Capitalism is only good when there’s bona fide competition and many industries are low or post-competition in this country. We abandoned well-tended gardens for economies of scale, and we didn’t realize that the consolidation of power would ruin our government.
Republicans have not been truly capitalist in a while. Important distinction. Don’t confuse corruption to help their rich friends with pro-business policies. No, it’s just corruption.
A bigger issue is that the oppositional party did not undo Trumps efforts. They even doubled down on many of those trade policies. This is no better than a monarchy when both parties represent the same interests.
Yeah! Maintaining planetary military hegemony to keep the dollar as the global reserve currency and exploiting third world labor is only okay when WE do it!
When China does it it's obviously evil communism. Pretty easy to understand the difference, folks.
"It’s wild how the exact same policy can be celebrated or condemned entirely based on the zip code. People will fiercely defend a heavily managed, state-supported social framework thousands of miles away, but the second someone suggests building those exact same mechanisms domestically, it gets labeled an existential crisis. The program itself isn't the problem—it’s just a matter of whose jersey it’s printed on."
Chinese EV companies actually operate in a highly competitive market, and most do fail. It is controlled and regulated by the state but competition is highly encouraged to ensure that the most efficient manufacturers are able to succeed.
China has an interesting system where the central government puts out priorities and the provinces try to promote their regional champions as that's the path to power. It does lead to a competitive market at times but not a free market.
But military domination and globalism that benefits big capital is? What's with you free market guys always having the most nebulous moving goalposts definition of what a "free" market is?
You act like our government doesn't also put its massive thumbs on the scales of labor and industry.
in some ways China is more capitalist by the strictest definition. The state defines the rules and enforces regulations, and allows market competition to decide the winner. The US is just corps lobbying to make the rules that suit them best, which usually means less competition.
So? They still make goods for cheaper than American companies and have more efficient industrial practices. Their products should be allowed to compete, especially when western companies operating in the US are raising prices higher and higher and implementing anti-consumer features like subscriptions for car features.
Which is why it's funny that people are telling me that the Chinese market is so free. China doesn't even claim it's free, they think it's good that it's firmly under control of the state (even if most employers are private)
Free market never exist while there is a state taxing, subsidiesing, having the monopoly of currency, central bank making national economic policies, close borders, etc.
The only real free market that there is is communism. And by communism I mean the true communism which only exist when people collectively own and manage their community and work place autonomously, and that is why Adam Smith was against both governments having too much control and power over communities as well as why he and other classic capitalists predicted and spoke against the type of economy which we live today, which corporations and groups in power of governments controls and "own" the economy.
The car thing isn't really a strike against capitalism because it's not an equal competition. Chinese manufactured cars cut corners on all sorts of regulations and get to be made colossal amounts of slave labor and CCP subsidization.
You can require regulations (which arent capitalist anyway) be met to be sold in the US and it not be an outright ban. Chinese Manufacturers will then decide if its cost effective to meet those standards or not.
The ones that would be imported to the US would have to meet US regulations- the bare boned death traps couldnt be sold here like any other global vehicle platform being sold.
I keep hearing this "its not fair, the CCP subsidizes their industry". Ok? We subsidize ours too, and we subsidize the fuel that goes into them. It'd be pretty simple to just nix the subsidies by taxing Chinese vehicles.
The US auto industry simply doesnt want to compete with the Chinese. Notice how right after the CEO of Ford registered that Chinese EV and drove it for awhile he suddenly began lobbying to stop Chinese EVs while simultaneously exclaiming how impressed he was by it? They cant compete, and its going to just drag the US auto industry down in the long run, as China masters electric automobile manufacturing
As if slave labor isnt foundational to US manufacturing. Its just not generally within our borders so its easier to turn a blind eye to. We really need to do a better job of policing our own shit.
This is not an excuse for China, mind. Just my frustration at our own failings in the name of profit.
chinese cars pass european and australian safety regulations just fine, so they could easily pass US. There are also very few remaining subsidies (there were a lot in the past, to bootstrap the industry).
> Chinese manufactured cars cut corners on all sorts of regulations and get to be made colossal amounts of slave labor and CCP subsidization.
Different from Tesla how? How many major recalls is the cybertruck up to now? 6? Within 1.5 years of release? How many lawsuits were pending against Tesla and Musk's companies until DOGE came around and Trump's DOJ and appointees blocked all of them from happening?
The nature of trade is that not all things are cost effective to outsource. Every $ saved with trade is a $ spent elsewhere, and each $ is returned as investment.
I wonder to myself often if concentration of wealth is inevitable under capitalism (or indeed maybe most systems) unless strong regulations are adopted to stop it. That's what I think we're seeing in the US today, it just keeps snowballing until there's a depression, a war, a revolution or another tragedy.
30 years ago republicans started messaging that any regulation at all is communism or socialism or whichever was scarier to your average rural/suburban doofus at the time, and it was EXTREMELY successful.
Capitalism is an engine. It can be powerful, but engines require redlines and limiters. When you remove the redline, the engine destroys itself.
Republicans have been removing the redlines since Reagan, and the engine is destroying itself trying to satisfy the insatiable greed of a select few oligarchs.
I don’t understand why republicans are against regulations for businesses. Regulations make a level playing field for all participants in the free market and support capitalism. My personal opinion is that a well regulated free market capitalist economy is the best system ever made. It’s why I hate republicans. Republicans say that if you are against deregulating businesses then you are anti business and a communist. Thats like saying if you are against referees in a football game you hate football. It’s the referees that make the game fair and makes it fun and competitive.
Republicans aren’t actually supporters of capitalism, they are supporters of the rich. Even their religion is increasingly infected with wealth worship per prosperity gospel teachings.
The other thing capitalism absolutely requires is a reasonable and enforced set of laws controlling that competition... The prevention of monopoly/cartel creation is something the GOP threw out back under Reagan and they've been attacking any kind of regulation of "the free market" as some kind of communism ever since. When left unchecked and unregulated, "the free market" just becomes corporatism, as industries get taken over by monopolies, and those monopolies then purchase the government. Which is the stage we're at now.
You absolutely can. China dominates international markets partially because of how brutally competitive the internal markets are. Pick anything, China has multiple extremely competitive players. Whether it be a garden variety bearing or advanced circuit board fabrication.
If we accept that big businesses can wield unfair advantages against small businesses, then we also have to accept that foreign big businesses can similarly wield unfair advantages against small local businesses
The only ways to mitigate it is by either:
Allowing small local businesses to grow large enough that they're able to compete internationally
Resorting to trade barriers that protect small businesses
Both these methods have worrying effects on competition, long-term
Competition, the golden virtue, is very hard to maintain. It requires serious upkeep & intervention
Canada is a perfect example of this. Canadian businesses that do well get bought up by larger American firms and stripped of value. Protected industries do well but are inefficient and expensive.
"We didn't realize the consolidation of power would ruin our government"
Have you heard of Teddy Roosevelt or listened to Lina Kahn during the Biden administration?
The real problem has been a lack of democratic development/innovation alongside over-marketisation caused by flawed economic ‘science’.
The neoclassical/orthodox school of economics has made great progress in many areas of economics - but they miss the forest for the trees when it comes to so much of the macro stuff.
They reduce ‘the economy’ to just the sum of all transactions/markets, and are over committed to price mechanisms - and they do not learn/understand enough about anthropology, psychology, sociology, history, the natural sciences, or complex systems theory, to even begin to actually conceptualise ‘the economy’ as accurately as they need to.
Fundamental aspects of market economies are framed with complete ignorance in many cases, like how market economies are emergent social systems that emerge from certain unmarketisable societal systems/structures in the first place - which thus require precedence over the markets themselves. However, none of these facts are acknowledged, studied, or integrated into the wider macroeconomic theories without being labelled an unserious and illegitimate heterodox.
Capitalism is inherently self-destructive. There is no good way to do it, it will always lead to accumulation of wealth and contradictions between workers and capital owners will always get worse. It is time for humanity to move beyond capitalism.
Capitalism by far the greatest economic system ever created for building wealth and distributing wealth. The problem is our political system is fucking it up.
Capitalism works great IF there is gaurdrails and protection put into place. Once that goes its no better than communism.
The problems always has been that the entire point and goal of business is to turn a profit no matter the cost. Its entire existence is counterintuitive to democracy.
Stock buybacks, hostile takeovers, and government bail outs should never have been legal. Yes we need way more anti trust laws, google, apple, meta should all be broken up. Hell so should walmart, and most major food companies.
Ill even go one further, as much as theres participation in the market. Wall street should absolutely be banned. It should not be legal and the way its being manipulated now is even more proof it should never have existed.
Exactly. It's communism by another name, except it's corporations that govern and reap the profits instead of the state. If this continues those corporations WILL be our government.
Christ what an absurd take. First sentence was great. Then....well let's just say your post was great if there had been guardrails in place to keep it from learning hard into crazytown.
We do need to better enforce our anti-trust laws though. But turning a profit is not "counterintuitive to democracy" (they're unrelated). Stock buybacks and hostile takeovers are completely reasonable business practices. And banning securities markets is just the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
The most broken parts of capitalism are where the government gets involved.
Aspirationally I agree with your take on anti-trust laws, but what does that actually mean? A recent high profile example is jet blue and spirit merger that got blocked due to antitrust, and now spirit is gone. Is spirit being gone due to government intervention, really better for consumers?
Competition by default means some companies will not survive and industry will consolidate, it’s how capitalism works until eventually everything is consolidated into one global giga-corporation.
Healthy, functioning Capitalism requires near-perfect participation of perfectly informed consumers making rational decisions tempered by man-made guard rails protecting against destructive externalities. Almost none of that is currently happening on virtually any level.
Capitalism needs regulation. Without some system in place to referee, moderate, and provide a stable means for an economy to operate, it's essentially just anarchy with a different coat of paint.
Yeah, none of what is going on is even close to the core idea of capitalism naturally selecting for efficiency. We have a quasi-socialist system that is actively prepetuating wealth inequality instead.
No one cares about anti-trust other than a handful of people on substack. Biden was extremely aggressive pursuing anti-trust and it was a complete non-issue in the election.
It’s a shame but you’re right. Aggressively enforcing antitrust laws would do far more for reducing inequality than taxing ‘the rich’. It would also lead to a healthier economy.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t provide a sexy slogan so no one gives AF.
