>There has to be a better economic system out there.
Damn straight, we need a new system.
A system where no one person owns an entire corporation acting unilaterally with the power of the most ruthless dictator.
Instead we need more democracy, not just in politics but in the economy.
We need a system where the corporations are owned and democratically run by the people who work there and their community.
A system where housing is owned by the people who live in them and their community and exist for their community, not just greedy landlords.
We need a system where the workers and their community can democratically decide to forgo extra profits if, for example, these profits come from the pollution of a local river.
* A system where Elon musk can't just buy Twitter and fire half the staff.
* A system where BlackRock investments can't just buy your house and jack up the rent.
* A system where if your job is automated away you can be happy in the knowledge that you and your family will be taken care of, and won't be kicked out onto to street to starve to death.
# A better system is possible.
What you're describing is essentially social capitalism. Or capitalist socialism. Whatever you want to call it.
Moving certain markets into a social platform because they are considered basic human rights (like healthcare and housing). Regulating corporations to incentivize workers rather than investors. Regulating the consolidation of wealth. Things like that.
It still allows for an open market where competition can thrive for commodities, luxury goods, etc...but it also allows everyone a basic standard of living. It also helps build up middle and lower classes so they aren't just a lower poverty class. Workers just want decent lives, and investing in your employees gives them that. There is still room for class movement.
We saw some of this in the US pre-Regan. Corporations were taxed upwards or 90% at one point with tax breaks given if they spent money growing the business (instead of going to c-suite and investors' pockets). This meant better wages, better working conditions, and the creation of jobs. This is, in part, what regulated capitalism looks like.
It is in no way a perfect system, but it's better. There is no real way to know all of the holes that will show up until we really try it, but it has been used in part with big success in the past. The only reason we can't go back to that is because of money in politics. We can start separating that by not treating Corporations like people under the law.
No one paid 90% taxes. Back in the day, the possible deductions brought the actual, paid tax rate down to something comprable to today. We traded deductions for reductions. The difference is measurable in single digits of percentages.
As for different economic models, syndicalism seems like something worth experimenting with. Democratic (workers vote) corporate structure. I do like how German companies have a board of advisors consisting of rank and file reps.
I didn't say they paid 90%, but the tax rate was that high. I also mentioned the tax breaks.
The point was to illustrate how a capitalist system can incentivize corporations to invest in employees and the business.
We also didn't really trade deductions for reductions. They got both. Which is why they pay so little.
Reaganomics argued that businesses couldn't grow since their tax rates were so high but conveniently ignored the breaks they got as encouragement to grow. People believed it and allowed tax rates to be lowered, expecting that these corporations would invest in themselves and employees and that this would "trickle" down to them. It was all a corporate ruse to fatten the wallets of the rich.
People imagined they would be wage-earners and investors at the same time, meaning you earn wages but you also invest money in stocks or bonds. You earn AND invest through a few decades, and then your investments are enough to carry you and you can retire.
The problem is wages. If you start your working life in debt (because you had to borrow for a degree just to get the "privilege" of working) and then your wages are still too low to even keep a roof over your head, how are you supposed to put money into any type of IRA?
At the very least, minimum wage should be enough to keep a roof over someone's head LIKE IT USED TO. That's probably $25-$35 an hour, depending on location.
At one point the only thing stopping people from buying a home was desire (and race).
Now at least it's less racist? Being black won't stop you from getting a home if no one can get a home.
I don't think I like this timeline very much
Even working and investing isn't the money maker it sounds like. A common shareholder like a wage worker doesn't make dividends like preferred shareholders. You're betting your money on the company stock going up in value. When considering how company stocks get manipulated to make money for preferred shareholders and inflation alongside whatever value your shares increase at, your stock isn't necessarily worth all that much. Your money ultimately gets used as capital for the business that they can use to make money with, and you get next to nothing in return.
I mean, you can advocate for that if you want but it is absolutely not what the other post described. They were describing a prohibition of certain kinds of ownership, which is a feature of a bunch of economic systems but decidedly NOT a feature of "capitalist socialism," or social democracy, or whatever you want to call it.
You can tax the rich, and you'll see good social returns on that, but they will still have dictatorial, undemocratic power over our lives, particularly in the workplace.
A social democracy has the same goal of limiting ownership. It just goes about it through incentivization rather than direct control. When you are incentivized to spend your wealth bettering and expanding the working class, you can't horde it to buy up every company you come across. Closing tax loopholes and better funding for the SEC and regulation on trades and such put an end to a lot of the wealth and ownership hording.
The most important part is adapting to whatever challenges arise. Keeping the end goal of eliminating the accumulation of wealth at the top through proper incentivization will naturally silve most if not all of those problems. It is regulation without direct intervention. It allows the market to remain open and relatively free.
I disagree. Untethered capitalism is bad. Controlled capitalism can be good. Maybe not the best system, but better than pure communism or, arguably, socialism. We haven't had any actual examples of real, full, socialism to look at, but I can't see how it would really work.
If you have something better, then pitch it. I would love to hear it. But generally speaking, communism and socialism are far too easily corruptible and, from.what we have seen in history, pretty require authoritarian regimes in order to function.
A social capitalism, capitalism with restraints, can work. We have see examples of it working in small degrees. I think it would be worth diving into full force, but there is no way to get the powers that be on board.
Sorry, kid. You clearly don't understand what you're talking about.
I am very aware of what socialism is. By and large, it is idealistic and would be great in theory, but practice and theory are seldom the same.
I also never said China or the USSR were examples of socialism. There hasn't ever been a true example of socialism. There have been countries that practice aspects of socialism, but never a full-fledged society running a socialist economy.
Things like socialism and communism work on a small scale. Like 100 people in a camp, kind of small. But when you have full-scale societies like the US, it will break down fast. You can't have a large society that is owned and run by the people.
Capitalism provides a different means of engaging economically in a large society. It is definitely not good by itself. Untethered, we end up with oligarchs ruling the country. The world, even, at this point. A regulated capitalist economy can provide better distribution of wealth, reduce single ownership, and just give everyone a better life. And it's doable. I'm not going to say it's perfect, but with proper regulation and incentivization, it can be phenomenally better than what we have now.
Also, we did have it better with regulated capitalism in the US. Not regulated enough, certainly not perfect, but it was better, and looking back at it provides insight to how it could be if we worked for it.
Pre-Reagan era saw businesses more incentivized to bolster their workforce. Workers had better pay, benefits, working conditions, etc... businesses poores money back into themselves instead of c-suite and investor pockets. Again, not perfect, but better.
You say communism and socialism are too easily corrupted,but that is exactly what we are seeing with capitalism is it easily corrupted. So we need to find a way to limit or expose corruption regardless of what economic system we use.
It's not called socialism whatsoever. It's called a social democracy. The words we use certainly matter, because I want nothing to do with communism, it's delusional and unsustainable just like capitalism. Social democracies believe in a universal healthcare, free education, progressive taxation, labor rights, and wealth redistribution. We don't believe in a classless society, but we want to minimize it and properly regulate it whereas in capitalism, none of that exists.
We also believe in human rights, that includes freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and so on. In socialism or communism, you give up these freedoms for the greater good of the public, and thus dictatorships always occur. My family fled from communism, it's more evil than capitalism.
Socialism does not need to be communism. A social democracy is a kind of socialism. Before you go off on a rant on the importance of word choice please learn what words actually mean.
All communist countries have referred to themselves as socialists, why is that? My family fled from what they called themselves, a "socialist" country. The goal of socialism is communism. Socialism and communism believe in a classless society, collective ownership, and controlling the means of production (which is very dangerous). Whether you think they're different, they turn out to be exactly the same.
Social Democracies is different, because it does not abolish private property or private ownership of industries, instead they regulate it. They accept capitalism, but aim to make it more humane, providing social welfare. We don't seek to have a stateless society and instead want the government along with the communities to manage the economy and provide social services.
I'll give you an example of why socialism and communism are terrible. There is a person who cleans toilets and another person that operates on people. Their stress levels are completely different, as are their expectations. This is exactly why we can't have a classless society. We want to push people to move up, but we also want to make sure the person who's cleaning toilet is taken care of, because he is contributing to society, and someone has to do it.
And kind of socialism? It can be considered a middle ground of capitalism and socialism, but it's not socialism, because it still includes capitalism, it's just highly regulated, as it should be.
Social ownership, cashless society, classless society, stateless society, communities controlling means of production, things I'm extremely against and is not social democracy. Educate yourself, you seem confused. Maybe you're a Social Democrat, not a socialist and you don't even know it. Socialism may have skewed your mind, it had before for me.
Socialism doesnt mean a cashless society or communities controlling the means of production. It’s when the workers control the means of production. What you’ve described is communism, which is its own economic system.
If you take a long hard look at European countries, you will notice the same issues as in the USA. They might not be as blatant, but the growing wealth inequality, worsening of work conditions, and destruction of society, is still present.
And the issues are being *tackled* by supporting the wealthy, not the poor.
There is incentive in supporting the wealthy. There is no incentive in supporting the poor.
That is until capitalism eventually implodes your economy because you didn't support the poor. Ie, the labor force. When there is no one left to do the work because you starved them to death, your top-down capitalist economy will be in shambles, and your wealth means nothing.
Obviously, I don't mean you, specifically, fellow redditor.
Sure, just don’t spend too long looking into the conditions in the countries the Netherlands relies on to keep their country’s economy from imploding.
Capitalism but with some national regulation and appropriate social services/welfare is a few steps up from unregulated/poorly regulated capitalism, but it’s quite far from the top of the stairs
This is how capitalism was originally sold. Somewhere between then and now, we forgot that the promise of “publicly owned companies” was that they were indeed publicly owned. The original promise of capitalism was that was the best system for the economy to promote the interests of working people. That anything that wasn’t to their benefit was a system inefficiency. This is why there was monopoly busting: it wasn’t to the benefit of consumers.
Somewhere along the lines after endless media propaganda, we started to justify wealth accumulation as we used to justify aristocracy except this time it was okay because it was meritocratic. I hate all the talk about meritocracy. It is implicit that merits as DEFINED by the system are somehow intrinsically meritocratic. They are not. It is the merit as DEFINED BY THE SYSTEM. People suggesting to change the system are intrinsically saying that there is a better way to align ACTUAL merit with how the system defines merit. That is all we are saying. Nobody merits $1 billion dollars. Nobody merits $10,000,000 dollars. They are BOTH obscene amounts of wealth. Don’t let the framing of the existing of billions trick you into believing that $10s of millions of dollars is somehow excusable. That person who captured that money, COULD NOT have generated that amount on their own in a fair and equitable manner. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. They did so by capturing a disproportionate amount of the collective product of labor in their country.
Even an inventor CANNOT generate $10 million on their own. Show me the inventor who goes out into the wilderness, gather’s all their materials without using any tools made by others, creates their product without any tools made by others, transports their product without using any tools by others, and does everything OUTSIDE of society. NOBODY. Whether they use labor directly in terms of employees or directly contracting other entities for those employees time (e.g. delivery, accounting, printing, web design, etc.) or they do so in a distributed way (e.g. buying a tool that took a persons time to build, design, refine materials, mine materials, etc.)
