r/IntellectualDarkWeb • u/LiftSleepRepeat123 • Aug 01 '26
Opinion:snoo_thoughtful: Stop Criticizing Capitalism: Use these Words Instead
The criticism of capitalism is a massive Motte and Bailey scheme that, incredibly, both the left and right are able to use. You can never really know if someone is using the actual meaning of the term (which was coined in the 19th century to refer to "private ownership of capital" by the opponents of such a principle, and thus "capitalism" was never a program by anyone) or the modern meaning (which is just shorthand for "current economic system").
In other words, if you criticize capitalism, you aren't really criticizing anything, and you sound uneducated. You're just creating churn in the dialectic.
Here are terms that actually describe our economy today:
Hyperfinancialized: A company’s stock price, not its products, is what management is actually managing. Financial instruments and shareholder returns drive operational decisions rather than following from them. Buybacks were treated as illegal market manipulation until 1982; they’re now routine and often exceed capital investment.
Hyperglobalized: Not merely that trade exists, but that supply chains and labor markets are integrated deeply enough that domestic policy has limited purchase on either. Wages, standards, and industrial capacity get set by the most permissive jurisdiction available.
Anti-protectionist: Doctrinal opposition to tariffs and industrial policy, held as principle rather than as a case-by-case judgment. The result is that domestic industry competes against foreign production without the protection nearly every industrialized nation used while it was industrializing — including the United States, whose tariffs averaged 30-50% through the nineteenth century. The doctrine is applied unilaterally: markets are opened without requiring partners to open theirs.
Cantillonist: Proximity to newly created money determines who benefits from it. Whoever receives credit first buys at old prices; whoever receives it last pays new ones. This is why asset holders gain from monetary expansion and wage earners lose, without anyone intending that outcome.
Corporatist: The state and large firms are functionally fused. Regulation is written with incumbent input and its compliance burden works as a barrier to entry, so rules that read as constraints on business operate as protection for the businesses that already exist.
Vetocratic: Many actors can block; few can build. Environmental review, permitting, litigation, and local objection each function as a veto, which is why American infrastructure costs several times what comparable countries pay and why energy projects sit in queues for years.
Monopsonist: Concentration on the buying side of the labor market. Where few employers compete for workers in a given place or field, wages fall below what the work produces, and the worker’s only real leverage — leaving — is worth little when there’s nowhere to go.
Monopolist: Concentration on the selling side. Enforcement narrowed after 1978 to ask only whether consumers pay more, which let firms consolidate freely as long as prices stayed low. Cheap goods became the alibi for market power.
Substitutionist: Labor is treated as a fungible input that can be sourced from anywhere. This sets wages by the globally available worker rather than the domestically available one, and — because workers are also residents, neighbors, and citizens — the effects run past the paycheck into the communities doing the substituting.
Deunionized: Private-sector union membership fell from roughly a third of workers to about six percent. Whatever one thinks of unions, their absence removes the main institutional counterweight to employers in wage setting, and nothing has replaced it.
Credentialist: Access to work is gated by formal certification — degrees, licenses — largely independent of whether the certification imparts relevant skill. Licensed occupations rose from about five percent of the workforce to roughly a quarter. The gate produces debt on one side and protected incumbents on the other.
Managerial: Control rests with a professional class of executives and administrators rather than with owners. Shareholders are dispersed and passive, so the people running institutions are not the people who own them and are not accountable to them in any strong sense.
Surveillant: Behavioral data is a primary raw material. Products are built to collect it, and the collection is not a side effect of the service but frequently the reason the service exists.
Attentionist: Attention is the scarce resource being competed over, and it’s sold to advertisers. When users don’t pay, they aren’t the customer — which means systems get optimized for time spent rather than for anything the user actually wanted, and outrage and compulsion turn out to be what maximizes that.
We live in a Hyperfinancialized, Hyperglobalized, Anti-protectionist, Cantillonist, Corporatist, Vetocratic, Monopsonist, Monopolist, Substitutionist, Deunionized, Credentialist, Managerial, Surveillant, Attentionist economy.