Well that and progressives lost their minds over Gaza so they threw a sink and helped elect a guy who put his son in law whose family is a person friend of Netanyahu in charge of it.
From who? America's current public is one where 60-70% of people would sooner walk themselves into gas chambers to appease the wealthy's whims/bloodlust than take to the streets in the name of the public good, because the latter's been marketed to them as 'woke', 'communist', 'effeminate', etc...
We're heading to the same shit-tastic destination that modern Russia's ended up at.
Thanks for the heads up about my comment. I thought i was working for a capitalist business, but I now understand that its actually state owned and my comment is irrelevant.
Obviously the problem is that you, a nano-economically-relevant individual, did not practice the macro-level economics of which they speak where your individual experience is as relevant and impactful as a a fly hoping to influence the trajectory of Earth through space meaningfully while people such as them actively sabotage your efforts.
Capitalism leads to anti-regulatory practices. How do you think we got here from previous forms of capitalism?
People need to stop worshipping capitalism as if regulating it is going to be easy or a single event. You will need to be constantly limiting it as it evolves to existing regulatory boundaries. This, as a result, requires the admittance of capitalism as being intrinsically toxic. A modern society should be built on a network of social, communist, AND capitalist policies. That way, they inter-regulate and we can have a chance of peoples’ basic needs being met as the baseline and individuals have the opportunity to engage in market dynamics if they desire more than what is provided.
It’s the ‘regulations’ that are killing us. The big boys can create red tape and rules that only they have the resources and depth to follow. They then use politicians to increase the regulatory burden and put up other barriers to entry.
Pure capitalism showed exactly what it does in the gilded age in the late 1800s. Without any safeguards without strongly enforced laws it becomes the absolute worst of the survival of the fittest. I fear current trends show this is exactly where we are heading.
The only way capitalism is beneficial to a society at large rather than just those who own the means of productionis with a combination of strong legal safeguards and other hard boundaries that ensure all people benefit to some degree.
The Gilded Age also led to Trust Bustin' Teddy Roosevelt, and an increasingly militant labor movement that gave us stuff like weekends and safety laws. Capital might be global, but the labor movement has a chance to be global now too.
The future could be Mad Max, or it could be Star Trek, but it will probably be a little bit of both.
It almost certainly won't be this. Even the most progressive areas in the country are overrun with people who can't get their heads out of their asses about things like affordable housing, holding police departments accountable, etc...
The problem isn't capitalism, it's lack of government oversight. Capitalism is a known quantity and will always strive for overabundance, business leaders cannot be counted on to moderate these excesses. Government must step in with logical regulation to curb it, and sadly our current gov has neglected its duty.
The problem is not merely that government forgot to regulate capitalism. Concentrated capital inevitably works to capture government and dismantle the regulation itself
But Capital can buy entire media conglomerates to push propaganda . And when ALL the media is basically owned by a small group of people who are all colluding with each other on their message, then it certainly is going to sway votes.
It took like 200 years of people losing faith in feudalism and probably a dozen violent uprisings before it started shifting towards market capitalism. Sadly I fear that capitalism will last at least a couple generations longer than people's taste for it and will require similar 'uprisings' before leaders begin to transition to something more equalistic.
But it's not really capitalism is it? In the last 3 decades, I've seen losses socialized twice (Great Recession and the pandemic's PPP/EIDFL) to preserve incumbent advantage. Without the Schumpeterian creative destruction, you just have a crony oligarchy but not capitalism. Of course, everyone hates that.
Its still capitalism, even when it doesn't function in a perfectly idealistic way.
Capitalism is the underlying economic system. It is inherently political in nature and always has been, but oligarchy is a political system.
Capitalism does not need to be democratic. These two things are often depicted as synonymous.
The losses being socialized is a product of a capital class that has grown too powerful, too influential and unable to take responsibility for their own ruinous behaviors. They are still capitalists, make no mistake.
I'll respectfully disagree. The level of government intervention and manipulation both the Great Recession and the Pandemic involved in no way resembled a market economy. And I'll be more precise - oligarchic economy. When the market plays less role than political cronyism in favor of the elite, then you are in an oligarchic economy. That's the real issue here - the government and the economy have started to become synonymous.
There is no such thing as an oligarchic economy. That does not exist nor is it a useful label.
"the government and the economy have started to become synonymous." There is a word for that: fascism. Specifically when private capital dominates the political system for its own benefit, while retaining capitalism as the underlying economic system. You just gotta declare some people undesirables, blame them for economic troubles and then push them out of airplanes/massacre/imprison them and its all right as rain.
I get that we all love capitalism here, but based off of historical patterns, this is just a natural inevitability.
We examine an oligarchic economy where only elites can establish firms. In monopolistic competition when the size of the elite is sufficiently small, there is an absolute exclusive equilibrium where wages are driven to the reservation wage. Because of the possession of market power by firms, total equilibrium output is insufficient to warrant the employment of the entire labor force, leading to inadequate aggregate demand for labor and underutilized capacity. The economy inefficiently operates inside its production possibilities frontier. Then, the adoption of rather unorthodox left-wing fiscal and labor policies may boost capacity utilization and lead to a Pareto improvement.
But capitalism requires open and relatively free markets for competition. These moves are the opposite of capitalism. What economic/political system you call them is irrelevant, but that doesn't make them capitalism.
"But capitalism requires open and relatively free markets for competition" in order to function in an idealistic manner.
"What economic/political system you call them is irrelevant, but that doesn't make them capitalism."
This is a straight rip from Merriam Webster. There is no widespread price control by the government and just because they intervene on mass market failure does not suddenly mean you have changed the foundational system that made it possible.
"Capitalism is an economic system where private individuals or businesses own the means of production (e.g., factories, land, tools). Resources, prices, and the distribution of goods are determined primarily by competition in a free market rather than by the government. Its core driving force is the motive to generate a profit."
So, you have limited intervention to prevent market failure, yet you haven't touched any of the defining hallmarks of the system and want to call it something else just because of that?
You are treating private ownership as the only defining feature of capitalism while minimizing the importance of other capitalist factors like market dynamics, competition and risk. These aren't just fancy concepts, they are the literal mechanisms that makes capitalism function.
Your own definition says that resources and prices are determined primarily by competition in a free market rather than by government. When the government repeatedly protects dominant firms from bankruptcy, subsidizes their losses, limits new competition, or gives them priviledged access to public money and information, outcomes are no longer being determined primarily by market competition, they are being politically allocated.
This is not "capitalism functioning imperfectly," failure and the possibility of losing invested capital are essential parts of market discipline that make the whole system work. If owners keep the profits when decisions succeed but transfer the losses to taxpayers when they fail, they are no longer accepting the risks that supposedly justify their profits and control.
Private ownership is not the defining feature. Mercantilist systems, oligarchies, and other political-based economies have included private businesses and profit seeking. What distinguishes capitalism is not merely that the business is privately owners, but that they must compete and can actually fail.
All of this without even mentioning bailouts, subsidies, monopoly priviledges, regulatory capture, tariffs or barriers to entry the government can implement.
Nobody is arguing that one isolated intervention instantly cancels out capitalism. I am arguing that when government-sanctioned protections for established capital becomes systematic, it is more accurate to describe it as crony capitalism, state-sponsored capitalism or oligarch-corporatism. Not a genuinely competitive capitalist market. Calling every system that has private ownership "capitalism" makes the term so broad it is meaningless.
They already stated to another commenter that the fusion of the control over the economy and governance is fascism. Crony capitalism is a form of fascism. You’re both in agreement. Please don’t lose the plot over pedantic details.
No offense, but you wrote paragraphs that don't really refute my belief that its still capitalism, which is *what the entire conversation revolves around*.
"when the government repeatedly protects dominant firms from bankruptcy, subsidizes their losses, limits new competition, or gives them priviledged access to public money and information, outcomes are no longer being determined primarily by market competition, they are being politically allocated."
You do understand that i am not disputing this? Corporate paternalism has existed, to varying degrees, for centuries.
We can argue over what its become all day, we can invent labels to make the system sound better but this is, at the end of the day, what it is in reality. Just because it strays from the ideal does not mean that it is entirely a separate system.
As another commenter highlighted, I have already specifically addressed what capitalism becomes when the foundations of private property are threatened in a capitalist society.
"If, he intimated on one occasion, capitalism refuses to recognise that the National Socialists are the last bulwark of private property, if capital impedes their struggle, Germany may be compelled to throw herself into the enticing arms of the siren Soviet Russia. But he is determined not to permit Bolshevism to take root in Germany.""
Edit: "Calling every system that has private ownership "capitalism" makes the term so broad it is meaningless." I urge you to reread my comments and find where i implied anywhere that the other systems you mentioned were capitalist, just because they had a degree of private ownership over property.
Part of a transition to something more equality-centric would require a mind shift from viewing our current system as a capitalistic democracy to what it has become - an oligarchy.
We allow the Oligarchs to buy companies that could be their competitor, yet many U.S. citizens assume the country is capitalist. While the oligarchs get more support from politicians than citizens ever could.
I've always thought that capitalism and democracy are incompatible systems so the idea of a 'capitalistic democracy' is an oxymoron.
One system gives primacy to capital owners, and within corporate structure there is a strict hierarchy with workers on the bottom who have no say in how the company is run.
The other system gives all citizens an equal say in how the country is run.
Unions are an imperfect attempt to apply more democratic principles to the strict dictatorship that is most companies, allowing workers to vote and have a say in their labor.
I'm a socialist and a capitalist. I don't think they're necessary mutually exclusive. Economic activity should be divided up by category, with some of it having more regulation than others. When the free market works, it works very well. What we have right now isn't a free market in any sense.
At the best, I think the free market needs to be eliminated for any marketplace where consumers don't really have true choice, or would die if they went without.
Healthcare, Energy, Housing should not be at the whims are market forces. They should be state owned. Land appreciates, but housing should be accessible first and an investment commodity second.
"Crony oligarchy" is just the economic system capitalists create for themselves once allowed to seize control of the state. Capitalists love this status quo; they created it and will fight to continue it.
"They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob." -FDR
There have been violent uprisings since there has been civilization, it's completely unfounded to try a connect some arbitrary proportion of them to the emergence of any particular economic system. Not the least because capitalism is a political development, not an economic one, and it was achieved because of political goals, namely liberalism.
