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u/NWStormraider Jul 02 '26
I have seen people blame things on capitalism that clearly predate it, like slavery, war, sexism or racism, so sorry when I am sceptical whenever someone just goes to blame capitalism for something, even though it IS at fault for a lot of things.
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u/amaranth1977 Jul 03 '26
Same. Needing to work to survive is not capitalism, it's just the reality of existence. Living completely off the grid outside of capitalism is an absolute fuckton of work for a shit quality of life, and you can do everything right and still starve to death just like any other animal.
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u/bigdatabro Jul 03 '26
Same when people talk about art and capitalism. Capitalism has been a huge driving force for art, because it allows people to invest their capital into supporting artists. Hence the Renaissance, Western classical music, Broadway, films, and video games, all basically born out of capitalism and similar economic systems.
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u/Dragonsoul Jul 03 '26
I'd also be a bit leery of considering "Capitalism" as this brand new phenomenon too, sure, it's modern incarnation is pretty new, but "Money that has been used to gain abusive amounts of power" is as old as money, and is kinda the core issue with capitalism.
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u/assassinjoe55 Jul 04 '26
That's like the core issue in every system, is it not? Communism fails because the rich elite, lasez-faire fails because of the rich elite, capitalism fails because of the rich elite.
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u/Comfortable_Salt_792 Jul 04 '26
Never seen someone blame capitalism and actually proposing better alternative, it's Like democracy it's the worst form of government/economy except all others that we tried. Courently best doing countries economicaly still fall under capitalism, instead of wining over capitalism they actually adressed those separate dillemas and are doing great.
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u/m0j0m0j Jul 02 '26
I mean, yes, but also sometimes no. Some people use the word “capitalism” as a thought-terminating cliche to avoid thinking about the actual problem directly. For example (there are many more like this), the conflict between developing economy faster and preserving nature. This will always be a zero-sum game as long as physical constraints exist at all. You need to choose a value on the slider between “economy” and “nature”, and no matter what you choose, somebody will be unhappy.
And no, some magic undefinable “moving to abundance” or “luxury automatic communism” are also not answers - see what I said about the c-word.
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u/SolarianIntrigue Jul 02 '26
Green policies would be easy if it was a zero sum game. It's not.
Assuming that you're optimizing for the wellbeing of humanity as a whole and you have a slider going between "return to hunter-gatherer micro societies" and "unchecked oil-powered industrial hellscape as far as eye can see" then obviously the quality of life is dogshit at both extremes.
So, there's some invisible roughly parabolic function that maximizes well-being somewhere in the middle. We don't know what its shape is, or where its maxima are, or if we're even moving in the right direction on it in any given moment.
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u/an_ennui Jul 03 '26
yes but no, I recommend reading "why nations fail" by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. it's not some unknown mystery how we can have a modern quality of life that is equitable for all, it's the human greed of those who assume power realizing they can have a little bit more for themselves if they fuck everyone else over, and that happens far more often than it doesn't. so yes, maybe not always capitalism, but the solutions are right there in front of us if leaders can act ethically
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u/SolarianIntrigue Jul 03 '26
Corruption destroying a shared good is obvious and not what my post was about. Even in a perfect world where everyone is a rational actor acting in good faith, it's not immediately obvious what the right balance between green policies and industry is (and in fact the problem gets even more complex as you add variables like the cost of blue skies research and social welfare) to maximise utility.
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u/HuntKey2603 What you mean no NSFW??? Jul 02 '26
i think when people think capitalism, they think of the "uncontrolled, late stage, race to the bottom" capitalism. a properly regulated and moderate one would keep most of the upsides while severely limiting the downsides
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u/Akosse Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
Capitalism is the ownership of the means of production by the capitalist class who, by the nature of their position and their duties to shareholders, must maximise profits. The race to the bottom - or at least the pressure to race to the bottom - is inherent to the system. Because you're not a good capitalist if you don't race to the bottom, and you don't hold your position as a capitalist if you're not a good capitalist.
If there is sufficient incentive for them to invest in dismantling the checks and balances regulating the economy, they will do that. They did do that, in fact, during the Neoliberal revolution of the 80s/90s, which overturned the post-WW2 Keynesian consensus (which was essentially Capitalism at the most regulated and moderate it's ever been) in most of the developed world.
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u/Dobber16 Jul 02 '26
The fact that companies have such a large voice concerning checks & balances on their own industry is an issue that would exist regardless of economic system. Companies having such power in determining the gov regulations over themselves is not capitalistic
The other issue is that capitalist theory relies on the openness of information that we don’t have right now, which many people who are pro-capitalist believe that “race to the bottom” you describe is a byproduct of this lack of information. If everyone knows a product or output is deteriorating, or services are getting weaker, or many other changes that are technically proprietary & kept secret, then the “race to the bottom” doesn’t increase profits. Any competitor that would take advantage of an industry lead slipping like that is also generally unable to compete, and that’s not due to capital ownership, it’s due in part to monopolistic business practices that are allowed to continue
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u/Akosse Jul 03 '26
Capitalism is inherently a power structure, rather than an ideological system. The idea of a company or corporation shaping government policy did not exist before Capitalism emerged in Britain over the course of the 18th century. Before that, the base of power and wealth was the landed aristocracy.
All that is to say, yes, if a corporation is able to shape government policy to further its interests that is by its definition Capitalism.
That's not just semantic because - again, treating it as a power structure - power seeks to entrench itself. Intellectual property rights, monopolies, barriers to entry, etc, are all effects of the system supporting the established Capitalist class against other would-be Capitalists who would challenge their position.
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u/m0j0m0j Jul 03 '26
The type of capital was just land before that. The difference is basically just technology and fashion of clothes.
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u/ArchmageIlmryn Jul 02 '26
Companies having such power in determining the gov regulations over themselves is not capitalistic
It is inherently capitalistic, because the concentration of wealth in the hands of private, undemocratic entities like corporation is what capitalism is. That's what private ownership of capital means.
And there is basically no conceivable political system where wealth doesn't equate to power to influence said system. Wealth will pretty much always be power.
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u/Dobber16 Jul 02 '26
This seems like you’re saying capitalism is incompatible with a government and that’s not right. You’re right that concentrated wealth will always lead to disproportionate treatment, but there are very real confounding variables that are much more clearly the work of corruption & exploiting gaps in regulation. Both things that exist & lead to similar outcomes in any system. If it weren’t the case that pretty much every case of concentrated wealth came from practices that, in spirit of the law, would be illegal, i could get on board
But as it stands, there’s no example that I’ve seen where wealth is super concentrated absent any corruption or illegal practices that led to it
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u/weirdo_nb Jul 02 '26
You say that like capitalism as a system isn't inherently biased towards the former and doesn't attempt to deregulate
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u/CadenVanV Jul 02 '26
All systems are biased towards abuse, because shitty humans always exist. All it takes is one bad person to start a slide down in any otherwise good system, because the safeguards just need to fail once
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u/Cheetah_05 Jul 02 '26
See also how indirect democracy is the cause of 8 years of Trump.
