global online survey discovers 56% of the global public thinks actually-existing capitalism is a bad system. Especially interesting considering the incessant propaganda being put out by Pinker types insisting capitalism's making things better for everyone
edelman.com/sites/g/files/…
edelman.com/sites/g/files/…
obviously it's also a sample of people who are online - why am I guessing that Ecuadorian peasants or Indonesian factory workers with no online presence are likely to be even less satisfied with capitalism? 2/
it's curious that Thailand is the single most anti-capitalist population on earth. Japan is the least anti-capitalist, which is again interesting considering over 10% of the Japanese population vote for the Communist Party each election 3/
(the case of Japan also suggests that Japanese zero-growth capitalism, while always described as a colossal failure, might better be viewed as one of the few cases where capitalism became sustainable) 4/
also interesting that India is seething with anticapitalist sentiment, considering the ascendancy of the right. It suggests again that many people vote for the right because they think unlike the left they'll be allowed to make *some* sort of structural change 5/
the US online population is predictably one of the more pro-capitalist, though it's interesting that in the US, the younger you are, the more anti-capitalist you tend to be. This isn't uniformly true internationally 6/
the most surprising thing in the above breakdown is that women (online at least) tend to be just a bit less anticapitalist than men. Is this an effect of those likely to be online, plus the fact that women had to fight their way into the corporate sector to begin with? 7/
the age breakdown is uneven, with those aged 35-54 being the most anti-capitalist, and older people the least anti-capitalist. As the case of the US or UK shows though, this must vary a lot by country: Eastern Europe presumably looks very different 8/
all in all, capitalism is having a very bad run globally. If it really is improving people's lives to the degree its exponents claim, it has done the worst job of self-promotion ever. This seems unlikely as self-promotion has always been one of its strongest points. 9/