Yes. For most of the middle to late Medieval era, through their religious faith, they understood fuedalism to be the natural state of the world and their lives as serfs to be decided by God, so to go against your station was to question God and the church. Peasants back then had no concept of rights or freedoms as we know them today because they literally had no real world examples of it.
One of the big catalysts actually was after the Black Death, there was a shortage of labor, so peasants started getting more pay, larger farms, etc but the lords at the time didn't like that, so kingdoms passed laws suppressing wages and what serfs could own or even wear.
Did you just totally ignore the part where I said to go against feudalism was seen as defying God? That would be unheard of in those times.
You can pretend that people 1000 years ago were secret freedom loving libertarians all you want and that they were being forced into serfdom against their will, but in reality most peasants never bothered to question their station or lives at all. Hell, most of them weren't even literate until the late Middle ages saw an increase in literacy (which led to a series of Renaissances)
The fuck are you on? you literally questioned if peasants had faith in fuedalism prior to the late middle ages, I said by in large they did. You're literally just saying 'no you're wrong' without providing a counterfactual.
They didn't have faith in fudualism, they accepted their lives because the state had a monopoly on violence and they didn't have any way to voice their opinion. It's not at all comparable to the modern era.
I don't think many people are even talking about the same thing when they talk about "capitalism" (or "socialism", or many other political isms for that matter). Furthermore, I don't think we have a way to communicate our way to an agreement on it. So not only do we not understand what the person we're arguing with is talking about, we can't get ourselves to a point where we do understand what they're talking about, and vice versa.
Capitalism only works with a well funded and maintained public sector and government. We've spent decades dismantling the government and public sector. Businesses and business men will absolutely take every cent they can. We no longer force them to look after people so the people no longer trust the system
It seems cyclical, driven by the times you live in. Disillusionment with Capitalism goes back at to the 19h century, i.e., as soon as it was born. Capitalism has been good at adapting to the crises/critiques going all the way back to the list of demands in Marx/Engel’s Communist Manifesto. I am optimistic that the younger generation will drive Capitalism to adapt again.
I wish some could publicly analyse the methodology of the data collection. It's just not something I'm knowledgeable about and since this is CNN their bias raises my guard.
Anyway, I would say that if "late stage capitalism " is real, I think we're really in the end of the end of it, to the extent that the US is well through its transition into a plutocratic corporate oligarchy that is a kind of "financial communism" of the private state.
I don't think countries and social systems stay the same, I think they're in constant evolution because they age and grow/change/die with the individuals that inhabit them. That is to say : I don't think there can ever be a perfect society because perfect implies a fixed arrangement without need to evolve or adapt with changing circumstances.
I say this because I know the reaction to the decay of capitalist society leads to communism/national socialism
and other utopian thinking. Utopian thinking is dangerously seductive and will manipulate us into "throwing the baby out with the bath water" as demagoguery sweeps away desperate people starved of hope.
Who answers the phone to take piolls anymore? If I don’t know the number there is no way I’m answering. So, many polls likely don’t give a very accurate picture one way or the other.
All of this could be solved with one pretty easy move: end the filibuster and allow meaningful legislation to be passed without 60+ votes in the Senate.
As it stands today, the filibuster mostly protects Republicans from the negative outcomes of their expressed policy goals (e.g. ending Obamacare) and it prevents both parties from passing any legislation they have in mind that voters might actually like but which the other party may not be sold on.
We haven't had a very functional democracy for a very long time because of the filibuster allowing bad actors to block the opposing party from getting nearly anything done short extraordinary circumstances like the post-9/11 environment or the immediate aftermath of the Great Recession.
The discontent with capitalism may not even be about capitalism itself but rather the ineffectiveness of good policy to even cross the finish line since there is little to no benefit of bipartisanship in all but the most extreme of cases, ironically.
We get eternal budget increases to the defense industry and nearly nothing besides for the average person.
If the parties had to deal with the consequences (potential, real or electoral) of their most extreme policy ideas, they may find some virtue in working together again instead of endless grandstanding over this issue and that issue while nothing gets done at all.
I'd rather risk both parties shoot their respective shots with terrible legislation than be stuck in an endless escalation of hostilities and extremism until and unless something truly horrific happens that does grave harm to not just all of us but the very ideas that found and sustain great nations.
Our economy became like this because people didn't care and got greedy, especially the "Law-makers"
Allowing faux competition when it's actually a monopoly. Like the Internet Service Providers are a monopoly. Sure there's different ISPs out there, but like the 5 mob families of New York, they've basically split the country up into separate pieces where one or two of them reign supreme. As far as I'm concerned, fake competition is not competition...
People without capital can't play capitalism. People with capital make money from.their money and people without capital survive by servicing those with capital. Now that people get the game they want to start the race on equal footing.
In Northern Europe something called welfare capitalism is practiced and it works well. It involves a safety net and highly progressive taxation. The USA had high progressive taxes during and after WWII. This has been in decline due to GOP attacks. Reagan led the effort which has continued to this day. Call it divide and conquer. The GOP works against the USA public being united and is supports I've got mine, no new taxes , and f,,,, you.
That's because it's become a soulless system run by a few being used by those few to consolidate more power and wealth at the expense of not only humanity but the planet itself.
If it's not regulated and the consolidation stopped, capitalism will become the enemy of the lower class and what's left of the middle class by that point.
Capitalism is devolving into corporate fascism/oligarchy.
Healthy capitalism has a middle class, a ladder for hard working and skilled people to succeed. But it is disappearing fast and becoming two classes 1) the wealthy who make more passively in the stock market than people working 60 hours a week. 2) working poor, permanent debt class, serfs. a modern advanced form of slavery.
Capitalism and democracy are ultimately incompatible. And when capitalists have the same weight and power as nation states, they will bend markets, laws and elections to their will. And wahey, their incentives are diametrically opposed to the needs of the average person.
We’ve not even had a veneer of capitalism in I don’t know how long.
I personally feel competition and capitalism is wonderful. What we have is regulatory capture, nepotism, too big to fail, and artificial barriers created by government & monopolies.
I’m done with republicans. I’m done with conservatism. They are losers and there is nothing to conserve. Like - we should fight to conserve only fans, car companies dependent on government bailouts, or a defense industry intent on killing children?
Not that democrats are better. They are insane and don’t care about labor either. The capital D democrats want the same thing as the republicans. Endless bailouts, pork, and unconditional money for israel.
There is no path forward. Everything is getting worse.
We’re at the end stage of capitalism. The only way out is through taxes. The wealth must be distributed or the system doesn’t work. This is common sense. Republicanism is destroying this country!
It's unfortunate that we see things like this and then have the same old conversation where (democratic) socialism and communism get thrown around in both favorable and unfavorable ways. We can have whatever system we want. What if we had capitalism but with an eye towards the social side of things? Rather than maximize profits the goal is to maximize revenues that net real profit after paying more to employees. That's one of an infinite potential ideas. It feels like we are in some crazy and even bad place right now but it could be viewed as a starting point. There's more than enough money out there. We don't have to live like this and we don't necessarily have to tear it all down.
Then there has never been a true capitalist or socialist or communist country, ever. Every economic system is mixed. Even during the gilded age you are talking about, the government still subsidized railroads, enacted tariffs, had oversight over banking regulations since 1863 currency act, provided a post office, provided a military, regulated trade via the interstate commerce act and the Sherman Act.
Anarcho-capitalism/Austrian economics, and Classical-Liberalism/Modern-Libertarianism are as unrealistic idealist/utopian BS as Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism. They’re all different sides of the same coin.
All we have is democracy. And we need democratic innovations (like those being developed across the world with citizen’s assemblies, range voting, and constitutional reforms) to develop democracy beyond electoral liberal democracy in order to solve “Hayek’s knowledge problem” beyond just price/market mechanisms.
Prices solve aspects of the knowledge problem, but the information they are determined/affected by is limited and not reflective of what should or shouldn’t constitute the path of least financial resistance for a many great deal of things.
That’s why deliberative democracy needs to be centre stage. The only way we actually solve problems is to get enough truly representative (non-elected) people to be given the right environment, resources (expert and citizen input alike), and enough time to ‘compute’ legislation to make decisions with enough legitimate procedural fairness, wisdom, and consideration - so that we can build genuinely functional, prosperous, and unifying societies.
Capitalism doesn't really mean anything. The reality is both parties are becoming more violent and authoritarian, and free markets have no place in such a society.
If we want to be really pedantic and play devil's advocate, we can even acknowledge that what's happening now isn't actually capitalism. It's oligarchal cronyism. A system where people own nothing and have no choices.
Remember kids socialism provides healthcare for everyone, universal childcare, and makes billionaires unable to afford a yacht that has another yacht inside it.
The corruption caused by the excessive concentration of wealth eventually effects everyone except the 0.01%.
The economy stops working for the people and they lose confidence in whatever the system is.
I'm a liberal, and I don't love the democratic party, but it is thick headed that the leadership party doesn't seem to acknowledge that it's not working for us.
The largest voting bloc in the country is "didn't vote". People have the power in the United States, they just actually have to exercise it.
Parties don't cater to people who don't advocate for their interests. Check in with many liberal or conservative advocates and you'll quickly find that vanishingly few have even sent an email to their representative.
Redditors are absolutely convinced violent revolution is literally imminent when the average voter is so apathetic they can barely muster up the political motivation to spend an hour every four years ticking a box.
Like I said, there are many factors to how we got here. If you check in with many of those people who didn't vote, you'd find that the majority say they don't think their vote will change anything. Where did that come from? I'd say the fact that money is an out sized influence in our politics and continues to grow. It also comes from the constant stream of misinformation and disinformation bombarding Americans. Where did that come from? Money.
I don't think most politicians care much at all about what they hear from their constituents. Maybe if they are in a competitive district or state, but there are not many of those left. The number of 'safe' seats is astounding and shows no sign of change.
So yes there are quite a few factors, but until we can address the problem of money corrupting our politics, I don't see a way out
An economic system…any system…has to actually work for people. It’s beyond obvious that our form of capitalism is massively rigged for the people at the very top.
It’s been obvious for a while…I’ll give Trump credit…he is really transparent…just not in the way he says he is…He is so open with blatant corruption that it can’t be denied.
Why participate in the stock market when insider trading is rampant and you’re not on the inside? Why start a business when it’s pay to play and you don’t have the access or money to pay off the right people?
Trump says everything is a scam…well he made sure of it!