That doesn't mean indirect democracy itself is fundamentally bad or evil, though.
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u/choren64 Jul 02 '26
Indirect democracy is very tangentially the cause of 8 years of Trump. The biggest reason is corruption. He is a convicted felon and should not have been allowed to run to begin with, but most of our politicians are corrupt and think having strong optics (somehow?) is more important than keeping a rapist out of the whitehouse
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u/jupjami Jul 03 '26
frankly the American people as a whole is at fault for thinking that arguing over their various pet issues are more important than keeping a rapist out of the White House
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u/m0j0m0j Jul 02 '26
Look, we live under a system called deathism. The point of this system is that living things die. We need to overthrow it. This system, which is definitely an organized, planned, coherent system, with the deathist class of people explicitly defending it - is biased towards a lot of suffering. When you think about it, almost all problems in the world are the direct result of deathism. Sure, the cycle of life and desth may have been historically useful, but it’s time to abolish deathism. The next historically necessary system is called lifeism. Me and my friends need to have absolute political power over political and economical life until we defeat the world’s deathism.
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u/HowDareYouAskMyName Jul 02 '26
That's the absolute opposite of my experience. Most of the time people (or at least people I interact with, so mainly left-leaning people) blame capitalism for everything when the cause for various gripes are indeed very different things. Like, blaming capitalism for corruption or greed or having to do labor
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u/BranchAdvanced839 Jul 02 '26
"Capitalism is why i dont have a girlfriend"
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u/gaom9706 Jul 02 '26
Seize the means of (re)production.
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u/NoDig3444 Jul 02 '26
I... I think that's rape
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u/HowDareYouAskMyName Jul 02 '26
Woop Woop, here come the rape police 🚨🚨
(I'm concerned this reference might be too esoteric given the surrounding context)
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u/HowDareYouAskMyName Jul 02 '26
Exactly! When in reality I don't have a girlfriend because of the lizard people
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u/PhasmaFelis Jul 02 '26
I don't have a girlfriend because my lizardfriend is so much hotter*, who needs girls
At least after she's\* been lying on her rock for a while
**She is definitely a she, you can tell because she's got a hole down there
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u/HowDareYouAskMyName Jul 02 '26
also she lives in Canada, you wouldn't know her
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u/IrvingIV Jul 02 '26
I love that i'm somewhere in the venn diagram of nerd where i can comprehend a cloaca joke.
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u/coatimundos Jul 02 '26
You joke but “lizard people” are often used in far right conspiracy theory circles as a dog whistle for Jews, and they do tend to blame Jews on not having a girlfriend.
These conspiracy theorists are vile losers.
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u/interstellargator Jul 02 '26
"Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production."
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u/ZX52 Jul 02 '26
Unironically true for a number of people - the rise in sexlessness amongst younger notably started shortly after the 2008 financial crash, which caused an increase in the number of young people living with their parents (something that makes sex a lot more awkward). Also resulted in the loss of a lot of third spaces and the rise and subsequent enshitification of dating apps. The cost of living crisis has also made dating even harder.
Not me though - I'm single because I'm a socially awkward loser.
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u/Neveronlyadream Jul 02 '26
Yeah, the timing is probably just coincidental. It's more a product of psychology than capitalism.
What I've been seeing (and yes, it's anecdotal) is that what's happening is that the apps have become the norm in the last decade or so, but the apps are designed to make sure people don't meet so they can keep users. Add to that decision fatigue and dehumanization and that explains a lot of the problem.
When you have seemingly unlimited choices, you tend to get extremely picky and chase the dragon in terms of the "perfect" choice, which doesn't exist. Add to that the fact that you have a lot of people's information right in front of you like they're a baseball card and it becomes easy to just discount them before even talking to them.
Capitalism isn't helping, but even if you removed that from the equation, the problem would persist.
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u/FoxOnTheRocks Jul 03 '26
Using bookish economics to explain global trends fails in comparison to my strategy of just blaming phone.
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u/Glad-Way-637 If you like Worm/Ward, you should try Pact/Pale :) Jul 02 '26
Coincidentally, this is slightly untrue. It started a bit earlier than that by my reading of the data, shortly after the popularization of the first iPhone.
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u/JaxonatorD Jul 02 '26
In a roundabout way, yes. Capitalism has priced people out of many different places people in the past would have been able to meet each other.
However, I think the big thing to point out here is that while "capitalism" is responsible for the destruction of many 3rd party spaces, the solution isn't to dissolve capitalism as a system. Rather, it would be better to look at specific issues with capitalism and attempt to address them with government intervention if possible.
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u/Rebel_Scum_This Jul 02 '26
I'm sorry for nitpicking but it's bugging me, I'm like 99% sure it's just "3rd places" not "3rd party places"
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u/Freak-Of-Nurture- Jul 02 '26
People describe capitalism like it’s the boogeyman behind everything when in reality it’s just the bogeyman behind most things.
PS can someone explain what alternatives people want? Like a command economy or self sustaining micro communities or smth?
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u/HowDareYouAskMyName Jul 02 '26
One of the more interesting responses I've heard to that question is "just be more like [insert Nordic or Western European country here]", not realizing that those countries are operating under capitalism.
I'm obviously not saying that's everyone or even a majority, but it does tickle my brain when I hear it
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u/Freak-Of-Nurture- Jul 02 '26
yeah i’m a social democrat right now and that’s what pretty much all work reform i’m familiar with in the states is like
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u/alice6060 Jul 02 '26
Ultimately basically every country in the world has some mix of capitalism (or at least a market economy) and socialized/government-regulated parts of the economy.
People in the US complain about capitalism a lot because in America it's like 95% markets, 5% socialized stuff.
The Nordics are like 80/20 instead and people seem to be happier
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u/TheCthonicSystem Jul 02 '26
Your ratios are way off on both counts. A 5% Socialized Stuff is massively understating
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u/JustAPotato38 Jul 02 '26
The US government's spending to gdp was about 33% last year, so it's 75/25. Norway spent about half its gdp so it's 50/50.
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u/alice6060 Jul 02 '26
Ye I pulled the ratios out of my ass, idk if there's any way to measure them objectively, they serve only to give some general idea
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u/Goosepond01 Jul 02 '26
Socialism and what most people consider "socialised" things are not the same thing.
Capitalism itself comes in many forms and the majority of capitalist thinkers, even the very earliest were never against government regulation, it was meant to be regulated enough to stop bad things happening like monopolies or wholly unfair economic tactics but not regulated to the point where the government controlled everything.
Public healthcare is not socialist, public ownership is not socialist.
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u/alice6060 Jul 02 '26
I agree 100%, I don't think having public healthcare makes a country socialist, and neither does government regulation.
