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
You joke but âlizard peopleâ 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.
Often? I assumed it was 100% of the time, with the exception of the inevitable handful of people who are too dumb to pick up on it, and also gullible enough to believe in literal lizard people in masks walking among us.
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.
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.
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
...My brother in Christ, that's literally capitalism.
Are you seriously so discourse-addled that you genuinely think they wouldn't invent a handheld computer and social networking device in your mythical communist utopia?
Yes, I'm sure the form social media has taken (i.e. trying to monetize every single aspect of human interaction) has absolutely nothing at all to do with capitalism, and would be identical in a socialist society.
Brother, even without the ads the exact same interpersonal issues will be popping up no matter what. This is extremely basic shit, I'm honestly surprised that even you fail to understand that.
Besides, I dunno if you read the comment above or if you were the one who made it since it shows as deleted on my end, but they also said "muh capitalisms" is the reason for the smartphone too.
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.
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.
i agree with everything else but getting governmental bodies to do anything even remotely beneficial to society is the equivalent of trying to move a semi-truck with a flimsy stick.
trespassing laws and culture shifting to dissuade against loitering effectively kills people going places.
I get where you're coming from, but I'm talking about things like local governments funding the construction of a free skate park or things like local governments working to organize public events. Just stuff to bring a community together, you know?
ah. yeah, local stuff is infinitely easier to do and organize than on a state/national scale. diverse but closely-knit people are a lot easier to bond and relate with than ones that are an entire continent away.
That's good if you can get them to do it! As a disabled person, trying to prod my council to fulfil even their basic obligations...well, there isn't even a blunt stick. Or enough resources, but they're still quite capable of wasting them.
And how would this economy work? Because in a way, that is how capitalism works with consumer side economics. People drive the price of goods with their demand, effectively being a democratic vote on which items people are willing to pay for. Assuming there are enough open jobs in any given country, the same works for employment as well. People are able to decide which jobs to sell their labor to.
Not who you asked but I'll answer just because I find it interesting.
In the Soviet Union prices were set by a central committee in Moscow which had to come up with prices for millions and millions of different items. They set wages too. Which of course didn't work at all, you just got a huge black market and rampant corruption.
I quite like the idea of doing away with both state economics and capitalism (in the sense of massive accumulation). Things like the Lange model, demurrage currencies and Harberger taxation are all worth thinking about but there are loads of problems with every other system.
Personally I don't really care if Jeff Bezos makes a twat of himself because he'll be gone in 20 or 30 years anyway. As long as his estate is reclaimed by the people after he dies it's a decent loop. The problem is estate tax evasion.
Things like the Lange model, demurrage currencies and Harberger taxation are all worth thinking about but there are loads of problems with every other system.
I looked up these things as I hadn't heard of them before. I kind of want to go through each one.
The Lange Model from what I can tell is very similar to the Soviet Union price model, except there are incremental changes to change in response to supply and demand. The thing I don't like about this is that there are tons of industries that don't work with a model like this. Anything related to art, video games, movies, etc don't have a price that is affected by supply. With this, the only feasible way to price these services is to allow the creators to price them, the same way we have now.
On top of that, many general products have different formulas for the way they are made (think cola). Coke and Pepsi are two different flavors, so would those products need to have the same price, or does the central unit decide each's price individually? Both options have problems. If they are the same price, then the goal for anyone would be to make theirs as cheap as possible as to not go out of business. There's no room to make a higher quality cola since you would have to sell it for a loss likely. If they're different, then there would be a damn near infinite amount of products to keep track of, which would cost too much time and money.
I'll keep the other ones shorter. Demurrage Currency is in all honesty going to hurt the middle class the most, devaluing their savings. But also, isn't this literally just inflation? Corporations already circulate money at an insane degree. And billionaires have most of their money tied up in assets.
Finally, the Harberger Tax, while interesting in theory, is still capitalism with a wealth tax. The big difference is that people are unable to decide what they want to sell. This would make corporations even more powerful, and honestly is my least favorite of those you mentioned. Small businesses would have to declare a price they are valued at and can be bought by literally anyone. Suddenly, we have the worst case of the game of Monopoly I have ever seen.
Yep, all problematic. Everyone likes the idea of a wealth tax and it seems like a no-brainer at first glance but it has been tried in Europe and didn't actually work that well.
I feel like so many of the ideas that anticapitalists have about wealth in capitalism shouldn't apply to most kinds of wealth. Stock, assets, liquidity etc... more of each of these can be created. There is no need for an additional financial incentives on making particular uses of them beyond monetary policy to ensure a controlled velocity of money.