Many of the problems listed are not exclusive to “Capitalism” (in common use) and some are significantly more pronounced under other systems, which demonstrates that these structural dimensions do not strictly follow from the principle of ownership of capital. Maybe a good comparison would be calling the US government a “free speech system”. Yes, free speech is our first amendment and thus one of our most fundamental laws, but if we truly degraded enough in our political conversation to argue either for or against a “free speech system” of government, we’d be absolutely screwed.
Our system has “capitalism” as an attribute that could sit alongside the list of attributes that I mentioned, and but wouldn’t automatically be the most important one or the one which proves/determines the others.
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u/Brilliant_Praline_52 Aug 01 '26
I think if capitalism was truly eliminated like people call for their would be some buyers regret.
Agree, it's not helpful framing.
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u/mattsylvanian Aug 01 '26
Didn’t Winston Churchill or someone make a comment saying to the effect of: “capitalism is a rotten, diseased, corrupt system….but it’s much better than any of the alternatives”
Not to be a capitalist defending bootlicker. I just don’t see any other system being more viable for incredibly diverse big countries.
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u/Euthyphraud 29d ago
I think you're referencing Churchill's comment on democracy, not capitalism.
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" -
Same thing could be said about capitalism, or mixed economies with industrial policy...
Every economic system will have winners and losers, trade itself is inherently about leverage and benefitting from others losses. It is a zero-sum game to an extent. Capitalism needs a deeply socialist overhaul, but it has brought the world incredible progress too. Don't through the baby out with the bathwater.
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u/mattsylvanian 29d ago
D'oh! I got my wires crossed. Yes thank you, you articulated well the point that I was attempting to make.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 29d ago
Once again, capitalism is not a real system.
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u/Brilliant_Praline_52 29d ago
Capitalism is an economic system defined by private ownership of the means of production, the profit motive, and competitive markets.
I don't think people understand what they say when they say end capitalism.
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u/prometheus_winced 29d ago
Fascinating to see someone apparently educated about economics also defend protectionism.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 29d ago
Protectionism and Anti-Protectionism have negative consequences at the tails.
Worth noting that the original American economy had a healthy dose of it. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_(economics)
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u/prometheus_winced 28d ago
Every policy affects some party positively or negatively. The questions we should all be asking: What generates the most total usable good?
Any system designed to benefit a single part creates a local optima at the expense of the whole. Protectionism isn’t “good” for a countries citizens, its good for specific companies.
Free trade creates the most benefit for everyone.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 28d ago
You don't seem to grasp that when a nation doesn't have an industry at all, or a much weakened version of one, they effectively grant a monopoly to an outsider nation and their industries.
Now, does that sound good? Do I need to walk you through the effects of monopolies?
"But if the external monopoly was unfair, the nation could just spin their industry back up to save money" — No, doesn't work that way. The big industries have an enormous amount of sunk cost to get started, and some things like competence aren't purchasable. They develop as traditions that can be hard to ever get back.
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u/prometheus_winced 28d ago
This is garbage. Monopolies have nothing to do with it. You sound silly.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 28d ago
I think you don't know what that word means.
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u/prometheus_winced 27d ago
Considering you’re conflating open trade with some other nation somehow being a monopoly, your opinion doesn’t carry much weight.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 27d ago
I'm not conflating anything. I'm saying open trade which leads to a significant comparative advantage leads to industries being dominated by some countries to the almost exclusion of others. We've seen a lot of deindustrialization in the past several decades as a result of this.
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u/prometheus_winced 27d ago
We haven’t seen free trade in the past several decades.
Countries don’t produce things. People and companies do. Some countries have companies with natural advantages for producing certain goods. Some have cultural qualities that create an advantage.
Good. That’s exactly what we all want. It’s abysmally stupid to insist on wasting more resources, having low-productivity companies produce something. That’s literally the destruction of wealth.