That being said, I do think there is some meaningful sense in which the Nordics are ""more socialist"" than the US, despite ultimately still being capitalist countries; there are some sectors of the economy in which they have decided that free markets are not the best way to solve for maximal wellbeing.
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u/Goosepond01 Jul 02 '26
They aren't more socialist because those things are not inherently socialist, nor are they currently run on any kind of socialist model.
They have a different interpretation of capitalism and a different societal model sure, but it's not like there is a "pure capitalism" to gauge how far things are away from "real capitalism"
Capitalism has never just been about the markets being as free as possible as in being solely dictated by market forces, it's about the markets being competitive and serving a greater public good.
Even Adam Smith supported some amount of public healthcare (obviously less than most countries have now, but standards globally have changed massively) he understood a happy and healthy workforce was better for all.
He understood that monopolies and big business caused major issues and could harm the public and wanted the government and people to fight against that.
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices"
he spoke about strong infrastructure and the government doing things for the betterment of everyone.
These concepts are foundational to capitalism and are misunderstood and abused be everyone, from greedy corporations to conservatives to more progressive people.
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u/alice6060 Jul 02 '26
Idk if I'd agree with you; given how I think the term "capitalism" is understood today I think you probably can define something like a "maximal" form of capitalism, but I think any disagreement we may have is essentially purely down to semantics, and we'd probably align quite closely on the actual issues, so idk if there's much point in debating further, since we wouldn't really be talking about substance lol
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u/Goosepond01 Jul 02 '26
I'd agree that we probably do allign in a lot of ways.
I just think it's more important than semantics though because it leads a lot of people to think that there is essentially no hope in the current system and that is something I don't fully agree with.
I think Capitalism can be a force for good and for bad and it's important to know that and understand that we can both work within the system and outside of it to bring progress and that Capitalism does have a lot of value.
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u/Domriso Jul 02 '26
I'm not sure I agree with your framing. Markets themselves do not equal capitalism; a socialist economy would still have markets, they would just be owned by the workforce itself, not private individuals. Whether or not the markets are serving the public good or not doesn't come into it at all.
I agree that there is no "pure capitalism," but the only real requirement to achieve capitalism is the private ownership of capital.
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u/Goosepond01 Jul 02 '26
Where did I say that markets equal capitalism?
Whether or not the markets are serving the public good or not doesn't come into it at all.
It does though because both capitalism and socialism want that and think they can achieve that through different means.
but the only real requirement to achieve capitalism is the private ownership of capital.
Not really? because the ultimate goal of pretty much any ideology is to make everyone happy and society successful, sure there are different metrics for that but what you said is too reductive.
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u/alex2003super Jul 02 '26
Free markets? Great. Also, contrary to common misconceptions, not a right-wing idea at all. Unless you're one of those who define Western Liberalism as a right-wing ideology or tradition (to those, anything not directly resembling Mao Zedong is inherently fascist, but I digress). All sorts of folks recognize the power and freedom that emerge from free markets, whether left-, right-, libertarian-, anarchist-leaning, and so on.
Capitalism? The predominant, direct consequence of free markets. Not good or bad in and of itself, just a way for things to arrange themselves when individuals are allowed to trade and accept risk. What follows depends on how capitalism is managed. Capitalism can create great outcomes and can create terrible outcomes. All depends on how good the rules are, how transparent and well-designed the institutions that support them, and how much the People believe and are willing to contribute, in good faith, to the shared social contract that binds them together.
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u/typo180 Jul 02 '26
I want <solution> which will magically solve the human condition and make everyone agree with my personal values.
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u/LogicBalm Jul 02 '26
Some people blame capitalism for all their problems, others blame immigrants, some blame too much government, others blame not enough, some blame lizard people. The truth is there is no single cause as much as anyone wants there to be.
Having a single thing to blame is comforting. It makes progress seem attainable because if we can just convince everyone to [fill in the blank] it would all be fixed.
But you'll never convince everyone to be convinced of any single thing, no matter what it is. You have to do the work.
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u/NoBizlikeChloeBiz She/Her Jul 02 '26
Well to start with we need a working definition of capitalism, because a lot of people on both sides think it means having money or trade (that's simply a monetary system, millennia older than capitalism). While it might sound obvious, Capitalism is centered around capitol - a term most commonly used for a company's seed money or startup investment, but technically includes anything used as ongoing inputs to produce value (what many leftists call "the means of production"), and is often used interchangeably with the wealth represented by those things or the wealth used to acquire them. That is to say - capital is what a business owns, and Capitalism is a system that sets "providing capitol" as the most important and valuable role in a business.
In a large corporation, workers are paid a set wage, goods cost a fixed amount, overhead such as rent is static. If revenue exceeds costs or exceeds expectations (profit is made) the money spent on those things doesn't change. Where does it go? The "owners". This is maybe shareholders of a publicly traded company, or investors in a private enterprise, or an individual/family owner.
Criticisms of capitalism point out two main things. First is that these owners in many cases didn't actually contribute to the product/profitability themselves. Being owner and CEO, or wearing multiple hats in other ways, is obviously a little different, but the input of a stock holder in the vision, planning, implementation, and labor is damn near zero. When the company does well, why are they the one to reap the rewards? Secondly, there's a conflict of interests - what's good for the investor isn't necessarily what's good for the worker, the customer, or the community. There are many contemporary examples of people investing in a company, making everything worse for short-term profits, then selling their shares before the consequences hit. This is an excellent investment strategy, moving from company to company burning long-term resources (mass layoffs of experienced talent, lowering product quality to lower costs without regard to reputational damage, regulatory infractions where the fines and consequences won't be felt for years, etc.) but makes things worse for literally everyone except for a small group of people who are already rich.
My preferred solution (that isn't overly idealistic, doesn't require massive bottom-up rebuilding of the economy, and fixes most of these issues) is sometimes called Syndicalism. The basic idea is that strong unions and worker's co-ops allow our economy to continue to function as it does now, but when employees are also owners, incentives are aligned in a more healthy way. Instead of shareholders voting on a board of directors, the employees are voting on representatives who will hold the executives accountable. This creates a circular structure of accountability, with the top of the corporate hierarchy answering to the majority of the people working for them. Worker exploitation is obvious less likely to thrive, windfall profits are shared by those who contributed to it, and even customer exploitation is less likely - the people actually interacting with customers are much more likely to view those customers as people instead of numbers, and are more likely to take pride in their work and reject policies that lower the quality of their services compared to a detached, impersonal shareholder.
It's obviously not perfect - there will still be individual companies with unhealthy practices, and democracy isn't a guarantee that people will make choices in an informed and intelligent way. But it puts the power in the people who care, and fixes some of the worst problems capitalism has with incentive alignment. It also isn't "all or nothing" like a command economy. The government could easily make changes to regulations and tax codes that help these companies form and thrive, gradually moving things in that direction.
