Some misconceptions here. The good old days that still existed in the ‘80s and early ‘90s were kinda still there, but the signs of economic retreat were there too. We were offshoring a lot of manufacturing, bankruptcies were tools to get rid of pensions and union strength, and then everything Reagan did to fuck us that just wasn’t apparent yet. They weren’t the good old days that the Boomers had, but they were far better than today.
You could still rent a place for a few hundred bucks on a single job, community college was ~$50/semester not including textbooks. A cheap house in a not so great area was ~$100k, often a lot less. People didn’t use credit cards the way they do now so debt wasn’t as common, it was harder to spend money you didn’t have. You could still claw your way ahead or at least tread water.
2000 was a turning point. The dot com bust, 9/11, offshoring of even more jobs in tech, multiple recessions, endless war, and corporations running out of ideas other than finding ways to extract more and more from the consumer while offering less in return. Every generation since has had to deal with more things being put out of reach.
Even in the 2010s it was still possible in some areas. I bought my first home in 2012, right at the bottom of the market. I bought a townhouse in a half-built development in a rough neighborhood. This was in Houston. The developer had gone under halfway through building the place. It was weird, but the place only cost $92k for a 3 bedroom 1800 ft^2 townhouse. I put 3% down on an FHA mortgage. I literally got into home ownership for less than people pay to get into an apartment lease today. Oh, and the mortgage was small enough that for several years I paid the entire mortgage by renting out the two spare bedrooms. The coastal areas were pretty unaffordable even back in the early 2010s. But at least then if you lived there and wanted to, you could move to a lower cost of living city elsewhere in the US and get established. Now? Everywhere is unaffordable.
My gen Z students don’t even fight adverts anymore… They all look amazed that ublock origin exists, and it’s sad because they look so happy not to have to deal with ads.
We millennials grew up through the great recession (many of us started out working lives in it), but the one good time we did experience was early 2000s internet.
Some of us are trying to bring it back… https://discourse.32bit.cafe/t/resources-list-for-the-personal-web/49
GenX here - I’m not blind. I’m two shakes away from becoming a full-blown communist myself, from what I have seen.
Capitalism is violently coercive and lethally exploitative. It’s only purpose is to concentrate wealth and power into the hands of a tiny proportion of people, and it does so exceedingly well.
Capitalism is the worst and most unethical of political tools, sadly it’s also the most efficient at what it does.
The thing about capitalism is that it swallows up and commodifies any ideology that tries to fight it. If you don’t believe me, go buy a book on communism and enroll at your local university to meet like-minded people and learn more.
Capitalism is a virus.
I am more appalled that they think many of us older gen people actually experienced the “good ol days.” When do they even think that is? Lmao Nobody else outside their generation has ever experienced these same troubles ever?
My dad bought two houses on a government typists salary. Try doing that today.
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Many of the discoveries that led to the creation of the internet and smart phones were via government-funded research. Capitalists just figured out how to put it in a sleek package and market it.
Also, you act as those these things are a net good, but have not demonstrated that in your post. Amazon and Shein have been atrocious for the environment and have been massively exploitative.
Omfg this is like the kind of shit I say ironically to solicit laughs from my friends. Appreciate the throwback brother.
Troll, and a terrible one at that.
but without it would you be using a smart phone? Or a cell phone at all? Let alone a smart one. There would be no Amazon or shein or Reddit none of it. No designer wigs or nails.
Buddy, I’m already on board with the collapse of capitalism and the devouring of the 1%, say less baby.
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You’ve got some boot polish on your nose.
They’re just a troll… or Elon’s new Lemmy account. Either way, don’t take it too seriously, they aren’t.
Ah the good old days. I do miss stagflation, the SNL crisis and the boot of Reagonomics on my neck. Fun times.
Yeah, I’m a millennial but I hear (and feel) the same things. And I know Gen X are big on griping. I think it’s human nature to gripe. And that’s not to suggest that things aren’t shit. It’s just human nature to gripe about how shit things are, because sometimes it feels like the only recourse we have.
Capatilism is only possible when you steal value from someone or somewhere else.
The US financially raped the rest of the world to generate it’s vast wealth.
China saw the opportunity to steal this wealth back itself by convincing US companies to abandon their manufacturing capabilities. Now we are watching the slow decline of the world’s default nobility as they scramble to justify their value.
Capatilism is only possible when you steal value from someone or somewhere else.