Capitalism doesn't work when you allow so many mergers that there is no competition anymore.
So maximizing the profits to any extent when you have no competition is literally corporate oligarchy. When you completely own an entire industry and the consumer must bow to your pricing because no one else can create what you have.
They did it with technology, food and now they are starting to do it with land. Eventually the end game of Capitalism is feudalism where one entity owns everything.
Well yeah, the current president is saying the government should obtain shares of companies like Intel, Spirit Airlines, etc. Taken to its limit, that is Communist policy. I see a lot of jaw flapping about capitalism, but I don’t think a lot of voters actually think about what capitalism or how much proposed policies disagree with it. I think most voters just think “Capitalism” stands for a generic American “fuck-yeah” slogan, or they think it means having the ability to buy something in a store. It’s not that, of course, and the same people defending capitalism with everything they have got will be the first to shit on what it actually is, like Wall Street bankers buying up shares, foreign investors buying up their local real estate and jacking up the prices, gas prices rising whenever we start a war, or their Lay’s potato chip bag getting shrinkflated so that the bottom line can increase marginally to please shareholders.
The same people will often tell you they don’t even invest in the stock market and would rather just stick their money in a mattress. These people are not capitalists, even if they think they are.
I just don't get why people want to go the extreme, captialism works, it just needs a little more government oversight, break up huge companies, ensuring working benefits and more taxation. People like to mention Scandinavia as socialism even though theyre just captialist with great benefits. America actually had almost 50% taxes on top corps before Reagan took over and decided only gdp mattered(great choice btw). We have so many ways of fixing this that is not socialism lmao.
I would like to separate the term capitalism from the free market.
A free, fair, and competitive market is an awesome thing.
But that's not always what we see happening. The term capitalism does fit pretty well when we continuously see deferment to capital, particularly the owners of capital, even at the expense of everything else.
When capital can move freely and work to enrich its owner from any corner of the world, but labor cannot, you're going to have an imbalance.
Yeah late stage capitalism is pretty awful. When every aspect of your life is nickel and dimed into oblivion to the benefit of the shareholders, things start to suck.
I think we're all beginning to see a future where everything is owned by 10 companies and the concept of competition that makes capitalism great will be entirely absent.
I think we definitely have issues we need to fix in America, but I don’t believe in socialism and I will never vote for it. I honestly can’t believe this is gaining traction in the US. The idea of giving the government more power is astounding to me. Seems like everything the government touches turns to sh@t.
How do you feel about workers having more democracy and democratic control over their places of employment? Greater control of where the profits and costs are assigned where they work?
Begging_Murphy | 2 hours ago
Capitalism is only good when there’s bona fide competition and many industries are low or post-competition in this country. We abandoned well-tended gardens for economies of scale, and we didn’t realize that the consolidation of power would ruin our government.
tooheavybroo | 2 hours ago
When I saw Trump ban Chinese EV car sales in the US, that was another strike against capitalism. What happened to “let the market decide”?
And all this bullshit about tariffs on imports like Trump wanting to slap tariffs on generic drugs??? That’s not capitalism!
psellers237 | an hour ago
Republicans have not been truly capitalist in a while. Important distinction. Don’t confuse corruption to help their rich friends with pro-business policies. No, it’s just corruption.
paupaupaupau | an hour ago
It's pro-business policy, just pro- their businesses.
MetaCognitio | 55 minutes ago
Crony Capitalism.
twenty_three_three | 55 minutes ago
A bigger issue is that the oppositional party did not undo Trumps efforts. They even doubled down on many of those trade policies. This is no better than a monarchy when both parties represent the same interests.
fx2600 | 2 hours ago
It isn't really the free market when China doesn't have a free market, they can suppress wages and manipulate the exchange rates to boost exports.
failedaspotcheck | 2 hours ago
Yeah! Maintaining planetary military hegemony to keep the dollar as the global reserve currency and exploiting third world labor is only okay when WE do it!
When China does it it's obviously evil communism. Pretty easy to understand the difference, folks.
Aspectdude09 | 58 minutes ago
"It’s wild how the exact same policy can be celebrated or condemned entirely based on the zip code. People will fiercely defend a heavily managed, state-supported social framework thousands of miles away, but the second someone suggests building those exact same mechanisms domestically, it gets labeled an existential crisis. The program itself isn't the problem—it’s just a matter of whose jersey it’s printed on."
We are master class at compartmentalization.
fx2600 | 2 hours ago
I never said it's evil, I just said it's not the free market.
0o0o0o0o0o0z | 2 hours ago
The US is absolutely not a free market economy.
fx2600 | 2 hours ago
No where is a pure free market but it's much more so than China
bloodrider1914 | an hour ago
Chinese EV companies actually operate in a highly competitive market, and most do fail. It is controlled and regulated by the state but competition is highly encouraged to ensure that the most efficient manufacturers are able to succeed.
fx2600 | an hour ago
China has an interesting system where the central government puts out priorities and the provinces try to promote their regional champions as that's the path to power. It does lead to a competitive market at times but not a free market.
twenty_three_three | 52 minutes ago
And their system is proving to be mich more effective at innovation in capability, quality, and costs. So not sure what your point is from the get go.
Mr_Zee_Speaks | an hour ago
No, it isn’t, quite the opposite
fx2600 | an hour ago
No serious person would claim that, China wouldn't claim that.
failedaspotcheck | 2 hours ago
But military domination and globalism that benefits big capital is? What's with you free market guys always having the most nebulous moving goalposts definition of what a "free" market is?
You act like our government doesn't also put its massive thumbs on the scales of labor and industry.
hunkyleepickle | an hour ago
in some ways China is more capitalist by the strictest definition. The state defines the rules and enforces regulations, and allows market competition to decide the winner. The US is just corps lobbying to make the rules that suit them best, which usually means less competition.
Aspectdude09 | 54 minutes ago
Mexico is way more capitalist than the USA. Pretty much anywhere is because the USA is such a walled garden.
Low-Calligrapher-531 | 58 minutes ago
They're American, everything's valid and correct if they're the ones doing it
fx2600 | 2 hours ago
Much less so than China which is my point
Zworrisdeh | an hour ago
Oh, China fights 20-year-long wars and sponsors brutal political coups at the behest of their oil and banana company CEOs? News to me
Mr_Zee_Speaks | an hour ago
There is no such thing as a free market
bloodrider1914 | an hour ago
So? They still make goods for cheaper than American companies and have more efficient industrial practices. Their products should be allowed to compete, especially when western companies operating in the US are raising prices higher and higher and implementing anti-consumer features like subscriptions for car features.
fx2600 | an hour ago
Should the US suppress wages and normalize 996 schedules to better compete?
Rumpus-Time-Is-Over | an hour ago
The US should compete in industries it has a comparative advantage in.
schrod | an hour ago
But China isn't pretending to be capitalist like this administration
fx2600 | an hour ago
Which is why it's funny that people are telling me that the Chinese market is so free. China doesn't even claim it's free, they think it's good that it's firmly under control of the state (even if most employers are private)
YourFuture2000 | an hour ago
Free market never exist while there is a state taxing, subsidiesing, having the monopoly of currency, central bank making national economic policies, close borders, etc.
The only real free market that there is is communism. And by communism I mean the true communism which only exist when people collectively own and manage their community and work place autonomously, and that is why Adam Smith was against both governments having too much control and power over communities as well as why he and other classic capitalists predicted and spoke against the type of economy which we live today, which corporations and groups in power of governments controls and "own" the economy.
plummbob | an hour ago
It doesn't matter, in trade, why BYD is cheaper, just that it is. It could be subsidies, or it could be a better climate or it could be whatever.
Consistent_Oil9624 | 2 hours ago
Was it Trump or Biden?
dgtbfan | 2 hours ago
The car thing isn't really a strike against capitalism because it's not an equal competition. Chinese manufactured cars cut corners on all sorts of regulations and get to be made colossal amounts of slave labor and CCP subsidization.
JSmith666 | 2 hours ago
You can require regulations (which arent capitalist anyway) be met to be sold in the US and it not be an outright ban. Chinese Manufacturers will then decide if its cost effective to meet those standards or not.
KillahHills10304 | 2 hours ago
The ones that would be imported to the US would have to meet US regulations- the bare boned death traps couldnt be sold here like any other global vehicle platform being sold.
I keep hearing this "its not fair, the CCP subsidizes their industry". Ok? We subsidize ours too, and we subsidize the fuel that goes into them. It'd be pretty simple to just nix the subsidies by taxing Chinese vehicles.
The US auto industry simply doesnt want to compete with the Chinese. Notice how right after the CEO of Ford registered that Chinese EV and drove it for awhile he suddenly began lobbying to stop Chinese EVs while simultaneously exclaiming how impressed he was by it? They cant compete, and its going to just drag the US auto industry down in the long run, as China masters electric automobile manufacturing
Ok_Builder_4225 | 2 hours ago
As if slave labor isnt foundational to US manufacturing. Its just not generally within our borders so its easier to turn a blind eye to. We really need to do a better job of policing our own shit.
This is not an excuse for China, mind. Just my frustration at our own failings in the name of profit.
dgtbfan | 2 hours ago
While you're not wrong, the US outsourcing some labor can't compete with the start-to-finish slave labor chain that the CCP gets.
Ok_Builder_4225 | 2 hours ago
We do have our prison labor though, which i briefly forgot to consider in the discussion.
Sullyyyyyyyyyyyyy | 2 hours ago
What slave labor is foundational to US manufacturing?
dgtbfan | 2 hours ago
We outsource all sorts of stuff, so they're not wrong.
Sullyyyyyyyyyyyyy | 2 hours ago
So then it’s not foundational to US manufacturing because the US isn’t doing the manufacturing
dgtbfan | 2 hours ago
Kind of disingenuous, but alright.
NicodemusV | an hour ago
Do you count manufactured goods by American companies in foreign countries as part of American manufacturing?
Sullyyyyyyyyyyyyy | 2 hours ago
Words matter
dgtbfan | 2 hours ago
Ok
dalyons | 2 hours ago
chinese cars pass european and australian safety regulations just fine, so they could easily pass US. There are also very few remaining subsidies (there were a lot in the past, to bootstrap the industry).
dogs_gt_cats | 2 hours ago
> Chinese manufactured cars cut corners on all sorts of regulations and get to be made colossal amounts of slave labor and CCP subsidization.