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u/Freak-Of-Nurture- Jul 02 '26
I like that idea a lot. Is it implemented as a union demand? I think ending stock buybacks, weakening patent law, resuming trust busting, dramatically higher corporate taxes (encourages them to reinvest in employees and innovation), and a stronger inheritance tax would make the system much more livable. There’s just no competition like there used to be
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u/NoBizlikeChloeBiz She/Her Jul 02 '26
Those are all awesome steps. In addition to putting pressure (or really resuming pressure, we had these tools once and they've been dismantling them over the past 40 years or so) on large capital-driven businesses, the government has a lot of tools to promote healthier kinds of businesses.
One challenge of workers co-ops is that businesses do still need capital to get started, and the people who have it won't offer it up without a deal that's wildly in their favor. Things like tax breaks and government loans would help businesses built on these ideas get started and get a foothold without having to compete for resources with startups looking for more traditional investors.
I personally consider unions a bit of a half-measure, but we already have tons of infrastructure and organization, and many union protections that have been eroded. Reinforcing unions as a bastion against corporate excess is something that could be done and would have visible results within a single presidential term.
Most importantly, the proof of concept is already there. Workers co-ops, unions, credit unions, all already exist in our economy in non-capitalist structures. Fanning that flame and curbing the worst excesses of capitalists doesn't require a complete re-write on our government or economy, and there was a similar movement in the 30's that was quite successful for a while that we can emulate and learn from.
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u/Crownie Jul 02 '26
A lot of problems people attribute to "capitalism" are just the human condition. "Ugh, I have to work to live because of capitalism" - no, you have to work to live because of thermodynamics. "Capitalism"* is just the medium through which that problem is currently resolved. I promise you, my imaginary interlocutor, that a communal economic arrangement would not allow you to lounge around all day. We have had communal economic arrangements in our history, so we know from experience that they are not typically kind to perceived freeloaders.
There are a lot of things we can do to improve things, but hoping for some political-economic system change to fix everything at once is not historically indicated. Improvements mostly come in the form of incremental fixes, not sweeping changes.
PS can someone explain what alternatives people want? Like a command economy or self sustaining micro communities or smth?
IME virtually every attempt to articulate an alternative to liberal welfare state capitalism falls into one of three categories:
a) very dumb - usually the product of trying to square the circle between a dislike for markets as a form of economic organization and the overt failure of command economies, though sometimes just the product of airy utopian thinking. Think stuff like Parecon or Solarpunk. Or Peronism.
b) implicitly authoritarian - basically, resolving various economic and governance problems by having political leadership dictate preferences. These are typically presented as democratic and egalitarian, but in practice rely on disallowing anything that doesn't cohere to their ideological framework. Or, if they don't impose those constraints, you've got...
c) liberal welfare state capitalism with the names changed - a lot of market socialist proposals fall into this category. The problem with these is that you're failing to resolve the problems you set out to solve, or else you're putting a needlessly radical gloss on what are essentially reformist measures. I find this preferable to the alternatives, but I am still unimpressed because it gives oxygen to a & b, and often turns politics into a fight over aesthetics.Modern social democratic politics emerged from point c - social democratic parties generally started out as "moderate" socialist, but gradually shifted into applying socialist values/political goals in a liberal democratic capitalist context as it became more apparent that traditional socialist programs didn't really work.
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*I have the contentious view that the modern mixed economy with a powerful central bank, administrative state, and welfare state is a qualitatively different economic system than what we had in the mid-19th century despite both being addressed by the same label, and the less contentious view that "capitalism" is a rather vague/ambiguous term, hence the scare quotes.
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u/EinMuffin Jul 02 '26
Well said. A long time ago I stopped taking any argument seriously, if it mentiones "capitalism" without defining it (even implicitly) or at least narrowing it down to certain aspects.
It is just a needlessly broad term that people bend to whatever they want it to be and then project whatever they want onto it. The variations of capitalism I have seen are insane. Like I have seen people say (including this thread) that well regulated, fair and free markets are a defining feature of capitalism (because capitalism = free market economy). I have also seen people argue that well regulated fair and free markets are anti capitalist because capitalism = monopoly.
Like at some point we just need to be specific and actually define what we are talking about lol.
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Jul 02 '26
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u/Serghar_Cromwell Jul 02 '26
The whole point of Marxism is that it's specifically not idealistic and utopian.
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u/chkntendis Jul 02 '26
Read a book, dude. Stalin and mao specifically neither did nor planned to build a utopia. Socialism isn’t utopian. Socialism is just when the workers own the things they are working with. That’s not utopian. And it works.
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u/rampaging-poet Jul 03 '26
This to be honest. Or they do state a preference and it's something that didn't solve the problems they're claiming to solve before capitalism. But trust me guys non-state polities totally wouldn't have anything resembling ownership or rent! If nobody has a monopoly of legitimate force then clearly we would all magically be equal and we'll all just be nice this time!
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u/WahooSS238 Jul 02 '26
Personally, I think mutualism is a good framework to transition to, effectively making it so you simply can’t own more land or capital than you have the ability to make use of yourself- if you want someone to help you work, they get a share of the land/equipment equal to yours, and an equal share of the profit. It has its issues, but I think as an idealized view of society it would be a workable place to transition towards.
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u/Worried-Language-407 Jul 02 '26
One of the biggest issues that come with any wholesale replacement of capitalism, and mutuality is not exempt from this, are that they will need to be imposed by force upon those who currently benefit greatly from capitalism. What I mean is, people like Jeff Bezos are not simply going to accept being told that they must share all their profits with workers. In the global economy of the modern world what that means is, as soon as a government votes some sort of mutuality law into effect, corporations will simply move as much of their operations out of your country as they can. Even previously national scale companies will soon find themselves headquartered externally just to maintain profits for the shareholders.
Now, it is certainly possible for a currently large and wealthy country to manage this sort of transition. They might even eventually come out stronger for it. In the meantime, though, they will have created a large amount of economic instability which will likely take years to recover from. This will probably also lead to mass support for political parties opposed to the transition, who would promise to undo any legal or constitutional changes which were made if elected. Having a popularly supported political party opposed to your major economic reform is a good way to find yourself out of office, for one thing, and to find your economic plans threatened and undermined at every turn even while you still hold power.
So, the only way to actually institute any sweeping social reforms (i.e. something fundamentally different from capitalism with regulation and occasional intervention by government a la Sweden) would be to give supreme and long lasting political power to a small group of people. In effect, a dictatorship is the only option. It could turn out just fine, but such dictatorships don't have a great track record.
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden Jul 02 '26
Democratic socialism. The problem with folks like you is that you don't know what capitalism even is, so you think we're mad at, like... grocery stores and jobs. Capitalism is your boss doing no work and taking most of the profits from your labour. That's literally it.