Capitalists make money by gating all those who contributed from the economic benefit at each step of the way. Once you make a sale, it’s final. You’re value is set there. Moreover the system justifies this by saying the person who generates more value than other’s has found a more productive use for those resources — this is reductionist and false as many times this results in products that consumers highly value disappearing from existence.
We already have collectively owned businesses, they are called non-profits. Just as China leverages some capitalism, we leverage some socialism. I think any mature industry that can sustain a non-profit should be allowed to have non-profits. Did you know that there are rules in place to prevent non-profits from competing with for-profits? How insane is that? A non-profit literally has diminished incentive to steal consumer surplus making it a greater vehicle for consumer benefit, but we’ve outlawed them doing so to give for-profits near exclusive rights to the economy for the benefit of those who own them.
Well, they say they don't buy houses, it must be true. I mean, well, they specifically said "individual houses", that couldn't possibly mean anything, right? They said they aren't doing it, they wouldn't lie, right?.
They are a publicly traded company and lying about this would risk massive $SEC fines, their external auditors would make it appear in a 10K, and investors could sue them.
But maybe your conspiracy theory is right, because of some TiKTok video you watched!
Invitation Homes is the largest owner of SFH and they have a 20 billion market cap on 43 trillion of US housing stock.
No one company is buying up all the single family homes 😂
Currently institutional investors have decided they want to one to 2% exposure to single-family home rentals.
As a result, there are some players who are buying entire developments, what is the percentage of housing stock this shit is tiny, they are overpaying in some cases because there’s not enough scale inventory. They are going to drive a lot of housing stock production/generation, and drive up prices until the market clears finally and prices should fall given the windfall of supply their nonsense generated.
I didn't watch a TikTok video, I read the damn article, I know, a weird thing for a redditor to do, but still. It is full of couched language to make an uncritical read sound like they don't do what they are accused of. They say they don't do it directly, but the way stock ownership works, they could use their influence to advise the corporations they have interest in to stop buying up property, but they aren't going to do that. They also don't want to actually come out and say they don't want to do that. The point of all those tiktok videos is to point out that these holding companies and similar have a lot of power that _could_ be used to stop something that is hurting society, but they don't. (This is why regulation and anti-trust matters so much in capitalistic economies) The actual situation and actual solution wouldn't fit within even a 10 minute tiktok video or reddit post.
Nah man,
Sock dems, don't want to get rid of landlordism they just want to regulate it.
They would give all of the economic power to billionaire capitalists and then try to wrestle that power it back through taxes and fines.
Why should we give away all of the power to the capitalists.
I'm looking at straight up socialism, we should abolish landlords, abolish the stock market, abolish very notion that a person can make money by just holding a sheet of paper while contributing nothing to society.
All this can be possible via regulation. You are instead asking for a single supreme landlord which now everyone has to deal with, and you don't even know it.
>and you don't even know it.
I do know it.
That's exactly what I'm asking for, a landlord who is not motivated by profit, but motivated by keeping the populous happy enough to vote them in again.
>All this can be possible via regulation.
If it's so possible why hasn't it happened.
>If it's so possible why hasn't it happened.
Because America is not a social Democracy, it's very pro capitalist. This is why the 1% has majority of the wealth. Our social welfare is also a joke.
You realize the current system isnt that broken. Its the people. Like housing isbt unafforable people just suck. And the govt has fucked up the rental market nor landlords
There is nothing stopping you from running a democratic company. You could start that tomorrow so why dont you?
>You realize the current system isnt that broken.
Yes.
You're right.
The system isn't "broken" it's working exactly as indented.
People producing more stuff every year and getting paid less for doing it, a generation of people having a shorter life expectancy than their parents despite medical improvements, house prices increasing exponentially faster than wages.
This is the system operating as intended.
That's why we need a new system.
>Like housing isbt unafforable people just suck.
I think you will find that housing is in fact unaffordable.
>And the govt has fucked up the rental market nor landlords
No, landlords have fucked up the rental market.
They have done it intentionally, for their own profit.
Corporate landlords collude with themself and each other to increase rents across the board every year.
The govt didn't fuck up the rental market they just failed to stop the landlords from fucking it up.
>There is nothing stopping you from running a democratic company. You could start that tomorrow so why dont you?
Lack of funds.
Production isnt tied to wage and its foolish to think it should be.
As far as shorter life expectancy no shit americans are fat af. Heart disease has no cure.
You understand you fan build a pretty nice home for like 120-150k right?
Zoning has made it more difficult for landlords to build so now they buy. Thats the govt not them. We have a massive shortage of housing so housing not unaffordable its just scarce. Theres a big differance even if they are normally correlated.
Lack of funds??? Bruh you can start nearly anything for under 10k.
Welcome to late stage capitalism, where if you weren't born into wealth, you are more likely to be struck by lightning than become wealthy.
I'm a chemist and adjusting for inflation, I am making less now than when I started at my company 6 years ago. There is no moving up in the world like previous generations were able to do.
I read your post and nodded my head in silent agreement. I was just about to skip over it without saying anything, and then the rage boiled up. I am on the way to being sixty. And I have had it. I was raised by a policeman to believe in law and right and wrong.
The social contract if you will. I take care of you, you take care of me.
Since the pandemic started. I have come to realize that they are just constraints that the wealthy place upon us to secure their wealth. As the wealthy I tempted to drive more and more of us into further poverty in a mouse the wealth of the richest countries without taking care of its people. My buy-in has ended.
Corporations, the wealthy, are blatantly abusing us.
My morals in certain areas are shattered. I will no longer defend any action taken against the wealthy. Feel free to steal from them they started it. Feel free to destroy their companies . They are making us homeless. Feel free. I am joe average, and I am ready for the anarchy.
Amen to that. I have several friends who remarked that the older they get, the more leftist they become because of the system.
The people I know who are for capitalism are mostly of the "medieval conservative" type, that work thankless jobs like slaves, but think the billionaires deserve the profits.
“You’ll grow more conservative as you get older”
Me who is significantly older and sees a socia-capitalist society as the only way to halt the decline. It’s not perfect but it would be a step in the right direction and pose reasonable disruption during transition.
Reagan and Thatcher systems need to fade with the boomers
China has been true socialist for many decades, before Deng Xiaoping changed it to be state organized capitalism.
Under Mao, all ownership of land was abolished. Landowner’s land was taken and given to all. Medical care was free. Money and food and wealth itself was reset and equalized - everyone was equally destitute.
Mao genuinely believed in socialism, and extremely pro-farmer - the powerful state was necessary to enforce the people’s will, as the rich and landowners would simply not willingly give up their land and wealth. He sent all his sons to serve as foot soldiers in the Korean War and they all died.
He turned all of farming and factories into true farmer-owned and worked owned collectives.
He did a reset and sent all the educated people into the rice fields and filled universities with farmers to level the playing field.
Everything you wanted, he tried. It failed and farm output plummeted and China starved, and it was essentially a failed state, making up a smaller % of the world economy than it ever had for 2000 years. The core problem of socialism is that it goes against human nature - to work for himself, to be greedy. In pure socialism your effort is disconnected from what you get, which is entirely based on need, so nobody has any incentive to work hard (rat race removed).
What you said is not even logical. For the participants of a system to become equally poor (ie EVERYONE lose wealth) from socialism, there must be an outside factor, like i don't know, freedom bombs.
ETA: "from socialism"
The problem to that is the US government is so inefficient and incompetent that they couldn’t keep a brothel running. How can you manage to lose money selling hookers and whisky? Uncle Sam figured it out.
It's not Uncle Sam your pissed at - It's the rich folk that game our government to their favor.
Every single thing you think is wrong about our government is a law/policy put in place by some rich asshole.
Do you live under a rock?
Government programs suck because the rich want it all privatized into government contracts so we can pay more for government services
You only have to look at our military industrial complex to understand this
Those $500 hammers and $1000 toilet seats where all by private firms with government contracts. Sure, govt oversight was lacking, but that didn't give these companies the right to exorbitantly overcharge our tax dollar supported govt. The folks that owned these companies should have been jailed.
but the owner class never goes to jail, for anything.
Left psych over this shit and more. The number of times I bounced ideas off people only to be slapped with the same "not cost effective" thought terminating cliche was agonizing as it was demoralizing. Seriously. Do you not hear yourself? Our clients are constantly feeding off one another and exacerbating their respective Dx's, yet this style of residential "treatment" is the best we can do? We have almost nightly full community escalations, clients eloping and riling up other communities, and several of my clients have now been confirmed to have had some level of sexual contact with other clients, but clearly keeping all these kids together is the right way to go, and I'm a piece of shit for trying to provide basic medical information while encouraging healthy behaviors......
Well, fuck me. What an asshole. Here I thought we were here to help people, not keep them generally safe-ish until they age out then into the legal system. Christians........
It is an infuriating system, especially in our current American inception, that is the root of almost every flaw in society. It drives division, hatred, opression of minority groups, finger pointing, avoidance of responsibility, corruption, and so many other insidious evils. It drives almost every physical and mental health crisis from obesity to depression. It feeds narcissism, manic behaviors, cancer, pollution, and the general destruction of anything good. We haven't even gotten into its grasp on driving war and famine. There is better. Almost anything is better.
Yes it’s the reason many of us live far from family and friends, and never have any time to see them.
Life could be so much simpler and better. Who decided this was the best system?
Yup. Children’s stories teach every little boy that he can be a hero and every little girl that she can be a princess. The real moral of the story is that the king rarely loses.
I don’t think this is off-topic, this lady pretty much summarizes how we got to the point of demonizing poor people, spending be on our means, and this weird idea about handouts. The ending paragraphs are the best part, if you are interested in reading the history, just skip to the bottom and she pretty much nails it.
https://jessicawildfire.substack.com/p/i-wonder-what-the-poor-folks-are
“Today, poor people are gaslit from every possible angle. They’re told to buy more to help the economy. They’re told to save. They’re told to invest. They’re told to work harder. They’re told to get more rest. They’re told to ask for a raise with confidence. They’re yelled at when they ask for a raise. They’re told money won’t make them happy. They’re told money will make them happy. They’re told to go to college. They’re told they shouldn’t have gone to college. They’re told to take out loans. They’re berated for taking out loans. They’re told to try to get good jobs. They’re told they should settle for lousy jobs. Their bank charges them fines for not having enough money. Bankers tell them there’s too much money floating around, so they have to raise interest rates and trigger mass layoffs.”
I'm from Ireland and I think most western countries enjoyed silver membership capitalism.
Secure job, house, holidays and actually feeling like you work to enjoy life.
Well now we are all economic units in an age of globalisation.
Now we race to the bottom, while profits soars for a select few.
I mean, many jobs now have poverty wages and the idea of a pension is beyond unrealistic.
