been decreasing ever since. This is because Capital wants to exploit labor for profit.
2. Women stepped back from the workforce because there was an expectation of unpaid labor; childcare, sex work, emotional care. And this was only possible while wages were high enough to support single income families. Many working class families don't get this privilege.
3. No Fulfillment? Stressed all the time? That's every working class person who is a bad day away from homelessness, working under capital dictatorships.
4. Men do more physical and mental strain during work? I don't think it's unique to men. Everyone feels strain selling their labor, when it's the only option.
5. Society absolutely created the roles, because society is a dictatorship of capital. Everything is judged by its profitability to Capital interests, instead of its use or enjoyment by everyday people. That's where the misery comes in.
6. The need for Profit is an abstraction that distorts positive distribution of resources. We overproduce nearly everything to justify profits, while we could cut cut back on profit and distribute resources equitably to provide for everyone. Scarcity is intentional, money is fake, the cruelty is the point.

Lot to unpack here. Let me start with page 12 https://mangadex.org/chapter/1ed0d31d-2945-4e57-a407-b266e7f84b73/11, think she meant someday you will have a baby, not I as her bomb has been planted

 

[EchoGirl]

"Don't give up on alcohol" is wild out of context

I like her dress

Separate is fine but imagine if they accidentally mixed it up

 

[Sanzsaja]

Thanks for the chapter

 

[DemonHide]

Cut for character limit, refer to original post

Everything I've said comes from honest, raw observations from decades of doing blue-collar work and simply keeping my eyes and ears open. Heavy labor, very long hours, brutal conditions, marriage, divorce, loss, abuse, sacrifice. Whatever it is, either I've done it myself for a long time and continue to do it today, or within my large circle of contacts are those who have done it and everything else. General contracting, industrial construction, factory jobs, line work, the various trades, combat, bomb disposal, nuclear engineers, Defense contracting (vehicle and weapon design), aircraft pilots (general, commercial, military), trucking in various capacities, small business owners, national disaster forensics, very high-level Federal agency positions, and much more. I've been around the block, and I'm still a nobody - but if you can think it, I've done it or can bend the ear of someone who has.

Marxism is the ivory tower pseudo-intellectual's favorite and most destructive gnostic dogma. You read "Das Kapital" once and think you have something to say to a well-rounded veteran laborer in the field. I'm the one whose back that disgusting ideology is propped upon, and I've had enough of your feet on my spine. Let's address your counterpoints.

Spoiler

1. Point A: Simple math. Double the people chasing the same dollars means half go jobless, everyone gets fewer dollars, or you print more dollars and the real wage drops like a rock. Now, if the people entering the workforce were superproductive, they can generate more than they draw - that's not what happened. If you expect employers to suddenly dish out double their expenses and gain nothing from it, you're asking the impossible from small businesses and the improbable from larger ones.
   
   Point B: I've never once worked for a unionized institution. I avoid them like the plague because they become filled with grifters, advocating not for the worker (who is not a brainless oaf, and is more than capable of advocating for himself) but for themselves. You either find another job or pay a fee for the privelege of joining. The government and the employer still take their cut, also. Now, I have friends in the trades, mostly electricians, who are unionized. If you get a competent union, it's not so bad. Your hours are decent, and you get paid by seniority and position. But it all depends on whether you have a good crew or not, which is the heart and soul of every job. The position is not the job, the prestige is not the work.
   
   Point C: As for the working conditions, I can tell you've only ever read textbooks on the topic, so take it from someone who still sweats and bleeds daily - it was a hell of a lot worse pre-industry, too. I'd say more people died per capita doing the same work manually vs machine. If a miner died in the tunnels, he had a few hundred pounds of ore to show for it. Thanks to industry, he is both less likely to die and far more productive. Now, as an interesting aside regarding textbooks, I have a college book from the 40's called "Psychology in Industry" by Norman Maier. It's the 1955 edition for the University of Michigan. It's a dry but fascinating read, free of most ideology and focused entirely on how to improve worker productivity with better lighting, lunch breaks, managing a man's work capacity, etc. Highly practical, supremely pragmatic, no tricks, no "Das Kapital", no agenda - just pages filled with superb citations of contemporary and prior technical studies and digestible inferences thereof.
   