I don’t know about “Capatalism” but “Capitalism” doesn’t require stealing value. All capitalism requires is private ownership of the means of production and using it to generate profit. If you’re a painter and buy paint, an easel and some canvas, and use that to sell portraits, you’re doing capitalism.
Most zoomers are anti-capitalist because they don’t actually know what capitalism is, and can’t really picture what it would actually be like in a different kind of economic system. Anybody who grew up after 1989 hasn’t actually seen a world where any other economic system exists. Capitalism was an attempt to improve a world dominated by monopolies, with big tariffs and trade barriers, where workers had no freedom to change jobs and had to fight over the scraps left over from the wealthy. If that sounds like the current world, it’s because we’re backsliding from capitalism back towards mercantilism and feudalism. Not because capitalism sucks.
You steal value by creating monopolies. You steal it by artificial controlling resources, your “capital” so that no one else can benifit. You price gouge, manipulate, spread propaganda, and lie. Make dirty deals behind closed doors. Undercut your competition.
Pro capitalist always leave out all the awful tactics capatilism employs to do things that require you to buy from them. That’s the theft. Gaming the system to put people in hard places. Baiting the general populace to bad behaviors all for the means of profit.
We shouldn’t be required to play a game of literal monopoly to survive.
Free market capatilism is a joke. Capatilism only drives invitation of the business model and freedom for the owning class at the expense of the people.
What’s the difference between feudalism and capatilism when corporations own ever piece of property on this spec of dust and you’re required to rent? Still playing the rules of capital, but without any of the rewards. Think about it. I doubt you own your house. The bank probably owns it just like it owns a majority of peoples. Probably the same thing with your car. Your education. Hell even your life depending on how your health is. People who have to pay 1000s to insurance companies every year just to stay alive. For insulin treatment that was sold for a 1$ by its creator for the good of humanity. Monopolized. You aren’t a capitalst if you own nothing.
Most people own nothing because that’s the goal of capatilism.
The perfect company has no employees, sells no product, carries no debts, yet takes from everyone it can. It is the nature of capatilism to shuffle towards this structure.
The US in the 1989s had Europe and the rest of the world by the balls by being the global reserve currency. A system put in place after world war 2 where Europe basically sold itself to the United States. Everyone had to spend money and buy it in debt while the US had the keys to the printing press.
When you take out a loan why do they charge you interest? If you don’t pay your loan back they will simply toss you in prison or reposes what meager property you have. Garnish your wages? What incitive does interest serve? It’s just their to keep you paying, to keep you under your feudal lord.
Somethings just shouldn’t have a price tag and should be owned by the people.
If you’re going to post these screeds, you should at least learn how to spell capitalism.
First time was a mistake the rest were to bother you :)
I don’t know about “Capatalism” but “Capitalism” doesn’t require stealing value. All capitalism requires is private ownership of the means of production and using it to generate profit. If you’re a painter and buy paint, an easel and some canvas, and use that to sell portraits, you’re doing capitalism.
Private ownership of the means of production is theft. What you described with the painter is personal - not private - ownership of the means of production. Personal ownership is when someone owns something and uses it for their own benefit. Private ownership is when someone owns something that they do not use themselves, instead hiring others to use it for them to generate a profit. The painter isn’t doing capitalism when they paint and sell portraits, they’re doing productive labor and participating in a market economy, which is not exclusive to capitalism. If the painter hired other painters to paint portraits using equipment and a studio that belongs to the original painter and kept the profits for themselves, that’s capitalism.
Now, if the hired painters decided they didn’t like this arrangement and claimed the equipment and studio for themselves collectively (seizing the means of production), that would be socialism. The original painter - the capitalist - would consider this theft, as those things were their private property. The hired painters - the socialists - would consider what the capitalist was doing theft and they are taking what is rightfully their collective personal property because they are the ones using it to produce value. To the capitalist, the value is produced by their capital (the means of production) and the labor is just another kind of capital which they have already paid for with wages. To the socialist, the value is produced by their labor and the means of production is being rented to them by the capitalist for their excess labor value, whose only claim to it is that they paid the upfront cost.
The owner of a company is like a landlord except instead of gatekeeping land/housing they are gatekeeping the means of production. Instead of paying rent, those who want access to the means of production sign away their excess labor value by agreeing to a set wage.
Capitalism != free market.
Under a free market, a painter buys paint, an easel and some canvas at prices set by supply and demand, and then paints and sells portraits again at a price set by supply and demand.
