Yo, please add alt text to this or future posts (since this one is a bit older). See rule 0.5 in the sidebar
srry
It’s OK, I probably should reword these messages. They are just meant as a reminder and not aggressive in any way >w<
nooo, I just wanted to apologise just in case ^^
Why is this still on the local/active timeline?
Gestures at the 158 comments.
idkk
“Capitalism is broken but we can fix it”
The proposed fix: more deregulation, less tax for the rich, removal of “wokeness” from society altogether.
Why are there so many liberals in lefty memes. And why don’t any of them know what socialism is.
Browsing all, mostly Americans
“I’m on the left! That makes me a leftist!”
Tbf it does actually make them a lefty in American terminology.
You’d have to look at community info to find out it’s meant to be explicitly socialist.
To be fair, most leftists also don’t know what socialism is lmao
I have been kicked out of things for bigotry for suggesting that reading theory was a thing people should do.
How the hell do you have 4k comments in 2 months
Major surgery and running out of books. Not talking to people on public transit.
Reminder to the liberals here: If you bash actural leftists for being leftists you are in fact a right winger, furthermore if you are not an actural leftist you are a centrist at best.
Capitalism is working so good that capitalists are the most consistently class conscious group. They are aware which class they belong to and side with it.
It feels more like people gravitate towards the “winning” team because they have the lion’s share of resources and commensurate status.
Billionaires are broadly class conscious, but they routinely feud and back stab one another in pursuit of primacy. Organizations have their own internal politics. People are regularly promoted and ousted as economic conditions shift and ideology drifts. Just ask any status climbing POC who had the ladder kicked out from under them in the name of DEI. Or any “Big Balls” DOGE teen who finds himself the de facto executive of a multi-billion dollar USAID program.
I would say the starkest shifts in Trumpian politics are the ways in which he’s redefining winners and losers in the domestic economy. Finance is out. Silicon Valley is in. Not all plutocrats are created equal.
We’re not voting our way out of this I know that much.
Capitalist democracy is not real democracy and you know it! Stop pretending this system works!
If greed doesn’t get fixed first, it doesn’t matter what system is used.
“capitalism” has become such an over-used washed-down term that barely anybody knows what’s meant by it. please speak in clearer terms to be more clearly understood.
Both are dumb as fuck. Hint: if you have only some wood and no instruments to work on it save a saw and a hammer, you are not going to make a car with internal combustion engine
Now watch the history of dumb fucks trying to make a “good” society with people who have no idea why exploiting others is not good
Hint: if you have only some wood and no instruments to work on it save a saw and a hammer, you are not going to make a car with internal combustion engine
As a wood scientist, I can confirm that wood is generally a poor material for engine block manufacture.
Have you even tried ??
I’m trying and failing to find it. But awhile back I did see a trolling video one of the YouTube woodworkers created. I can’t recall the exact details, but they built a fireplace, a stove, or similar fire containing device. Except, they built it out of wood. Unfortunately, the concept seems unsearchable, as there’s no way to not get the search engines to interpret “fireplace made of wood” as “wood burning fireplace.”
They built this thing and set a fire inside it. And it went…well, about as well as one would expect.
ah, gotta find it !
If you’re going by capitalist purism like Milton Friedman we’re nothing even close to that.
Also: still evil, antidemocratic. Literally not compatible with democracy.
how is a completely free market incompatible with democracy?
- Capitalist markets cannot be free
- Snowball effect
- Read a book
- They can be more or less free. You aim for more and don’t achieve perfect freedom but it can be close.
- This is why bodies like the FTC are supposed to exist.
- Fuck you
- Sure but they’re all antitherical to freedom
- So its completely free except for all tge limits.
- No.
- If they’re all in different positions then they aren’t all antithetical.
- Free and fragmented. When you let things get too consolidated and centralized they stop being free.
But the point of capitalism, a system where capital (ownership) is valued is centralizing. So if you let it do the entire central point of the thing it’s anti-democratic
You can’t create strong values and pervasive systemic imperatives to behave a certain way and then jyst arbitrarily switch on a dime. Thats not how human behavior or physics or literally anything besides fuvking magic works. That system will always crush the rules made to bind it, thats its nature, thats how it was designed and what i have been told its greatest virtue is. Expecting you can make it behave differently without a power differential so spectacular that this system cannot be a substantial factor in anything (like, a step or two on the kardashev scale) is clown shit, and nobody who thinks like that should be considered competent to operate heavy machinery (like cars) or consent to sex.
