cm0002Capitalism in theory vs capitalism in practice
danc4498You invented technology that makes my company more efficient. After buying your company and laying off 20% of my workforce, we have increased our profits by 100%. Bonuses for all ~^executives^~
Have you ever listened to a child invent some piece of mythology and try to pass it off as fact? Maybe it’s just my kids, but they like to make stuff up to explain stuff they don’t understand. Like one time my kid said that the postal worker lives at the post office, and that all the mail in the whole country arrives at her house where she sorts it and then delivers it to everyone like Santa Claus. There’s a series of pneumatic tubes going every which way, and a fleet of postal trucks to save time on refueling. There was a whole team supporting her as she drove across the country, making deliveries. She ate flavored stamps and slept in an envelope-shaped bed.
My point is, nobody told her that’s what happens. She understood some of the concept and filled in the rest with what she thought might be true, what she thought should be true, what she hoped was true.
Nobody who understands capitalism has ever thought that capitalism creates fair competition or encourages innovation. People who say it does are either lying or they are talking about how they think it should work, ideally. The mythology of capitalism is repeated and shared and taught like gospel, and with the same level of critical thinking.
I heard a comedian and an atheist point out that, if all the science books were destroyed and all the scientific knowledge lost, eventually humans would rediscover every truth. If every holy text were destroyed, and all religious theology lost, those ideas and stories would be gone forever.
Were society to collapse, and civilization had to start anew with no concept of economics, you can be damn sure capitalism would make an appearance, only it wouldn’t be called capitalism.
Well know I must know more about Postal World. Do they grow the stamps that they eat? Aren’t all beds enveloped shaped, or are the sheets folded a certain way to imply an envelope.
Also, to your point about capitalism. Monkeys trade bananas for sex.
I remember that the post office had a feud with the trash pickup crew. That’s why neither didn’t do both jobs, but all the mail that went directly into the recycling bin would be returned to her to be delivered to someone else.
Also, that’s not capitalism. That’s just trade. Capitalism would be if one big monkey kept all the bananas for himself and used his control over the hoard to force the prostitute monkeys to give him a portion of each of the bananas they earned from having sex.
Your kid might be ChatGPT, you should get her tested
I might get a bit of hate for this, but fuck it. Capitalism isn't evil, just flawed enough that the evil can take advantage of it. Socialism makes sure that people have what they need, very good. Capitalism lets people get what they want. I propose smashing those 2 together with rather heavy regulations to prevent exploitation. This has kind of been done, but to a rather light extent. I'm not an economist, I'm just a guy. Don't listen to me. Eh, like 3 people will see this. How's your day going?
You might be interested in UBI
James R KirkI said this elsewhere too, but the bottom panel depicts something other than capitalism, since capitalism definitionally requires a competitive market.
Companies that are ostensibly in competition but not fighting each other too hard, is just another way of saying they are not in competition. It’s not capitalism.
The competition exists, but it's basically just a few megacorporations in each industry. They're not fighting each other too hard.
That’s because the US hasn’t enforced antitrust law for a few decades. This wasn’t supposed to be allowed to happen.
There’s a whole other group out there who argues that doing anything to stop the bottom panel is communism, and communism is bad and terrible (according to people who have never read anything about it except Ayn Rand). You’ll have to fight with them over what constitutes “real capitalism”.
I’ll be over here noting the whole notion of profits going predominantly to the owner of capital is flawed to begin with.
I think it’s silly to get caught up in definitions too. Cory Doctorow calls the bottom panel “techno feudalism” and I think that’s pretty good.
If I understand the communist/Marxist take on this, retaining any form of capitalism just allows the reproduction of these circumstances down the line. You stop it in the short term with laws, but if you retain the power of capital then those people just buy elections, buy politicians, etc, and we’re back to this scenario again.
I’m not sure I agree with everything involved with communism, but I do agree with their take on this problem. We’re going through it right now in the US. We fought, literally shed blood, for the rights we have and the regulations that protect us, and then money comes in and buys a shit government to take it all away.
If I understand the communist/Marxist take on this, retaining any form of capitalism just allows the reproduction of these circumstances down the line.
It’s not even really theoretical. Lenin famously established the New Economic Policy (NEP) which basically allowed capitalism for farmers. As a result some farmers became quite wealthy and this gave them economic power over the communist party officials that were ostensibly overseeing them (Stalin during a tour in the mid-'20s often found his officials living in the houses of “kulaks”). Stalin of course solved this problem by exterminating the entire class of wealthy peasants - and a whole lot of other people, too, not to mention almost all of the nation’s livestock.