Different from Tesla how? How many major recalls is the cybertruck up to now? 6? Within 1.5 years of release? How many lawsuits were pending against Tesla and Musk's companies until DOGE came around and Trump's DOJ and appointees blocked all of them from happening?
plummbob | an hour ago
The entire point of trade is that places are unequal.
dgtbfan | an hour ago
Solid point, let's outsource everything.
plummbob | an hour ago
The nature of trade is that not all things are cost effective to outsource. Every $ saved with trade is a $ spent elsewhere, and each $ is returned as investment.
vacantbay | 2 hours ago
The US government could do the same too and also charge the Chinese vehicles a tax that makes up the difference.
Frylock304 | 2 hours ago
That was Biden, he instituted a 100% tariff on chinese vehicles
unaskthequestion | 2 hours ago
I wonder to myself often if concentration of wealth is inevitable under capitalism (or indeed maybe most systems) unless strong regulations are adopted to stop it. That's what I think we're seeing in the US today, it just keeps snowballing until there's a depression, a war, a revolution or another tragedy.
psellers237 | an hour ago
30 years ago republicans started messaging that any regulation at all is communism or socialism or whichever was scarier to your average rural/suburban doofus at the time, and it was EXTREMELY successful.
Capitalism REQUIRES regulation. Bottom line.
ItsMeSlinky | an hour ago
Capitalism is an engine. It can be powerful, but engines require redlines and limiters. When you remove the redline, the engine destroys itself.
Republicans have been removing the redlines since Reagan, and the engine is destroying itself trying to satisfy the insatiable greed of a select few oligarchs.
Delicious-Help4187 | an hour ago
I don’t understand why republicans are against regulations for businesses. Regulations make a level playing field for all participants in the free market and support capitalism. My personal opinion is that a well regulated free market capitalist economy is the best system ever made. It’s why I hate republicans. Republicans say that if you are against deregulating businesses then you are anti business and a communist. Thats like saying if you are against referees in a football game you hate football. It’s the referees that make the game fair and makes it fun and competitive.
TenaceErbaccia | 34 minutes ago
Republicans aren’t actually supporters of capitalism, they are supporters of the rich. Even their religion is increasingly infected with wealth worship per prosperity gospel teachings.
ActualSpiders | an hour ago
The other thing capitalism absolutely requires is a reasonable and enforced set of laws controlling that competition... The prevention of monopoly/cartel creation is something the GOP threw out back under Reagan and they've been attacking any kind of regulation of "the free market" as some kind of communism ever since. When left unchecked and unregulated, "the free market" just becomes corporatism, as industries get taken over by monopolies, and those monopolies then purchase the government. Which is the stage we're at now.
Harbinger2001 | 2 hours ago
Globalization forced economies of scale. It turns out you can’t have a competitive internal market and be competitive globally.
Vulcanize_It | an hour ago
We didn’t really try restricting monopolies/oligopolies in a post-globalization environment.
Fat_cat_syndicate | an hour ago
You absolutely can. China dominates international markets partially because of how brutally competitive the internal markets are. Pick anything, China has multiple extremely competitive players. Whether it be a garden variety bearing or advanced circuit board fabrication.
Harbinger2001 | an hour ago
That is only through massive government intervention.
Phugasity | 45 minutes ago
Governments intervene massively in their economies. Look at all the US bailouts, tariffs, research, tax credits, and direct funding.
phantom_in_the_cage | an hour ago
I think this is the hard truth
If we accept that big businesses can wield unfair advantages against small businesses, then we also have to accept that foreign big businesses can similarly wield unfair advantages against small local businesses
The only ways to mitigate it is by either:
Both these methods have worrying effects on competition, long-term
Competition, the golden virtue, is very hard to maintain. It requires serious upkeep & intervention
Harbinger2001 | an hour ago
Canada is a perfect example of this. Canadian businesses that do well get bought up by larger American firms and stripped of value. Protected industries do well but are inefficient and expensive.
More_Programmer8905 | an hour ago
"We didn't realize the consolidation of power would ruin our government" Have you heard of Teddy Roosevelt or listened to Lina Kahn during the Biden administration?
LeoKitCat | 2 hours ago
It’s all monopolies, cartelism, and government capture now
UnknownBreadd | 2 hours ago
Capitalism doesn’t exist; it’s a fantasy ideal.
The real problem has been a lack of democratic development/innovation alongside over-marketisation caused by flawed economic ‘science’.
The neoclassical/orthodox school of economics has made great progress in many areas of economics - but they miss the forest for the trees when it comes to so much of the macro stuff.
They reduce ‘the economy’ to just the sum of all transactions/markets, and are over committed to price mechanisms - and they do not learn/understand enough about anthropology, psychology, sociology, history, the natural sciences, or complex systems theory, to even begin to actually conceptualise ‘the economy’ as accurately as they need to.
Fundamental aspects of market economies are framed with complete ignorance in many cases, like how market economies are emergent social systems that emerge from certain unmarketisable societal systems/structures in the first place - which thus require precedence over the markets themselves. However, none of these facts are acknowledged, studied, or integrated into the wider macroeconomic theories without being labelled an unserious and illegitimate heterodox.
bullhead2007 | an hour ago
Capitalism is inherently self-destructive. There is no good way to do it, it will always lead to accumulation of wealth and contradictions between workers and capital owners will always get worse. It is time for humanity to move beyond capitalism.
ants_are_everywhere | an hour ago
I'm not convinced "capitalism" is a coherent thing. It's used to describe vastly different economic policies.
IMO if you want to say anything precise and falsifiable about economic policy you need terms where everyone agrees on the meanings.
And before people comment with the educational definition of capitalism, I am familiar with it. It's just not a well defined concept.
DhOnky730 | 2 hours ago
Capitalism by far the greatest economic system ever created for building wealth and distributing wealth. The problem is our political system is fucking it up.
Broad_Shock44 | 2 hours ago
Capitalism works great IF there is gaurdrails and protection put into place. Once that goes its no better than communism.
The problems always has been that the entire point and goal of business is to turn a profit no matter the cost. Its entire existence is counterintuitive to democracy.
Stock buybacks, hostile takeovers, and government bail outs should never have been legal. Yes we need way more anti trust laws, google, apple, meta should all be broken up. Hell so should walmart, and most major food companies.
Ill even go one further, as much as theres participation in the market. Wall street should absolutely be banned. It should not be legal and the way its being manipulated now is even more proof it should never have existed.
stellae-fons | 2 hours ago
Exactly. It's communism by another name, except it's corporations that govern and reap the profits instead of the state. If this continues those corporations WILL be our government.
Broad_Shock44 | an hour ago
I hate to tell you thats the pretty much the case now.
stellae-fons | an hour ago
Oh I know 😭 they're still pretending otherwise though
bullhead2007 | an hour ago
You don't even know what communism is yet you speak so confidently about it.
hereditydrift | 32 minutes ago
The state doesn't reap the profits in communism...
Rumpus-Time-Is-Over | an hour ago
Christ what an absurd take. First sentence was great. Then....well let's just say your post was great if there had been guardrails in place to keep it from learning hard into crazytown.
We do need to better enforce our anti-trust laws though. But turning a profit is not "counterintuitive to democracy" (they're unrelated). Stock buybacks and hostile takeovers are completely reasonable business practices. And banning securities markets is just the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
growaway9172 | 32 minutes ago
The most broken parts of capitalism are where the government gets involved.
Aspirationally I agree with your take on anti-trust laws, but what does that actually mean? A recent high profile example is jet blue and spirit merger that got blocked due to antitrust, and now spirit is gone. Is spirit being gone due to government intervention, really better for consumers?
Express_Spirit_3350 | an hour ago
>we didn’t realize that the consolidation of power would ruin our government.
As long as you mean "the people" didnt realize, and not the government itself.
whiteriot0906 | an hour ago
Competition by default means some companies will not survive and industry will consolidate, it’s how capitalism works until eventually everything is consolidated into one global giga-corporation.
mmelectronic | 45 minutes ago
“We” realized it, who do we vote for to overturn citizens united?
LaVidaYokel | 35 minutes ago
Healthy, functioning Capitalism requires near-perfect participation of perfectly informed consumers making rational decisions tempered by man-made guard rails protecting against destructive externalities. Almost none of that is currently happening on virtually any level.
End3rWi99in | 11 minutes ago
Capitalism needs regulation. Without some system in place to referee, moderate, and provide a stable means for an economy to operate, it's essentially just anarchy with a different coat of paint.
HyperTextCoffeePot | an hour ago
Yeah, none of what is going on is even close to the core idea of capitalism naturally selecting for efficiency. We have a quasi-socialist system that is actively prepetuating wealth inequality instead.
NonReality | an hour ago
Dumbest thing I've read today and that says something lmao
Sufficient-Bid1279 | 2 hours ago
So where do countries with capitalism go from here?
TMN8R | 2 hours ago
Enforce antitrust laws and bolster the social safety nets. Or face revolution.
fx2600 | 2 hours ago
No one cares about anti-trust other than a handful of people on substack. Biden was extremely aggressive pursuing anti-trust and it was a complete non-issue in the election.
Background-Depth3985 | 2 hours ago
It’s a shame but you’re right. Aggressively enforcing antitrust laws would do far more for reducing inequality than taxing ‘the rich’. It would also lead to a healthier economy.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t provide a sexy slogan so no one gives AF.
felis_scipio | 53 minutes ago
Well that and progressives lost their minds over Gaza so they threw a sink and helped elect a guy who put his son in law whose family is a person friend of Netanyahu in charge of it.
Sufficient-Bid1279 | 2 hours ago
I think die hard capitalists really think putting parameters around capitalism and going back in time is going to work. It’s not
A_Monster_Named_John | 41 minutes ago
> Or face revolution.
From who? America's current public is one where 60-70% of people would sooner walk themselves into gas chambers to appease the wealthy's whims/bloodlust than take to the streets in the name of the public good, because the latter's been marketed to them as 'woke', 'communist', 'effeminate', etc...
We're heading to the same shit-tastic destination that modern Russia's ended up at.
bot_comment1234 | 2 hours ago
My employer earned 8 billion in profit last year and cut WFH. We had it since 2010, so it wasn't exactly a pandemic thing that didn't work out.
If they earn 10 billion this year, maybe we'll lose our lunch breaks.
Effort makes life worse in corporate America. The last thing I want is for the company to be successful.