Under capitalism, an artist wants to start a painting business, so he goes to a rich person or group of rich people and says “If you give me some money to start my painting business, I will give you a share in ownership of the business and its profits.” with this so-called capital, the artist rents or buys a building and supplies and operates the business to effectively pay back that loan. The working class make a living and the rich get richer for having been rich.
Under a free market, a painter buys paint, an easel and some canvas at prices set by supply and demand, and then paints and sells portraits again at a price set by supply and demand.
That’s capitalism, my dude:
- Private ownership of the means of production: the worker owns the paint, easel and canvas
- Used for obtaining a profit: the worker uses the capital to transform inputs (the blank canvas) to outputs (painted canvas) which they sell at a markup to generate profit.
What you’re describing as capitalism is also capitalism, but it adds unnecessary steps. Capitalism isn’t about selling shares in companies, although that can happen under capitalism (it also happens under mercantilism). It’s not about loans (but of course they can happen under capitalism, just like under any other economic system).
Your misunderstanding of capitalism is why people hate capitalism. They think it’s about the rich getting richer. But capitalism is merely about private ownership of the means of production, and selling the results using that capital for a profit. That’s it.
In the middle ages you could buy art supplies and do art, but if you wanted to sell your art, you needed to be in the right guild. For example, if you lived in London you couldn’t sell playing cards unless you were a member of the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards. And, whether or not you made a profit wasn’t a matter for the free market, rates were determined by the guild. The guild determined who could own the means of production for the arts they controlled, and the guild determined prices.
Similarly, under communism, there was no private ownership of the means of production, so there was no selling things for profit after making them. Everything belonged to the state. Until the 1960s in the USSR there was an exception for small production cooperatives owned by groups of artists. But, those were liquidated and transferred to the state because they really weren’t in line with communism.
If you want to be able to sell things on the free market, and to buy and own the tools you use to make those things, then you want capitalism. If you don’t want wealth concentration, then you still want capitalism, you just want it to be regulated in the way that the early thinkers like Adam Smith thought capitalism should be regulated.
You know…
A phrase I often hear associated with communism, especially the kind of people who aren’t communists but want to be, particularly the “revolutionaries” who do all the work of turning a state communist before being killed and replaced by a psychotic despot, is “the workers shall own the means of production.”
Of course, most or all of the people are the “workers” so it’s “the people shall own the means of production.”
Of course, collectively, the people are the “public” so it’s “the public shall own the means of production.”
Of course, anything pubic is controlled by the “government”, so it’s “the government shall own the means of production.”
Of course, the government is made up of the “elites”, so it’s “the elites shall own the means of production.”
It strikes me that an artist privately owning his tools and materials independently of any others is closer to “the workers owning the means of production” than anything anyone calling themselves communist have ever accomplished.
I think the existence of the elites and their psychopathy is the actual problem, and that between the two systems, capitalism or the free market economy or whatever you want to call it hands literally all of society to the elites slower than “communism” does.
The term capitalism was coined by socialists to describe existing systems where wealth accumulated into the hands of the bourgeoisie. Only later did the supporters of the existing system attempt to “reclaim” capitalism and change the meaning to this nonsense. Capitalism is not “an attempt to improve a world dominated by monopolies,” monopolies are the bread and butter of capitalism.
Painters owned their own paint supplies under feudalism. Were they “doing capitalism?” No, capitalism is not something you “do” on an individual level, it is a system that exists, and which has only existed for a few hundred years. Capitalism does not mean simply trading or owning tools.
Monopolies are the bread and butter of mercantilism. Capitalism was seen as a way to break up those monopolies.
The world would be do different if the western world had a kill pigs list in the 50’s.
Tech bros running scared that America is going to collapse so they cling to AI because the only thing that could save this continent would be a fucking miracle tech breakthrough.
Ugh it all makes sense. I hate it when it makes sense. Occam’s razor has not been kind lately.
Millennials are anticapitalist for the opposite reason. We DO remember the good old days.
I was born in 88 and I remember my parents doing ok, but by the time I hit the workforce I saw no good old days. The 2008 crash happened right as I was priming up for adult life and I’ve watched any prosperity for my generation fade out of existence for as long as I can remember. I’ve only ever known decay of the “American dream” and have seen time and again corporations and capitalists robbing us of our future.
I think you were just too young to see the flaws. As was I. I didnt hear about Rodney King until I was 13. But it happened when I was 2 years old.
(And it still happens)
I didn’t say or imply that it was a flawless time
The “good old days” implies such things. That’s the meaning of the expression. Hence why people use it to refer to a time they would rather go back to. Because of the implication.
