this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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. I guess the lesson here is that only rampant psychopathy can defeat capitalism, which is kind of depressing.
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.
I would say Sweden is a social-capitalist society
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
You might be interested in UBI
I 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.
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.
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.