The problem is, socialism looks great by reading the notes on the side of the tin, but there’s not a lot of successful installations that maintain individual freedom.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/socialist-countries
If you’re going to do it, it’s going to need to be done in a way that’s never been done before or you’re just going to end up another country listed as “former”
I think the way forward is to combine socialism and capitalism. The latter is an optimization layer that is ideal for fostering the personality of individuals, but royally sucks at promoting their everyday wellbeing. Socialism can be terrific for ensuring survival and fairness, but is too rigid to allow people to develop their humanity.
I consider socialism to be a framework and structure of a economic house, while capitalism is the means to furnish it. To do this, we need to make money into something that doesn’t buy necessities - society provides all of them - but rather, you use money to buy lifestyle upgrades. That can be fancier food, bigger cars, a nicer house, lots of books, going to the bar, hiring pleasant company, and so forth.
Like all optimization, capitalism will become detrimental if taken too far, so there would be a need for heavy regulations and strict lines to ensure that it sticks to its lane. To that end, I propose that job classes should be assigned to a fixed income rank. This means that a CEO is, perhaps, no more than 2x the income of a waitress. That sort of structural design can help keep capitalism from becoming malignant, since strong and simple rules would make it easier to diagnose corruption, such as wage theft.
As it is, the capitalism of our day is too random for individuals to grasp, while corporations can have dedicated staff to getting the most out of it, often at the expense of individuals. That stacks the deck, especially as the game goes on. If ordinary members of society knew their rights without needing extensive research, it would make it easier for them to call out bad actors and to enforce the rules.
No, actually its not doing what it’s supposed to he doing, and yes, it can be fixed with laws and taxes, loads of taxes.
For all the moaning about capitalism is evil, capitalism is the most efficient system to generate wealth. Used properly it can give wealth to everyone through taxes and fun a social network that can take care of free healthcare, free education, even universal income.
But it’s easier to just say that communism is awesome because you read about it and China is amazing and can do no wrong ever
calling china communist is like calling the nazis socialist, both are/were fascist regimes that were/are communist/socialist in name only
I suppose that’s fair enough but by that metric there hasn’t been any communist country ever.
In any case, capitalism is fine (more likely the best option) as long as there are good laws in place to limit assholes. Same goes for all economic systems, without the right laws to limit cheaters, everything will be abused.
Put capitalism in place with Hard limits. No personal networth over 10 million, after that everything goes to taxes. No inheritance of buildings. No company larger than 1 billion networth, or more than 1000 employees.
Like that (and various other rules) you’ll get a free system where everyone can freely trade, you get the best parts of capitalism and a huge tax income you can then use for a giant socialist system where you can do free healthcare, free education, universal income, etc…
So… no capitalism immediately means communism to you?
Way to tell us how little you know of economic systems without just saying, “hey I’m also an idiot with an opinion!”
Did I say that?
I read my comment and I didn’t say that at all.
I did mention communism because left subs on Lemmy usually are very “capitalism is evil and can’t be fixed but communism is awesome and has zero faults!!”
You projecting your ignorance of economics doesn’t absolve you of making the implication yourself. If you don’t think the only alternative to capitalism is communism, then say that. Don’t preemptively strawman everyone unless you want to have an unproductive conversation.
So you’re in favor of owning the means of production? And profit from others work?
I’m in favor of a system where nobody gets to be extremely richer or poorer than everyone else.
I’m in favor of a system where the richest person can’t get beyond -just a random out of my butt number that sounds reasonable - 10 million in networth. Any income beyond that gets taxes 100%. Below that, the poorest pay no tax, they get pay. Then the higher you go, the higher income taxes get until you hit the hard limit
With a system like that you get an enormous tax income which you can then use for a socialist system that gives free healthcare (including mental, dental, everything), free education, free housing, even universal income
The poorest don’t pay taxes, they receive money. If you can work, you work what you can and if you can’t work, then you don’t.
I want a system where companies cannot grow beyond certain limits either. Same deal, taxes get higher and higher until after a net worth of say, 1 billion, taxes to go 100%. No company can have more than 1000 employees so that if one breaks, it woi kill your economy.
I don’t think my idea is that far off from your ideas
I just want capitalism at the base of it because at its core, capitalism is just free trade however anyone wants it. it’s freedom but it’s also by far the best and most efficient system to generate wealth. So limited correctly, I think capitalism in that way could be awesome and contrary to, say, communism, this idea is actually that you can implement without wrecking havoc with the world
As I see things capitalism is the right to own the means of production, the right to exploit others work, and by that I mean your profit comes from other people work, not yours, and that is the main problem in my understanding
Yet when communism fucked up, that was just because of western interference.
Nah, westen interference wasn’t necessary to bring down communism, all those dictatorships did that quite effectively by themselves
China