We've got to try to lose money so life can improve.
Its_kinda_nice_out | 2 hours ago
Time for extra long poops on the job
bot_comment1234 | an hour ago
Yes, exactly lol.
We all heard the message loud and clear, and understand we cannot allow the company to keep earning a profit.
A_Monster_Named_John | 38 minutes ago
Which will likely result in timed bathroom breaks, almost certainly clocked by some AI surveillance system.
fx2600 | 2 hours ago
This is peak /r/economics content.
PhroneticReflex | 2 hours ago
And for good reason.
fx2600 | 2 hours ago
Because it's a subreddit completely dominated by vibes and most of posters don't have even a rudimentary understanding of economics.
PhroneticReflex | 2 hours ago
How happy for us a bot and/or shill with hidden post history is here to steer us right.
fx2600 | an hour ago
"anyone I disagree with is a bot" is also peak reddit. Great contribution.
PhroneticReflex | an hour ago
Nah, just people with "namenumber" usernames and no post history. Nice try tho
No_Ant_5064 | 23 minutes ago
that's reddit in general.
bot_comment1234 | 2 hours ago
Thanks, I tried really hard.
I figured it was worth sharing as an example of why people dont give a shit.
Businesses succeeding is meaningless, so why would I ever care about a business lol
fx2600 | 2 hours ago
You didn't try at all but here vibes are the only thing that matter
bot_comment1234 | 2 hours ago
Ah, you've caught me.
I recently learned that not trying hard is the way to succeed at work. I forgot that in the real world it's the opposite.
fx2600 | an hour ago
If only you learned something about economics you could make a comment that is relevant to the sub.
bot_comment1234 | an hour ago
Maybe one day.
Thanks for the heads up about my comment. I thought i was working for a capitalist business, but I now understand that its actually state owned and my comment is irrelevant.
EterneX_II | 58 minutes ago
Obviously the problem is that you, a nano-economically-relevant individual, did not practice the macro-level economics of which they speak where your individual experience is as relevant and impactful as a a fly hoping to influence the trajectory of Earth through space meaningfully while people such as them actively sabotage your efforts.
bot_comment1234 | 50 minutes ago
It's a post about a poll of nano-economically-relevant individuals expressing their opinions on capitalism.
There's a lot of flies waiting for wise people like you to explain the macro-economic reasons why their opinions are wrong.
Go ahead and explain.
EterneX_II | 47 minutes ago
Uhh I was supporting you against the person telling you to just be more economically-adherent. My bad, I guess.
radiantwave | 2 hours ago
Regulated capitalism works... Unregulated capitalism doesn't.
Everything in excess is bad... That isn't communism, it is just common sense.
EterneX_II | 49 minutes ago
Capitalism leads to anti-regulatory practices. How do you think we got here from previous forms of capitalism?
People need to stop worshipping capitalism as if regulating it is going to be easy or a single event. You will need to be constantly limiting it as it evolves to existing regulatory boundaries. This, as a result, requires the admittance of capitalism as being intrinsically toxic. A modern society should be built on a network of social, communist, AND capitalist policies. That way, they inter-regulate and we can have a chance of peoples’ basic needs being met as the baseline and individuals have the opportunity to engage in market dynamics if they desire more than what is provided.
TheBigGees | an hour ago
We have regulated capitalism.
In fact, some of the least price-competitive industries are those where incumbents can collect rent through regulatory capture.
DJanomaly | 50 minutes ago
We live in a time with the most regulatory capture of the last 100 years, since at least the railroad expansions of the late 19th century.
I’m sorry my friend. This is not at all what regulated capitalism looks like.
Famous_Owl_840 | 9 minutes ago
It’s the ‘regulations’ that are killing us. The big boys can create red tape and rules that only they have the resources and depth to follow. They then use politicians to increase the regulatory burden and put up other barriers to entry.
It’s regulated capitalism that is killing us.
bmyst70 | 2 hours ago
Pure capitalism showed exactly what it does in the gilded age in the late 1800s. Without any safeguards without strongly enforced laws it becomes the absolute worst of the survival of the fittest. I fear current trends show this is exactly where we are heading.
The only way capitalism is beneficial to a society at large rather than just those who own the means of productionis with a combination of strong legal safeguards and other hard boundaries that ensure all people benefit to some degree.
failedaspotcheck | 2 hours ago
The Gilded Age also led to Trust Bustin' Teddy Roosevelt, and an increasingly militant labor movement that gave us stuff like weekends and safety laws. Capital might be global, but the labor movement has a chance to be global now too.
The future could be Mad Max, or it could be Star Trek, but it will probably be a little bit of both.
Siegfoult | an hour ago
Mad Trek. Star Max.
A_Monster_Named_John | 32 minutes ago
> or it could be Star Trek
It almost certainly won't be this. Even the most progressive areas in the country are overrun with people who can't get their heads out of their asses about things like affordable housing, holding police departments accountable, etc...
Competitive_Shock783 | 2 hours ago
The problem isn't capitalism, it's lack of government oversight. Capitalism is a known quantity and will always strive for overabundance, business leaders cannot be counted on to moderate these excesses. Government must step in with logical regulation to curb it, and sadly our current gov has neglected its duty.
gs87 | 2 hours ago
The problem is not merely that government forgot to regulate capitalism. Concentrated capital inevitably works to capture government and dismantle the regulation itself
TheMauveHand | 51 minutes ago
Capital doesn't vote
Fnordpocalypse | 30 minutes ago
But Capital can buy entire media conglomerates to push propaganda . And when ALL the media is basically owned by a small group of people who are all colluding with each other on their message, then it certainly is going to sway votes.
10000Lols | an hour ago
>The problem isn't capitalism
>I don't know how capitalism works
Lol
artbystorms | 2 hours ago
It took like 200 years of people losing faith in feudalism and probably a dozen violent uprisings before it started shifting towards market capitalism. Sadly I fear that capitalism will last at least a couple generations longer than people's taste for it and will require similar 'uprisings' before leaders begin to transition to something more equalistic.
strabosassistant | 2 hours ago
But it's not really capitalism is it? In the last 3 decades, I've seen losses socialized twice (Great Recession and the pandemic's PPP/EIDFL) to preserve incumbent advantage. Without the Schumpeterian creative destruction, you just have a crony oligarchy but not capitalism. Of course, everyone hates that.
AddanDeith | 2 hours ago
Its still capitalism, even when it doesn't function in a perfectly idealistic way.
Capitalism is the underlying economic system. It is inherently political in nature and always has been, but oligarchy is a political system.
Capitalism does not need to be democratic. These two things are often depicted as synonymous.
The losses being socialized is a product of a capital class that has grown too powerful, too influential and unable to take responsibility for their own ruinous behaviors. They are still capitalists, make no mistake.
strabosassistant | 2 hours ago
I'll respectfully disagree. The level of government intervention and manipulation both the Great Recession and the Pandemic involved in no way resembled a market economy. And I'll be more precise - oligarchic economy. When the market plays less role than political cronyism in favor of the elite, then you are in an oligarchic economy. That's the real issue here - the government and the economy have started to become synonymous.
AddanDeith | an hour ago
There is no such thing as an oligarchic economy. That does not exist nor is it a useful label.
"the government and the economy have started to become synonymous." There is a word for that: fascism. Specifically when private capital dominates the political system for its own benefit, while retaining capitalism as the underlying economic system. You just gotta declare some people undesirables, blame them for economic troubles and then push them out of airplanes/massacre/imprison them and its all right as rain.
I get that we all love capitalism here, but based off of historical patterns, this is just a natural inevitability.
strabosassistant | 31 minutes ago
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014292123002362
Oligarchy, underutilized capacity, and government policy
Christodoulos Stefanadis
Abstract
We examine an oligarchic economy where only elites can establish firms. In monopolistic competition when the size of the elite is sufficiently small, there is an absolute exclusive equilibrium where wages are driven to the reservation wage. Because of the possession of market power by firms, total equilibrium output is insufficient to warrant the employment of the entire labor force, leading to inadequate aggregate demand for labor and underutilized capacity. The economy inefficiently operates inside its production possibilities frontier. Then, the adoption of rather unorthodox left-wing fiscal and labor policies may boost capacity utilization and lead to a Pareto improvement.
GhostofBeowulf | 2 hours ago
But capitalism requires open and relatively free markets for competition. These moves are the opposite of capitalism. What economic/political system you call them is irrelevant, but that doesn't make them capitalism.
AddanDeith | 2 hours ago
"But capitalism requires open and relatively free markets for competition" in order to function in an idealistic manner.
"What economic/political system you call them is irrelevant, but that doesn't make them capitalism."
This is a straight rip from Merriam Webster. There is no widespread price control by the government and just because they intervene on mass market failure does not suddenly mean you have changed the foundational system that made it possible.
"Capitalism is an economic system where private individuals or businesses own the means of production (e.g., factories, land, tools). Resources, prices, and the distribution of goods are determined primarily by competition in a free market rather than by the government. Its core driving force is the motive to generate a profit."
So, you have limited intervention to prevent market failure, yet you haven't touched any of the defining hallmarks of the system and want to call it something else just because of that?
GhostofBeowulf | an hour ago
You are treating private ownership as the only defining feature of capitalism while minimizing the importance of other capitalist factors like market dynamics, competition and risk. These aren't just fancy concepts, they are the literal mechanisms that makes capitalism function.
Your own definition says that resources and prices are determined primarily by competition in a free market rather than by government. When the government repeatedly protects dominant firms from bankruptcy, subsidizes their losses, limits new competition, or gives them priviledged access to public money and information, outcomes are no longer being determined primarily by market competition, they are being politically allocated.
This is not "capitalism functioning imperfectly," failure and the possibility of losing invested capital are essential parts of market discipline that make the whole system work. If owners keep the profits when decisions succeed but transfer the losses to taxpayers when they fail, they are no longer accepting the risks that supposedly justify their profits and control.
Private ownership is not the defining feature. Mercantilist systems, oligarchies, and other political-based economies have included private businesses and profit seeking. What distinguishes capitalism is not merely that the business is privately owners, but that they must compete and can actually fail.
All of this without even mentioning bailouts, subsidies, monopoly priviledges, regulatory capture, tariffs or barriers to entry the government can implement.