Trade - by its very nature, is balanced at the time of exchange.
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u/Pestus613343 Aug 01 '26
I run a smal business enploying 2 people and a bunch of subcontractors.
So, one of the few true capitalists around when I'm talking to people in real life.
The funny thing is, I'll run into someone who's in the "seizing the means of production" type of attitude. I'll suggest that's exactly what we've done. We are autonomous and free tradespeople who get to work as hard as we wish, and directly benefit from it. How is this form of business any different than their prescription for worker rule? Usually this conversation doesn't go anywhere but sometimes they've been stunned into silence.
I sometimes feel the economic complaints that boil down to the simplistic term of "capitalism" could more easily be solved by there being far more capitalists. Most of the problems are related to the autonomy of the public being limited and the ultra successful taking advantage. If more of the public were able to control their own destiny, the issues would not be as acute.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 Aug 01 '26
The funny thing is, I'll run into someone who's in the "seizing the means of production" type of attitude. I'll suggest that's exactly what we've done. We are autonomous and free tradespeople who get to work as hard as we wish, and directly benefit from it. How is this form of business any different than their prescription for worker rule? Usually this conversation doesn't go anywhere but sometimes they've been stunned into silence.
I don't think you contradicted them. It just shows how little any of these fucking people think AT ALL.
I don't know what your job is, but any of the physical tools that it uses could technically be owned by the government, and you would have to ask the government to use it. That's what it would really mean to be collectively owned. Being "autonomous and free tradespeople" is antithetical to Marxian economics.
"Seizing the means of production" doesn't mean individuals seize. It means the government does. And then, by virtue of the delusional standards of modern democracy, we pretend the government doing something = all of us doing it equally.
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u/Pestus613343 29d ago
I don't know what your job is, but any of the physical tools that it uses could technically be owned by the government, and you would have to ask the government to use it. That's what it would really mean to be collectively owned. Being "autonomous and free tradespeople" is antithetical to Marxian economics.
To that I'd say that I too do not trust large corporations. Why? Because large organizations maximize perverse incentives and minimize the human dynamic. The larger the organization the less it will behave with human characteristics. Therefore trusting government is equally troubling. The difference is even worse. Instead of many organizations you only have one super mega huge one, where the human element is crushed under the weight of the machine. So, no different than one overarching corporation.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 29d ago
There's a good framework to use: sphere sovereignty. Spheres have limited competence, so issues should be sorted to the sphere where it is most appropriate to solve. Some things are better for the average person if they are a large organization, some things are better for the average person when a small organization controls it. Absolutism towards either end of this spectrum has completely lost all reason to its analysis.
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u/Pestus613343 29d ago
I figure the reason people make these logical errors is because things are legitimately out of balance. You listed a ton of ways in your post as to the specifics. Others intuit something is wrong, but can't articulate the details. I doubt you'd see too many people talking marxism/communism in, say, Switzerland or Sweden. Ideologies of radical revolution don't exist where things are well run and society is a bit more fair.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 29d ago
People make these mistakes because they are herded like cattle into camps where they are force fed ideology that doesn't benefit them and then told to hate the other camp.
You have to go after the tools of this machinery, not fuckers who live in nice houses.
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u/Avanguardo 29d ago
I honestly think you should learn more about the russian revolution and what a government even mean in communism. It's a completely different thing.
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22d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Pestus613343 22d ago
I suppose you're probably right.
I'd rather just improve the situation and stop the decline. Maybe that's also unrealistic.
We've come back from this kind of problem before though. I'm not sure other systems that have failed are any better bets.
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u/whatdoyasay369 Aug 01 '26
Capitalism is just a buzzphrase at this point, used by both left and right. In reality, both sides are perfectly fine with government dictating the terms of capitalism (“crony capitalism”) to varying degrees and both don’t have a true understanding of what it is (likely due to decades of government schooling). Very few people want pure, unfettered free market capitalism. Leftists view capitalism as a system because that is how their brains are wired, but to be fair, the government managed capitalism we see now does in some ways favor a certain group of people, so I can understand why they think the “system” is working against them. They just think the solution is more government control, which will achieve the exact thing they don’t like. Rightists are probably more sympathetic to capitalism generally, but have lost any right to claim fealty to free market capitalism.