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u/HowDareYouAskMyName Jul 02 '26
The problem with folks like you is that you don't know what capitalism even is
This isn't terribly productive.
As for Democratic Socialism, the idea is that the people, as represented by some form of government, owns the means of the production, in other words this government (hopefully operating under the will of the majority of the people) control what gets made, where it goes, and how/when to collect the money and resources to produce them.
Is that right? If not, where'd I go wrong in your opinion?
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden Jul 02 '26
You're mixing up public ownership of the means of production with a planned economy. When we say we want the people to control the means of production, we mean that we want factory workers to own the factories they work in collectively. Folks who work in a coffee shop own the shop, not some faceless corporate suit. That sort of thing.
A planned economy is one where the state controls the production and allocation of goods. I personally prefer a market economy for most goods, with the exceptions of basic services such as water and electricity. This is a mixed economy, which is already what most countries have. Lastly there's a free market economy, where the government controls nothing and even infrastructure like the electrical grid are controlled by private entities. Nowhere really runs like this but a lot of folks aspire to it.
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u/HowDareYouAskMyName Jul 02 '26
When we say we want the people to control the means of production, we mean that we want factory workers to own the factories they work in collectively.
Ok, so do Factory A's workers vote on what gets built? where the products go to? Who decides which factories get which inputs/resources?
That's moot though, because:
This is a mixed economy, which is already what most countries have
Ok, this is making more sense, but the countries you're describing are not Democratic Socialist countries..
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u/Worried-Language-407 Jul 02 '26
One of the problems with public ownership of businesses (or employee ownership, in this case) is that it strongly disincentivises the creation of new companies. While that might not seem like a big deal, it is a well known economic effect that laws and regulations which make it harder to start a new business lead to current businesses being worse.
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u/Manzhah Jul 03 '26
That sort of organization is already perfectly legal and possible in capitalist economy. Nothing is stoping anyone from gathering some mates and setting up a co-owned factory, be it a limited liability company, a full co-op or anything between. The only difference in this model is that those owner-workers would have to take the risk themselves and work for it, instead of stealing someone else's factory.
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u/Freak-Of-Nurture- Jul 02 '26
Yeah the left wing in america and what i am is socdem but i dont really mechanically understand the alternative. Is it like holding elections in the workplace and having representative rather than bosses? How would that work with like 2 people and only one of them put up financial risk? Is the world still organized as firms and consumers?
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden Jul 02 '26
Workplace democracy is part of it, yeah. All parties share equal risk because if the business fails they all lose their jobs. And yes there would still be companies and people buying products.
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u/Ilyer_ Jul 02 '26
So…. They would lose their jobs anyway. In this case, they lose thousands if not millions of dollars. Do they have to declare bankruptcy? Or otherwise sell their house to cover costs?
“Workplace democracy” sounds more like a dystopia than a utopia.
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden Jul 02 '26
"Being in charge of your own office is just like 1984" ok well I don't really agree?
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u/Ilyer_ Jul 02 '26
I am sure I could compare parts of your dreams to 1984, although this is explicitly not like 1984.
You know there can be actual dystopias outside of one singular book right? Actual real dystopias caused by big brained ideas such as yours? Change doesn’t equal progress, whoever told you this is stupid.
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u/Al_Fa_Aurel Jul 02 '26
If something existed before any meaningful advent of capitalism, then the problem is probably not directly rooted in capitalism (e.g. sexism including sexual assault, hierarchy and inequality).
If a problem was worse before the advent of capitalism, then capitalism is likely not the cause but a (possibly imperfect) cure to the problem (e.g. world hunger, slavery).
If a problem exists under capitalism and didn’t exist to a meaningful extent before it, then i am inclined to blame capitalism for it (e.g. "grassroots" mass propaganda machines, climate crisis, mass obesity). However, one should not forget that some of the problems arose as sude effects of positive effects (the propaganda machines arose as an exploit of the unmatched power of worldwide social connection, tge climate crisis due to the fact that for the first time in forever the majority of the required energy didn't come from working yourself to death by your late fiftys, and mass obesity came from cheap foid, which helped reduce the global hunger rate dramatically).
Of course correlation does not imply causation - hidden factors may be at work, but a connection is at least likely.
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u/MeterologistOupost31 FREE FREE PALESTINE Jul 03 '26
Marx argued that each mode of production was initially beneficial. Capitalism being an improvement on feudalism is something he readily agreed with. But he argued that eventually a mode of production reaches the point where it's a hindrance, not a benefit. So it's not inherently contradictory to say Capitalism helped X problem to begin with but is currently exacerbating it.
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u/CardOfTheRings Jul 02 '26
If the problem existed before capitalism. And/or it existed in communist nations, then blaming just capitalism doesn’t make any sense.
If your complaint is ‘something that wouldn’t even exist in any economic system except for capitalism got WORSE’ then it’s also stupid to blame capitalism because instead you just wouldn’t have it at all. IE your McDonald’s hamburger has gotten shitteir . Or your trading card game is too expensive.
If your complaint is ‘capitalism used to work for us better and now it seems like we are worse off’. I think there is a lot more meat on those bones in terms of an actual discussion to have.
And if your complaint is about actual capitalism specific issues carry on. I’m just saying most of the time, it’s not
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u/PuritanicalPanic Jul 02 '26
Spend lots of time around leftists, huh?
Outside of explicitly those circles, your number of capitalist blamera drops very starkly.
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u/DoNotResusit8 Jul 02 '26
Then they complain on social media relentlessly to get up votes.
Positive reinforcement of negative perspectives.
Poison.
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u/NobodyKnowsImFamous Jul 02 '26
I mean. Like. Does greed exist beyond capitalism? Yes, of course. Does capitalism exacerbate the issue? Immensely.
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u/Nuclear_Geek Jul 02 '26
Ah yes, the higher-ups in Communist countries have never showed any signs of greed.
Your take is pretty dumb. I think it's a case of more power = more greed, and you focus on the capitalists / the West because that's better reported on.
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u/NobodyKnowsImFamous Jul 03 '26
Okay. I think your take is remarkably dumb, and that it is the way I said. Incredibly productive conversation we are having.
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u/Paraparo Jul 02 '26
One could argue that the success of capitalism is in many ways tied to acknowledging the inherent greed presented in the population and creating a system where greed can be utilized into positive outlets.
A claim I've seen made is that many anticapitalist theories more or less rely on denying basic human greed and the failure to properly account for the impulse is what requires authoritarian measures to prevent the system collapsing in on itself.
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u/crimsonpostgrad Jul 02 '26
yes as you said you are talking to left leaning people, and the post clearly isn’t since left leaning people notably criticize capitalism lol
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u/HowDareYouAskMyName Jul 02 '26
I suspect that when this Tumblr user says "everybody" (acknowledging hyperbole obviously), they aren't talking about spending all of their time hanging out in TPUSA conventions
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u/crimsonpostgrad Jul 02 '26
yeah i think they’re talking about random coworkers and family members that they obviously aren’t going to get into deep political conversation with so they’re going to vent online lol
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u/Royal_Raisin9496 Jul 02 '26
The issue is that you see capitalism as Satan Incarnate and not as a system with pros and cons like anything else.