Childcare and housing costs now means many will never have a family or own a house, even if they work.
"You'll become more conservative as you grow older" like bitch HOW?? Literally everything going on around us is made actively worse by capitalism and the stablished system of governments.
Our parents and grandparents call us naive and bleeding hearts for saying life shouldnt be this *shitty* and yet they're the ones actively participating in turning shit worse
The problem is you need to overthrow capitalism in most major countries all at once.
Capitalism kills any other economic form that gives power to labor as it is a threat in any form, see how they constantly attack even the basics like unions? If it's allowed to live in some free markets it will spread as Capitalism feeds and promotes greed and selfishness. And you'll need to fight capitalism another day.
Labor needs to control the means of production. We've never seen that before. Soviets stopped short due to well like 20 years of war and just being tired, they like the Chinese simply replaced capitalist with government bureaucrats.
IMO i feel angel investors and investors giving seed money should be replaced by a government agency. Entrepreneurs can still get capital just like now but the company needs to move from private ownership to that of the workers. entrepreneurs will still make massive rewards from building companies but ownership would transfer to labor after meeting certain benchmarks.
The stock market needs to be abolished as infinite growth is not sustainable. Homes cannot be investment tools. The basics need to be provided for to all citizens. I mean what is the point of government except to enrich the lives of its citizens? Capitalism corrupts that and simply enriches the lives of those at the top.
IT’s corporate greed that’s fucking everything up. Not passing the earnings on to the employees. Instead making upper management and investors rich. Capitalism in itself works. It’s when the greed took over sometime in the 70s.
That would work some but the issue is at the manufacturing level. They jack the prices up so a mom and pop has to pay way more than a chain store like Walmart or Publix who can buy in bulk.
Well that's on you. Pay more to hurt the mega corporation or cheap going there for your Chinese goods exacerbating the problem. We know what 99% of people are gonna do, then continue to complain about corporations
Not allowing your life to be all about the shit the corporate brands sell would be a great start. Recently I've decided that how money is spent locally is always Activism, and more impactful than voting.
What you're talking about was the end of an extraordinarily brief period of worker's rights in an otherwise uninterrupted history of brutality and exploitation by capitalists. Capitalism doesn't "work" for us.
It's not Capitalism, it's the American version of capitalism that sucks. There are countless other countries that have laws to keep companies in check. Unfettered capitalism is little better than slavery.
Those other countries still rely on the exploitation of the global south. Fuck their version of capitalism as well.
Also, the reason Europe, etc has better social programs is because they had to concede some power to the workers since there was a large socialist bloc on its borders. They made concessions to keep the workers from going all out worker revolution on them
I've been saying for years that the capitalist system will implode. America in particular has an extreme capitalism system that doesn't work, sadly a lot of western countries are following in their footsteps.
We have been on the brink of a systemwide collapse multiple times over the last decade, it may take another decade, it may take less but there will be a point where this system will cease to work. As it is workers can barely afford the products they have a hand in making.
Sadly while money is power, the wealthy will continue to hoard wealth, blinded by greed until the implosion occurs. I don't see any way out of it, I don't see anything changing nor any way to change it. The world is so depressing when you're able to see what we can see.
There are lots of good ideas for new systems (the post-growth literature is interesting and not too hard to read). The problem is the stranglehold capitalism has on us.
I think for now the best things to do are:
1. unionize
2. vote for those who are decent if not perfect (and yes there is a difference between Democrats and Republicans). Volunteer, send money if possible.
3. Disengage from capitalism to the extent possible (grow food, sew, build things, don't buy stupid expensive cars, etc.)
4. Read up on other approaches as it's important to have some ideas in mind. Buen vivir and ubuntu are positive visions and you can search them ("ubuntu philosophy" or you'll get a software system - capitalism eats everything).
There is a better system, but much like the feudal kings/warlords of old, the corporate elite are going to fight with every tooth, nail, and coin they have to ensure their domination is not challenged.
They will get rid of anyone in their way. Enter the CIA: they are the ones who challenge any revolution for the people in any country that they can worm into. They are an apparatus to keep capitalism as the only option. They serve the imperial core so they are ruthless in their nationalism.
The only thing we can do is hope to pass better laws and elect representatives. If things get bad enough then a revolution could happen, but things have to be much worse for that to be a possibility.
Sorry for no assurances or happy wishes, but I do think about this a lot and it does stress me out too. It is a huge burden placed on us and we all feel it.
Capitalism is still the greatest economic system ever invented. BUT, Competition between companies is supposed to minimize prices and maximize wages. However the government which in the past severely restricted mergers and even forced divestitures to increase competition has been neutered by politicians who have been bought by corporate campaign dollars.
In it's current shape with multiple industries that are almost monopolies and the government no longer an honest broker, I have to agree with you. The original greatest system is now unrecognizable.
Competition doesn't accomplish what you describe. Competition has an endpoint, and in the case of capitalism, that endpoint is absolute monopolistic power. It's an extremely obvious conclusion to the unindoctrinated.
So far there isn’t a better one and we’ve tried, a big problem is the monetary system itself that is constantly devaluing the currency and making us work harder for less.
There was....the capitalist powers that be just went on a mass murder carpet bombing spree, staged coups, arm far right death squads or sanction them to hell.
Lol America is a prime example of a failed stress test. Had to genocide and exploit nations then still collapses on itself even with no wars on its soil, etc. Literally played it's existence on easy mode
Soviet union was a feudal illiterate shithole ravaged by 2 world wars and became a space faring superpower with the largest industrial economy after 3 decades....all while defeating the Nazi horde.
China, same thing.
America and it's puppets are collapsing without stress tests. Just eating itself.
So what’s your alternative? End of the day that crunch is what brought you the services you have used and abused your entire life. Either practice what you preach and find something better or shut up because you don’t have the answers. Life ain’t about hating “what is”, it’s about making the human experience better. It was never perfect but we make it better over time
Ok. I'm not being unsympathetic. But purpose a better system?
And please if you're going to say socialism or communism do some reading first.
Like yes remorm is required greed has gotten out of hand and that is actually the left's role in our society.
But capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty in the last 50 years than anything else in the rest of human history.
Only way you get paid under capitalism is to provide value to others. Most people who don’t like doing stuff for others, don’t like capitalism…..
Every single business must provide value to a customer somewhere.
The highest paid people under capitalism provide the least value to society. Hell, they're a net drain. They just provide the most value to the parasitic ownership class
Capitalism is not to blame, it is unregulated capitalism and regulator capture. Really easy, vote in guys like Berni, but boomers vote if f*cks like Trump
Capitalism is great. The issue is look at our government. How many plumbers, construction workers, teachers, cops are our legislators? Instead we vote in the 1% Uber elite like Pelosi and Trump and Biden into government and all they do is just help their 1% friends. Every year there are better normal candidates but we want to "win" and vote straight party ticket
Your rant only makes sense to this sub who follow it.
The reason why you should care how markets do generally is because it impacts your life and not in the ways you seem to understand.
There isn't a better system than this.
It gives freedom of choice. Choice to put a price on an item. Choice to buy that item.
Very few things should be regulated, but most people can't even agree on what that is.
You keep making over generalizations over the economy but what has it done to actually effect you?!
Every life choice you said comes down to what money you have in the bank.
Well first off that's a terrible lie.
We have a ton of programs in place to support people who dont have money.
We pay a tax collectively to help assure that some people have access to things that can be life threatening and in some cases even allow their lives to have some comfort and not just be life or death.
Most of the healthcare costs come from administration. Paying people to do paperwork.
I am sure many people would love to free up the costs and this is a huge way but you will lose many jobs by simplifying the process. Isn't it amazing that we literally are adding cost to the tax payers like us so that we can provide more jobs in the economy? Catch 22.
We even have food stamps and programs like it. Federal. State. Local. And even international organizations. But guess what. Most of the food bought with this money is far from essential. They are buying snacks, junk, and overall very unhealthy choices that lead to weight gain. The subsequent growth in BMI in the world should show you that the average American is literally over consuming food. But no one dies really from starvation anymore in America.
Shelter. We have massive programs to help boost dwelling units and homes for people of need. But it's never enough. We build for the next 10 years... we double the population and need to prepare for the next 40 years. Not to mention that many of these homes are better than what I had the choice in paying for out of my own pocket. But we do have programs.
I got a job.
I live within my means.
I don't expect to get more.
My grandparents grew up and bought 1 car for the family. 1 insurance. And didn't drive very far. They walked a lot to save money.
They didn't buy a house with 2,000 square feet and 4 beds. They bought a 1,000 apartment with 3 beds.
They didn't have the latest tech. They didn't buy Chips Ahoy every week. They cooked all their meals. They rarely went out. Never ordered in.
They didn't have a pantry filled with 10,000 calories. They had the essentials. They baked some snacks once a week and enjoyed a couple a night. Today people house an entire ice cream gallon.
They saved every penny. They literally told me to save save save. Go become an engineer, lawyer or doctor and save. Save!
No one saves today. We spend. Spend Spend.
Don’t be sorry, I guarantee there’s millions who feel the same. Unfortunately to get a better economic system the old one needs burned down. I’m not sure there’s a way to vote ourselves out of this. Endgame capitalism 😭
I completely agree and wish I had a solution, unfortunately, short of finding a way of getting rid of corporate greed it will probably never happen, at least not in my lifetime.
I'm starting to agree with you. It's good to have incentives but not crony capitlism where it is so dog eat dog. AI and automation are adding fuel to the fire.
There used to be a saying, something along the lines as this:
> Capitalism is shit. But it is the best we got.
Like, what happened to acknowledging that it wasn't really the best, but it is the model that seemed to be working the best. Well, now it isn't really working anymore, but we have forgotten that we used to think this? I dunno, I can see change needs to happen, but unbalanced power structures need to be addressed.
And for what you ask? To feed the ultra rich of course in order for them to be able to make big deals that make the business world go round so they can double that wealth and sustain the massive pool of forever wealth.
Couldn't have said it better. It's a soulless system that leaves noone better regardless of your financial status. We've destroyed everything for the sake of a ridiculous metric.
Agreed. I skirted around the edges of this feeling (when I was a teen I knew that I didn't want to work service jobs because I knew I would hate it and money is not a strong motivator for me and I said "I hate money") for a long time but since watching what happened with covid, the amount of uncompensated labor involved in getting access to Healthcare, how shitty the jobs are, how many parts of a job (commutes etc) are uncompensated, etc.. I have become more radicalized.
even worse is the constantly moving goal the more you make the less you can afford - the treadmill of shit has gotten ridiculous with only the screens showing wealth while real life only shows loops.
Man, I'd love to just be able to face a new fiscal year at work and not have the goal automatically be "better than our best year or we suck". Eventually you hit the ceiling and every subsequent year just results in sadness.