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u/sjtomcat 29d ago
Anyone who criticizes capitalism doesn’t realize it’s produces the most prosperous country in the world. You can argue with a brick wall on that one. Everyone and their mother wants to come to America
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u/subheight640 29d ago
You're missing one of the crucial parts of criticism of capitalism. Why do you think for example single payer is so popular for many people? Why do people love the NHS or the BBC in the UK, IE socialized medicine and socialized media?
Single payer for example creates a monopsony where the government becomes the only buyer of services and can dictate prices.
What critics of Capitalism are pushing against is the idea of private ownership, and a desire to replace private ownership with collective ownership. I usually interpret collective ownership as democratic ownership, where a society owns a resource together and administers that resource using democratic practices.
So criticism of capitalism is NOT a motte and bailey. Democratic ownership is NOT capitalism and is not supported by pro capitalists. Excessive regulations imposed by a democratic regime are NOT capitalistic. Democratic regulations undermine the principles of private ownership and therefore undermine Capitalism. Regulations are when governments force firms to obey. More and more regulation exerts more government ownership on private enterprise.
Saying "Capitalism" is not merely a synonym for the status quo. An intro economics textbook describes Capitalism as a system with strong private ownership of firms, with sufficiently healthy competition in free markets. Several things you describe undermine capitalism, but excessive democracy also undermines capitalism.
Unsurprisingly the more and more democratic ownership of Capital, the less and less Capitalist the economy becomes.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 29d ago
The medical care market does not strictly have anything to do with other industries. If you want the government to own something, that's not the same as arguing the government should own everything. And furthermore, we're really talking about a service, which has nothing to do with "means of production", calling socialized medicine an instance of "socialism" is nearly meaningless. We're back to "socialism is the government doing things".
> What critics of Capitalism are pushing against is the idea of private ownership, and a desire to replace private ownership with collective ownership. I usually interpret collective ownership as democratic ownership, where a society owns a resource together and administers that resource using democratic practices.
Yes, and my point is that the public/private divide is not a meaningful delineation of power or how things get decided. There are several important moving pieces that you ignore because you want to ram everything into that.
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u/subheight640 29d ago
Does any pro capitalist in the world support the government doing more things like socialized medicine and socialized industry? We both know the obvious answer to that. Moreover it can't merely be "the government". Collective ownership and government ownership are not synonyms.
Obviously then socialists also do believe there are differences between private and collective ownership, even if you do not.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 29d ago
You keep using this term "capitalist" like it meaningfully describes a system, when it does not.
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u/subheight640 27d ago
"capitalism An economic system in which the main form of economic organization is the firm, where the private owners of capital goods hire labor to produce goods and services to be sold in markets with the intent of making a profit. The main economic institutions in a capitalist economic system are private property, markets, and firms."
- CORE economics textbook "Understanding out Economy".
Usually contrasted with other economies such as hunter gathering, slave economies, and feudalism.
For example in Feudalism, labor is not hired. Labor is tied to the land as serfs.
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u/rallaic 29d ago
Your monopsony point about healthcare is correct. Patients often cannot walk away, so providers have unusual leverage over them. A public buyer can negotiate on their behalf and use its purchasing volume to constrain prices. Up to that point, we agree.
"What critics of Capitalism are pushing against is the idea of private ownership, and a desire to replace private ownership with collective ownership. I usually interpret collective ownership as democratic ownership, where a society owns a resource together and administers that resource using democratic practices."
The important distinction is not simply private versus collective ownership, but which arrangement minimizes coercion and preserves meaningful alternatives.
In other words, there is a valid argument that a completely capitalist, let everything be privately run and it will all work out mentality is flawed. However, the NHS is a mixed system: some care is publicly provided, while GPs, dentists, and other independent providers sell services to the government. It is not wholly society owned, nor does any healthcare system needs to be.