   
2. Point A, my experience and that of most men: When I got home after a 13-hour shift moving heavy shit in the blazing sun and rain and mud, I was greeted with a long "honey-do" list of things I had to do, unpaid and unrewarded. I didn't quit working, and I didn't stop the presses because I had to rewire a light fixture or rough in a toilet or hang blinds or put in some cabinets.
   Point B: If a woman who stays home all day, works part time, or does normal white-collar work can't do simple chores without crying oppression, then that only further proves my point - she's not nearly as capable as I am, and her role is different as a result. Childcare is extremely important, and that's why somebody should be home to raise them, and I'm more than happy to get suplexed by the world day in, day out in order to provide her a comfortable and safe place to do it, whether it's the home, neighborhood, or the nation. Sex work is now a choice many young women are all too happy to make, and it's either exploitation or empowerment depending on what day of the week it is, apparently. As far as "emotional care" goes, it's neither quantifiable nor consistent nor unique to women. You can just be a human being and understand it's a normal part of life to manage that, in whatever way works best for you.
   
   
3. Point A: "Capital dictatorships" are voluntary negotiations between employers and employees. It's not what kept me "one bad day" away from homelessness. That happened when my wife took nearly everything from me and years of court battles took whatever was left. I was eventually able to stop the bleeding. My money, my home, and my stuff was still gone, but my smeared reputation had been restored. I had the small, fortunate silver lining of being able to start over clean, unlike far too many men. Most men I know have also gone through something similar, and those of retiring age will never be able to do so thanks to alimony payments or tragic suicide before they ever get the chance.
   
   Point B: Men do get a significant degree of fulfillment from hard work, from being useful, from providing, from accomplishing difficult things, in ways that just don't click with most women. This is why some of my buddies who slogged up and down the steep, rocky mountains of Afghanistan in full combat gear, with no sleep due to being mortared all night, sick with a fever, in 103-degree weather and dodging rocket fire take immense pride in what they've done and almost wish to go back to do it some more. It's also why women, trying to do the jobs that are made for men, struggle to find meaning and purpose in what they're doing, and just like anyone who can't find those things for themselves, it's not long before they quit the whole field entirely. They get all of the stress, none of the fulfillment.
   
   
4. We have a lot more physical and mental strain at work in general, not just a little. It's not comparable. I've done retail during the busiest seasons, I've run tables when the place was packed to the brim. When I helped a buddy manage his business for a while, I was working long hours contacting shipping companies, negotiating with overseas manufacturing partners, and cleaning up financials. None of that compares to when I was putting in 27 hours in a row stacking hundreds of 50-pound bags onto pallets by hand, sleeping in the warehouse for 3-5 hours, and then getting in another double shift doing the same thing. 60-80+ hours a week doing heavy labor at all, much less outdoors, is a hell of a lot harder than chatting up Jenny at the office for a while then going home. At one point I also made the mistake of running a crew of guys for a couple years, about 15-20 of them. That's not quite the mental strain of a civil engineer or nuclear physicist or dosimetrist or a medical doctor (again, all of whom are in my circle of acquaintances), but if you ever had to wrangle several 200-pound gorillas in a way that gets the job done without them or someone else getting killed, you get the idea. You're trying to beat the weather, the clock, the equipment, the materials, the inspectors, the governments, the missing crew, and the language barriers. And if you don't, the entire job gets held up because the other guys can't continue until your part is done. And of course, none of that compares to a good friend of mine who defused explosives overseas in an active warzone over several tours. Talk about mental strain... And no, there's no women in that capacity, because only men are foolish enough to want to go back and do it again. Ha!
   
   
5. Point A: Enough of this nonsense about the "dictatorship of Capital". Profit is the primary measure of success for a business, and it's an important cushion against losses, but we have everything we could want outside of the excesses of corporations and the State. There's no profit in promoting half the shit that companies pretend to care about these days, but there is the favorable position attained with Federal and state governments for driving the agenda. That, in turn, either keeps the company off the hit list or provides boons in the form of other special treatment from the State. That's not "Capital", that's protectionism and favoritism. Even with all of that in mind, you can still choose to go for a nice walk in the neighborhood, take a nap in the shade, watch the stars at night, shoot some guns into a thick berm in the field, make some moonshine and drink with your buddies, chat with your neighbors, and more. It's the government that has a problem if you do those things a certain way, not the corporations. And if you live in the city, my condolences. Get outta there and live free.
   
