The major premise of Capitalism is risk vs reward. We hit a tipping point though, where 99% of people do not have any capital to risk, and the people who do have the capital have enough to nullify any risk.
Tax the rich.
Sometimes I get mad about how we in practice have basic income for the rich. If you have a few million dollars, you can park it in zero or low risk investments (eg: high yield savings, bonds) and get free money. Then you can just fuck off and pursue your dreams. No risk. Lots of reward.
But if you’re poor? Well you better take any job for any salary or you’re just a parasite blah blah blah. All pain, some risk, little reward.
My ex gets an allowance from his grandparents every week. They also bought him a house.
He’d get a job for a couple years, fuck around and get fired. Only got through college because I did his homework.
He has a house, he has a fridge full of food, he can go to restaurants and order out and take weeks off for vacation.
I worked full time through college, often three jobs. I still have massive student loans. I work two part time jobs, because the career field I went into is collapsing, and I’m not welcome as a trans person anyway.
I have always worked; he has not. I sleep on a rug and stack of pillows; he can pick out whatever luxury furniture he wants.
Work is entirely disconnected from reward.
Rich people also get handed so many free things.
Put over $100,000 in the bank and they will throw free accounts, low interest credit cards, rewards, free safety deposit boxes, personal concierge services. And that’s just the start.
Oh yeah I forgot about that. One of the banks here refunds ATM fees if you have a minimum balance of $2500 (and waives the monthly fee if you have $25,000). Like, my guys, the people who don’t have money need that fee waived a lot more. But the bank just wants to make money and that means appealing to rich people.
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And it went pretty well, until they bought enough politicians to change it.
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We hit a tipping point though, where 99% of people do not have any capital to risk
When do you think this tipping point was? Because as far as I can tell this was around the French revolution.
In modern economics, a massive change came about in the early 1970s. Productivity and profits decoupled from employee wages, and continued to rise while wages stayed flat. Fast forward 50 years, account for inflation and shifts in technology, and it’s easy to see that employee wages HAVEN’T RISEN in meaningful amounts for 50 years. Meanwhile, companies are making more money than ever.
So, I’d say it was in the 70’s.
In a classic example you have a village with 2 bakeries, one of the bakers came up with a machine to kneed the bread, so he can make more bread and sell it cheaper. This is sort of the story people tell to show how great capitalism is.
But we have reached a point where that one bakery now owns a chain of bakers, adds ingredients to the bread to make it more addictive, skips on actual ingredients needed for bread and replaces them with sawdust, made donations to the current political party so any competition has to jump through hoops to get a bakery license, etc.
And then uses his immense wealth and contacts to make frivolous lawsuits against smaller bakers trying to make their own machine, knowing full well they will not win in court but will financially ruin the smaller baker and tie them up in litigation for years, then forcing them to an unfair arbitration where they make a shit offer to buy out the competition
Capitalism only works if it’s regulated. Unregulated capitalism just becomes feudalism again. In your example, the owner of the bakery chain no longer has to innovate or compete. They simply own something and wait for money to be delivered to them.
Of course, for the government to be able to regulate things, it needs to be bigger and more powerful than the businesses it’s regulating. You can’t have Amazon being worth 2.3 trillion because it can easily make itself immune from competition and immune from regulators.
A mixed capitalist / socialist economy is the best solution we’ve come up with so far that actually seems to work in the real world. Only the most insane would want things like fire services to be fully privatized, or for every road to be a privately owned toll road. But, a fully state owned economy didn’t really work either. Trying that caused the USSR to collapse, and it caused China to switch to a different version of a capitalist / communist / socialist setup. The real issue is where to draw the boundaries. Most countries have decided that healthcare is something that the government should either fully control, or at least have a very strong control over. Meanwhile, the US pays more and receives less with its for-profit system. In England, they privatized water, and it seems to have been a disaster, meanwhile the socialist utopia of USA mostly has cities providing water services.
Where do you draw the line? Personally, I think Northern Europe seems to have the best results. Strong labour protections, a lot of essential things owned by / provided by the government, but with space for for-profit private enterprise too.
Agreed. I feel as though capitalism is a good option for things which can have elastic demand. Luxury items, entertainment, etc can all benefit from a competitive market because I have the luxury of not needing to buy them. On the other hand, I do absolutely need food, housing, and healthcare in order to live. Applying supply and demand principles when demand must be inelastic only leads to people getting hurt.
My dream system would be one in which, as a baseline, all human requirements for survival are provided no matter the situation, and where currency is only used for luxuries.
