Capitalists love regulations and do a lot to make sure financial laws are in their favor and make great use of government handouts they help orchestrate for themselves.
Yeah, Senator Whitehouse actually wrote a book awhile back, Captured, that covers the topic very well. However, that book is also depressing because he illustrates just how fucking rampant it is in the US now.
No, the competitive nature of capitalism definitely incentivizes people to do very shitty things to each other for personal gain. Or have you not heard of the Gilded Age? Or our current climate crisis? Or strike breaking? Or the incredible wealth inequality we are seeing today?
[edit] The Irish Potato Famine? The Bengal Famine? Belgium in the Congo? Sweatshop labour? Coups in South America for the benefit of fruit companies? Wars in the Middle East for the sake of oil? Clear-cutting of the Amazon? Any of this ringing a bell?
Can you prove capitalism is the source of any of those problems vs just plain human greed?
If we want to attribute every negative event to it, well what about the positive events? Did it cause the light bulb to be invented, the telegraph, the computer, the printing press, satellites, etc, or was it just the economic system at the time?
Capitalism doesn’t make people greedy, lots of people just are.
Beyond that, you can beat on capitalism all you want but until someone comes up with a viable alternative, it’s what we’ve got.
Literally the point of capitalism is to utilize greed and enlightened self-interest to (supposedly) drive innovation and expand production. Greed is central to the whole ideology. “Greed is good”. You are making a false distinction. How can you support an economic system you don’t even understand?
Capitalism could be amazing if the psychos of society didn’t constantly rise to the top then again the same could be said for communism and just about every other system we’ve tried.
Doesn’t communism do the same? In fact why the fuck do the crazy psychos rise to the top seemingly everywhere? Is this one of those “nice guys finish last” kinda deals or some phenomenon I’ve never heard of?
It’s because people are too focused on who controls the capital and not focused enough on what the capital itself is actually doing.
It doesn’t much matter whether it’s controlled by a Capitalist or a Communist if the person controlling the capital is a fucking idiot. Hell, it honestly doesn’t even matter that much if they’re smart, because the actual driver of growth has always been competition, which is only very indirectly connected to who controls the Capital, largely because it’s pretty much always been taken at the point of a gun for all of human history and likely will be for as long as we exist unless we somehow manage to decide on post-scarcity society rather than infinite growth society.
It’s because of the concept of successful ambition correlating with the lack of morals or integrity. It just so happens that people ambitious enough to do whatever it takes to rise through the ranks often have to be necessarily immoral to step on people to get to the top.
People who have others’ best interests at heart simply don’t take advantage of the opportunities as often because a number of those opportunities would involve unfairly stepping on someone else.
So to answer your question, yes, ambitious assholes tend to ride faster and further than good people. Kind of like how a large portion of cops tend to be former bullies.
I like to think there’s a distinct difference, summed up like so:
Communism attempts to put the control and distribution of resources (capital) on the collective, ie everyone. Since everyone effectively owns it, it feels like nobody does.
Capitalism puts it on individuals. Nowadays, almost all of these individuals acquired their resource(s) by inheritance. If not, by dubious (morally questionable) means.
This is a simplification that may upset people on both sides, but it’s about as clean as I can think to make it.
Note: the following is from the perspective of a somewhat average person living in the US.
My personal thought is that the democratic republic political system would ideally be coupled with the communistic (I’d prefer federated unions, ie federations, but speaking broadly) economic one. They seem to be natural matches.
However, it seems the coupling of said republic with capitalism causes significant and repeated backslides on social issues and education. Capital owners, after all, are most interested in maximizing gains while minimizing losses; this has led to a fairly high number of people being convinced to think that education is bad, especially university level education. Which, in turn, makes them compliant voters and eager workers, often severely underpaid. Which they, of course, have no idea of knowing since they likely have never left their birth town.
That’s not to say that such things won’t happen with communism. They should happen a lot less, but only if we put controls in place to combat abuse and overreach. In other words, regulations. Capitalism…might be beyond hope at this point, given how capital owners have been acting lately.
I don’t know what will actually end up working, but I hope we try something new soon. Because this ain’t it. Preferably before we extinct more species. Hopefully before we extinct ourselves.
I don’t know what will actually end up working, but I hope we try something new soon.
Personally I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all solution. Each problem needs a different approach. We need to figure out how to have all these systems work in tandem.
Hey, I’m open to trying anything. The current biggest problem is oligarchs and power centralization though, which capitalism sort of encourages.
Without much heavier regulation, sticking with capitalism will essentially doom us all. We need more localized, equal resource management. We need logical transportation logistics, and we need more nationalized (federal) goods and services.
But I do agree with the spirit of your message. We do need to all be working together towards a shared goal, instead of…this.
Removed by mod
Capitalism is fine as long as people aren’t complete scumbags about it. Rare, I know. It’s a human morality proposition.
Capitalism is great, but it absolutely must be tempered by regulation.
The problem comes when the capitalist gains influence over the regulator, aka, regulatory capture.
Capitalists love regulations and do a lot to make sure financial laws are in their favor and make great use of government handouts they help orchestrate for themselves.
Yes, this is called regulatory capture.