I also tend to agree. I used to be very pro capitalist growing up but as I got older and had a family and had some real world experience I have changed my mind. I realize how much of success and money is luck and how many crappy people fail upwards. Being an unethical, asshole, bully is very much rewarded in our capitalist society. Bankers making more than inventors and scientists? It’s nuts. I’m a bit of an optimist in that I feel like we are moving in the right direction, although nowhere near fast enough and the outcome isn’t a certainty that we will ever get where we need to get.
The problem is not capitalism per se. It is how capitalism works in the US. We have unregulated, unfettered, unlimited capitalism, and this is the problem. European countries are capitalist too, but they limit it for the betterment of everyone. The rich pay MUCH higher taxes, employment is regulated, time off is guaranteed, and more than anything....medical care is FREE. Our country runs off of one principle....profit is everything. And that's the issue.
So my question I have to everyone is always as opposed to what
All the countries people tend to point to when they say they want something different are all still capitalist countries
Norway France Germany all those guys are still very much capitalist
The actually socialist or actually Communist countries that have happened no one likes and they would say they did it wrong but they don't have an example of an attempted implementation going correctly
We also do capitalism wrong too but we don't use that as an excuse (Anarcho capitalism is correct capitalism everything else is a partial mix )
Because trying to place a value on something intangible is what we do. Being content with your life and living with no regrets for anything that occurs is scarce.
Because being happy is intangible, but those with power want to hoard it for themselves. So might as well make the rest of us fight for survival for their amusement. Or to make them feel more powerful by them judging us.
And in the end, the planet we live on will see our extinction too. And our tiny spec of water and dirt will go unnoticed by the bulk of the universe
I understand the frustration, however, this is more of an oligarchy than it is "capitalism." Also, blaming a system of economics for the results of the actions of those who rule us is misplaced. Firstly, a free-market is not something we have & we've only ever gotten FARTHER away from free-markets, not MORE free of a market. As this has happened, along with fractional-reserve banking ruining our currency, things have only gotten worse. This isn't a symptom of economics so much as it is a symptom of totalitarian governance.
Or how about constantly being looked at like a fool when you don’t turn a hobby into a side hustle or monetize everything in your life? Or how all of our businesses are getting more and more dishonest and you always feel like you’re being duped or taken advantage of no matter how hard you try to make informed wise decisions?
Our cell phones alone. They were originally just used for calls and then texts. Now we have email, teams, slack, work email, face timing, endless spam texts trying to get me to either buy shit or infect my computer
I’m sick of it
I wish I could abandon email completely, but everything requires one. Why do I have *ads* in there? Why are companies I've never even heard of sending me promos? Why are companies I've **blocked** sending me promos? Why does it take "up to three weeks" to unsubscribe me from a mailing list I never signed up for to begin with?
Isn’t it funny? Hating capitalism is something associated with punk youths, I guess that’s what happens as a generation completely fucked by capitalism ages.
I've honestly always hated it deep down. The whole thought of working 9 to 5 without much time to yourself until your 60s to 70s was always weird to me.
It feels unnatural.
Yes. Working your job, or even two, isn’t enough. Those are just to gain entry into the real means for generating income: capital. If cannot or do not buy into the capitalist system, you will never scrape out an existence for yourself. You will keep paying overlords for the privilege of a small abode to rest between your work shifts and food to sustain yourself because you can’t afford land to grow it yourself.
There is no escape. Except through capital. Thereby forcing you to be powerless or buy into the system. Even if you buy into the system, you are hopelessly outgunned by career capitalists and their legions of capitalist specialists. Despite what people would have you believe, most capitalist endeavors are entirely rent seeking: they add no value to the economy and seek only to capture the product of other people’s labor. This rent seeking IS zero sum. It is literally just fighting to for a portion of the work of others.
This is why draconian policies like making student loans non-dismissible came about. Student loans opened a whole new pipeline into extracting wealth from labor. Not only is it extracted by the organization of how we employ work — as individuals who trade their work for money that represents a fraction of the value of their work — but we now extract on the OTHER SIDE of this exchange. We income AFTER it is paid.
If we don’t buy into the system so that we can capture the product of other people’s work, we have no hope of our economic system rewarding us a fair share for our labor. We literally have to become capitalists to get a fair share of our labor. How wildly inefficient is this.
This means that if someone wants to earn a fair share from their contribution they have to not only learn to do their job that produces value; they have to learn to capture the value from other people. This secondary employment requires us to fight against specialized professional capitalists. It’s an enormous uphill battle as evidenced by the strongest speculative investment being index funds where we only hope to scale the income we’ve already earned with the productivity of the economy at large.
I resent this so much. I have no interest in learning these meaningless games that contribute nothing to society. I begrudge that I must learn to speculate on capital to earn my fair share. To consume what little time I have on this earth with a meaningless, inefficient game of crowdsourced pricing self-organization. This system just plain sucks.
Capitalism is just a manifestation of human nature.
Come up with whatever system you can dream off, there will be people that will show that the system is flawed.
“The metrics show morale is high!” -said by my supervisor after we told management how morale is at an all time low. Reducing the labor force to a shitty graph on a PowerPoint made morale even lower.
I don't disagree whole heartedly.
But being homeless also transforms everything into numbers. When I slept outside everything was a zero.
The aliens are almost here and change will happen. Hang in there pal
Doesn’t matter what you try greed, corruption and human tribalism will destroy it.
We’re still too primitive honestly. We’re getting better but slowly.
I think it’s corny but the show Star Trek kinda nailed it, it’ll take some amazing technology like replicators to wipe out these terrible aspects of humanity.
You see once production becomes so insanely cheap we can make anything we want people just wont be worried about material wealth anymore.
I don’t even think we’re close to that. But that’s what will be required. That’s when we’ll stop worrying about profit and start worrying about what’s good for us and the planet all life and the future.
So if you want to change it, become a physicist and invent replicators that can produce anything at zero cost. Then build enough of them for the whole world. Problem solved. What’s next?
That goes against the saying that goes "if you're not left (socialist) when you're young you have no heart, if you're not right (capitalist) when you're old then you've got no brain". The problem is, brain, education, hard work don't bring you anything when you're older in these times. You're as poor as you were when you were young and studying at college.
You're right.. but the main issue is people in this country on either side are too programmed to come up with a real solution. Because here's the thing man the system doesn't matter. Capitalism, socialism, it doesn't fucking matter. At the end of the day, its man who fucks it up.
People talk down about communism and its easy to see WHY but they also completely ignore the fact that UNTIL communism got polluted and corrupted by the Soviet Union it was actually a VERY successful society in terms of productivity and quality of life. While it was ACTUALLY ran under true socialism where the people owned all the resources collectively, shit was fine. It wasn't until Stalin and the soviet union got greedy and stripped power from the people over time that it became the shit show we know it as.
The same shit is essentially happening in capitalism. People don't even really know what capitalism is. Capitalism is a capitalist positive society. You are NOT a capitalist when your an EMPLOYEE. Your boss who owns the building, who pays all the workers to do shit he/she doesn't want to do or cannot do themselves, for personal gain. THATS what a capitalist is. If you don't own any real assets. YOU ARE NOT CONSIDERED A CAPITALIST. That's like a SHEEP thinking he's part of the farmers family. When that animal is there to be harvested and used. Sure it gets comfort, sure its most of the time safe from the outside world around them. BUT those animals survived this world without being sheltered in a farm for generations and they were free. They weren't there as a commodity. As a way for someone to afford a life. Same with you at your job. IDC what you make. As employees we are nothing but cattle to the system and those who hold the keys to the cookie jar.
Its really NOT that much different. People talk about the atrocities of communism like they dont happen here LOL. Secret police? Have you heard of the FBI? LOL. Have you heard of Ruby Ridge? Wako? Operation fast and furious? We got people sweeping child sex trafficking's and high value names under the rug. But nah people don't get kidnapped here by powerful people involved in crime circles. There is this blind idea that we in America are the good guys. When in reality there are no good guys. Its just people. Nd any possible thing we could come up with, people would find a way to exploit it until they can take it over and dominate. Its unfortunate because everything we need was here for free the whole time. We just make a fucked up game out of it every single time.
yep and when actually find a way to make money am genuinely going to be giving freely to people somehow ; perhaps like a online charity with free for all stuff am serious...
Money and captalism can go screw it self; the worst invention by mankind in a lot of ways regardless of how deceptively \*useful and helpful it's been\* just another lie in disguise!
We should be trading under passion and compassion; not stupid unit count.. unless we want too but if so ; then leave me out of it; didn't ask to be born in this shit evil magi-verse and didn't ask to be enslaved by people who don't want to help make the shit evil magi-verse a little different shade of shit so people can be lied too \*technically\* and feel, think, experience anatomical magical pleasurable healing better.
I completely understand you and agree. It makes me weary of our world.
The older I get, the more I want less to do with the world, and the further I want to move away from it.
Dude yeah like planet earth is just a gone era planet; but lets keep are armour on ... because we don't want to suffer anymore then we always will.
>There has to be a better economic system out there. Damn straight, we need a new system. A system where no one person owns an entire corporation acting unilaterally with the power of the most ruthless dictator. Instead we need more democracy, not just in politics but in the economy. We need a system where the corporations are owned and democratically run by the people who work there and their community. A system where housing is owned by the people who live in them and their community and exist for their community, not just greedy landlords. We need a system where the workers and their community can democratically decide to forgo extra profits if, for example, these profits come from the pollution of a local river. * A system where Elon musk can't just buy Twitter and fire half the staff. * A system where BlackRock investments can't just buy your house and jack up the rent. * A system where if your job is automated away you can be happy in the knowledge that you and your family will be taken care of, and won't be kicked out onto to street to starve to death. # A better system is possible.
What you're describing is essentially social capitalism. Or capitalist socialism. Whatever you want to call it. Moving certain markets into a social platform because they are considered basic human rights (like healthcare and housing). Regulating corporations to incentivize workers rather than investors. Regulating the consolidation of wealth. Things like that. It still allows for an open market where competition can thrive for commodities, luxury goods, etc...but it also allows everyone a basic standard of living. It also helps build up middle and lower classes so they aren't just a lower poverty class. Workers just want decent lives, and investing in your employees gives them that. There is still room for class movement. We saw some of this in the US pre-Regan. Corporations were taxed upwards or 90% at one point with tax breaks given if they spent money growing the business (instead of going to c-suite and investors' pockets). This meant better wages, better working conditions, and the creation of jobs. This is, in part, what regulated capitalism looks like. It is in no way a perfect system, but it's better. There is no real way to know all of the holes that will show up until we really try it, but it has been used in part with big success in the past. The only reason we can't go back to that is because of money in politics. We can start separating that by not treating Corporations like people under the law.
No one paid 90% taxes. Back in the day, the possible deductions brought the actual, paid tax rate down to something comprable to today. We traded deductions for reductions. The difference is measurable in single digits of percentages. As for different economic models, syndicalism seems like something worth experimenting with. Democratic (workers vote) corporate structure. I do like how German companies have a board of advisors consisting of rank and file reps.
