this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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“Free market” Capitalism is self-destructive. As the wealthy build and consolidate power, more and more resources get funneled to the top while the people at the bottom actually creating those resources go with less and less, and it’s unsustainable.
Being a billionaire is a moral failing. To have the ability to do something about all the suffering and death in the world, and to choose to do nothing borders on sociopathy. The systems designed to allow for billionaires to exist ensure that they don’t pay a fair share of their taxes, and they contribute nothing to society. They are leeches, feeding off the working class and giving nothing in return, when they have so much more to give than anyone else.
It doesn't border on anything, they are straight up psychopaths. You can't do what they do if you have a conscience.
I agree with your point of view, and I think the solution is more governmental regulation. Billionaires and companies keep leeching for infinite growth, and I believe our system can work (and has proven it can work), if we allow a free market within reason.
Since the current system allows the people who make the rules to be bought, I think we'd have to start over entirely from scratch for it to work at all.
I think realistically the only way to fix that flaw would be starting over. Unrealistically, a constitutional amendment could solve a lot of those issues.
Regulations are indeed an important part of managing our system as it is, but they're fundamentally a bandaid to the problems of capitalism.
You gotta catch the corporations doing a bad thing and then tell them not to do it, meanwhile they're buying politicians to fight against you on it. And it still doesn't stop them from committing actions that are horribly unethical and extremely damaging to our society and to the environment, they just tone it down a bit at best, or occasionally they'll have to put a small fraction of their money into a lawsuit without actually changing their behavior.
Yeah, the relationship betweens corporations and our government absolutely has to change. I totally agree that the system is not at all working in that regard. It especially pisses me off when corporations break the law and the fines amount to nothing except the cost of doing business.
Yup. If we're talking regulations then regulations on how much corporations can donate to politicians should be top of the list (and ideally that amount should be zero), but obviously both the politicians and the corporations like that donations are totally allowed, making it difficult to pass such things...
Some example where it works? Because where I live (EU), stuff is regulated and no one of my generation can buy shit. I pay so much for rent that I can't save money to buy something of my own. While the owner of the company has luxury cars. We're all wage slaves. Sadly, everything else is doomed to fail as well, so even the fabled communism of Soviet bootlickers won't save us.
If you think EU is regulated, you have no idea what regulation should be. EU is merely preventing capitalism from self euthanasy at this point.
And I am a firm supporter of Europe.
Soviet system was communism with bosses, bosses duck up everything.
Yeah, that's looking for scapegoats. Truth is you always need some kind of a boss.
Let's imagine the fabled True Communism™. So everyone goes to vote for everything, everyone has a say in everything and everything is owned by everyone. Someone has to organize the elections. And because it's unrealistic for millions of people to go to one voting booth, you need local elections, pretty much what democracy looks like now. And there you go - you have your local leaders, those who organize elections. Your bosses are back and True Communism™ devolves back into the "communism with bosses".
Or let's say we come with a magical solution to that problem. Your country doesn't have money to build only luxury houses or flats, there need to be some smaller and shittier ones. Who decides who lives in the villa and who lives in the small apartment? There are these solutions:
Communism doesn't work and cannot work, simply because of human nature.
All forms of power are self destructive. Greedy humans will want more of and will exploit others to get it.
Capitalism isn't immune to that, but does provide a bit of a wildcard that other forms of government don't have. Mark Zuckerberg controls, frankly, more of the world than anyone should be comfortable with, and the reason it's him and not someone else is mostly dumb luck. If he plays his cards right, he can build a Zuckerberg dynasty, and his descendants will have power by birth, but him being in power is capitalism. Some random person can obtain mass power.
All other feasible economic systems centralize power by design, and centralized power is, historically, rife with corruption and dynasties. Hell, the US presidency alone is usually a race between two people that the majority isn't happy with. Our election system is one of the fairest (far from perfect) and we still have crap options. You can pick your favorite color, so long as it's black or white.
I'm all for exposing and discussing the issues with capitalism, but it's still better than most other systems. The general check to capitalism is government regulations, which works on paper, but not in reality. Our current government system is pay to play, so if you have enough money, the regulations don't effect you, they affect your competition, its the worst form of free market. Get money out of politics and maybe regulations will work. Until then, they mostly make it worse.
If we wanted to explore other options, like socialism, it still boils down to corruption in the government. If its not money, it's something else. At the end of the day, leaders need support to get elected, and they will pimp themselves out for that support. If we look at an extreme example of "All jobs pay the same", within a decade, all desirable jobs, such as hiring managers, will be held by children of politicians and allies. Corruption won't go away just because money does, but money gives an ordinary person a chance at obtaining power.