Yeah, Senator Whitehouse actually wrote a book awhile back, Captured, that covers the topic very well. However, that book is also depressing because he illustrates just how fucking rampant it is in the US now.
You’re putting the cart before the horse. Capitalism incentivizes people to be scumbags.
So does any other economic model.
That is an absolutely meaningless statement.
As is capitalism incentivizing people to be scumbags, as trendy as that perspective is.
No, the competitive nature of capitalism definitely incentivizes people to do very shitty things to each other for personal gain. Or have you not heard of the Gilded Age? Or our current climate crisis? Or strike breaking? Or the incredible wealth inequality we are seeing today?
[edit] The Irish Potato Famine? The Bengal Famine? Belgium in the Congo? Sweatshop labour? Coups in South America for the benefit of fruit companies? Wars in the Middle East for the sake of oil? Clear-cutting of the Amazon? Any of this ringing a bell?
Can you prove capitalism is the source of any of those problems vs just plain human greed?
If we want to attribute every negative event to it, well what about the positive events? Did it cause the light bulb to be invented, the telegraph, the computer, the printing press, satellites, etc, or was it just the economic system at the time?
Capitalism doesn’t make people greedy, lots of people just are.
Beyond that, you can beat on capitalism all you want but until someone comes up with a viable alternative, it’s what we’ve got.
Literally the point of capitalism is to utilize greed and enlightened self-interest to (supposedly) drive innovation and expand production. Greed is central to the whole ideology. “Greed is good”. You are making a false distinction. How can you support an economic system you don’t even understand?
Capitalism could be amazing if the psychos of society didn’t constantly rise to the top then again the same could be said for communism and just about every other system we’ve tried.
That’s because Capitalism rewards exploitative psychos, essentially by design
Any system has to give a group of people some authority to keep order the crazies will eventually work their way in and ruin it.
Doesn’t communism do the same? In fact why the fuck do the crazy psychos rise to the top seemingly everywhere? Is this one of those “nice guys finish last” kinda deals or some phenomenon I’ve never heard of?
Evil only needs to succeed every now and then, good needs to constantly win.
It’s because people are too focused on who controls the capital and not focused enough on what the capital itself is actually doing.
It doesn’t much matter whether it’s controlled by a Capitalist or a Communist if the person controlling the capital is a fucking idiot. Hell, it honestly doesn’t even matter that much if they’re smart, because the actual driver of growth has always been competition, which is only very indirectly connected to who controls the Capital, largely because it’s pretty much always been taken at the point of a gun for all of human history and likely will be for as long as we exist unless we somehow manage to decide on post-scarcity society rather than infinite growth society.
It’s because of the concept of successful ambition correlating with the lack of morals or integrity. It just so happens that people ambitious enough to do whatever it takes to rise through the ranks often have to be necessarily immoral to step on people to get to the top.
People who have others’ best interests at heart simply don’t take advantage of the opportunities as often because a number of those opportunities would involve unfairly stepping on someone else.
So to answer your question, yes, ambitious assholes tend to ride faster and further than good people. Kind of like how a large portion of cops tend to be former bullies.
I like to think there’s a distinct difference, summed up like so:
Communism attempts to put the control and distribution of resources (capital) on the collective, ie everyone. Since everyone effectively owns it, it feels like nobody does.
Capitalism puts it on individuals. Nowadays, almost all of these individuals acquired their resource(s) by inheritance. If not, by dubious (morally questionable) means.
This is a simplification that may upset people on both sides, but it’s about as clean as I can think to make it.
Note: the following is from the perspective of a somewhat average person living in the US.
My personal thought is that the democratic republic political system would ideally be coupled with the communistic (I’d prefer federated unions, ie federations, but speaking broadly) economic one. They seem to be natural matches.
However, it seems the coupling of said republic with capitalism causes significant and repeated backslides on social issues and education. Capital owners, after all, are most interested in maximizing gains while minimizing losses; this has led to a fairly high number of people being convinced to think that education is bad, especially university level education. Which, in turn, makes them compliant voters and eager workers, often severely underpaid. Which they, of course, have no idea of knowing since they likely have never left their birth town.
That’s not to say that such things won’t happen with communism. They should happen a lot less, but only if we put controls in place to combat abuse and overreach. In other words, regulations. Capitalism…might be beyond hope at this point, given how capital owners have been acting lately.
I don’t know what will actually end up working, but I hope we try something new soon. Because this ain’t it. Preferably before we extinct more species. Hopefully before we extinct ourselves.
I keep ranting, sorry for the wall of text.
And socialism is the middle ground that apparently no one with the power to implement it wants.
Personally I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all solution. Each problem needs a different approach. We need to figure out how to have all these systems work in tandem.
Hey, I’m open to trying anything. The current biggest problem is oligarchs and power centralization though, which capitalism sort of encourages.
Without much heavier regulation, sticking with capitalism will essentially doom us all. We need more localized, equal resource management. We need logical transportation logistics, and we need more nationalized (federal) goods and services.
But I do agree with the spirit of your message. We do need to all be working together towards a shared goal, instead of…this.
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Want to say, “Communism” is democratic control of the economy. So ideally there is no “top”.
Using some terms really loosely here to avoid a wall of political theory.