   Point B: Marxists love to convolute the origin of fundamental sex roles by adding layer after layer of abstraction, to the point where the underlying biological foundations are muddled into obscurity. The sex roles existed long before humans even existed to assign them. While I do concede that there are several societal roles that have been created as technology and communities evolved (or devolved), the roles of father, protector, provider, and of mother, caregiver, nurturer, are not constructs. We are built physically from the ground up to fulfil these particular roles. Form follows function. Men have stronger muscles, denser bones, taller builds, penises, testes, high amounts of testosterone, more aggressive and active dispositions, more stable neurology, etc. Women have wider hips, more body fat, vaginas, lactacting breasts, wombs, higher estrogen, more passive and agreeable dispositions, a more chaotic neurology, etc. There are many more differences, and that's not an accident. We're made to fit the role. When it comes to assigning these roles, it's not a question of whether man or woman, it's a question of which man and which woman. Only in the luxury of the modern age, where the utility of mankind is steadily replaced by our artificial progenitors, is there leeway and tolerance for the occasional pretense of assigning the opposite sex to a role. Naturally, even you can concede that if every man was tasked with giving birth, and no woman was tasked with it, our species ends.
   
   
6. Finally, the last point. This is where it all really falls apart, and where opinion flees reason. So, there is no profit without capital, and there is no capital without ownership, and there is no ownership without private property, and there is no private property without the capture of resources. Ergo, distribute the resources, abolish private property, relinquish ownership, erase capital, destroy profit, commence the revolution. This theorem alone has caused more suffering and death than any other idea post-Enlightenment. If "religion is the opiate of the masses", Marxism is the crystal meth of power-hungry authoritarians masquerading as the People's Champion.
   
   The markets are too productive - that is the criticism, and what a pitiful one it is. Everything you could ever want is available at the best possible price directly at your fingertips. Press a button, and soon an autonomous mini-helicopter plops it at your door. Consumerism isn't pretty, and it may not be "sustainable" in its exact form currently, but nobody is starving by circumstance and every day brings more innovation. Free-market economies have essentially eliminated hunger, and they're robust enough to survive even significant regulatory stifling and once-in-a-lifetime worldwide turmoil. If you think we over-produce, you might be right to some extent. But if you don't want it, don't pay for it. And if you don't pay for it, less is produced or it's produced differently. It's not that hard, in theory.
   
   The problem comes when an entity takes your earnings by force and spends it as it pleases for its own purposes. Northrop-Grumman, General Dynamics Land Systems, BAE Systems, Boeing (McDonnell-Douglas was way more awesome), Raytheon, Moderna, Pfizer, Google, Apple, General Motors, Harvard, Coca-Cola, Viacom, and whoever the fuck else get a lot of my money, even though I don't buy anything from them. All because the State takes from my pocket and "distributes" to itself, its friends, and their preferred voter base. Centrally planned distribution of resources means centrally-dictated value of labor. That's what "equitable" distribution of resources looks like. I work harder, and I get less and less while people who don't work, and who spend like lunatics, get an ever-increasing portion of the resources I bust my ass for. All the while, they are under no obligation to meet any standard of productivity or deserving of any entitlement. I'm not talking about good folks who happen to be injured, ill, or invalid. They aren't the problem and their entitlements don't bother me. However, the nature of humans to choose the lazy, easy way is far too tempting. Eventually, the hard workers won't work hard anymore or at all, and they will collect entitlements from an ever-shrinking pool. They can also continue to work for themselves and their families, acquiring more resources than their neighbors by simply not waiting around for their promised entitlements - upon which the neighbors, whom receive less and less from the State each time because there's fewer and fewer producers, descend on the competent and annihilate the last producers left. And then you get an ugly, genocidal collapse.
   
   Whatever your idea of distribution of resources may entail, it will always fail due to human error, human nature, and simple mathematics. The market does not distribute or dole resources on its own, this much is true, but what it does distribute is the countless complex calculations of real-time supply and demand, at any and all scales. Perhaps several highly-advanced Artificial General Intelligence programs could do this, but I think you'd be quite surprised to find that they likely wouldn't change a whole lot. But that future is shockingly near, so we'll see about that.