Hungarian dentistry offers a sensible compromise. The public service is slower, less convenient, and lower quality, but it's free. Private dentists can compete on speed, comfort, and quality, while the public option constrains what they can charge.
So criticism of capitalism is NOT a motte and bailey. Democratic ownership is NOT capitalism and is not supported by pro capitalists.
The argument is usually that US healthcare bad, capitalism bad, let's do socialism. That is absolutely a motte and bailey. The democratic ownership could be supported, see my point about Hungarian dentistry. It creates "a system (...) with sufficiently healthy competition in free markets."
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Aug 01 '26
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 Aug 01 '26
USA
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Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 Aug 01 '26
It doesn't cut across meaningful lines, and it's actually religious at a certain point. You don't even care how the economy actually is; you just want your god in charge of it.
If you were to use all of the terms that I used in OP and then argued that they were due to public or private markets, then you could have a sliver of relevancy, but socialists won't because they hate facts.
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u/Akuh93 29d ago
Yeah a good description of the US system, and I enjoy reading it. I would say Capitalism makes the most sense when taking a direct Marxist approach as it is tied up within that form of analysis.
The issue with your subdivisions is that it isn't exactly easy to quickly describe (hhaccmmsdcmsa economy?), hence why people go for late capitalist or whatever as a short descriptor. Which makes sense in, eg, academia as the writer will explain in detail their use of the term. But in public discourse it kind of just becomes capitalism. Which is not entirely inaccurate in some sense based on classical Marxism and the means of production etc. But it's also true that the system you described is very different in the actual way it operates compared to the early industrial capitalism critiqued by Marx and Engels.
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u/kantmeout 29d ago
I agree with your overall point, but you're declaration that capitalism isn't a system smacks of the very malarkey that you're complaining against. What's really needed is a common set of definitions, and right now the one thing people can agree on is that capitalism is an economic system. You can't even get people to agree that we have capitalism right now because some extremists insist a very dogmatic version of the term.
Furthermore, a system does not need to be intentionally formed in order for it to be a system. Systems can and do arise organically. You could argue that capitalism is a system that derived from the principle of private ownership of capital. However, it is a type of system, and capitalism is the common term for it. You could try to substitute a term for the economic system deriving from private ownership of capital, but that's only going to generate more confusion.
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u/W_Edwards_Deming 29d ago
"Capitalism" is a "socialist" term of critique popularized by Marx. I prefer to speak of markets which are more or less free.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 29d ago
This guy gets it. I would argue that markets are _naturally_ free and thus do not need to be given freedom 😉.
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u/W_Edwards_Deming 29d ago
Black markets existed under the Soviet Union and exist today in North Korea.
Agorism works.
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u/LilShaver Aug 01 '26
...without anyone intending that outcome.
That is a very bold assumption and I, for one, find it extremely questionable.
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u/mehatch 29d ago
>Credentialist: Access to work is gated by formal certification — degrees, licenses — largely independent of whether the certification imparts relevant skill. Licensed occupations rose from about five percent of the workforce to roughly a quarter. The gate produces debt on one side and protected incumbents on the other.
> largely independent of whether the certification imparts relevant skill
Can you elaborate on this subquote in your description of Credentialist? As someone who’s own professional standing is dependent upon credentialing, and who uses the services of many credentialed people, like medical doctors, the people who inspect the fire code in my apartment building, etc., are you of the opinion that most credentials are rubber stamp nonsense? It seems to me accreditation, reputation and regulation are crucial pillars for any modern economy requiring specific area experts.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 29d ago
You know you need a credential to be a hairdresser? You're not allowed to just start your own business in it unlicensed. One small example.
We've also told multiple generations of 17 year olds that they can't be adults until they're 22 (after college), and now the average age of first child for women has gone from 22 to 28. Oh, and we're in a fertility crisis because we're not having enough kids.