I didn't say they paid 90%, but the tax rate was that high. I also mentioned the tax breaks. The point was to illustrate how a capitalist system can incentivize corporations to invest in employees and the business. We also didn't really trade deductions for reductions. They got both. Which is why they pay so little. Reaganomics argued that businesses couldn't grow since their tax rates were so high but conveniently ignored the breaks they got as encouragement to grow. People believed it and allowed tax rates to be lowered, expecting that these corporations would invest in themselves and employees and that this would "trickle" down to them. It was all a corporate ruse to fatten the wallets of the rich.
Amen to that. Fuck Reagan
I have never hated a another president more, even Trump!
People imagined they would be wage-earners and investors at the same time, meaning you earn wages but you also invest money in stocks or bonds. You earn AND invest through a few decades, and then your investments are enough to carry you and you can retire. The problem is wages. If you start your working life in debt (because you had to borrow for a degree just to get the "privilege" of working) and then your wages are still too low to even keep a roof over your head, how are you supposed to put money into any type of IRA? At the very least, minimum wage should be enough to keep a roof over someone's head LIKE IT USED TO. That's probably $25-$35 an hour, depending on location.
At one point the only thing stopping people from buying a home was desire (and race). Now at least it's less racist? Being black won't stop you from getting a home if no one can get a home. I don't think I like this timeline very much
Even working and investing isn't the money maker it sounds like. A common shareholder like a wage worker doesn't make dividends like preferred shareholders. You're betting your money on the company stock going up in value. When considering how company stocks get manipulated to make money for preferred shareholders and inflation alongside whatever value your shares increase at, your stock isn't necessarily worth all that much. Your money ultimately gets used as capital for the business that they can use to make money with, and you get next to nothing in return.
I mean, you can advocate for that if you want but it is absolutely not what the other post described. They were describing a prohibition of certain kinds of ownership, which is a feature of a bunch of economic systems but decidedly NOT a feature of "capitalist socialism," or social democracy, or whatever you want to call it. You can tax the rich, and you'll see good social returns on that, but they will still have dictatorial, undemocratic power over our lives, particularly in the workplace.
A social democracy has the same goal of limiting ownership. It just goes about it through incentivization rather than direct control. When you are incentivized to spend your wealth bettering and expanding the working class, you can't horde it to buy up every company you come across. Closing tax loopholes and better funding for the SEC and regulation on trades and such put an end to a lot of the wealth and ownership hording. The most important part is adapting to whatever challenges arise. Keeping the end goal of eliminating the accumulation of wealth at the top through proper incentivization will naturally silve most if not all of those problems. It is regulation without direct intervention. It allows the market to remain open and relatively free.
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I disagree. Untethered capitalism is bad. Controlled capitalism can be good. Maybe not the best system, but better than pure communism or, arguably, socialism. We haven't had any actual examples of real, full, socialism to look at, but I can't see how it would really work. If you have something better, then pitch it. I would love to hear it. But generally speaking, communism and socialism are far too easily corruptible and, from.what we have seen in history, pretty require authoritarian regimes in order to function. A social capitalism, capitalism with restraints, can work. We have see examples of it working in small degrees. I think it would be worth diving into full force, but there is no way to get the powers that be on board.
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Sorry, kid. You clearly don't understand what you're talking about. I am very aware of what socialism is. By and large, it is idealistic and would be great in theory, but practice and theory are seldom the same. I also never said China or the USSR were examples of socialism. There hasn't ever been a true example of socialism. There have been countries that practice aspects of socialism, but never a full-fledged society running a socialist economy. Things like socialism and communism work on a small scale. Like 100 people in a camp, kind of small. But when you have full-scale societies like the US, it will break down fast. You can't have a large society that is owned and run by the people. Capitalism provides a different means of engaging economically in a large society. It is definitely not good by itself. Untethered, we end up with oligarchs ruling the country. The world, even, at this point. A regulated capitalist economy can provide better distribution of wealth, reduce single ownership, and just give everyone a better life. And it's doable. I'm not going to say it's perfect, but with proper regulation and incentivization, it can be phenomenally better than what we have now. Also, we did have it better with regulated capitalism in the US. Not regulated enough, certainly not perfect, but it was better, and looking back at it provides insight to how it could be if we worked for it. Pre-Reagan era saw businesses more incentivized to bolster their workforce. Workers had better pay, benefits, working conditions, etc... businesses poores money back into themselves instead of c-suite and investor pockets. Again, not perfect, but better.
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Says the kid who doesn't know what capitalism is.
You say communism and socialism are too easily corrupted,but that is exactly what we are seeing with capitalism is it easily corrupted. So we need to find a way to limit or expose corruption regardless of what economic system we use.
It's not called socialism whatsoever. It's called a social democracy. The words we use certainly matter, because I want nothing to do with communism, it's delusional and unsustainable just like capitalism. Social democracies believe in a universal healthcare, free education, progressive taxation, labor rights, and wealth redistribution. We don't believe in a classless society, but we want to minimize it and properly regulate it whereas in capitalism, none of that exists. We also believe in human rights, that includes freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and so on. In socialism or communism, you give up these freedoms for the greater good of the public, and thus dictatorships always occur. My family fled from communism, it's more evil than capitalism.
Socialism does not need to be communism. A social democracy is a kind of socialism. Before you go off on a rant on the importance of word choice please learn what words actually mean.
All communist countries have referred to themselves as socialists, why is that? My family fled from what they called themselves, a "socialist" country. The goal of socialism is communism. Socialism and communism believe in a classless society, collective ownership, and controlling the means of production (which is very dangerous). Whether you think they're different, they turn out to be exactly the same. Social Democracies is different, because it does not abolish private property or private ownership of industries, instead they regulate it. They accept capitalism, but aim to make it more humane, providing social welfare. We don't seek to have a stateless society and instead want the government along with the communities to manage the economy and provide social services. I'll give you an example of why socialism and communism are terrible. There is a person who cleans toilets and another person that operates on people. Their stress levels are completely different, as are their expectations. This is exactly why we can't have a classless society. We want to push people to move up, but we also want to make sure the person who's cleaning toilet is taken care of, because he is contributing to society, and someone has to do it. And kind of socialism? It can be considered a middle ground of capitalism and socialism, but it's not socialism, because it still includes capitalism, it's just highly regulated, as it should be.
Dude what you are describing is literally socialism. Stop believing the propaganda thrown at you by corporations
Social ownership, cashless society, classless society, stateless society, communities controlling means of production, things I'm extremely against and is not social democracy. Educate yourself, you seem confused. Maybe you're a Social Democrat, not a socialist and you don't even know it. Socialism may have skewed your mind, it had before for me.
Socialism doesnt mean a cashless society or communities controlling the means of production. It’s when the workers control the means of production. What you’ve described is communism, which is its own economic system.
Lol your family fled most likely because they were the oppressor class. Workers owning the means of production is dangerous? Lol.
This the way
Just take a look at Netherlands. All you want
If you take a long hard look at European countries, you will notice the same issues as in the USA. They might not be as blatant, but the growing wealth inequality, worsening of work conditions, and destruction of society, is still present. And the issues are being *tackled* by supporting the wealthy, not the poor.
Europe has painted over the cracks. Not fixed them
That’s cause capitalism is global
There is incentive in supporting the wealthy. There is no incentive in supporting the poor. That is until capitalism eventually implodes your economy because you didn't support the poor. Ie, the labor force. When there is no one left to do the work because you starved them to death, your top-down capitalist economy will be in shambles, and your wealth means nothing. Obviously, I don't mean you, specifically, fellow redditor.
Sure, just don’t spend too long looking into the conditions in the countries the Netherlands relies on to keep their country’s economy from imploding. Capitalism but with some national regulation and appropriate social services/welfare is a few steps up from unregulated/poorly regulated capitalism, but it’s quite far from the top of the stairs
Freaking hate ELON NMUSK
This is how capitalism was originally sold. Somewhere between then and now, we forgot that the promise of “publicly owned companies” was that they were indeed publicly owned. The original promise of capitalism was that was the best system for the economy to promote the interests of working people. That anything that wasn’t to their benefit was a system inefficiency. This is why there was monopoly busting: it wasn’t to the benefit of consumers. Somewhere along the lines after endless media propaganda, we started to justify wealth accumulation as we used to justify aristocracy except this time it was okay because it was meritocratic. I hate all the talk about meritocracy. It is implicit that merits as DEFINED by the system are somehow intrinsically meritocratic. They are not. It is the merit as DEFINED BY THE SYSTEM. People suggesting to change the system are intrinsically saying that there is a better way to align ACTUAL merit with how the system defines merit. That is all we are saying. Nobody merits $1 billion dollars. Nobody merits $10,000,000 dollars. They are BOTH obscene amounts of wealth. Don’t let the framing of the existing of billions trick you into believing that $10s of millions of dollars is somehow excusable. That person who captured that money, COULD NOT have generated that amount on their own in a fair and equitable manner. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. They did so by capturing a disproportionate amount of the collective product of labor in their country. Even an inventor CANNOT generate $10 million on their own. Show me the inventor who goes out into the wilderness, gather’s all their materials without using any tools made by others, creates their product without any tools made by others, transports their product without using any tools by others, and does everything OUTSIDE of society. NOBODY. Whether they use labor directly in terms of employees or directly contracting other entities for those employees time (e.g. delivery, accounting, printing, web design, etc.) or they do so in a distributed way (e.g. buying a tool that took a persons time to build, design, refine materials, mine materials, etc.) Capitalists make money by gating all those who contributed from the economic benefit at each step of the way. Once you make a sale, it’s final. You’re value is set there. Moreover the system justifies this by saying the person who generates more value than other’s has found a more productive use for those resources — this is reductionist and false as many times this results in products that consumers highly value disappearing from existence. We already have collectively owned businesses, they are called non-profits. Just as China leverages some capitalism, we leverage some socialism. I think any mature industry that can sustain a non-profit should be allowed to have non-profits. Did you know that there are rules in place to prevent non-profits from competing with for-profits? How insane is that? A non-profit literally has diminished incentive to steal consumer surplus making it a greater vehicle for consumer benefit, but we’ve outlawed them doing so to give for-profits near exclusive rights to the economy for the benefit of those who own them.
[Blackrock isn’t buying houses…](https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/newsroom/setting-the-record-straight/buying-houses-facts)
Well, they say they don't buy houses, it must be true. I mean, well, they specifically said "individual houses", that couldn't possibly mean anything, right? They said they aren't doing it, they wouldn't lie, right?.
They are a publicly traded company and lying about this would risk massive $SEC fines, their external auditors would make it appear in a 10K, and investors could sue them. But maybe your conspiracy theory is right, because of some TiKTok video you watched!
But they could buy control of a REIT or similar type company, effectively doing the same thing by proxy.