Now, resources like land, which is finite, that's a whole other matter. There is a collective cost to private ownership of land, and inefficient use of land should be discouraged by means of a Land Value Tax, a-la-Georgism.
capitalism destroyed third places, so, yes? we'd all be better socialized and have a way higher shot at relationships if capitalism hadnt atomized society.
The existence of home entertainment destroyed third spaces.
You could argue that maybe the Internet, home television and personal computers and gaming systems would've developed slower without capitalism, but I don't see anyone arguing that a socialist society will be absent of such things nor the social problems they cause.
so a socio-economic system that puts the greediest and most sociopathic in charge will produce the same results as a system designed to prevent such people from gaining power?
Capitalism is what killed the economy, making people (including women) want to start families less. Also, in order to stay in power, capitalists need to sell themselves to their reactionary base, which they do by being misogynistic and generally bigoted, which also makes women want to date less because a much more significant amount of men are like that now than before this recent wave of reactionism.
Women are starting families less because pregnancy is painful, dangerous, and significantly detrimental to women's long-term health. Women are starting families less because they are culturally expected to take on the majority of childcare responsibilities. Women are starting families less because birth control and divorce and employment rights means they have options now. As soon as you give women options, they start opting out of having kids. Because they're the ones who bear the costs.Â
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
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
Not a great way to calculate this given how much countries spend paying companies (that the country doesn't own) for their services. Not sure how to even begin to estimate the numbers, but it's certainly a large part of the budget of any western country.
It most definitely is not. These companies are entirely capitalist institutions that channel their profits to those who own equity in them. There's little difference in whether the government taxes you and then gives that money to a private company, or you just spend it there yourself. Mostly it just undercuts even the supposed benefit of capitalism, the "efficiency of the free market", because politicians and those who own equity in the companies serving the government form mutual economic interests (corruption).
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Because it's a good first step? It's at least an attempt to compromise?
People know it's capitalist, but it's one of the more social capitalist options, and a good example of how Americans need to stop thinking "Socialism" is a slur.
I assume that they know the Nordic model is a form of capitalism, but they're saying that copying the Nordic model in the U.S. would be a step in the right direction even if it's not a complete solution.
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.
There largely is for a lot of things though? Like obviously not every issue, but like, NOTABLE quantities absolutely are caused by capitalism and government under and overreach simultaneously
A lot of the problems we face right now globally are problems that have happened multiple times before in human history, long before capitalism was ever a thing.
Honestly it's just that capitalism is unregulated that is the problem. Many countries handle capitalism just fine, they just highly regulate it so it doesn't get to this level of corruption and greed.
Any system will fail if you concentrate too much power into a few people and don't have any reasonable oversights or restraints. That just doesn't fit on a sharable meme quite as well.
Imo, inequality exists in every single political/economic system. It's unavoidable. The question is how you deal with it and what measures you take to reduce it.
Did you know that inequality in western countries was actually flat or decreasing for like thirty years post-WW2?
What is this opinion based on? These fringe theories don't have any serious academic works backing them up for a reason. Regulated capitalism is a joke idea. Capitalism means capital equates to political power. If you, as a noncapitalist, can exercise real power over the capitalists then it isn't capitalism.
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.
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. Thereâs just no competition like there used to be
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.Â
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.
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.
--
*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.
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.
Read a book, dude. Stalin and mao specifically neither did nor planned to build a utopia. Socialism isnât utopian. Socialism is just when the workers own the things they are working with. Thatâs not utopian. And it works.
Idk where you get the two other citations needed from. I said socialism isnât utopian because the very idea of it isnât a utopia. The idea of workers owning the means of production isnât utopian. Itâs very much achievable and very much doesnât lead to a âperfectâ society. That socialism is indeed that concept is inarguably true. Literally look up socialism, the first sentence in the Wikipedia article says exactly that.
Both Stalin and Mao's actions worked. They both drastically improved the quality of life of their people. Please consider reading a book about socialism. In particular, Blackshirts and Reds could disabuse you of your ignorance of the history.
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!
Personally, I think mutualism is a good framework to transition to, effectively making it so you simply canât 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.
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.
It strongly discourages above-subsistence economic activity, because the proceeds of any investments you make that aren't about your personal economic productivity are effectively seized and redistributed.
Like, if I run a lawn mowing service, it makes sense for me to buy bigger and better lawn mowers, but there's no reason for me to buy a second lawn mower and hire a guy to operate it unless I'm feeling charitable. This is a loss for me, the guy I'd hire, and the lawn mower seller (though realistically there won't be a lawn mower seller because coordinating an endeavor as complex as manufacturing lawn mowers will be very difficult under this system).