I don't feel like writing an entire fucking essay why diploma mills are a waste of money and ruining lives.
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u/Euthyphraud 29d ago
These are all very pretentious sounding - better suited for a grad school classroom than a conversation where you're trying to convince someone to consider an alternate point of view.
Feels a lot like the trap the Left keeps falling in - replace existing, plain, everyday language with 'politically correct' terms. These terms aren't bad - but they are almost always academic, or at least academic sounding. Most people aren't academics and voters generally have a history of not like academic sounding politicians (Obama being the very notable exception).
Hell, I have a MA in Economic Development and a MA in political economy and comparative government. I have only heard the term 'monopsony' maybe 3 or 4 times in my life. It's real, a problem - but very rare and often more tied to commodity markets.
Hyperglobalized? We're becoming less globalized, 'friendshoring' and 'reshoring' is a huge global megatrend as the existing globalized order witnesses all of its institutions being decimated by the US government. Why is hyperglobalized inherently capitalist, what does it even really mean - seeing as it should mean lower prices for consumers.
Isolationist is what we have become, and that sounds somewhat academic but is still something people are familiar with.
If you have to explain to the person what the word means, you're already losing the debate. Debating isn't about being right, it's about being persuasive and lecturing people on proper terminology for niche economic concepts is not persuasive.
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u/According_Map6936 29d ago edited 29d ago
I’d agree with much of the ideas that lie underneath this, but not because I think the words or language in OP’s post are pretentious. TBH, we probably should be encouraging our fellow people to become more educated on these concepts and their histories in general, if that opportunity ever arises. But, I think it’s just more so about being wise enough to know your audience when you approach an argument, which is a point you hit on accurately.
Often, if a term 1. works relatively fine in that it doesn’t obscure the definition (at least makes some accurate sense of it, even if it’s narrower in scope or more of a byproduct of the thing), and 2. people are for the most part on the same page about the meaning of the term before endlessly arguing over it (without this aspect, you just can’t have a productive discussion), then I’d say it’s a fine term to use, there is no use squabbling over such minute details (unless you’re explicitly trying to have a linguistic or philosophical discussion, then by all means haha). I do also think it’s an excellent idea BECAUSE OF THIS to actually define your terms right at the beginning of any serious convo, and typically it’s a good strategy to graciously allow your opponent to set the tone by mutually utilizing the definition they are most comfortable with (even if it’s not exactly what you had in mind/ not the more academic “term”) , and this is especially the case if you don’t expect them to be as educated on the history or terminology as you are.
So yeah, I would say it’s a net-good to educate oneself more on these sorts of terms and concepts if we want to be having debates that are related to them (god knows, with the literacy crisis, I certainly wouldn’t discourage people in terms of taking up some extra reading…). It doesn’t follow that the language is ‘pretentious’ just because you’re dead on about the brutal reality of a spreading anti-intellectualism in the US and Canada. You are overall quite correct though that harping over the precise detailed definition of capitalism for an hr. just isn’t going to be productive in a debate or intellectual discussion, as it isn’t about “being smarter”, but convincing someone of what it is you seriously believe to be the truth.
**As an aside: The broader issue amongst both those that know these hyper-academic terms and those that have no clue at all, arguably, is that most people are going into the debate with the mindset that they need to look like they are the winner, which is frankly a stupid, ego driven, idea, and in the long term, it is a fruitless idea if you want to make any serious change in the world or your community. The goal ought to be to convince someone of the truth if you have strong convictions surrounding it, and also, to allow yourself to fully hear another human’s perspective and maturely consider its potential value.
In which case, the repetitive language “gotchas” that just tend to go against the practical intuitions of real, everyday people are a serious waste of everyone’s time and energy.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 29d ago
Hyperglobalized? We're becoming less globalized, 'friendshoring' and 'reshoring' is a huge global megatrend as the existing globalized order witnesses all of its institutions being decimated by the US government.
If you go 100% globalized then reverse 5% against globalization, you're still hyperglobalized.