The whole IP debate is just pure nonsense. It still relies on the cartesian mind/body dichotomy and an idealism of some sort where “the ideas” exist in their own immaterial cognitive realm. And they think that I can steal these imaginary immaterial entities and they will be gone for good. Yeah…
Someone gets it.
Lets instead do this:
Every citizen, irrespective of their nationality, skincolor, gender has the right to:
- living quarters
- work
- maximum of 7 hours of work
- free healthcare
- paid vacation
- equal pay and treatment for women
- freedom of religion and speech
This is directly taken from a 1936 constitution. Today one could improve on it but we’re so much worse, everywhere.
Now guess which one.
Stalin 1936 constitution. Holidays for “enemies of the people” were unpaid and in a quite cold climate of Siberia. They also cared about fitness of citizens by ensuring no one has too much of food. And if you didn’t like it, you get a free ride in a black car to the place of final rest.
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Go check those living quarters they had lol, and food queues, and how well the health care worked if you had nothing to bribe with. Those sweet shortages of everything.
You should talk to someone who actually lived in the “union” and stop slurping kremlin propaganda. But will you? I wouldn’t bet on it.
Even if i dont check and just believe what you wrote, it still beats the shit out of the situation a ton of us are in right now (also that was literally 34+ yrs ago. Life was different then AND the country was recovering from tons of shit). Not to speak of the countries that make our ill gotten comfort possible too. And just to clarify, present day russia is not communist or socialist. they’re as capitalist as the western states are. They are no better and no worse in terms of inequality.
The important part, will you have a respectful discussion or do I have to block you?
Man, it Ended 34 years ago, check out how life was in the eighties in URSS. Or seventies. The gulag vas so nice.
Today it’s an autocracy, people earn 200€ a month and goes to prison for nothing, what a glorious place.
But I’m probably talking in the wind here, you don’t seems to be interested in knowing right or wrong:
Even if I dont check…
If you want to know, do check.
And thats what I meant.
Respect means you acknowledge my arguments. Just backing off on the insults a bit (but not fully) isnt cutting it. Respectful discussion is addressing people’s arguments as well as not insulting them or their intelligence.
I will definitely take the time and check things that are brought forward. Saying “just because shit was bad back then means exactly that, not that the system it was in was shit.” isnt the same as sticking fingers in ones ears and singing lalala. Doing as if that were the case is just abusive rhetoric.
Because shit is horrendous today as well: Fentanyl hordes, people freezing to death on the streets, protesters shot, people deported to concentration camps, genocide, media spewing propaganda, most of the population living paycheck to paycheck, guantanamo. Most of the examples are US but the EU is only marginally different and catching up fast.
There is no such thing as a perfect system. Gulags alone are no sole cause for dismissal same as guantanamo is.
Here’s a video about the reason why people hate socialism so much https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mhYS59egWQc
I don’t acknowledge your arguments because the boil down to whataboutism, “it was a long time ago” and other fallacies.
Then you goalpoast-move and try to say I don’t like socialism lol. If you think the USSR was socialist I have a bridge to sell you.
BTW what bout you acknowledge my arguments? Based on historical facts? Nah guess you doesn’t like what you’d read.
URSS was an authororian crap “union” and Russia is trying to become as bad, hopefully Russian will go the same way and be dismantled ASAP so their citisens can finally live in a free country.
Also Europe is on the brink of collapse or something? ROFL I live here. But you don’t seems to be interested in facts.
Yeah, I didnt think you would be able to defend against any of it.
But since you’re still being condescending, this conversation is now over.
I will check the stuff you mentioned because, unlike you, I have no issue with being corrected.
Good luck with your attitude mate.
Lol I sure have a limited energy for tankies, but if you’re serious i’ll be so to.
Have a nice evening.
Uh… This is coming from the folks who said “he who does not work, neither shall he eat” during a famine so… uh… yeah, that’s not the flex you think it is.
Edit: And in case anyone is wondering, this gets worse with context.
during a famine
They also created the famine by decentralizing agriculture and planning, but at least that sort of people learned their lesson from it and didn’t repeat the exact same blunder in China years later, right?
And this was said about able-bodied parasites such as owners of the means of production, shareholders, landlords, and others living off society on non-labor income. At the same time, the population received old-age and disability pensions, maternity leave for women in labor and a huge number of social payments and compensations. Too bad most believe Goebbels propaganda and don’t study history.
And this was said about able-bodied parasites such as owners of the means of production, shareholders, landlords, and others living off society on non-labor income.
And Ukrainians, don’t forget Ukrainians. I know enough about early Soviet history to know that Stalin was a cold-blooded murderer. Not that the rest of the Communist Party was full of upstanding global citizens, but Stalin was particularly egregious.