At least in the US, there hasn't been much of a history of successful dynasties. Fortunes do get passed down, but not for long. Take the Vanderbilt family. There are few famous Vanderbilts in modern day US life. The one I find most recognizable is Anderson Cooper, and he got his millions from working, not inheriting. Of course, there's a constant attempt from the Republican Party to repeal the estate tax, so that might change.
You say that people at the bottom go with less and less, but that doesn’t seem to match what’s actually happening in the world.
People used to be able to afford homes, so yes, it definitely is happening.
Have you seen the housing market lately? Capitalism was great for the boomers pretty much in every developed country. Now millenials and zoomers encountered this ripe form of it where everything is consolidated under a massive corporate entity optimizing only for profit.
I remember even a couple of years ago renting a place straight from the owners who moved to someplace bigger and after a year they just said i can live there however long i’d like with a month notice. Same rent for five years. Now every year i renew my lease through an intermediate management company and every year they hike the rent.
Groceries are getting more expensive, ads are fucking everywhere and every news outlet lies or creates mostly sponsored shit. We are surrounded by soulless corporations and we “work” for them at our bullshit jobs providing nothing of value. Feeling down? Why dont you install a fucking subscription app for therapy.
Boomers had a fairly well regulated capitalism, which they benefited from greatly.
Then they deregulated it because they got theirs, so fuck everyone else.
The boomers were adjacent to the two generations that started the neoliberal disaster. Reagan and Thatcher and Friedman etc weren’t boomers. The Clinton and Bush jr crew enthusiastically joined in, but they didn’t start it.
There are enormous government pressures against new construction. That’s not capitalism at work it’s centralized economic planning suppressing the supply of housing.
Ummm. Im in bed right now with two construction sites nearby waking me up. The whole city is in cranes and development companies make a killing. Still a basic 40m² place costs as much as a house outside of the city cost 5 years ago.
It does match exactly what's happening though. Others have mentioned housing cost which is a clear example, but you can also look at income inequality. Here's an article which cites data from the congressional budget office https://inequality.org/facts/income-inequality/
It shows up to 500% growth since 1979 in the earnings of the .01% while the 99% of earners are only making about 50% more than in 1979. That data makes it clear that wealth is being concentrated, and that people at the bottom are going with less. Especially considering inflation since 1979 has been 320% (source)
Not to mention that people in America and Europe aren't necessarily at "the bottom". A lot of today's wealth is built on the backs of poorer countries that make even less than we do, or nothing at all, or by exploiting them by coming in and privatizing something as basic as water.
@Crankpork
Debt and giving weapons to extremist factions, like druglords, are the big ways that the extraction/pillage/theft happens.
BTW corporatism (aka #neoliberalism) is not capitalism. Capital (including money) is supposed to deplete when bad decisions are made in capitalism. Also capitalism was defined to have protections and a publicSector to counteract so-called 'externalities' (ie. bad stuff) a corporation might produce as a by-product.
Both are clowned w neoliberalism
@local_taxi_fix
The people at the bottom of the world are doing better and better.
Being removed from reality is a form of insanity itself.
A lot of people die from hunger daily in my country and different parts of the world. If you're speaking about growing wealth in developing countries, you should go look at the people holding these wealth, most times, it's an even smaller group of elites than in the USA.
Capitalism is wielded in a much worse manner in underdeveloped and developing countries, the elite and people in power don't care about the citizens, they want to hoard as much wealth as they can and they would do so in any way they can. What's worse, they take these wealth to already wealthy countries to further develop them while intentionally destroying theirs. Your should follow the flow of wealth from the global south to the north the west in particular.
Yes, in these countries there's a growing middle class, but what can they buy or do with the little wealth they hold? They're stuck in an endless struggle against totalitarian governments who are themselves stooges to global neocolonialist and imperialistic countries powers like the USA and European countries.
Inequality is a measure of the difference between top and bottom. It is not a measure of how much the bottom has.
Demonstrating that the bottom 99% has had wages increase 50% since 1979 while inflation has decreased the value of the same currency by 320% is damning. There's no good defense for capitalism here.
There's more overall for everyone, but the people at the bottom are getting a smaller and smaller share, and a lot of important things, like housing, not to mention with things like streaming, and online stores, we don't really "own" most of the media we consume anymore, we just pay forever to rent it. Fast fashion and planned obscelescence means that our clothing is worse than what people used to have, and our machines don't last as long, so we have to keep replacing both of those.
What we do have is designed not to last, and more meaningful, life-long purchases are out of reach. Meanwhile the people at the top of the pile who do literally nothing but "have wealth" sit around on their yachts blissfully ignoring the people starving to death on the streets.