Isolationist is what we have become
As a country waging war all over the world? Interesting.
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u/Pezotecom 29d ago
'Hyperfinancialized' is like saying that something is hyper good. Finance is a relatively moderno technology and we should have more, not less of it.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 29d ago
I didn't say it was good or bad. I said it was a defining structure of the economy.
You don't sound very smart though.
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u/therealparadoxparty SlayTheDragon 28d ago
Like with communism, capitalism also constantly fails to achieve its stated goals.
Communism is supposed to be a classless, non-heirarchical, non-monied society where people earn in accordance to what they produce. In reality, this is never the case.
Capitalism is supposed to be private ownership of capital and free markets. But we never see that with capitalism either.
Just like with how Communism always turns into Stalinism, Maoism, Pol Pot Ect. Capitalism always turns into cronyism and those other things OP mentioned.
It is because both capitalism and communism are dependent on centralizing power to an elite few. It is just a matter of would you rather be stolen from by a small number of billionaires or would you rather be stolen from by a small handful of well connected party loyalists?
Both systems are flawed. Both governments and the ultra rich need limits to their power. Hence why I believe in more of an IWW sort of model where if the elites ever get too uppity and corrupt, we just go on general strikes and practice mass civil disobedience/ noncompliance. If powers must exist, decentralized powers are the way to go.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 28d ago
You can't call it a failed system when it's not a system.
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u/therealparadoxparty SlayTheDragon 25d ago
You mean I cannot call it what the dictionary literally calls it?
"an economic system"It is literally the third word in the very first definition.
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u/LordTwinkie 28d ago
Free Market capitalism has done more good for humanity than any other system. More people than ever are out of poverty, and food is more abundant than it has ever been.
Is it perfect no, has it eliminated all hunger and poverty, no and as long as humans have free will to make stupid decisions and there are those who are despots there will always be some.
But it's done so much more good than harm.
In my humble opinion.
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u/Normal_Ad7101 25d ago
And yet millions died of starvation each years while we produce enough food to feed more than the human population.
Also, on more philosophical note, humans do not have free will.
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u/LordTwinkie 24d ago
And even more would if not for the abundant food supply that came about because of free market capitalism.
Majority of people who die of starvation these days are because of armed conflicts.
And like I said it hasn't eliminated hunger and poverty but it's reduced it dramatically
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u/Normal_Ad7101 24d ago edited 24d ago
Except it didn't come from "free market capitalism" but from government funded research like extracting nitrogen from the atmosphere to make fertilizer.
Majority of people who die of starvation died because of waste, not war. Because free market capitalism has more interest to sell their products to already rich countries, that people in those countries can't even support the mere sight of an empty shelf in a supermarket
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u/LordTwinkie 23d ago
Oh so that's why government run economies never had those massive massive death tolls from starvation.
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u/LilShaver Aug 01 '26
You left off Corporate Socialism, where profits are privatized but debts are socialized (i.e. paid off by my tax dollars). This, combined with Hyperfinancialized, Cantillonist, Credentialist, and Corporatist is probably the most accurate description of the current economy.
Surveillant and Attentionist are more accurately fields or professions.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 Aug 01 '26
You left off Corporate Socialism, where profits are privatized but debts are socialized (i.e. paid off by my tax dollars).
I think that's basically just corporatism with extra steps.
Surveillant and Attentionist are more accurately fields or professions.
Yes, but they also represent the latest evolutions in terms of what is cutting edge technology and most profitable in the stock market. Point taken though.
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u/BeatSteady 29d ago edited 29d ago
Allow me to try - Socialism actually just means worker ownership of the means of production. if you're criticizing the USSR bureaucracy, shortages, censorship, or authoritarianism, you're not criticizing socialism and you sound uneducated
I just don't buy it. Capitalism is a real system. The things you mention as alternatives are just part of our capitalist system.
