Capitalism is a system of exploitation, whereby owners suck up the value workers create. As the world gets increasingly complex, the farther away from the top you are, the more exploited you are.
Agree
What drives quality of life is not what economic system you have, but the level of development, largely.
Massive agree
The tools and goods present in a country do not care who owns tools, all they care about is investment in industrialization and development.
Agree
Next up, your request for a "specific example" at a country-scale of what I am asking for. The shortest answer is that there isn't one, at least not yet, but that by no means discounts the possibility of its existence in the future, you'd have to explain why you think it impossible.
I didn't say at all that it was impossible. In this and a lot of your following argument, you seem like you think I'm saying the outcomes I talk about are inevitable as an absolute. I'm perfectly open to the idea that a non-capitalist society would work better. What I'm saying is that, in the observed real world I have observed so far, it seems like it has significant drawbacks. That doesn't have to be the end of the story but it does seem relevant to bring to the table if someone's going to argue that the US needs to change itself to a totally non-capitalist society. No?
I think we'll probably agree very hard that the current US system is too capitalistic and exploitative. It's out of control plutocracy or borderline feudalism like the US at the turn-of-the-20th-century, or if you wanted to oversimplify a little, like China or Russia before their revolutions. My argument is that the labor movement in the US, leading to massive reform like the New Deal within a still-capitalist framework, worked way better for the quality of life of the people in the US than did the full-on transition to non-capitalism in Russia and China.
What do I mean? Well, some examples include the EZLN and Revolutionary Catalonia, which are/were Libertarian Socialist and Anarcho-Communist, respectively. They have their own shortcomings, notably the modern lack of existence of Revolutionary Catalonia due to its inability to defend itself, and the EZLN for being very slow at developing, though it works for the people who live there.
Surely these outcomes are relevant? Again, I'm not saying it's impossible for it to work if done right, or that the US's currently-hypercapitalistic-to-the-point-of-black-comedy system needs to stay the same.
These include places like Cuba, the USSR, and China. While the latter 2 did manage to skyrocket quality of life
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Millions of dead of starvation people in both countries would disagree with you
I think this is very important to keep in mind, when talking about the (absolutely wholly unacceptable I agree with you) level of hunger and misery in the United States, is that it can also get much much worse.
ultimately the Politburo is unaccountable to the masses, and as such the governments of each have committed atrocities. Cuba is a bit of a unique case, it's nearly completely locked out of global trade, and as such it has had severely stunted development.
Yeah. There's a certain amount of realpolitik involved, that the US and the West in general like to "punish" socialist countries economically or militarily and then use their suffering as a way to claim that socialism doesn't work. Cuba's a really interesting example because even under the boot of significant oppression under that philosophy, it still does some things really well (education and medicine), arguably better than some of the countries doing the oppressing.
That's a counterbalancing factor against a whole lot of what I'm saying, I recognize, yes. There's a book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" where someone closely involved in that system explains it in absolutely horrifying living color.
You appear to be rejecting the idea of analyzing the mechanics of Socialism and Capitalism and applying the results of that analysis to the real world
Not at all at all -- like I say, I'm not at all closed to the idea that they can work. I just think too much analysis purely based on theory without looking at instructive examples is a bad idea. The current world is not the end of the story but you do need a balance of both.
what is the extent to which you have read leftist theoretical texts, such as from Marx, or even Anarchists like Kropotkin? If none, would you be willing to read?
I have basically read none; for what reason I honestly don't know. Sure, I'm open to it.