Stalin was still a capitalist. What he did was eliminate the competition in a particular violent way.
Stalin was a despot above all else. His particular brand of psychopathy long predates capitalism.
You're probably right. I don't know shit.
It’s ok, I don’t either really lol I certainly don’t have any real answers for where we go that’s for sure.
Better to know you don’t know than to run around thinking you know everything, so it’s cool lol
In my experience, and if history has anything to say, if either system is half assed, exploitation is waiting on the other side.
Also just a dude, open to be corrected
I would say Sweden is a social-capitalist society
I like how you say that. It made me deduce a thought of how everything we need should be socialized to some extent (or at least have superbly heavily regulated mandated processes and stuff), and the stuff we want can be provided through a “free market” (not to say the free market shouldnt be regulated, but it wouldnt need to be as strict as stuff/services that we need).
Healthcare & transportation being the most important things I can think of where the government should keep 100% of the controls.
Since Capitalism is just a method to distribute goods and services, it can’t be good or evil. There is no intent. The problems arises when humans use capitalism. A natural process occurs that creates oligarchs. So most people apply the evil label to it. It is not meant to be taken literally.
Capitalism is just another word for hoarding. The fact that it allows to have what you need is a side affect that capitalist would rather fix; it’s a leak.
Easy laws that could stop this bullshit:
A company can’t own other companies.
A company cannot have more than 2500 employees.
A company cannot employ contractors, outside or temporary workers numbering more than 10% of it’s total work force.
No mega corporations, no buying out competition, no loopholes to employment standards.
Might need some additional consideration, though. We can cap the size of companies, but does that address consortiums or franchise models?
The contractors section might also need more clarification. I get the concept, but I think we might need to specify who counts as a contracted worker in this scenario. An office of 10 employees might not need full-time housekeepers on their payroll, but would they be in violation if they contracted out a couple of cleaners who also service other businesses in the area to tidy up once per week? Or if I’m a solo game developer, or even a team of 5, am I in violation if I contract someone to compose the soundtrack?
My main office has 8 employees. We clean our own place. If you need a cleaner, hire one. If you’re not big enough to support that, clean it yourself. Maybe you need phones answered, hire someone that can clean when they’re not on the phone.
If you needed to have a composer, they become part of your team, or you buy music from them. The composer wouldn’t be a contractor from a company, but rather somene who produces their own art and can sell it as they see fit, or they work on the payroll for the project. This not only gives more power to creators, but cuts out every leech middleman driving up prices and lowering average wages. Mass communication through the internet has killed the necessity for giant advertising firms to get your name out there.
For franchises, I would argue anyone running a McDonalds works for McDonalds. Hit that cap of 2500, and suddenly there’s room for competition and innovation, instead of a sea of the same trash everywhere you go.
We DO have very explicit laws against it, they have just sat unenforced since the 80’s (except for a few brief years in the 2020s).
I don’t want to defend capitalism, but the bottom panel depicts activity that is technically very illegal in the US (but antritrust laws have not been enforced by the FTC since the 1980s, barring a few short years in 2020s under Lina Khan).
Capitalism definitionally requires competition, without it you have… something even worse.
Endymion_MallornLaws that are only enforced by fines are legal for a price.
And those prices are currently being adjusted downward…
I believe it was Wells Fargo that was caught creating fake accounts under real customers names (why, I can’t remember) and they were fined something on the order of millions for it.
Mango Mussolini comes in and drops it to hundreds of thousands…
Sounds like he wants more favorable mortgage rates.
Cost of doing business, baby.
FizzThis is a failure of government to block these kinds of acquisitions. Google shouldn’t be allowed to buy so many companies.
The solution to not being able to buy everything you want was to buy politicians so then you can buy everything!
Capitalism really does breed innovation! Woo!
/Wrist.
True, but like the one ring trying to get back to sauron, all of capitalism’s will and malice bends towards monopoly.
And thats fine. As things develop we would expect mature companies to trend towards monopoly. Its up to the government to decide where to draw the line.
How do you prevent someone from Reagan coming and deciding monopolies are cool, and taking us back to this hellscape?
You can’t. Unfortunately democracies are run by the people. But think about the alternatives. At least democracy has a choice to not vote for him or vote him out in other systems that option may not be available.