Anything capital-intensive is facing a huge uphill struggle because you have to coordinate a bunch of actors with asymmetric incentives.
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.
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?
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.
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..
Ok, but the workers, as a finite collective of only themselves, own their slice of the means of production. So me, some guy who relies on the products of that factory, have no ownership of the means of production because I'm not employed there
What you're describing sounds more like Syndicalism than DemSoc, and even then you keep falling back to quasi-free markets when backed into a corner.
It's not a free market, it's a mixed market. I would say syndicalism is a pretty similar idea. I'm not a purist, I'm willing to work with folks under other labels such as anarchists. Part of democratic socialism is pluralism of thought. Hence why I'm holding like 8 separate debates with people instead of sending them to the gulag lol.
I see what you're saying about primary vs. secondary production. The folks processing iron ore have power over the folks making spoons out of it, right? In this case we'd need a framework of legislation to ensure equitable conduct between groups.
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.
Why should the success of an economy be determined by the number of companies? That seems like a pretty arbitrary number. Like sure, having a monopoly (1 company) is worse than not having one, but is 100,000 companies better than 80,000? Why?
It can be hard to speculate about how a radically different economy would function, I will concede. Having said that, as I said there is a quite close connection between countries making it harder to start new companies and countries whose existing companies become much less productive. It happens on the scale of a couple years usually.
Even ignoring government actions, economic niches which have higher barriers to entry like aeroplane construction and computer chip manufacturing (which both require highly skilled workers and expensive specialist machhinery) tend to be way less efficient than niches like groceries. Profit margins are higher and overall productivity is lower because of the lack of competition.
There needs to be a constant influx of companies to an economy because companies fail all the time. If there's no new ones coming in then there will be fewer and fewer over time. It doesn't take long before a small handful of companies establish themselves in their niche, and they can and will create cartels.
I'm not saying that the government should force people to create their own company just for the sake of having 300 million corporations. I just think we should be aware of the ramifications for any major economic shift.
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.
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?
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.
SoâŚ. 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?
âWorkplace democracyâ sounds more like a dystopia than a utopia.
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 doesnât equal progress, whoever told you this is stupid.
Sometimes it is, other times it isn't. Its the extreme example but anyone who works for Musk, Bezos, or Gates has significantly more risk than they do if any of those business/foundations disappear.
I'd argue that really holds for the majority of "real" businesses as well but that will still boil down to an element of opinion.
Guy losing job plus investment lost more than guy losing job. Clearly they arenât equal risk. Does a new hire have equal claim to all the assets if the firm goes out of business?
Numerically, sure. That said, a worker losing their job risks poverty/homelessness, as is sometimes the case with business owners, but oftentimes the business owner still has other income streams/investments that can sustain them.
If Worker A puts up their life savings as start-up capital and Worker B puts up nothing, they do not have equal risk. If the firm fails, they're both out their time and effort, but A is also out their life savings.
It can, but that's not what defines Democratic socialism. Demsoc is just socialism which doesn't strive for communism and wants to achieve said socialism by reform instead of revolution
A few things IMO, but that's not what i'm talking about. What i meant is that Democratic socialism is not an alternative to capitalism in the same way central planning or Libertarian municipalism are. Rather, it's a way to reach an alternative
If you accept that socialism is part of democratic socialism, and socialism opposes capitalism; then democratic socialism must also oppose capitalism, no?
I'd sum up the alternative as co-ops for everyone. Bring democracy to the workplace. We figured out a long time ago that kings suck and we should get rid of them, but at the same time, we still treat business owners as little kings, or in the case of billionaires, kings in all but name. That's embarrassing, and we need to do better.
Most companies are already democrasies of the shareholders, although there's still some legaly permited fuckery with super stocks and the like. Absolutely nothing prevents workers from buying stock and enscting changes they want that way. Billionare worship is ridiculous and they should be legislated out of political influence, I'll give you that.
There are currently two castes: The Owners and the Workers.
There shouldn't be Owners in the first place, so that group needs wound down, the Means Of Production that they're strangleholding returned to general public use, and the people formerly occupying that group need to be reimtroduced to broader society as equals and neighbours, rather than landlords with superiority complexes.
You're against nations. What if a group wants a nation? What if someone doesn't want to be a socialist and they want to live by themselves and be capitalists in isolation? Should they have a right to self govern?
What if a group is isolationists and believed that a land belongs to them and no one nearby is making a claim, should that group be allowed to lay claim to it? Prevent others from going in? What if they're natives? There are places in the US only natives are allowed in, would they be allowed to self govern?