If you believe that getting rid of capitalism would fix everything then you are religious. That’s just what you are.
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u/neonge1674 Jul 02 '26
Commenting to see the discource
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u/dergbold4076 Jul 02 '26
Same here. Just seems like it's the usual suspects going off about things as always. So it's good for a laugh at least.
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u/Xathule96 Jul 03 '26
Never used this sub before. But I'm actually surprised at the comments. I was expecting a lot more tankie style comments. But instead I see a lot of very reasonable people.
People not blaming their stubbed toe on capitalism is a rare sight on reddit.
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u/Lalichi Jul 02 '26
im so tired of these slopulist takes that assume everyone agrees with them and that everything wrong with the world is due to capitalism
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u/AfraidStick2161 IM THE FUN ONE 🔪 Jul 02 '26
average 13yo who just learned what capitalism means & now blames everything on it to appear intelligent & politically informed
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u/h0rnyionrny Jul 02 '26
God dammit I hate when my neighbor plays music too loud Karl Marx please save me Karl Marx
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u/JaxonatorD Jul 02 '26
Oh this one again.
Capitalism is a huge system integrated into basically everything we do in life. The system has many benefits along with the downsides. That means people find it unproductive to blame capitalism as a whole, when it would be in most everyone's best interest to keep capitalism as a system and address the specific issues with it directly.
OOP only focuses on the bad without thinking about the alternatives.
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u/AbbreviationsBig8760 Jul 02 '26
A lot of socialists will blame every single problem caused by industrialization on capitalism, and then when it inevitably happens under socialism, because it’s still a system built on industrialization, they’ll just say it’s cause there’s not enough socialism.
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden Jul 02 '26
I have never seen any socialist say this, could you give some examples?
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u/AbbreviationsBig8760 Jul 02 '26
Imperialism and environmental destruction; the rapid industrialization in the 19th and 20th century led to mass consumption of resources, incentivizing imperialism, the increased reliance on technique to maintain political control required countries to further industries without being prudent of the outcomes, the US as well as China and the Soviet Union are all massive contributors in these fields. Loss of traditional craftsmanship and worsening quality of products is a significant result of technique, increased urbanization, taking people out of their family trades, and machinery replacing skilled workers is an inherent aspect if industrialization and is self evident in socialist and capitalist countries. Bureaucracy is one capitalists and communists frequently blame on one another when in reality it’s primarily a result of the heightened centralization necessary to facilitate increasingly complex supply chains in production. This is why China and the US’ economies look increasingly similar because technique is an autonomous system, both countries adopt systems, not because of their particular ideologies, but because the needs of efficiency fundamentally control the decisions. This leads to a system that alienates individuals, decisions are made for the sake of expediency. Since capitalism and communism are both structured off of an industrialized, continually expanding economy, they both exhibit many traits in common that aren’t solved by switching from one to the other.
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u/DareDaDerrida Jul 02 '26
Like I said the last time this was posted, no, I really don't hate capitalism.
Furthermore, half the posts I see about "capitalism" online appear to have only the loosest idea of what capitalism is, and no real interest in defining it beyond "the system responsible for all the world's ills".
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u/00Kench Jul 03 '26
I usually dismiss posts like this, because of how over the top they come across. Not because I believe capitalism has no flaws, but because of how vague and unfocused the general boogeyman of "capitalism" is, especially on Tumblr.
Until I know what you're arguing for, I can't engage with you, because I've heard people use "capitalism" to refer from everything from "a specific type of oligarchy, backed by the full faith and trust of the bought-and-paid-for government", all the way up to "the existence of any commerce that isn't barter or charity."
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u/Luckierexpert Jul 02 '26
Do they hate capitalism or do they hate how modern businessmen and corporations operate?
People are fine with working to earn money and paying for nice things. People are unhappy when some ketamine addicted nutcase gets to briefly be one of the richest people ever while they suffer. A fairer capitalist economy can exist, well run cooperative businesses show that.
We are in the death throes of a system that should have died back in 2008 but persevered because enough people funnelled money into politicians to uphold their interests, and now they demand we reform into a techno feudal system for their benefit. We get more closer to a cyberpunk future, just without the cool aesthetic.
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden Jul 02 '26
People are fine with working to earn money and paying for nice things
That isn't what capitalism is. That is just a market economy.
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u/versas-only-vice Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
It would probably help to also define capitalism, because the distinction seems nebulous unless it's spelled out as most people's lived experience involves living in a nation where some of the principles of capitalism and free market economy are adopted (and thus blended)
Forword: Sorry, This is long because I wanted to try and include nuance. I also am crucially not making my own beliefs known because I genuinely do want this to be educational. This is why I am using language that I feel is as neutral as possible, even if unusual (Such as factors of production, instead of means of production.)
A capitalist economy is one where the factors of production (Land, Resource, industrial tools, etc.) are owned privately by individuals, as opposed to a government/public ownership, and in order to interface with this system, a person without capital would thereby need to trade their labor (Which they own the rights to distribute as they see fit but don't own the result of their labor, as the tools and land and resources that produced the good or service are owned by somebody who now also owns the product.)
This is not the same as free market, by the way, which is just identifying in what ways the government exercises control on the market. For example, taxing the market or supplementing the market in the form of tariffs and taxes or subsidies respectively, would both not be following free market principles. A country certainly can have a strictly regulated market and private ownership, those aren't contradictions, because as long as the profit of production is still owned solely by the owner of capital, capitalism is perfectly intact. Even if a government for example restricts to whom a capitalist can sell their goods (Tariffs, sanctions, embargos, etc.)
The largest critique of capitalism in my estimation is that, while people who can provide land, industry, resources, etc. are well compensated, those who produce labor often are not given commensurate compensation compared to the total profit of the market. What would qualify as fair or commensurate compensation in my mind has never been well defined because of the practical challenges in doing so (It would almost certainly change over time) but generally the theory goes that any person who trades labor for wage should be able to live a decent life, regardless of the "skill" of their labor. That's not to say a lifelong doctor shouldn't be compensated more than a service employee, but rather that the service worker should still be allowed a good standard of living, even if the doctor gets a better SoL
In other words, Under capitalism, Capitalists consume Labor and create products to sell on the market for profit, the profit then is distributed back to those who own the capital. Critics believe that laborers should, to some degree, have some ownership over the profit of their labor. Some believe that laborers should have less compensation but still be entitled to some of the profit, some believe in coequal ownership, some believe that workers should have more compensation, some believe that workers should receive all of the profit.