America isnt fucked because of capitalism. I believe its fucked because of the American people. I believe their government does reflect their views in the way it was designed. I’d say the only way America could stop a person like Regan getting in is to convince people that those ideas are bad and to not vote for anyone like that. Easier said than done but not impossible.
Other government systems that allow smaller parties are in my opinion far better because they can reflect more views at a single time and force major parities to address popular issues. Other capitalist countries are not like America and while life isnt perfect and there is still inequality they still enjoy a decent quality of life and a fair society to operate in.
I think capitalism has done a number on the american people, and that’s why they’re in the state they’re in. Poorly funded education plus dubious news sources (eg: fox news) is a bad combination.
I think its the fault of bad leadership and a culture that values individualism and “wild west” kind of isolation. Its also tough because America is huge its no wonder people in Texas dont care about people in new York, they’re a world away. Its sad, I feel for the people in America right now. I’m not sure how theyre going to get past this but i think they can. Its going to take a ton of change from the government and the people.
Fox News and some other outlets like it are pure propaganda. I don’t have an answer to it, but it’s very frustrating that we’re apparently so defenseless and helpless against something that’s intent on destroying democracy. We have no active defenses.
That’s not unique to capitalism. That’s just what living in a society made up of humans is like. Incompetence and malice (whichever applies) will exist for as long as there are people.
This isnt a function of capitalism. It is a function of concentrated power.
Capitalism concentrates power, so I don’t follow your point
Concentrating power is not exclusive to capitalism, and is more natural than not. In order to improve outcomes relative to capitalism, you must make a system which is geopolitically competitive with capitalist states while simultaneously actively avoiding concentrations of power. Saying capitalism is the problem is problematic because it does not account for this. If we limit our scope to saying capitalism is the problem, then we allow ourselves to advocate for systems which not only perpetuate the problem of power concentration, but worsen it.
Even the top image sucks.
SkunkWorkzAlso: I just bribed politicians who will let more uneducated immigrants in so I can exploit their labor and pay them pennies on the dollar compared to your local laborers. And I started a culture war so that anyone who raises concern to the immigration and how it suppresses wages will be silenced and called a racist by the left even though it undermines their own cause.
And I started a culture war so that anyone who raises concern to the immigration and how it suppresses wages will be silenced and called a racist by the left even though it undermines their own cause.
Also applies in housing. Private developers build houses, then foreign vulture capital funds outbid the locals, and VCs raise the rent prices to extortionate fees. When it is pointed out that foreign corporate buyers contribute to housing crisis, neoliberals and NIMBYs go “are you racist?” And the government (including local NIMBYs) is only too happy not to build social housing to artificially inflate property and rent prices. Many politicians in my country own multiple properties themselves. And people wonder why the far-right is on the rise…
Cool!
Now do communism
What do you mean by this, comrade? Choose your next words carefully.
Communism in Theory
- Everyone on equal footing
- Everyone’s basic human rights are met (Healthcare, Housing, Safety & Security)
Communism in practice
- Authoritarianism
- Homo/Trans-Phobia
We’ve yet to have true communism anywhere in my opinion. It opens up too baby pathways to corruption and tyranny that so far have always been taken up by someone or some group.
Being from ex-soviet state (although the one most hated by tankies), I can say that older folks still remember how there were constantly talks about reaching communism in next 20 years, and, of course, there years didn’t count down.
Funny, because when surveyed, most older folks in ex-soviet states say that life was actually better under the socialists than it is now. Like, it still wasn’t perfect, but most people felt more secure, had more access to housing, jobs, and necessities, and felt like the people around them were actually working together for the common good to build something equitable.
I imagine the tyranny was less felt in rural areas where a true sense of community still existed. And id correlate longer living wonders with living in those rural areas too. Wonder if that could be a reason?
So, in first few decades (if we ignore some elephants in the room, that my grandparents had to survive) living in village meant you belonged to entity, called “колгосп” (collective farmstead may be the best translation), people there didn’t even have USSR passports, just some papers about them belonging to that place. Villagers were paid for their work mainly by being allowed to take home some of the produce they made, and, most interestingly, they were heavily taxed for dumbest shit imaginable - if you, for example, had an apple tree in your backyard - yep, that’s a tax. Few strains of Ukrainian apples got extinct simply because of that. Later it got better, but at first people had to work for food and were perpetually in debt.
Or it could be that life actually was better…
I didn’t refute that…
samus12345True communism only world on a small scale. As soon as there are enough people that everyone doesn’t know everyone else, it collapses.
It really puts the community in communism