this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2024

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Exclusive: Farage: Capitalism is Dead, We're Living in Corporatism (www.breitbart.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I guess if BreitBart makes up enough stuff they'll eventually say something factual on accident.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Normally I don’t read or cite breitbart. I posted this specifically because it was from breitbart. I also agree with the premise but was surprised it was on breitbart

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

The thing about fascists is that they do sometimes point out real problems, but their explanations on the causes and their solutions for those incorrect causes are wildly unreasonable. For example, Nigel here probably believes that "corporatism" is caused by the companies exploiting (white, British) people being owned by non British and non white people, and his solution is to ban those people from owning anything and indeed deport non white people and immigrants instead of regulating the actions of businesses in any way. So even if he's correct that it's a problem that people are suffering and the government is corrupt, he and Breitbart can't be worked with because their solutions are bullshit and sharing glowing articles about them promotes their explanations and solutions.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

There are good free market capitalists who are trying to expose corporatism to distinguish it from capitalism with healthy competition that makes locally owned services and businesses, some of those even get to know their customers. Coporations believe they are entitled to everybody else's money while only doing the token minimal for very large amounts of money.

[+] [email protected] -7 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I am very much a capitalist at heart. It’s the only system proven to raise the quality of life for everyone. The current corporatism isn’t the same as capitalism. I’m not a fan of that.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

One thing that’s confusing is that capitalism breaks down over time, into something like this “corporatism” or oligarchy or corporate capture. This makes people think that capitalism is these things.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I'm curious, how exactly do you define "capitalism"? I'm having difficulty constructing a definition which doesn't inevitably lead to corporatism.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Literally just don't have the limited liability corporate structure. It's an invention of government to privatize profits while socializing losses.

In a free market, company owners would not be entitled to profits while eschewing liability for the actions of their companies. It would force prioritizing long-term brand sustainability over cutting corners to juice next quarter's share price. And liability would incentivize keeping companies small to manage risk, so there probably wouldn't even be megacorp conglomerates to begin with.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Most of our economy is small business.

The problem is large companies have a large influence on politics, etc that they shouldn’t have.

Many of our regulations are nothing more than a barrier for a small business to start.

It’s why I praise Elon for growing Tesla. Only someone with his wealth and connections could push the EV industry to where it is now.

Doesn’t mean I like Elon as a person but that is where we are now. To get a new idea going, we need a mega wealthy person to do it and that shouldn’t be the case.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm not seeing a definition of capitalism here.

To my knowledge, capitalism is defined as a market economy where the means of production are privately owned by investors and operated for a profit. It fundamentally concentrates money to a small number of investors, who are incentivized to use that money to more efficiently concentrate money in their pockets (e.g. influencing politics).

Whether it's the intended outcome of capitalism, it's certainly an inevitable one. Which is why I asked, how you would define capitalism such that it doesn't inevitably lead to the mega wealthy with power to influence regulation.

[+] [email protected] -7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Capitalism is the private ownership of property.

Dictionary Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more noun an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit. "an era of free-market capitalism"

Not sure what you mean by a small group. Anyone who a pension, a 401k, etc is an investor. Almost every American is an investor. It’s how we fund our retirements.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

None of that contradicts the observation that, over time, the accumulation of capital through profit incentivizes private owners to reinvest that capital to increase the profit potential of their business. Passive investors (e.g. pension-holders) don't do much of this, that much is true. Even small-scale investors (e.g. small business owners) typically only do this in positive, productive ways we like to see (e.g. reinvesting in the means of production to create more valuable products).

But large investors (e.g. corporations) inevitably bubble up. That's what capitalism "selects" for, over time. They are heavily incentivized, at the demand of shareholders, to maximize profit. Profit = Revenue - Expenses, which means maximizing profit requires maximizing revenue and minimizing expenses.

Maximizing revenue eventually leads to suppressing competition through market forces (e.g. selling at a loss to drive smaller businesses to failure a la Walmart) and regulation (e.g. the aforementioned political influence through ~~bribery~~ gratuity), as well as directly exploiting monopolies to raise prices (e.g. Ticketmaster). Then there's the many other mechanisms used to increase sales without increasing value (e.g. planned obsolescence, subscriptions, etc). Minimizing expenses eventually leads to cheaping out on quality (which nicely dovetails into increasing revenue through planned obsolescence) and minimizing wages.

So what you get, in a model based on private investment and driven by profit, is an environment where the most successful investors with the most capital at their disposal to reinvest will be the ones who use every tool in their arsenal to maximize profit. Sure, there will be plenty of other small businesses and individual investors getting by, but the mega wealthy are an inevitable by-product. It's natural selection.

And as the mega-wealthy get wealthier, they siphon wealth from down the food-chain. Wage suppression and price increases mean less disposable income for the average person to reinvest. Regulatory capture, as you said, sets a barrier to small businesses in entering the market. Even if a small business makes it to market, corporations are comfortably poised to undercut them.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

@wintermute_oregon @agamemnonymous

> The problem is large companies have a large influence on politics, etc that they shouldn’t have.
...
> It’s why I praise Elon for growing Tesla.

Usually I'm with you but...HUH? #ElonMusk literally owns #X, one of the largest social media platforms, and therefore has some amount of political power in the #USA.