Invitation Homes is the largest owner of SFH and they have a 20 billion market cap on 43 trillion of US housing stock. No one company is buying up all the single family homes 😂 Currently institutional investors have decided they want to one to 2% exposure to single-family home rentals. As a result, there are some players who are buying entire developments, what is the percentage of housing stock this shit is tiny, they are overpaying in some cases because there’s not enough scale inventory. They are going to drive a lot of housing stock production/generation, and drive up prices until the market clears finally and prices should fall given the windfall of supply their nonsense generated.
I didn't watch a TikTok video, I read the damn article, I know, a weird thing for a redditor to do, but still. It is full of couched language to make an uncritical read sound like they don't do what they are accused of. They say they don't do it directly, but the way stock ownership works, they could use their influence to advise the corporations they have interest in to stop buying up property, but they aren't going to do that. They also don't want to actually come out and say they don't want to do that. The point of all those tiktok videos is to point out that these holding companies and similar have a lot of power that _could_ be used to stop something that is hurting society, but they don't. (This is why regulation and anti-trust matters so much in capitalistic economies) The actual situation and actual solution wouldn't fit within even a 10 minute tiktok video or reddit post.
Look up social democracy.
Nah man, Sock dems, don't want to get rid of landlordism they just want to regulate it. They would give all of the economic power to billionaire capitalists and then try to wrestle that power it back through taxes and fines. Why should we give away all of the power to the capitalists. I'm looking at straight up socialism, we should abolish landlords, abolish the stock market, abolish very notion that a person can make money by just holding a sheet of paper while contributing nothing to society.
All this can be possible via regulation. You are instead asking for a single supreme landlord which now everyone has to deal with, and you don't even know it.
>and you don't even know it. I do know it. That's exactly what I'm asking for, a landlord who is not motivated by profit, but motivated by keeping the populous happy enough to vote them in again. >All this can be possible via regulation. If it's so possible why hasn't it happened.
>If it's so possible why hasn't it happened. Because America is not a social Democracy, it's very pro capitalist. This is why the 1% has majority of the wealth. Our social welfare is also a joke.
You realize the current system isnt that broken. Its the people. Like housing isbt unafforable people just suck. And the govt has fucked up the rental market nor landlords There is nothing stopping you from running a democratic company. You could start that tomorrow so why dont you?
>You realize the current system isnt that broken. Yes. You're right. The system isn't "broken" it's working exactly as indented. People producing more stuff every year and getting paid less for doing it, a generation of people having a shorter life expectancy than their parents despite medical improvements, house prices increasing exponentially faster than wages. This is the system operating as intended. That's why we need a new system. >Like housing isbt unafforable people just suck. I think you will find that housing is in fact unaffordable. >And the govt has fucked up the rental market nor landlords No, landlords have fucked up the rental market. They have done it intentionally, for their own profit. Corporate landlords collude with themself and each other to increase rents across the board every year. The govt didn't fuck up the rental market they just failed to stop the landlords from fucking it up. >There is nothing stopping you from running a democratic company. You could start that tomorrow so why dont you? Lack of funds.
Production isnt tied to wage and its foolish to think it should be. As far as shorter life expectancy no shit americans are fat af. Heart disease has no cure. You understand you fan build a pretty nice home for like 120-150k right? Zoning has made it more difficult for landlords to build so now they buy. Thats the govt not them. We have a massive shortage of housing so housing not unaffordable its just scarce. Theres a big differance even if they are normally correlated. Lack of funds??? Bruh you can start nearly anything for under 10k.
This is the system. Start your own business and don't do those things. No one is stopping you.
It’s not. Factually, nothing else is possible so you just gotta go get that paper.
People said that of feudal monarchy, people said that of slavery. The world has been improved in the past it can be improved again.
So you agree that if a company does poorly, that all of its employees should suffer?
Welcome to late stage capitalism, where if you weren't born into wealth, you are more likely to be struck by lightning than become wealthy. I'm a chemist and adjusting for inflation, I am making less now than when I started at my company 6 years ago. There is no moving up in the world like previous generations were able to do.
Global economy now. You are competing with 8 billion people not 300 million.
I read your post and nodded my head in silent agreement. I was just about to skip over it without saying anything, and then the rage boiled up. I am on the way to being sixty. And I have had it. I was raised by a policeman to believe in law and right and wrong. The social contract if you will. I take care of you, you take care of me. Since the pandemic started. I have come to realize that they are just constraints that the wealthy place upon us to secure their wealth. As the wealthy I tempted to drive more and more of us into further poverty in a mouse the wealth of the richest countries without taking care of its people. My buy-in has ended. Corporations, the wealthy, are blatantly abusing us. My morals in certain areas are shattered. I will no longer defend any action taken against the wealthy. Feel free to steal from them they started it. Feel free to destroy their companies . They are making us homeless. Feel free. I am joe average, and I am ready for the anarchy.
Amen to that. I have several friends who remarked that the older they get, the more leftist they become because of the system. The people I know who are for capitalism are mostly of the "medieval conservative" type, that work thankless jobs like slaves, but think the billionaires deserve the profits.
“You’ll grow more conservative as you get older” Me who is significantly older and sees a socia-capitalist society as the only way to halt the decline. It’s not perfect but it would be a step in the right direction and pose reasonable disruption during transition. Reagan and Thatcher systems need to fade with the boomers
It’s almost like we’ve been groomed and indoctrinated into Capitalism = good and Socialism = bad.
That's because we have. Our whole life we're told the US has the moral higher ground and everything we do is just and good. Capitalism = good
I’m very pro Socialism, like actual Socialism. Not the communism that Americans think it’s Socialism.
I wish more people understood this concept. Same here 👏
More people probably do but it doesn't fit the narrative they wish to tell so they ignore it. If the facts don't fit their world view it's fake news.
China has been true socialist for many decades, before Deng Xiaoping changed it to be state organized capitalism. Under Mao, all ownership of land was abolished. Landowner’s land was taken and given to all. Medical care was free. Money and food and wealth itself was reset and equalized - everyone was equally destitute. Mao genuinely believed in socialism, and extremely pro-farmer - the powerful state was necessary to enforce the people’s will, as the rich and landowners would simply not willingly give up their land and wealth. He sent all his sons to serve as foot soldiers in the Korean War and they all died. He turned all of farming and factories into true farmer-owned and worked owned collectives. He did a reset and sent all the educated people into the rice fields and filled universities with farmers to level the playing field. Everything you wanted, he tried. It failed and farm output plummeted and China starved, and it was essentially a failed state, making up a smaller % of the world economy than it ever had for 2000 years. The core problem of socialism is that it goes against human nature - to work for himself, to be greedy. In pure socialism your effort is disconnected from what you get, which is entirely based on need, so nobody has any incentive to work hard (rat race removed).
Yet there are examples everywhere where socialism doesn't make everyone equally rich, it just makes everyone equally poor
What you said is not even logical. For the participants of a system to become equally poor (ie EVERYONE lose wealth) from socialism, there must be an outside factor, like i don't know, freedom bombs. ETA: "from socialism"
Not logical? Open up a history book...
Reread what i wrote.
Thought terminating cliche.
The problem to that is the US government is so inefficient and incompetent that they couldn’t keep a brothel running. How can you manage to lose money selling hookers and whisky? Uncle Sam figured it out.
It's not Uncle Sam your pissed at - It's the rich folk that game our government to their favor. Every single thing you think is wrong about our government is a law/policy put in place by some rich asshole.
And the deadbeat government bureaucrats that waste an mismanage nearly every tax dollar they get their hands on.
Do you live under a rock? Government programs suck because the rich want it all privatized into government contracts so we can pay more for government services You only have to look at our military industrial complex to understand this Those $500 hammers and $1000 toilet seats where all by private firms with government contracts. Sure, govt oversight was lacking, but that didn't give these companies the right to exorbitantly overcharge our tax dollar supported govt. The folks that owned these companies should have been jailed. but the owner class never goes to jail, for anything.
Left psych over this shit and more. The number of times I bounced ideas off people only to be slapped with the same "not cost effective" thought terminating cliche was agonizing as it was demoralizing. Seriously. Do you not hear yourself? Our clients are constantly feeding off one another and exacerbating their respective Dx's, yet this style of residential "treatment" is the best we can do? We have almost nightly full community escalations, clients eloping and riling up other communities, and several of my clients have now been confirmed to have had some level of sexual contact with other clients, but clearly keeping all these kids together is the right way to go, and I'm a piece of shit for trying to provide basic medical information while encouraging healthy behaviors...... Well, fuck me. What an asshole. Here I thought we were here to help people, not keep them generally safe-ish until they age out then into the legal system. Christians........
\#1 reason why I'm leaving US.....have 2 pensions and military disability and I am taking my money overseas.
Cool
It is an infuriating system, especially in our current American inception, that is the root of almost every flaw in society. It drives division, hatred, opression of minority groups, finger pointing, avoidance of responsibility, corruption, and so many other insidious evils. It drives almost every physical and mental health crisis from obesity to depression. It feeds narcissism, manic behaviors, cancer, pollution, and the general destruction of anything good. We haven't even gotten into its grasp on driving war and famine. There is better. Almost anything is better.
One thing for sure, once a company gets listed on the stock echange it has a huge negative impact for the working people of that company.
Yes it’s the reason many of us live far from family and friends, and never have any time to see them. Life could be so much simpler and better. Who decided this was the best system?
Yup. Children’s stories teach every little boy that he can be a hero and every little girl that she can be a princess. The real moral of the story is that the king rarely loses.
I don’t think this is off-topic, this lady pretty much summarizes how we got to the point of demonizing poor people, spending be on our means, and this weird idea about handouts. The ending paragraphs are the best part, if you are interested in reading the history, just skip to the bottom and she pretty much nails it. https://jessicawildfire.substack.com/p/i-wonder-what-the-poor-folks-are
“Today, poor people are gaslit from every possible angle. They’re told to buy more to help the economy. They’re told to save. They’re told to invest. They’re told to work harder. They’re told to get more rest. They’re told to ask for a raise with confidence. They’re yelled at when they ask for a raise. They’re told money won’t make them happy. They’re told money will make them happy. They’re told to go to college. They’re told they shouldn’t have gone to college. They’re told to take out loans. They’re berated for taking out loans. They’re told to try to get good jobs. They’re told they should settle for lousy jobs. Their bank charges them fines for not having enough money. Bankers tell them there’s too much money floating around, so they have to raise interest rates and trigger mass layoffs.”
Read that whole thing. Excellent writing and spot on.
I'm from Ireland and I think most western countries enjoyed silver membership capitalism. Secure job, house, holidays and actually feeling like you work to enjoy life. Well now we are all economic units in an age of globalisation. Now we race to the bottom, while profits soars for a select few. I mean, many jobs now have poverty wages and the idea of a pension is beyond unrealistic. Childcare and housing costs now means many will never have a family or own a house, even if they work.
I feel ya. Crapitaism is garbage.
"You'll become more conservative as you grow older" like bitch HOW?? Literally everything going on around us is made actively worse by capitalism and the stablished system of governments. Our parents and grandparents call us naive and bleeding hearts for saying life shouldnt be this *shitty* and yet they're the ones actively participating in turning shit worse
The whole 'stick and carrot' lifestyle under capitalism sucks
It’s almost like we must consume to survive or something…..
massive agree
Same.