This is the longest reply I've ever written on this site, it won't change your mind or anyone else's, and nobody will read this on Chapter 12 of a mild slice-of-life manga anyway. It's the principle of the matter, and more than that, I'll carry it forward elsewhere as needed. The character limit is 15,000 by the way, including spaces.

 

[outinthegardener]

@DemonHide You don't seem to have noticed that you are making plenty of ideological judgements and deflections, ignoring historical events, and fighting straw men. You are interpreting things in a way that suits your values while ignoring how they've affected others. Do you seriously think I've not worked jobs, both blue and white collar? I've framed houses, worked retail, managed retail, taught at colleges, poured iron, ran a press brake, drove delivery. You claim to base your beliefs on common sense and your own observations, then go on to cite events that happened 200 years ago like what you've read about them is obvious to anyone who hasn't read the wrong books.

Point A: Simple math. Double the people chasing the same dollars means half go jobless, everyone gets fewer dollars, or you print more dollars and the real wage drops like a rock. Now, if the people entering the workforce were superproductive, they can generate more than they draw - that's not what happened. If you expect employers to suddenly dish out double their expenses and gain nothing from it, you're asking the impossible from small businesses and the improbable from larger ones.

This is an ideological argument that assumes economics and resource allocation are math, when they are political. An example: As productivity has risen in the late 20th century, wages have largely remained the same. If this were math, then wages should have risen with productivity! But the people who have ultimate power to decide your wages decided to keep the benefits of worker's productivity for themselves. That's a political problem.

Point B: I've never once worked for a unionized institution. I avoid them like the plague because they become filled with grifters, advocating not for the worker (who is not a brainless oaf, and is more than capable of advocating for himself) but for themselves. You either find another job or pay a fee for the privelege of joining. The government and the employer still take their cut, also. Now, I have friends in the trades, mostly electricians, who are unionized. If you get a competent union, it's not so bad. Your hours are decent, and you get paid by seniority and position. But it all depends on whether you have a good crew or not, which is the heart and soul of every job. The position is not the job, the prestige is not the work.

I've seen this complaint about unions being filled with the wrong people, and it ignores the members' need to participate in the union. Unions are a method for workers to advocate for themselves. If you want to show up at your job and accept whatever conditions, then complain the union is not working for you... that's the same as complaining the boss is working for you. People tend to forget, but companies violently fought against union drives. When workers tried to advocate for themselves (which you say is a reasonable solution) companies hired mercenaries, police, or the national guard to try and force them back to work.

Point C: As for the working conditions, I can tell you've only ever read textbooks on the topic, so take it from someone who still sweats and bleeds daily - it was a hell of a lot worse pre-industry, too. I'd say more people died per capita doing the same work manually vs machine. If a miner died in the tunnels, he had a few hundred pounds of ore to show for it. Thanks to industry, he is both less likely to die and far more productive.

Yes, I'm sure you were alive in 1870 pulling coal and didn't need a textbook to tell you all about it. Guess what, mining safety conditions didn't improve because Capitalist mine owners had a change of heart or just needed the right technology. Workers fought and bled to force them to change. Capitalists today are still lobbying the government to eliminate safety laws that were earned by those workers, and workplace accidents are rising. It's not math, it's political.

 

[outinthegardener]

Point A, my experience and that of most men: When I got home after a 13-hour shift moving heavy shit in the blazing sun and rain and mud, I was greeted with a long "honey-do" list of things I had to do, unpaid and unrewarded. I didn't quit working, and I didn't stop the presses because I had to rewire a light fixture or rough in a toilet or hang blinds or put in some cabinets.
Point B: If a woman who stays home all day, works part time, or does normal white-collar work can't do simple chores without crying oppression, then that only further proves my point - she's not nearly as capable as I am, and her role is different as a result.

Your gender essentialism is pretty frustrating. Women also work full time jobs, blue collar jobs, overnight jobs while their partner works days, etc. You seem to think that if people desire different or better labor conditions that's "crying oppression" for them and a sign of capability for you. Take a step back and look at the big picture: there are fewer stay at home mothers doing full time home and child care because there are fewer jobs that pay enough for a single parent to provide for all their needs.