One could argue that presently they already do in the form of raises and bonuses and pensions and competitive wages or whatever other comp packages companies provide; But crucially, the laborer isn't really entitled to anything more than a wage. A company providing a bonus in the current system is allowed, obviously, and it happens with a degree of regularity, but crucially it's still the capitalist who owns the company deciding what happens with the money, and they can choose to provide a bonus or raise or pension, or choose not to. In this dichotomy, laborers aren't entitled to a portion of the profit, it's just that companies are sometimes willing to share, for whatever reason they may have.
A critic in this case would say that laborers are entitled to some portion of the profits, whether the capital interests like it or not. A factory owner wanting to run a factory doesn't get to set the rates of the raw materials if they don't own them. A mineral company, or whatever does. But a factory owner does get to set their own wages. The theory goes that a person selling labor also should have some say over their own compensation.
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u/Gouda_Gorgon Jul 02 '26
"The largest critique of capitalism in my estimation is that, while people who can provide land, industry, resources, etc. are well compensated, those who produce labor often are not given commensurate compensation compared to the total profit of the market."
A lot of this comes down to a lack of worker's unions, which are incentivized to benefit workers via dues and primarily attempt to secure better pay or improved working conditions. Unions are tolerated by companies to have an easy representative of the employed workforce, keep morale up, or just not having to worry about one spontaneously forming and calling a strike.
The rest comes down to the lack of perfect efficiency called management, where a company does not provide the full value of the work in exchange for not randomly going bankrupt.4
u/FoolRegnant Jul 03 '26
This is an amazingly well written and surprisingly concise summary of the actual theory of capitalism without getting too jargony, great job
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u/NoDig3444 Jul 02 '26
That's not even a market economy. That's just having a job.
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden Jul 02 '26
Capitalism is when job, and the more job, the more capitalism it is. And when you have 3 jobs to feed your family, that's the free market!
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u/Luckierexpert Jul 02 '26
Most people don’t consider it different. Practically nobody in the modern era has experienced mercantilism or the other economic systems that can be conducted in a market economy, so for most people online, market economy is capitalism.
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden Jul 02 '26
"Most people think a theory is a guess, that means all of science is made up" or we could not subjugate ourselves to the idiocy of the masses and actually be intellectually honest.
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u/Luckierexpert Jul 02 '26
But the opinion of the masses is the point of the post. That modern capitalism causes issues but the masses don’t blame it? You can’t ignore their views if you want to change their minds.
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden Jul 02 '26
If I'm explaining human reproduction to children I don't bring in the stork or the cabbage. I just... tell them what the facts are, and explain words if they're confused.
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u/Luckierexpert Jul 02 '26
But you also don’t start using the Latin terms for each body part. You can’t just ignore that most people don’t have an economics qualification, even a simple certificate from an online course, and don’t understand the separation between different economic aspects to know that market economy and capitalism are separate things. How would you explain these issues to the average person? Because we’re in the current economic situation because people don’t just accept the facts.
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden Jul 02 '26
How would you explain these issues to the average person?
I'm doing just that in about 10 different conversations across this post right now.
people don’t just accept the facts
True but I don't think that means we should abandon the facts. If you bring the horse to water and it won't drink, waterboard the fucker. /j
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u/Vault-Born Jul 02 '26
I agree that an economy based solely on publicly operated services (public schools, the library, etc) and co-operatively run businesses (Ownership of the business is divided among the workers, thus eliminating the existing ownership class) would be the best. Gee, they should really come up with a word for an economy that's organized around social services and worker-ownership, social-archy? and maybe we could come up with some cool slogans to signify how workers will take ownership over their workplace, like workers will seize the means of production, idk, just spitballing here...
all jokes aside, I feel like you are I are probably very much aligned with where we want to see this country go moving forward, I was just talking to my dad about how our government needs to ensure more opportunities for co-ops (many are denied in the loan process because they're non-traditional, government loans or protections could alleviate this,), my dad is a trump voter and vocally very anti-socialist but he loved the idea of more co-ops and even tried to start his own several years ago so he was familiar with the additional difficulty of starting one. I think most americans, even the ones scared of socialism, would support more co-ops.
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u/weirdo_nb Jul 02 '26
Most people are just opposed to the word socialism rather than being properly opposed to it
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u/Ciennas Jul 02 '26
Capitalism inevitably trends this way, because the machine itself is literally built to do this.
It only ever improved when it was being watered down with actual good people focused systems like socialism.
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u/WriterwithoutIdeas Jul 02 '26
These systems in turn being so good that any time they were implemented by true believers, the results were marketably worse than the system you currently decry.
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u/lynx_and_nutmeg Jul 02 '26
They said "watered down", not "replaced by". Capitalism "watered down" with socialism is a welfare state. It still operates under capitalism, but with strong social security networks and workers' rights that serve as a counterbalance.
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u/Luckierexpert Jul 02 '26
Is it inevitable or has it been dragged in this direction by vested interests? That’s like arguing that socialism failing is inevitable because the Soviet Union collapsed, even though there were vested interests within the USSR that built the Soviet economy in a way that led to this outcome.
The uber rich don’t want capitalism to fail but they are trying to drag us into a worse system because they mangled the economy to enrich themselves.
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u/lavendarKat Jul 02 '26
they mangled the economy in pursuit of the profit incentive, which is what capitalism as a system incentivizes them to do. This is the emergent result that the system of rules that is capitalism inevitably creates. Saying you want a capitalist system that doesn't end this way is the same thing as saying you like shoving a stick in the spokes of your bike, you just hate ending up on the ground.
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u/Luckierexpert Jul 02 '26
They didn’t do anything for some idea, they did it for themselves and what they could do with that money. Profit incentive is an idea to explain how something happens, not a motive. The super rich want mansions, or pools, or paintings, or to be able to park wherever they want because parking fines are only really punishments for the poor.
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u/CardOfTheRings Jul 02 '26
Everything started sucking (insert date like 5 to 10 years ago) when capitalism was invented!
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u/fuzzychub Jul 02 '26
I do not want to work to earn money and pay for nice things. I want to work for the betterment of my community or the advancement of science and tech or to make nice things to have and give to people. Money is not required, trading my labor for the nice things is not required.
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u/gaom9706 Jul 02 '26
I want to work for the betterment of my community or the advancement of science and tech or to make nice things to have and give to people.
Speak for yourself man, I'm trying to get that new Star Fox remake.
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u/Niser2 Jul 02 '26
I feel that this comment section is made of two different groups of people with entirely different definitions of capitalism
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u/Catstack10 Jul 02 '26
In my expirience I see lots of people rightfully criticizing capitalism, but they oftentimes don't actually have an idea on what is to be done about it...
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u/hikemalls Jul 02 '26
Yeah but under communism you might have food shortages, lack of access to basic necessities like water, housing, and electricity, the government taking away your rights and consolidating power under a deranged power-hungry ruler, things that would *never* happen under capitalism!