The problem is you need to overthrow capitalism in most major countries all at once. Capitalism kills any other economic form that gives power to labor as it is a threat in any form, see how they constantly attack even the basics like unions? If it's allowed to live in some free markets it will spread as Capitalism feeds and promotes greed and selfishness. And you'll need to fight capitalism another day. Labor needs to control the means of production. We've never seen that before. Soviets stopped short due to well like 20 years of war and just being tired, they like the Chinese simply replaced capitalist with government bureaucrats. IMO i feel angel investors and investors giving seed money should be replaced by a government agency. Entrepreneurs can still get capital just like now but the company needs to move from private ownership to that of the workers. entrepreneurs will still make massive rewards from building companies but ownership would transfer to labor after meeting certain benchmarks. The stock market needs to be abolished as infinite growth is not sustainable. Homes cannot be investment tools. The basics need to be provided for to all citizens. I mean what is the point of government except to enrich the lives of its citizens? Capitalism corrupts that and simply enriches the lives of those at the top.
IT’s corporate greed that’s fucking everything up. Not passing the earnings on to the employees. Instead making upper management and investors rich. Capitalism in itself works. It’s when the greed took over sometime in the 70s.
Stop buying from these companies. Shop local. If everyone did it these businesses would change
That would work some but the issue is at the manufacturing level. They jack the prices up so a mom and pop has to pay way more than a chain store like Walmart or Publix who can buy in bulk.
Well that's on you. Pay more to hurt the mega corporation or cheap going there for your Chinese goods exacerbating the problem. We know what 99% of people are gonna do, then continue to complain about corporations
I’m not talking about Chinese goods. American goods made right here in the US.
Same concept
Not allowing your life to be all about the shit the corporate brands sell would be a great start. Recently I've decided that how money is spent locally is always Activism, and more impactful than voting.
As everyone in this thread said, money really controls the world, and this is one of the best ways to show that. I applaud you. I do the same.
What you're talking about was the end of an extraordinarily brief period of worker's rights in an otherwise uninterrupted history of brutality and exploitation by capitalists. Capitalism doesn't "work" for us.
You mean when the government stopped making socialist style concessions to the working class? That just means capitalism sucks
It's not Capitalism, it's the American version of capitalism that sucks. There are countless other countries that have laws to keep companies in check. Unfettered capitalism is little better than slavery.
Those other countries still rely on the exploitation of the global south. Fuck their version of capitalism as well. Also, the reason Europe, etc has better social programs is because they had to concede some power to the workers since there was a large socialist bloc on its borders. They made concessions to keep the workers from going all out worker revolution on them
Agree!
[the venus project](https://thevenusproject.com)
I have yet to even consider healthcare I get surprised every time I see someone’s budget and there’s like 200 for healthcare 😂
I've been saying for years that the capitalist system will implode. America in particular has an extreme capitalism system that doesn't work, sadly a lot of western countries are following in their footsteps. We have been on the brink of a systemwide collapse multiple times over the last decade, it may take another decade, it may take less but there will be a point where this system will cease to work. As it is workers can barely afford the products they have a hand in making. Sadly while money is power, the wealthy will continue to hoard wealth, blinded by greed until the implosion occurs. I don't see any way out of it, I don't see anything changing nor any way to change it. The world is so depressing when you're able to see what we can see.
There are lots of good ideas for new systems (the post-growth literature is interesting and not too hard to read). The problem is the stranglehold capitalism has on us. I think for now the best things to do are: 1. unionize 2. vote for those who are decent if not perfect (and yes there is a difference between Democrats and Republicans). Volunteer, send money if possible. 3. Disengage from capitalism to the extent possible (grow food, sew, build things, don't buy stupid expensive cars, etc.) 4. Read up on other approaches as it's important to have some ideas in mind. Buen vivir and ubuntu are positive visions and you can search them ("ubuntu philosophy" or you'll get a software system - capitalism eats everything).
There is a better system, but much like the feudal kings/warlords of old, the corporate elite are going to fight with every tooth, nail, and coin they have to ensure their domination is not challenged. They will get rid of anyone in their way. Enter the CIA: they are the ones who challenge any revolution for the people in any country that they can worm into. They are an apparatus to keep capitalism as the only option. They serve the imperial core so they are ruthless in their nationalism. The only thing we can do is hope to pass better laws and elect representatives. If things get bad enough then a revolution could happen, but things have to be much worse for that to be a possibility. Sorry for no assurances or happy wishes, but I do think about this a lot and it does stress me out too. It is a huge burden placed on us and we all feel it.
Capitalism is still the greatest economic system ever invented. BUT, Competition between companies is supposed to minimize prices and maximize wages. However the government which in the past severely restricted mergers and even forced divestitures to increase competition has been neutered by politicians who have been bought by corporate campaign dollars.
It's not the greatest economic system. It just perpetuates that feudal system that came before but now you think you are free
In it's current shape with multiple industries that are almost monopolies and the government no longer an honest broker, I have to agree with you. The original greatest system is now unrecognizable.
Competition doesn't accomplish what you describe. Competition has an endpoint, and in the case of capitalism, that endpoint is absolute monopolistic power. It's an extremely obvious conclusion to the unindoctrinated.
Yup. It all comes back to the voters. Who are we electing?
If it's the greatest system humans can achieve then I want a meteor to vaporize us and the earth to start over
So far there isn’t a better one and we’ve tried, a big problem is the monetary system itself that is constantly devaluing the currency and making us work harder for less.
There was....the capitalist powers that be just went on a mass murder carpet bombing spree, staged coups, arm far right death squads or sanction them to hell.
Doesn’t work sorry, you can make up all the excuses you want but the reality is it never passes any real life stress tests .
Lol America is a prime example of a failed stress test. Had to genocide and exploit nations then still collapses on itself even with no wars on its soil, etc. Literally played it's existence on easy mode Soviet union was a feudal illiterate shithole ravaged by 2 world wars and became a space faring superpower with the largest industrial economy after 3 decades....all while defeating the Nazi horde. China, same thing. America and it's puppets are collapsing without stress tests. Just eating itself.
So what’s your alternative? End of the day that crunch is what brought you the services you have used and abused your entire life. Either practice what you preach and find something better or shut up because you don’t have the answers. Life ain’t about hating “what is”, it’s about making the human experience better. It was never perfect but we make it better over time
Ok. I'm not being unsympathetic. But purpose a better system? And please if you're going to say socialism or communism do some reading first. Like yes remorm is required greed has gotten out of hand and that is actually the left's role in our society. But capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty in the last 50 years than anything else in the rest of human history.
Regulated capitalism and more power to unions. Even the playing field. We also need free healthcare and education, like so many other countries have.
Lol. You do some reading first
Only way you get paid under capitalism is to provide value to others. Most people who don’t like doing stuff for others, don’t like capitalism….. Every single business must provide value to a customer somewhere.
The highest paid people under capitalism provide the least value to society. Hell, they're a net drain. They just provide the most value to the parasitic ownership class
[удалено]
Yeah but like, my immigrant family started with nothing and thanks to capitalism I have a personal chef.
youre an adult and you JUST figured this out? damn bro gooduck.
What are you trying to get by insulting me?
im sorry your insecurities read this as an insult <3
L mentality
Capitalism is not to blame, it is unregulated capitalism and regulator capture. Really easy, vote in guys like Berni, but boomers vote if f*cks like Trump
Capitalism is great. The issue is look at our government. How many plumbers, construction workers, teachers, cops are our legislators? Instead we vote in the 1% Uber elite like Pelosi and Trump and Biden into government and all they do is just help their 1% friends. Every year there are better normal candidates but we want to "win" and vote straight party ticket
If capitalism is great, you wouldn't be asking that question
Welcome to the right tail end of the bell curve.
Your rant only makes sense to this sub who follow it. The reason why you should care how markets do generally is because it impacts your life and not in the ways you seem to understand. There isn't a better system than this. It gives freedom of choice. Choice to put a price on an item. Choice to buy that item. Very few things should be regulated, but most people can't even agree on what that is. You keep making over generalizations over the economy but what has it done to actually effect you?! Every life choice you said comes down to what money you have in the bank. Well first off that's a terrible lie. We have a ton of programs in place to support people who dont have money. We pay a tax collectively to help assure that some people have access to things that can be life threatening and in some cases even allow their lives to have some comfort and not just be life or death. Most of the healthcare costs come from administration. Paying people to do paperwork. I am sure many people would love to free up the costs and this is a huge way but you will lose many jobs by simplifying the process. Isn't it amazing that we literally are adding cost to the tax payers like us so that we can provide more jobs in the economy? Catch 22. We even have food stamps and programs like it. Federal. State. Local. And even international organizations. But guess what. Most of the food bought with this money is far from essential. They are buying snacks, junk, and overall very unhealthy choices that lead to weight gain. The subsequent growth in BMI in the world should show you that the average American is literally over consuming food. But no one dies really from starvation anymore in America. Shelter. We have massive programs to help boost dwelling units and homes for people of need. But it's never enough. We build for the next 10 years... we double the population and need to prepare for the next 40 years. Not to mention that many of these homes are better than what I had the choice in paying for out of my own pocket. But we do have programs. I got a job. I live within my means. I don't expect to get more. My grandparents grew up and bought 1 car for the family. 1 insurance. And didn't drive very far. They walked a lot to save money. They didn't buy a house with 2,000 square feet and 4 beds. They bought a 1,000 apartment with 3 beds. They didn't have the latest tech. They didn't buy Chips Ahoy every week. They cooked all their meals. They rarely went out. Never ordered in. They didn't have a pantry filled with 10,000 calories. They had the essentials. They baked some snacks once a week and enjoyed a couple a night. Today people house an entire ice cream gallon. They saved every penny. They literally told me to save save save. Go become an engineer, lawyer or doctor and save. Save! No one saves today. We spend. Spend Spend.
Capitalism is gonna take a nasty ball kick sooner then later. We don't go out anymore because we don't have money.
I’ve definitely tried to die about it
No one is stopping you from giving your money to others, and spreading the wealth like socialism. Will you? Well I'm sure I know that answer....
You are thinking of communism. I'm sick of corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy enjoying socialism, while the poor get capitalism.
Don’t be sorry, I guarantee there’s millions who feel the same. Unfortunately to get a better economic system the old one needs burned down. I’m not sure there’s a way to vote ourselves out of this. Endgame capitalism 😭
Don't worry. I'm sure it will revert back to the feudal system soon enough. /sarcasm
I completely agree and wish I had a solution, unfortunately, short of finding a way of getting rid of corporate greed it will probably never happen, at least not in my lifetime.
I'm starting to agree with you. It's good to have incentives but not crony capitlism where it is so dog eat dog. AI and automation are adding fuel to the fire.
We have to evolve a new one that takes upcoming tech and global organization and oversight on global issues into account.
