Placing hard and fast values on things. What is that called? Oh yeah, it’s called capitalism!
With socialism, values are established by the fiat of the ruling class. They say laborers (l) should be paid x-amount for doing y, regardless of the value y produces, and so it takes place by their decree. If l produces less value than x, then the result is a loss for the operation, which either results in its collapse or its rescue by the ruling class who use money they steal from everyone else to pay for it. Exactly the same thing holds true for prices. The ruling class demands that things cost what they think is right, and if their prices exceed the cost of production (including labor), then the same process takes place: enterprises either shut down or get subsidized using more of that stolen money. Eventually, the system runs out of money to steal, and the whole thing collapses.
With capitalism, values are determined in real time by the actions of billions of consumers deciding what things are worth to them alongside millions of producers who decide what things are worth producing. The result is a dynamic, healthy economy producing exactly what is needed at the lowest possible cost.
It’s not capitalism that’s the problem you’re describing, it’s the lack of capitalism in the marketplace of what women traditionally and biologically produce. The legacy economic system women struggle with is, in fact, exactly the socialist system!
The ruling class (men) decided long ago on their own fiat to place a value near zero on the labor of women in the home and in childbirth and child rearing, in effect making them slaves. In a capitalist system, women would only produce and rear children if they were induced to do so by prices that made the enterprise attractive. That’s how “hard and fast prices” are established and maintained in a sustainable, peaceful world.
But of course it’s not that simple; women surrender to their biological urges to procreate, and men are only too happy to do their part in making it happen, reinforced by the cultural cloud that makes the slavery appear normal.
How to break out of that? I don’t have a simple answer, but I think the start toward finding one is to acknowledge the true nature of the problem rather than to cast it in reverse along the “capitalism vs. socialism” vector.