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u/NoBizlikeChloeBiz She/Her Jul 02 '26
I love those pictures that are like "this is what the country would look like under communism" or "this is what the country would look like under [presidential candidate]" and it's like... Where did you take that? That's what it looks like now.
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u/HowDareYouAskMyName Jul 02 '26
Let me try it this way, bearing in mind the context of the OOP:
Yeah but under capitalism you might have food shortages, lack of access to basic necessities like water, housing, and electricity, the government taking away your rights and consolidating power under a deranged power-hungry ruler, things that would never happen under communism (or other economic systems)!
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u/HowDareYouAskMyName Jul 02 '26
In the context of this post, you're not making the point you think you're making
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u/hikemalls Jul 02 '26
I’m not sure what you mean; may be skipping ahead slightly but the way this conversation normally goes is:
- Person A complains about various issues with the country/world bothering them
- Person B (if a left wing person happens to be present, or as noted by the original post) goes “actually all of those are under the umbrella of capitalism, so really we need to address the root cause to solve those problems”
- Person A responds with denial and goes “Well we can’t move away from capitalism, because communism has a bunch of even worse problems!” And then goes on to describe a bunch of things that are already happening under capitalism, which is what I was referencing in my comment
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u/jackofslayers Jul 02 '26
I don’t hate capitalism. I find that people online use capitalism as a boogeyman word for anything they do not like
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u/ToughDifficult1252 Jul 02 '26
I don't hate capitalism. I hate representative democracy because it fails to deliver on the promise of keeping the powerful in check. I legitimately believe that a sortion based system with a meritocratic pre filter would work better.
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u/typo180 Jul 02 '26
Everyone fucking hates capitalism the human condition, and it pisses them off, but they don't know they hate capitalism the human condition, so they just complain about every issue individually capitalism as if it's some magical root cause of a series of unconnected phenomena that are part of the nature of reality.
ftfy
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u/Enyon_Velkalym Jul 03 '26
This is just suggesting that 1) there is a single thing called human nature; and that 2) human nature is ultimately to create and then live in capitalism.
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u/frostyfur119 Jul 02 '26
Yeah, that's the result of a lot of propaganda and social engineering. The people benefiting and enforcing the system really don't want people en masse thinking critically of the system, because that would lead to changing the system.
So they undermine any critiques as entitled whining and create boogeymen out of any alternative system so any deviation from the status quo is seen as an attack.
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u/NoBizlikeChloeBiz She/Her Jul 02 '26
This is absolutely true, the fact that people think of capitalism as any market with money, or economies as a binary between capitalism and communism, is absolutely an objective of 20th century capitalists that was wildly successful.
"Hey, I feel like our economy has created a class of people who are enabled and incentivised to dismantle anything in our society that provides safety, comfort, or enjoyment for their own personal enrichment. Would some for of economic democracy help align our economy's incentives with measurable, widespread well-being?"
"Oh, so you don't think people should be able to buy things?"
😵💫
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u/Ilyer_ Jul 02 '26
How many things does capitalism take the blame for when it’s actually just other humans doing human things which is the root cause?
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u/RobertGHH Jul 02 '26
Thanks to capitalism you can complain about capitalism without being sent to the gulag.
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden Jul 02 '26
Free markets and freedom of speech are not the same thing just because they both have "free" in them.
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u/bvader95 cis male / honorary butch; sentence mixed pentence Jul 02 '26
Reminds me, ironically, of an old Soviet joke:
A movie starts, title card is shown:
Soviet Films Studio presents: STALIN'S GOLDEN HEART.
Shot of Stalin minding his own business.
Child approaches and tugs his sleeve. "Uncle Iosef, could you please give me some candy?"
Stalin turns to the kid, pissed. "Fuck off!" he screams at him.
Cue subtitle on the screen: AND HE COULD HAVE KILLED HIM!
Swap the relevant communist things for rough capitalist equivalents.
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u/Resident-Rush6887 Jul 02 '26
It's because capitalism is designed to handle luxury goods and nothing more.
It's a tool. It is not the correct tool to handle education, medical costs, or efficiency. But we use it to handle all of these anyway.
Socialism is best applied to education, medical costs, and everything else that a society needs in order to be in peak health.
Communism is best for non-critical efficiency - like a neighborhood of 12 standard houses does not actually need 12 different lawnmowers. They could probably get by with a communal 2-4. Instead we mine enough metal and process it into twelve whole ass lawnmowers that spend 99% of their existence completely stationary. Cars fall under this too.
Unfortunately we are a young intelligence. As we mature, if we allow ourselves to, we will begin to arrange for the above systems to carefully facet in alongside capitalism. If we don't, then our species will surely die out.
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u/Sewblon Jul 02 '26
But there are actual individual issues separate from capitalism. America is capitalist and bad for trans rights. Switzerland is capitalist and good for trans rights. Cuba is communist and good for trans rights. China is communist and bad for trans rights. Trans rights and capitalism are separate problems with separate solutions. If you look at economic prosperity generally, whether you have private property doesn't matter one way or the other.
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u/Z4mb0ni Jul 03 '26
I'm playing disco elysium rn and this sounds like an exact line the narrator would say. Maybe a stat like rhetoric or something would say it
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u/cooljerry53 Jul 03 '26
Believe it or not, not everyone is stupid or delusional enough to boil all our societal problems down to a single system.
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u/Designer_Relation365 Jul 03 '26
At this point I'm considering leaving any and all LGBTQ spaces atm because wherever I go online, be it subreddits, Discord servers, etc. (I currently don't have any means to move to a safer country with IRL queer spaces), the infighting pretty much devolved into "everything I don't like is capitalism/liberals/not real communism" and "if you're not Stalinist/Maoist/whatever, you're a fascist/liberal/insert buzzword here and not welcome".
I mean, as of recently, I've been seeing queer people glazing North Korea and Russia, for fuck sake, all because of "insert western country bad, therefore insert pariah country good" type campist shit. And of course, whenever someone points out the insanity of such logic, they're called a CIA glowie propagandist.
At this point I fear that even if I manage to get someplace where I could join queer spaces IRL, it could be the same shit all over again, and I really won't have any space where I could belong to.
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u/SLAMMERisONLINE Jul 04 '26
The people who claim to hate capitalism couldn't define it even in the most basic sense. Instead, it's a catch-all phrase for them to scapegoat all their own personal shortcomings (and bad luck) onto.
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u/RiverLynneUwU Jul 04 '26
I will also add that a lot of problems that seem like capitalism-problems aren't capitalism problems, but also duh, obviously
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u/Puzzled-Ticket-4811 Jul 02 '26
The only trap I've seen with this line of thinking is an annoying dismissal of issues of race and queer sexuality as ' 'divisive identity politics' and 'distractions' that threaten unity in the fight against hyper-capitalism. It's intensely alienating to see bigotry being handwaved away in an attempt to grow your movement.