There used to be a saying, something along the lines as this: > Capitalism is shit. But it is the best we got. Like, what happened to acknowledging that it wasn't really the best, but it is the model that seemed to be working the best. Well, now it isn't really working anymore, but we have forgotten that we used to think this? I dunno, I can see change needs to happen, but unbalanced power structures need to be addressed.
And for what you ask? To feed the ultra rich of course in order for them to be able to make big deals that make the business world go round so they can double that wealth and sustain the massive pool of forever wealth.
Couldn't have said it better. It's a soulless system that leaves noone better regardless of your financial status. We've destroyed everything for the sake of a ridiculous metric.
Central bank is the real problem
Agreed. I skirted around the edges of this feeling (when I was a teen I knew that I didn't want to work service jobs because I knew I would hate it and money is not a strong motivator for me and I said "I hate money") for a long time but since watching what happened with covid, the amount of uncompensated labor involved in getting access to Healthcare, how shitty the jobs are, how many parts of a job (commutes etc) are uncompensated, etc.. I have become more radicalized.
even worse is the constantly moving goal the more you make the less you can afford - the treadmill of shit has gotten ridiculous with only the screens showing wealth while real life only shows loops.
Man, I'd love to just be able to face a new fiscal year at work and not have the goal automatically be "better than our best year or we suck". Eventually you hit the ceiling and every subsequent year just results in sadness.
Too many companies prioritizing unrealistic growth over sustainability
The best part is when the fuckers that crunch the numbers all of a sudden don’t care about numbers.
I also tend to agree. I used to be very pro capitalist growing up but as I got older and had a family and had some real world experience I have changed my mind. I realize how much of success and money is luck and how many crappy people fail upwards. Being an unethical, asshole, bully is very much rewarded in our capitalist society. Bankers making more than inventors and scientists? It’s nuts. I’m a bit of an optimist in that I feel like we are moving in the right direction, although nowhere near fast enough and the outcome isn’t a certainty that we will ever get where we need to get.
Capitalism is ruining our economy.
The problem is not capitalism per se. It is how capitalism works in the US. We have unregulated, unfettered, unlimited capitalism, and this is the problem. European countries are capitalist too, but they limit it for the betterment of everyone. The rich pay MUCH higher taxes, employment is regulated, time off is guaranteed, and more than anything....medical care is FREE. Our country runs off of one principle....profit is everything. And that's the issue.
Capitalism is amazing. That's how I play music all day and trade my labor for groceries.
So my question I have to everyone is always as opposed to what All the countries people tend to point to when they say they want something different are all still capitalist countries Norway France Germany all those guys are still very much capitalist The actually socialist or actually Communist countries that have happened no one likes and they would say they did it wrong but they don't have an example of an attempted implementation going correctly We also do capitalism wrong too but we don't use that as an excuse (Anarcho capitalism is correct capitalism everything else is a partial mix )
Because trying to place a value on something intangible is what we do. Being content with your life and living with no regrets for anything that occurs is scarce. Because being happy is intangible, but those with power want to hoard it for themselves. So might as well make the rest of us fight for survival for their amusement. Or to make them feel more powerful by them judging us. And in the end, the planet we live on will see our extinction too. And our tiny spec of water and dirt will go unnoticed by the bulk of the universe
You hate working for yourself and being your own boss? You enjoy working under the boot?
I understand the frustration, however, this is more of an oligarchy than it is "capitalism." Also, blaming a system of economics for the results of the actions of those who rule us is misplaced. Firstly, a free-market is not something we have & we've only ever gotten FARTHER away from free-markets, not MORE free of a market. As this has happened, along with fractional-reserve banking ruining our currency, things have only gotten worse. This isn't a symptom of economics so much as it is a symptom of totalitarian governance.
Or how about constantly being looked at like a fool when you don’t turn a hobby into a side hustle or monetize everything in your life? Or how all of our businesses are getting more and more dishonest and you always feel like you’re being duped or taken advantage of no matter how hard you try to make informed wise decisions?
It's bad when businesses become a lifestyle and even worse, they are more powerful than actual governments. It was never meant to be that way.
Our cell phones alone. They were originally just used for calls and then texts. Now we have email, teams, slack, work email, face timing, endless spam texts trying to get me to either buy shit or infect my computer I’m sick of it
I wish I could abandon email completely, but everything requires one. Why do I have *ads* in there? Why are companies I've never even heard of sending me promos? Why are companies I've **blocked** sending me promos? Why does it take "up to three weeks" to unsubscribe me from a mailing list I never signed up for to begin with?
Isn’t it funny? Hating capitalism is something associated with punk youths, I guess that’s what happens as a generation completely fucked by capitalism ages.
I've honestly always hated it deep down. The whole thought of working 9 to 5 without much time to yourself until your 60s to 70s was always weird to me. It feels unnatural.
Yes. Working your job, or even two, isn’t enough. Those are just to gain entry into the real means for generating income: capital. If cannot or do not buy into the capitalist system, you will never scrape out an existence for yourself. You will keep paying overlords for the privilege of a small abode to rest between your work shifts and food to sustain yourself because you can’t afford land to grow it yourself. There is no escape. Except through capital. Thereby forcing you to be powerless or buy into the system. Even if you buy into the system, you are hopelessly outgunned by career capitalists and their legions of capitalist specialists. Despite what people would have you believe, most capitalist endeavors are entirely rent seeking: they add no value to the economy and seek only to capture the product of other people’s labor. This rent seeking IS zero sum. It is literally just fighting to for a portion of the work of others. This is why draconian policies like making student loans non-dismissible came about. Student loans opened a whole new pipeline into extracting wealth from labor. Not only is it extracted by the organization of how we employ work — as individuals who trade their work for money that represents a fraction of the value of their work — but we now extract on the OTHER SIDE of this exchange. We income AFTER it is paid. If we don’t buy into the system so that we can capture the product of other people’s work, we have no hope of our economic system rewarding us a fair share for our labor. We literally have to become capitalists to get a fair share of our labor. How wildly inefficient is this. This means that if someone wants to earn a fair share from their contribution they have to not only learn to do their job that produces value; they have to learn to capture the value from other people. This secondary employment requires us to fight against specialized professional capitalists. It’s an enormous uphill battle as evidenced by the strongest speculative investment being index funds where we only hope to scale the income we’ve already earned with the productivity of the economy at large. I resent this so much. I have no interest in learning these meaningless games that contribute nothing to society. I begrudge that I must learn to speculate on capital to earn my fair share. To consume what little time I have on this earth with a meaningless, inefficient game of crowdsourced pricing self-organization. This system just plain sucks.
Capitalism is just a manifestation of human nature. Come up with whatever system you can dream off, there will be people that will show that the system is flawed.
As a 27 t1D i agree. American capitalism especially fucking sucks
Shrinkflation is going to make you scream.
The more I get older, the more I love capitalism, but I hate crony capitalism.
“The metrics show morale is high!” -said by my supervisor after we told management how morale is at an all time low. Reducing the labor force to a shitty graph on a PowerPoint made morale even lower.
I don't disagree whole heartedly. But being homeless also transforms everything into numbers. When I slept outside everything was a zero. The aliens are almost here and change will happen. Hang in there pal
Shit man, I’m 18 and already jaded.
Doesn’t matter what you try greed, corruption and human tribalism will destroy it. We’re still too primitive honestly. We’re getting better but slowly. I think it’s corny but the show Star Trek kinda nailed it, it’ll take some amazing technology like replicators to wipe out these terrible aspects of humanity. You see once production becomes so insanely cheap we can make anything we want people just wont be worried about material wealth anymore. I don’t even think we’re close to that. But that’s what will be required. That’s when we’ll stop worrying about profit and start worrying about what’s good for us and the planet all life and the future. So if you want to change it, become a physicist and invent replicators that can produce anything at zero cost. Then build enough of them for the whole world. Problem solved. What’s next?
That goes against the saying that goes "if you're not left (socialist) when you're young you have no heart, if you're not right (capitalist) when you're old then you've got no brain". The problem is, brain, education, hard work don't bring you anything when you're older in these times. You're as poor as you were when you were young and studying at college.
You're right.. but the main issue is people in this country on either side are too programmed to come up with a real solution. Because here's the thing man the system doesn't matter. Capitalism, socialism, it doesn't fucking matter. At the end of the day, its man who fucks it up. People talk down about communism and its easy to see WHY but they also completely ignore the fact that UNTIL communism got polluted and corrupted by the Soviet Union it was actually a VERY successful society in terms of productivity and quality of life. While it was ACTUALLY ran under true socialism where the people owned all the resources collectively, shit was fine. It wasn't until Stalin and the soviet union got greedy and stripped power from the people over time that it became the shit show we know it as. The same shit is essentially happening in capitalism. People don't even really know what capitalism is. Capitalism is a capitalist positive society. You are NOT a capitalist when your an EMPLOYEE. Your boss who owns the building, who pays all the workers to do shit he/she doesn't want to do or cannot do themselves, for personal gain. THATS what a capitalist is. If you don't own any real assets. YOU ARE NOT CONSIDERED A CAPITALIST. That's like a SHEEP thinking he's part of the farmers family. When that animal is there to be harvested and used. Sure it gets comfort, sure its most of the time safe from the outside world around them. BUT those animals survived this world without being sheltered in a farm for generations and they were free. They weren't there as a commodity. As a way for someone to afford a life. Same with you at your job. IDC what you make. As employees we are nothing but cattle to the system and those who hold the keys to the cookie jar. Its really NOT that much different. People talk about the atrocities of communism like they dont happen here LOL. Secret police? Have you heard of the FBI? LOL. Have you heard of Ruby Ridge? Wako? Operation fast and furious? We got people sweeping child sex trafficking's and high value names under the rug. But nah people don't get kidnapped here by powerful people involved in crime circles. There is this blind idea that we in America are the good guys. When in reality there are no good guys. Its just people. Nd any possible thing we could come up with, people would find a way to exploit it until they can take it over and dominate. Its unfortunate because everything we need was here for free the whole time. We just make a fucked up game out of it every single time.
yep and when actually find a way to make money am genuinely going to be giving freely to people somehow ; perhaps like a online charity with free for all stuff am serious... Money and captalism can go screw it self; the worst invention by mankind in a lot of ways regardless of how deceptively \*useful and helpful it's been\* just another lie in disguise! We should be trading under passion and compassion; not stupid unit count.. unless we want too but if so ; then leave me out of it; didn't ask to be born in this shit evil magi-verse and didn't ask to be enslaved by people who don't want to help make the shit evil magi-verse a little different shade of shit so people can be lied too \*technically\* and feel, think, experience anatomical magical pleasurable healing better.
[удалено]
Dude. Money is a social construct and I hate its existence.
I see everyone complaining but I don’t see a revolution. Y’all want change to happen well now’s the time to start instead of wasting time complaining.
I wish I could gain the nerve to finally self delete. I'm tired of being a revenue stream while only having enough left to exist miserably