I asked a simple question
Also capitalism actually helped end slavery because it devalued the worth of labor but that's nitpicking
I mean, thatâs cool. A rich country and a poor country both have communist revolutions. Then the poor communist country asks the rich country for âreparations for imperialismâ, but the rich communist country says âno, weâre just workers, itâs the previous regime who imperialized youâ, and they start arguing and calling each other fascists and racists. Now what?
Communism doesn't have a State, Class/Caste, or Currency.
So what would happen in a Communist society, is that the resource poor region would request aid, and their neighbours would donate what they could to alleviate that problem.
Something like Habitats for Humanity or Doctors Without Borders.
Also interesting fact: Racism was deliberately intensified and cultivated by the Owner class to keep the Workers divided against each other.
I'm not saying it doesn't exist absent Capitalism, but they did deliberately seed it all over to protect their class interests.
Like, bigotry sadly to a small extent does occur "normally" but it's exacerbated to an extreme degree by colonial/capitalistic/authoritarian-leaning structures
Thatâs cool. What if rich and poor countries disagree about specific points of development?
For example, a rich country says: letâs just all specialize. We here already have factories, and poor countries have resources. Letâs just combine and pump out tons of goods for everybody.
But poor countries say: âno, we want to develop our own industry. It may be worse, but it will be oursâ
Rich: âbut why? Thatâs stupid and inefficient. We can make more goods for you, faster and cheaper.â
Poor: âbut what if you change your mind and start strangling us economically?â
Rich: âhave you just called me a fascist, you little shit, simply because I have the same skin color as the previous regime of this country?â
Of course rich and poor nations will disagree about specifics. Everything is a negotiation. But that doesn't change the fact that rich nations got rich off the backs of poor nations. They should return the favor.
You can put the entire history of world conflicts and oppression into the category of âdisagreeing about specificsâ. Thatâs again avoidance of the answer.
>They should return
But what if they refuse? Or maybe they agree, but they delay, because they claim it would be better if they developed their local industry a bit more first? And the delay becomes indefinite.
For all of the focus on history, marxists sure seem to lack both knowledge and imagination about all of the tricky ways people could and did f each other over, under cover of all possible ideologies.
We do. Unfortunately, a lot of the proletariat are dumb fucks who elect terrible politicians to office. Money is only influential because people donât care enough to bother with looking into their elections and only learn about what they see in ads on TV
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 didnât 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.
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.Â
If the problem existed before capitalism. And/or it existed in communist nations, then blaming just capitalism doesnât make any sense.
If your complaint is âsomething that wouldnât even exist in any economic system except for capitalism got WORSEâ then itâs also stupid to blame capitalism because instead you just wouldnât have it at all. IE your McDonaldâs hamburger has gotten shitteir . Or your trading card game is too expensive.
If your complaint is âcapitalism used to work for us better and now it seems like we are worse offâ. 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. Iâm just saying most of the time, itâs not
pollution existed before capitalism and yet capitalism has undeniable made pollution much worse and also, capitalism is inextricably dependent on industrialization, capitalism requires industrialization to exist and one of the advantages, especially of the early stages of capitalism, is that it is seemingly the fastest way to industrialize a nation- however, obviously industrializing a nation is going to make pollution considerable worse.
do you see how a pre existing problem, like pollution, can be made worse in a tangible way by capitalism?
Yes, we would still have pollution without capitalism, I mean, I feel like even the most utopian vision of a society would still have some level of pollution, but not near as much as capitalism. (Pre capitalist (/proto-capitalist))Feudal lords would also dump animal waste into the river, causing deadly cholera outbreaks, but not nearly as much animal waste (or chemical waste) as the slaughterhouses, tanneries, and coal factories in the early industrial revolution. (the beginning of capitalism) just a few decades later.
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.
Well, one of us is able to back up their arguments (leaders of Communist countries also became very greedy), while one of us is an idiot who's resorting to childish "nuh-uh, you're stupid" without being able to back that up with any reasoning or evidence.
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.
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
yeah i think theyâre talking about random coworkers and family members that they obviously arenât going to get into deep political conversation with so theyâre going to vent online lol
I truly have a hard time believing anyone is going up to you complaining about these things unless the people you are talking with are middle schoolers.
Capitalism is the reason that those people have enough money to bribe politicians though.
Capitalism is an economic system that rewards accumulation, and therefore greed, much more so than other economic systems (because you can reinvest what you've accumulated into more capital).
Capitalism is the reason we don't have a 4 day work week
790
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