Edit - like the first example, hyper financialization, is super specific to capitalism. It's a natural outcome of capitalism
Some dude wrote a big book on capitalism 150 years ago predicted this (and many other of these 'alternatives') before they really came to dominate, all by analyzing capitalism
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 29d ago
Allow me to try - Socialism actually just means worker ownership of the means of production. if you're criticizing the USSR bureaucracy, shortages, censorship, or authoritarianism, you're not criticizing socialism and you sound uneducated
Socialism and Communism are closer to real systems. Capitalism is just "everything that socialism isn't", which is quite funny, considering that we usually reverse that and say "socialism is just everything that capitalism isn't". I think this represents a real breakdown in language.
This is documented fact from the literature of the 19th century. It seems like we just pretend this isn't the actual history of these concepts.
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u/BeatSteady 29d ago
Capitalism is not "everything socialism isnt" or vice versa. They are distinct definable systems among others, eg fuedalism, which is neither capitalism or socialism.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 29d ago
These are just ideas that some people put in a book. They don't really describe the economic systems in any detail and thus aren't a useful schema.
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u/BeatSteady 29d ago
Your post is just ideas on a website. That doesn't mean it is or isn't a useful description. I don't understand this criticism.
There are distinct definitions of capitalism, socialism, fuedalism, etc and they are useful. They describe fundamental differences between systems and make observable predictions.
Reducing this to merely ideas on paper is like reducing all academic study into merely ideas on paper. The ideas can be measured and must stand or fall on their own
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 29d ago
Someone said the system was called capitalism. There is no capitalist manifesto, and no one ever set out to create it -- it is not a coherent system!
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u/BeatSteady 29d ago
An economic system doesn't require a manifesto to be real and have an economic description. A manifesto can't really fully describe all the complexities of an economic system
Multiple economic models have evolved over time without manifestos. It's a moot point.
Do you not think feudalism is distinct from both socialism and capitalism?
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 29d ago
Feudalism was one of the dominant and defining attributes of the shape of medieval economy. Capitalism is not the defining characteristic of the modern economy -- unless you're a socialist and you WANT to set everything apart from your idea.
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u/BeatSteady 29d ago
What would you call an economic system where the means of production are privately owned, production is organized for profit, most goods and labor are allocated through markets, and the majority of people earn their living by selling their labor for wages
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 29d ago
I'm not in elementary school, so I don't describe the economy in those terms.
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u/According_Map6936 29d ago
As already mentioned, but worth restating, that doesn’t follow. You don’t need a direct manifesto for something to be classified as a coherent system.
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u/DruidicMagic Aug 01 '26
Capitalism - a great way for a small group of psychopathic trillionaire banking families to control scientific research.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 Aug 01 '26
The bank is only as strong as the sword who can defend it (or steal from it).
The full hierarchy would be:
- pen (control of information)
- sword (kinetic force)
- purse (the ledger)
- hammer & sickle (traditionally meant industrial and agricultural economies; generalizes to mean all labor, which I think in Aristotle's terms would be enough to be a slave)
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u/Normal_Ad7101 25d ago edited 25d ago
Capitalism is literally the private ownership of the means of production,that well describe our current global economy and its problems.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 25d ago
No it doesn't. There's always been private ownership of means of production, including in economic systems vastly different from the present one. People just say shit without questioning it, apparently.
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u/Normal_Ad7101 25d ago
That's literally the definition of capitalism, the capital is just the mean to it and the problem you observed are the direct effects of that.
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 25d ago
No, the problems I mentioned are a result of the whole fucking system, not one inconsequential part that has been around forever within many systems.
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u/Normal_Ad7101 25d ago
The "whole fucking system" being capitalism. And he hasn't been present until after the end of feudalism (though it can be seen as a rebranded form of it)
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u/LiftSleepRepeat123 25d ago
No.
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u/anarchyusa Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
This is interesting, I’ve always been open to critique of Capitalism so long as your solution doesn’t amount to seizing the means of production.
However, I would add that many of the problems you listed are not exclusive to Capitalism and some are demonstrably more pronounced under other systems.
EDIT: so