Of course you do, from the textbooks of Goebels and his followers.
https://liva.com.ua/lenin-ukraine.html
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
edit: updated links
I thought it was the nazis who said that, so I checked it with FuckDuckGo assist:
This phrase, “He who does not work, neither shall he eat,” originates from the New Testament, specifically 2 Thessalonians 3:10,
Also love that people try to make it morally acceptable because of reasons.
Copyright and inheritance can’t exist in a capitalist society
Under true capitalism, everyone starts at 0 regardless of their birth and the only way to make more money than someone else is to work more hours regardless of profession. Over saturation of a given market is fixed by the invisible hand where people just move onto something that gives more hours
the only way to make more money than someone else is to work more hours regardless of profession
Workers aren’t capitalists. The whole point of Capitalism is to ensure the ruling class never has to do the actual work. Capitalists make their money by exploiting workers, not working themselves.
Capitalists are people who own the means of production. Working in a capitalist system you will never earn enough to buy the factory. Inheritance is one of the main ways to become a capitalist. Sure some people get lucky but with few exceptions if you are rich the way you got rich was by exploiting other people .
Copyright was a halfway decent idea when it first came out. Give a chance for an artist or inventor to profit from their work for a few years and then it becomes public property. Thanks to corporations like Disney, that has all been twisted, and now it’s used as a cudgel to keep others from competing and it takes almost 100 years for something to go out of copyright now (thanks congress).
A system where you do the work and get paid for your value is closer to Socialism than capitalism.
Now compare democracy with both systems.
Democracy is a form of government.
Capitalism and Socialism are economic systems.
You could have a Democratic Socialist system, if the majority of people wanted it.
You could have an Authoritarian Dictatorship that allowed Capitalism.
It’s a little more complex because people are used to living under Capitalism and many people don’t really understand Socialism and would fight against their own interest to revert to the status quo, as a result some socialist philosophers have suggested not giving people a choice but to accept socialism, a so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat”, but even in such a system you could have a constitution that enshrines socialism as the the economic system, while still giving people the ability to vote on everything else.
For example “Private Property” could be abolished. Factories and business could be owned by all of the employees as a whole and the profits shared equitably. After a short time living in such a system it would be unlikely that the majority of people would vote to return power back over to just a few individuals.
This would likely depend on the transition going smoothly. Give people a little hardship and the knee jerk/reactionary response would be to proclaim they were “better off” before.
The main problem with Socialism is that people are so used to having ‘rulers’, that they simply do not know how to act in their absence. This creates a seeming ‘power vacuum’. Unscrupulous individuals can use that fact as a way to assume the roles vacated by the formerly rich and powerful in the name of being a force that maintains the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, when very often they seem to become dictators themselves.
In my personal opinion, violent revolution will always lead to that outcome. If we ever want to evolve as a society, people must first understand what Socialism actually is and why it’s the best choice for the majority of people. We must freely choose it, because it’s the right thing to do.
That is made extremely difficult because the rich and powerful like being rich and powerful, and will use every bit of their resources to ensure they stay rich and powerful. It’s easier to convince cops to side with them to keep them in power by sharing a tiny bit of their wealth, than it is to convince them to do the right thing, when they aren’t even sure what the right thing is.
There is a reason that Education is a political battleground in the US. If people were actually taught the truth, they probably would choose to do the right thing. The capitalists won’t allow that to happen if they can help it.
Anytime you see someone trying to cut funding for education, or try to have a whitewashed version of history taught. This is the reason.
This is also the source of “Red Scare” propaganda and fear mongering. ‘Keep people scared, ignorant, and confused’ will probably be the subtitle of the last 100 years if they make a movie about it in the future, provided the Fascists and/or Capitalists don’t win.
Edit: JFK once said “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” I think there is a lot of wisdom in that and I wish people in power would take it to heart, though I know they wont.
Very well said, thank you.
Capitalists say the free market is king then they go and make laws to stifle and restrict it so they can make monopolies and gouge everyone out of their hard-earned income.
Buy everything up so your choice doesnt really latter because the money ends up in theirs either way. And put hurdles in the way so no one could try to get any funny ideas and make their own thing
They are not Capitalists. In fact capitalism is a great idea, it just we don’t have it.
Properly regulated capitalism isn’t strictly horrible. The biggest issue we have is that first bit, unfortunately.
-Me, a dirty socialist
Fuck reformism. All my homies hate reformism.
I mean, I’m totally down for the burn it all to the ground approach, too. It’d certainly be much better long term. Reformism at this point is definitely more akin to a bandaid when you need a full amputation.
Maybe it’s Crony capitalism instead?