You're also misunderstanding my original point because you lack historical context. The nostalgic romanticization of happy stay-at-home mothers ignores how women didn't use to have as many opportunities to work, own private property, or open bank accounts without their husband's permission. If any of those women didn't like the way their husband treated them, they had fewer alternatives than women do today. When I say women were expected to do sex work, it was non-consensual and unpaid. Husbands could legally rape their wives into the 1990's in the USA.

Point A: "Capital dictatorships" are voluntary negotiations between employers and employees.

It's not a negotiation when the Capitalist has superior leverage. If a Capitalist doesn't want to pay you more, they can find someone who is willing and not hire you. If you refuse to work for any reason, you are unemployed and facing homelessness. That's coercion, not a voluntary negotiation. Here is where I think you misunderstand what "owning the means of production" is.

That's why Capitalists hate unions and cooperatives and the concept of giving workers more leverage. It means they lose power to dictate terms of employment. If you manage to get a chill boss, that's great. But I've had way more bosses that wanted to tell us how to dress, when we could talk, not to rest or get a drink if we were tired, what free speech we were allowed to exercise at work or outside of work, when we had to be there, if we were allowed to take a vacation, etc. I've been fired for asking for a raise before. That's Capitalist Dictatorship. There is a heirachy inherent under Capitalism and it's an authoritarian structure.

Point B: Men do get a significant degree of fulfillment from hard work, from being useful, from providing, from accomplishing difficult things, in ways that just don't click with most women.

This is oversimplifying horseshit. Not all men, not all women. Don't assume the things that you found valuable in work or suffering apply to everyone else the same way. Are you seriously claiming women don't feel satisfaction from accomplishing difficult things? Are you sure you listen when women talk?

We have a lot more physical and mental strain at work in general, not just a little.

More oversimplification. Depends on the work, depends on the coworkers, depends on how you are treated or valued for the work. Depends on the individual doing the work, their health and their past experiences. Claiming that men all enjoy carrying heavy loads without a forklift but women just can't handle it emotionally is silly.

Point A: Enough of this nonsense about the "dictatorship of Capital". Profit is the primary measure of success for a business, and it's an important cushion against losses, but we have everything we could want outside of the excesses of corporations and the State.

I don't think you understand what profit is. Profit is the value generated by workers that is not paid out to workers, and not reinvested in the company in the form of equipment, resources, training, and other upkeep. Profit is the money kept by Shareholders who did none of the work. I don't think profit should be a measure of success for anyone but the shareholders who benefit from it. To everyone else in the business, they would understand profit as a measure of theft.

There's no profit in promoting half the shit that companies pretend to care about these days, but there is the favorable position attained with Federal and state governments for driving the agenda. That, in turn, either keeps the company off the hit list or provides boons in the form of other special treatment from the State. That's not "Capital", that's protectionism and favoritism.

You make it sound like the blame for protectionism and favoritism lies with the State. I think it's a partnership. Capitalism only exists with the consent of the state. You need a legal charter to form a corporation. The restrictions and terms of your charters are the result of capitalists and the state negotiating, without input from workers. Capitalists love to justify their behaviors by citing "The Market!" or some other ideology, but Capitalists do everything they can to suppress the market. They crush unions, they form monopolies, they use bribery to get favorable laws passed. You may be defending an idealized mythological Capitalism that does not exist.

And if you live in the city, my condolences. Get outta there and live free.

Not sure what your point is here, but did you know that Urbanization was caused by Capitalists deciding to locate jobs in cities? If you want to bring up why more people don't live in rural places, it's because there are fewer jobs available, and most people don't own enough to be Capitalists and start their own jobs.

Point B: Marxists love to convolute the origin of fundamental sex roles by adding layer after layer of abstraction, to the point where the underlying biological foundations are muddled into obscurity. The sex roles existed long before humans even existed to assign them. While I do concede that there are several societal roles that have been created as technology and communities evolved (or devolved), the roles of father, protector, provider, and of mother, caregiver, nurturer, are not constructs. We are built physically from the ground up to fulfil these particular roles. Form follows function.

This is patently false. You want to claim sex roles exist before humans did? You know that many species have different sex roles than humans do, right? Humans are the only species than can abstract the roles of different sexes, and over history they've developed many different forms. There have been matriarchal societies, societies where women did the hunting/gathering while men did parental work, and societies that split the hunting and domestic labor equally. The reality that patriarchal societies are currently dominant does not mean it's the fundamental truth.