Nobody is arguing that one isolated intervention instantly cancels out capitalism. I am arguing that when government-sanctioned protections for established capital becomes systematic, it is more accurate to describe it as crony capitalism, state-sponsored capitalism or oligarch-corporatism. Not a genuinely competitive capitalist market. Calling every system that has private ownership "capitalism" makes the term so broad it is meaningless.
EterneX_II | 53 minutes ago
They already stated to another commenter that the fusion of the control over the economy and governance is fascism. Crony capitalism is a form of fascism. You’re both in agreement. Please don’t lose the plot over pedantic details.
AddanDeith | 15 minutes ago
No offense, but you wrote paragraphs that don't really refute my belief that its still capitalism, which is *what the entire conversation revolves around*.
"when the government repeatedly protects dominant firms from bankruptcy, subsidizes their losses, limits new competition, or gives them priviledged access to public money and information, outcomes are no longer being determined primarily by market competition, they are being politically allocated."
You do understand that i am not disputing this? Corporate paternalism has existed, to varying degrees, for centuries.
We can argue over what its become all day, we can invent labels to make the system sound better but this is, at the end of the day, what it is in reality. Just because it strays from the ideal does not mean that it is entirely a separate system.
As another commenter highlighted, I have already specifically addressed what capitalism becomes when the foundations of private property are threatened in a capitalist society.
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/sep/17/greatinterviews1
"If, he intimated on one occasion, capitalism refuses to recognise that the National Socialists are the last bulwark of private property, if capital impedes their struggle, Germany may be compelled to throw herself into the enticing arms of the siren Soviet Russia. But he is determined not to permit Bolshevism to take root in Germany.""
Edit: "Calling every system that has private ownership "capitalism" makes the term so broad it is meaningless." I urge you to reread my comments and find where i implied anywhere that the other systems you mentioned were capitalist, just because they had a degree of private ownership over property.
Regular-Sorbet9513 | 2 hours ago
Part of a transition to something more equality-centric would require a mind shift from viewing our current system as a capitalistic democracy to what it has become - an oligarchy.
DragonSnooz | 2 hours ago
It's so true.
We allow the Oligarchs to buy companies that could be their competitor, yet many U.S. citizens assume the country is capitalist. While the oligarchs get more support from politicians than citizens ever could.
artbystorms | 2 hours ago
I've always thought that capitalism and democracy are incompatible systems so the idea of a 'capitalistic democracy' is an oxymoron.
One system gives primacy to capital owners, and within corporate structure there is a strict hierarchy with workers on the bottom who have no say in how the company is run.
The other system gives all citizens an equal say in how the country is run.
Unions are an imperfect attempt to apply more democratic principles to the strict dictatorship that is most companies, allowing workers to vote and have a say in their labor.
stellae-fons | 2 hours ago
I'm a socialist and a capitalist. I don't think they're necessary mutually exclusive. Economic activity should be divided up by category, with some of it having more regulation than others. When the free market works, it works very well. What we have right now isn't a free market in any sense.
artbystorms | 2 hours ago
At the best, I think the free market needs to be eliminated for any marketplace where consumers don't really have true choice, or would die if they went without.
Healthcare, Energy, Housing should not be at the whims are market forces. They should be state owned. Land appreciates, but housing should be accessible first and an investment commodity second.
Christopher_Ramirez_ | 2 hours ago
"Crony oligarchy" is just the economic system capitalists create for themselves once allowed to seize control of the state. Capitalists love this status quo; they created it and will fight to continue it.
"They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob." -FDR
New-Border8172 | an hour ago
This is just no true Scotsman fallacy. You have a magical idea of capitalism, and just saying what we have in reality isn't it.
3rdPoliceman | 2 hours ago
The oligarchs love it, actually
TheMauveHand | 51 minutes ago
There have been violent uprisings since there has been civilization, it's completely unfounded to try a connect some arbitrary proportion of them to the emergence of any particular economic system. Not the least because capitalism is a political development, not an economic one, and it was achieved because of political goals, namely liberalism.
fx2600 | 2 hours ago
Did peasants have faith in feudalism for 200 years? If there's an 'uprising', why do you assume you're political tribe would come out on top?
artbystorms | 2 hours ago
Yes. For most of the middle to late Medieval era, through their religious faith, they understood fuedalism to be the natural state of the world and their lives as serfs to be decided by God, so to go against your station was to question God and the church. Peasants back then had no concept of rights or freedoms as we know them today because they literally had no real world examples of it.
One of the big catalysts actually was after the Black Death, there was a shortage of labor, so peasants started getting more pay, larger farms, etc but the lords at the time didn't like that, so kingdoms passed laws suppressing wages and what serfs could own or even wear.
fx2600 | 2 hours ago
Yeah, so it didn't have support, they just didn't have a choice.
artbystorms | 2 hours ago
Did you just totally ignore the part where I said to go against feudalism was seen as defying God? That would be unheard of in those times.
You can pretend that people 1000 years ago were secret freedom loving libertarians all you want and that they were being forced into serfdom against their will, but in reality most peasants never bothered to question their station or lives at all. Hell, most of them weren't even literate until the late Middle ages saw an increase in literacy (which led to a series of Renaissances)
fx2600 | 2 hours ago
I didn't ignore anything. You made a comparison that doesn't hold up. Now you're just explaining why the comparison doesn't hold up
artbystorms | an hour ago
The fuck are you on? you literally questioned if peasants had faith in fuedalism prior to the late middle ages, I said by in large they did. You're literally just saying 'no you're wrong' without providing a counterfactual.
fx2600 | an hour ago
They didn't have faith in fudualism, they accepted their lives because the state had a monopoly on violence and they didn't have any way to voice their opinion. It's not at all comparable to the modern era.
artbystorms | an hour ago
Oh wow, I didn't know you were a medieval history scholar. Tell me more.
fx2600 | an hour ago
You don't need to be a medieval scholar to understand that basic fact.
SonofHondoBelmondo | 2 hours ago
I don't think many people are even talking about the same thing when they talk about "capitalism" (or "socialism", or many other political isms for that matter). Furthermore, I don't think we have a way to communicate our way to an agreement on it. So not only do we not understand what the person we're arguing with is talking about, we can't get ourselves to a point where we do understand what they're talking about, and vice versa.
Frostymagnum | an hour ago
Capitalism only works with a well funded and maintained public sector and government. We've spent decades dismantling the government and public sector. Businesses and business men will absolutely take every cent they can. We no longer force them to look after people so the people no longer trust the system
Darkdragoon324 | 33 minutes ago
That’s what happens when you put the absolute worst capitalists you can find in charge of a society, with no guardrails or accountability.
It doesn’t stay a functioning society for long.
Karnaeq | 2 hours ago
It seems cyclical, driven by the times you live in. Disillusionment with Capitalism goes back at to the 19h century, i.e., as soon as it was born. Capitalism has been good at adapting to the crises/critiques going all the way back to the list of demands in Marx/Engel’s Communist Manifesto. I am optimistic that the younger generation will drive Capitalism to adapt again.
NavyDean | 2 hours ago
40% of the American labour force is now in the gig economy getting paid less than minimum wage.
A minimum wage that hasn't moved since 2009.
A minimum wage that is now worth 37% less than it was in worth 2009, in 2026 dollars due to inflation.
A wage that can't even pay for room and board.
Yeah, no kidding Americans don't believe in capitalism anymore.
Rumpus-Time-Is-Over | an hour ago
Please source your claims in your first sentence.
Commercial_Watch2972 | 43 minutes ago
Source: am alive
TheBigGees | an hour ago
None of these claims are factually true in the context that you've presented them, lol.
Comfortable_Ring_439 | 2 hours ago
I wish some could publicly analyse the methodology of the data collection. It's just not something I'm knowledgeable about and since this is CNN their bias raises my guard.
Anyway, I would say that if "late stage capitalism " is real, I think we're really in the end of the end of it, to the extent that the US is well through its transition into a plutocratic corporate oligarchy that is a kind of "financial communism" of the private state.
I don't think countries and social systems stay the same, I think they're in constant evolution because they age and grow/change/die with the individuals that inhabit them. That is to say : I don't think there can ever be a perfect society because perfect implies a fixed arrangement without need to evolve or adapt with changing circumstances.
I say this because I know the reaction to the decay of capitalist society leads to communism/national socialism and other utopian thinking. Utopian thinking is dangerously seductive and will manipulate us into "throwing the baby out with the bath water" as demagoguery sweeps away desperate people starved of hope.
Just my 0.02
PcarDriver | 2 hours ago
Who answers the phone to take piolls anymore? If I don’t know the number there is no way I’m answering. So, many polls likely don’t give a very accurate picture one way or the other.
No_Aesthetic | 2 hours ago
All of this could be solved with one pretty easy move: end the filibuster and allow meaningful legislation to be passed without 60+ votes in the Senate.
As it stands today, the filibuster mostly protects Republicans from the negative outcomes of their expressed policy goals (e.g. ending Obamacare) and it prevents both parties from passing any legislation they have in mind that voters might actually like but which the other party may not be sold on.
We haven't had a very functional democracy for a very long time because of the filibuster allowing bad actors to block the opposing party from getting nearly anything done short extraordinary circumstances like the post-9/11 environment or the immediate aftermath of the Great Recession.
The discontent with capitalism may not even be about capitalism itself but rather the ineffectiveness of good policy to even cross the finish line since there is little to no benefit of bipartisanship in all but the most extreme of cases, ironically.
We get eternal budget increases to the defense industry and nearly nothing besides for the average person.
If the parties had to deal with the consequences (potential, real or electoral) of their most extreme policy ideas, they may find some virtue in working together again instead of endless grandstanding over this issue and that issue while nothing gets done at all.
I'd rather risk both parties shoot their respective shots with terrible legislation than be stuck in an endless escalation of hostilities and extremism until and unless something truly horrific happens that does grave harm to not just all of us but the very ideas that found and sustain great nations.
sicurri | 2 hours ago
Our economy became like this because people didn't care and got greedy, especially the "Law-makers"
Allowing faux competition when it's actually a monopoly. Like the Internet Service Providers are a monopoly. Sure there's different ISPs out there, but like the 5 mob families of New York, they've basically split the country up into separate pieces where one or two of them reign supreme. As far as I'm concerned, fake competition is not competition...
Awkward-Ambassador52 | 2 hours ago
People without capital can't play capitalism. People with capital make money from.their money and people without capital survive by servicing those with capital. Now that people get the game they want to start the race on equal footing.
Gene020 | 2 hours ago
In Northern Europe something called welfare capitalism is practiced and it works well. It involves a safety net and highly progressive taxation. The USA had high progressive taxes during and after WWII. This has been in decline due to GOP attacks. Reagan led the effort which has continued to this day. Call it divide and conquer. The GOP works against the USA public being united and is supports I've got mine, no new taxes , and f,,,, you.
ThePensiveE | an hour ago
That's because it's become a soulless system run by a few being used by those few to consolidate more power and wealth at the expense of not only humanity but the planet itself.
If it's not regulated and the consolidation stopped, capitalism will become the enemy of the lower class and what's left of the middle class by that point.
nova8808 | 59 minutes ago
Capitalism is devolving into corporate fascism/oligarchy.
Healthy capitalism has a middle class, a ladder for hard working and skilled people to succeed. But it is disappearing fast and becoming two classes 1) the wealthy who make more passively in the stock market than people working 60 hours a week. 2) working poor, permanent debt class, serfs. a modern advanced form of slavery.
LeatherRebel5150 | 23 minutes ago
The word is feudalism
funglegunk | 15 minutes ago
Capitalism and democracy are ultimately incompatible. And when capitalists have the same weight and power as nation states, they will bend markets, laws and elections to their will. And wahey, their incentives are diametrically opposed to the needs of the average person.
Famous_Owl_840 | 12 minutes ago
We’ve not even had a veneer of capitalism in I don’t know how long.
I personally feel competition and capitalism is wonderful. What we have is regulatory capture, nepotism, too big to fail, and artificial barriers created by government & monopolies.
I’m done with republicans. I’m done with conservatism. They are losers and there is nothing to conserve. Like - we should fight to conserve only fans, car companies dependent on government bailouts, or a defense industry intent on killing children?
Not that democrats are better. They are insane and don’t care about labor either. The capital D democrats want the same thing as the republicans. Endless bailouts, pork, and unconditional money for israel.
There is no path forward. Everything is getting worse.
redsreadit | 12 minutes ago
We’re at the end stage of capitalism. The only way out is through taxes. The wealth must be distributed or the system doesn’t work. This is common sense. Republicanism is destroying this country!
yrotsihfoedisgnorw | 8 minutes ago
It's unfortunate that we see things like this and then have the same old conversation where (democratic) socialism and communism get thrown around in both favorable and unfavorable ways. We can have whatever system we want. What if we had capitalism but with an eye towards the social side of things? Rather than maximize profits the goal is to maximize revenues that net real profit after paying more to employees. That's one of an infinite potential ideas. It feels like we are in some crazy and even bad place right now but it could be viewed as a starting point. There's more than enough money out there. We don't have to live like this and we don't necessarily have to tear it all down.
rainywanderingclouds | 2 hours ago
people just toss around the word capitalism without knowing anything
the usa hasn't been capitalists since the 1800's, from 1900 onward it's mostly been a mixed economy.
but some problems are creeping in now where the wealth class is being heavily socialized at the expense of everyone else
GhostofBeowulf | 2 hours ago
Then there has never been a true capitalist or socialist or communist country, ever. Every economic system is mixed. Even during the gilded age you are talking about, the government still subsidized railroads, enacted tariffs, had oversight over banking regulations since 1863 currency act, provided a post office, provided a military, regulated trade via the interstate commerce act and the Sherman Act.
This is a silly argument.
UnknownBreadd | 2 hours ago
No true scotsman fallacy
GhostofBeowulf | 2 hours ago
Yup, by their argument there has never been a true capitalist country since the US during that time still provided courts and the military.
UnknownBreadd | 2 hours ago
Anarcho-capitalism/Austrian economics, and Classical-Liberalism/Modern-Libertarianism are as unrealistic idealist/utopian BS as Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism. They’re all different sides of the same coin.
All we have is democracy. And we need democratic innovations (like those being developed across the world with citizen’s assemblies, range voting, and constitutional reforms) to develop democracy beyond electoral liberal democracy in order to solve “Hayek’s knowledge problem” beyond just price/market mechanisms.
Prices solve aspects of the knowledge problem, but the information they are determined/affected by is limited and not reflective of what should or shouldn’t constitute the path of least financial resistance for a many great deal of things.
That’s why deliberative democracy needs to be centre stage. The only way we actually solve problems is to get enough truly representative (non-elected) people to be given the right environment, resources (expert and citizen input alike), and enough time to ‘compute’ legislation to make decisions with enough legitimate procedural fairness, wisdom, and consideration - so that we can build genuinely functional, prosperous, and unifying societies.
10000Lols | an hour ago
Lol
feral401k9 | 2 hours ago
Capitalism doesn't really mean anything. The reality is both parties are becoming more violent and authoritarian, and free markets have no place in such a society.
stellae-fons | 2 hours ago
If we want to be really pedantic and play devil's advocate, we can even acknowledge that what's happening now isn't actually capitalism. It's oligarchal cronyism. A system where people own nothing and have no choices.
TheBigGees | an hour ago
Median household wealth is ~$200k, yet people have no choices in one of the most economically free countries on the planet?
Y'all need to get off the internet.
cybercuzco | an hour ago
Remember kids socialism provides healthcare for everyone, universal childcare, and makes billionaires unable to afford a yacht that has another yacht inside it.
unaskthequestion | 2 hours ago
The corruption caused by the excessive concentration of wealth eventually effects everyone except the 0.01%.
The economy stops working for the people and they lose confidence in whatever the system is.
I'm a liberal, and I don't love the democratic party, but it is thick headed that the leadership party doesn't seem to acknowledge that it's not working for us.
TheBigGees | an hour ago
The largest voting bloc in the country is "didn't vote". People have the power in the United States, they just actually have to exercise it.
Parties don't cater to people who don't advocate for their interests. Check in with many liberal or conservative advocates and you'll quickly find that vanishingly few have even sent an email to their representative.
TheMauveHand | 48 minutes ago
Redditors are absolutely convinced violent revolution is literally imminent when the average voter is so apathetic they can barely muster up the political motivation to spend an hour every four years ticking a box.
unaskthequestion | 45 minutes ago
Like I said, there are many factors to how we got here. If you check in with many of those people who didn't vote, you'd find that the majority say they don't think their vote will change anything. Where did that come from? I'd say the fact that money is an out sized influence in our politics and continues to grow. It also comes from the constant stream of misinformation and disinformation bombarding Americans. Where did that come from? Money.
I don't think most politicians care much at all about what they hear from their constituents. Maybe if they are in a competitive district or state, but there are not many of those left. The number of 'safe' seats is astounding and shows no sign of change.
So yes there are quite a few factors, but until we can address the problem of money corrupting our politics, I don't see a way out
PianoPatient8168 | an hour ago
An economic system…any system…has to actually work for people. It’s beyond obvious that our form of capitalism is massively rigged for the people at the very top.
It’s been obvious for a while…I’ll give Trump credit…he is really transparent…just not in the way he says he is…He is so open with blatant corruption that it can’t be denied.
Why participate in the stock market when insider trading is rampant and you’re not on the inside? Why start a business when it’s pay to play and you don’t have the access or money to pay off the right people?
Trump says everything is a scam…well he made sure of it!
VanCityPhotoNewbie | an hour ago
Capitalism doesn't work when you allow so many mergers that there is no competition anymore.
So maximizing the profits to any extent when you have no competition is literally corporate oligarchy. When you completely own an entire industry and the consumer must bow to your pricing because no one else can create what you have.
They did it with technology, food and now they are starting to do it with land. Eventually the end game of Capitalism is feudalism where one entity owns everything.
GurProfessional9534 | an hour ago
Well yeah, the current president is saying the government should obtain shares of companies like Intel, Spirit Airlines, etc. Taken to its limit, that is Communist policy. I see a lot of jaw flapping about capitalism, but I don’t think a lot of voters actually think about what capitalism or how much proposed policies disagree with it. I think most voters just think “Capitalism” stands for a generic American “fuck-yeah” slogan, or they think it means having the ability to buy something in a store. It’s not that, of course, and the same people defending capitalism with everything they have got will be the first to shit on what it actually is, like Wall Street bankers buying up shares, foreign investors buying up their local real estate and jacking up the prices, gas prices rising whenever we start a war, or their Lay’s potato chip bag getting shrinkflated so that the bottom line can increase marginally to please shareholders.
The same people will often tell you they don’t even invest in the stock market and would rather just stick their money in a mattress. These people are not capitalists, even if they think they are.
Wabakin | 2 hours ago
I just don't get why people want to go the extreme, captialism works, it just needs a little more government oversight, break up huge companies, ensuring working benefits and more taxation. People like to mention Scandinavia as socialism even though theyre just captialist with great benefits. America actually had almost 50% taxes on top corps before Reagan took over and decided only gdp mattered(great choice btw). We have so many ways of fixing this that is not socialism lmao.
ICLazeru | 2 hours ago
I would like to separate the term capitalism from the free market.
A free, fair, and competitive market is an awesome thing.
But that's not always what we see happening. The term capitalism does fit pretty well when we continuously see deferment to capital, particularly the owners of capital, even at the expense of everything else.
When capital can move freely and work to enrich its owner from any corner of the world, but labor cannot, you're going to have an imbalance.
utahh1ker | an hour ago
Yeah late stage capitalism is pretty awful. When every aspect of your life is nickel and dimed into oblivion to the benefit of the shareholders, things start to suck.
I think we're all beginning to see a future where everything is owned by 10 companies and the concept of competition that makes capitalism great will be entirely absent.
Historical-Tough6455 | an hour ago
They're not losing faith in capitalism, they're just learning what capitalism is, and that's control by those how control the most capital
The mystery is why they ever expected capitalism to address the needs of society
HubbaWubba69420 | 2 hours ago
I think we definitely have issues we need to fix in America, but I don’t believe in socialism and I will never vote for it. I honestly can’t believe this is gaining traction in the US. The idea of giving the government more power is astounding to me. Seems like everything the government touches turns to sh@t.
Zetesofos | an hour ago
How do you feel about workers having more democracy and democratic control over their places of employment? Greater control of where the profits and costs are assigned where they work?
HubbaWubba69420 | 44 minutes ago
What’s stopping anyone from starting their own business?
TheMauveHand | 42 minutes ago
Terrible idea that doesn't work, as evidenced by the fact that it has to be forced into existence by ideology.