Further, you are conflating the biological nature of sexes with the social constructs of Gender. Gender roles are extremely fluid. Thinks like protector, provider, mother, caregiver, can all exist in multiple styles dependent on culture, and those are dependent on material needs. An example is matriarchal tribes in the pacific northwest, where an abundance of fish means women do a fair share of gathering.

Yes, men are stronger on average. That doesn't make them better parents, or fighters, in every given context. If I had to bet on a unarmed man versus a woman with a weapon, I'd bet on the woman. If the best form of subsistence was lifting heavy things then Men would have an innate advantage, but material economies aren't like that universally.

Naturally, even you can concede that if every man was tasked with giving birth, and no woman was tasked with it, our species ends.

Pretty sure women and men work together to give birth in a process called sex. But if you want to claim that since women carry the fetus and lactate, then it means women are meant to be caregivers and men providers, you are limiting your understanding of what it means to give care or provide. Lactation is providing, and men can also partake in childcare if they choose. The arguments for "biological roles" fall flat.

Finally, the last point. This is where it all really falls apart, and where opinion flees reason. So, there is no profit without capital, and there is no capital without ownership, and there is no ownership without private property, and there is no private property without the capture of resources. Ergo, distribute the resources, abolish private property, relinquish ownership, erase capital, destroy profit, commence the revolution. This theorem alone has caused more suffering and death than any other idea post-Enlightenment.

Oh boy. Won't deny that authoritarianism hasn't crept in and caused a lot of cruelty and death in the USSR or the Chinese Cultural revolution. But I do challenge you that authoritarianism hasn't caused a lot of cruelty and death in Capitalist societies. Things like the Congolese Genocide, American Westward Expansion, Nazi Germany's Eastern Expansion, the transatlantic slave trade, industrial disasters, poisonous commodities, overpriced healthcare, death by starvation, death by climate change, and on and on.

It's difficult to count deaths of Capitalism and deaths of communism accurately, but any methodology that attributes a death to communism can also attribute equal or higher deaths to Capitalism. Even if we limit the time frame to 1917 to present, Capitalism goes toe to toe with communism/marxism for causing suffering and death.

If we compare their positive aspects, it's evident that the gains of Capitalism are concentrated in the hands of capitalists, while workers gained more modest improvements. In communist countries, they pulled more people out of poverty faster than it takes capitalist economies, and experience less income inequality, better housing, less filthy cities, better healthcare. Arguably a lot of the problems communist countries faced were impacted by invasions/sanctions of Capitalist countries.

The markets are too productive - that is the criticism, and what a pitiful one it is. Everything you could ever want is available at the best possible price directly at your fingertips. Press a button, and soon an autonomous mini-helicopter plops it at your door. Consumerism isn't pretty, and it may not be "sustainable" in its exact form currently, but nobody is starving by circumstance and every day brings more innovation. Free-market economies have essentially eliminated hunger, and they're robust enough to survive even significant regulatory stifling and once-in-a-lifetime worldwide turmoil. If you think we over-produce, you might be right to some extent. But if you don't want it, don't pay for it. And if you don't pay for it, less is produced or it's produced differently. It's not that hard, in theory.

You have a rosy view of things, to the point you pretend some things aren't happening. Everything I could ever want? I want to balance productivity with leisure, but I can't order that from Amazon. I want less pollution and to eat less microplastics. You say nobody is starving by circumstances, and this is false- Under capitalist economies, roughly 9 million people starve to death every year. Capitalism might bring innovation but a lot of that innovation is useless. I don't need 17 choices of hamburger or kitchen gadgets that break after a year. Every year we dispose of huge amounts of unsold clothing, consumer goods, and food, because Capitalists overproduce them and won't distribute them unless it's profitable. It doesn't matter if I refuse to buy the things I don't want or need- they get produced anyways, because Capitalists want to manipulate markets with psychology and inventing problems to sell us solutions. In the United States, we have 33 empty houses for every homeless person because we financialize basic survival needs.

Don't act like the current system has flaws but it can't get any better. I'm not even claiming that full communism is a perfect solution, but I am claiming that some form of mixed economy with capitalist and communist principles would work better than what we are currently doing.

 

[MewOne]

Thank you for the sl!