I think that’s a pretty dumb interpretation of what I said
Not all of us. I was born in the late 80s, and grew up pulling food out of garbage cans because my family didn’t make enough money to feed all five of us.
Did you some how think that I meant poverty didn’t exist?
In my experience, people who refer to any era as ‘the good old days’ are ignoring large amounts of inequality that existed in that time period.
I mean I put it in quotes for a reason, but it’s pretty obviously the case that a lot more people’s material conditions were better 40 years ago than today.
If you put it in quotes, it’s not showing up on my end.
Yeah fair, apparently not. I dunno man, it’s just annoying being on the internet. Why do I have to caveat some dumb comment with a bunch of antecedents so you don’t assume I thought 1998 was a classless utopia.
It’s pretty obvious what’s meant by the comment. We got to see a world that mostly functioned as anticipated where average folks with a bit of graft could earn a decent living and take care of their family. That doesn’t mean every one of us experienced it. We still know what the world looked like then, and we know what it looks like now.
And I’m also pretty sure you knew what I meant too
The problem is that there do exist people who think '98 was some kind of utopia. They unironically say they were actually good old days. I’ve had multiple people tell me, IRL, without a hint of sarcasm, that everybody had it good in the '90s unless they were lazy.
On the internet, nobody can see how you walk, so if it talks like a duck, you assume it’s a duck. I only know what you write, I cannot read your mind.
The 90s were a happy accident in which technological breakthrough could actually sate the endless hunger of capitalism
Certainly the 90s were more stable and prosperous for more people than today, but to say those were the good old days means you would have to ignore:
- Extreme urban decay
- Unchecked police violence against minorities
- Vile homophobia in the mainstream and no recognition at all of trans people
- The rise of commodified suburban housing, stores, and restaurants
- Our government’s Imperial ambition becoming completely unchecked in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union
There were never good old days.
EDIT: also, isn’t that when school shootings really took off?
Not everyone is American
Nor am I?
I didn’t reply to you
Most of us were like “holy shit, Nintendo 64. Whoa, PlayStation. Dude, you got a Dell! It’s got a SoundBlaster! Check out this new Internet thing! It’s got the World Wide Web! I’m gonna gel my hair and skateboard listening to Korn on my Discman with antiskip while eating 3d Doritos”
And if you asked us about world events we would have been like “gulf war was lame”
We were too young to really have known about how bad shit was getting, and the internet was just taking off and info did not travel like it does today. Video on a computer was an novelty (lots of windows loyalists called Apple’s QuickTime a gimmick and that it’d never last; until they got a video player themselves) and it took hours to download a few MB. There was no YouTube or TikTok, no live streams, barely any “feeds”, nothing was pushed to you, no WiFi even. Going on the computer was a purposeful activity you spent a slice of your day doing, like reading a book or gaming.
We did not have the window to the world we have now. We all like to pretend that it’s getting worse; and it IS, but also we’re just now waking up to the lie we were told our whole lives and just how deep that lie goes.
America’s decline really started with Richard Nixon. I’m not an expert though.
In the Netherlands, the 90’s were pretty good. I’m sure there were downsides,but there always are.
The economy was good. We had a firm social safety net, maybe even too firm. That is now only a shell of its former self.
The general acceptance of the gay community was on the uprise. The media was becoming gay positive, because of some key public figures. Trans not so much, only in the form of “drag queens” and such.
Some things that are bad today, were bad than. Environmental issues, animal rights, gender equality, institutionalized racism.
Most things are getting better now, but the economy is shit. That is fully to blame on capitalism. There are voices in power for change, but not enough.
A long time ago, I heard someone say that a Swedish drunk laying in a gutter knows more about American politics than the average American college graduate - it is true.
My comment was very US-centered. I apologize for that.
Violence in general was out of control in the 1980s & 90s where I live, if you look at crime charts you can see a sharp drop since I was growing up here. It used to be ROUGH.
The extreme urban decay of the 90s is to the extreme urban decay of the 20s just as Office Spaces hell of office cubes and meaningless work is to the deeper, darker hell of gig work and poverty.
Shit was shit, its just that shit wasn’t as shit as it is now.
I brought up how Office Space is supposed to be about a hellish environment… I’ve never had a cubical to myself, or a computer I can leave at work at 5pm. Its 2026 and I find myself wishing for the hell that Peter finds himself in, as its far, far more comfortable than the hell we have now.
I hated that movie the first time I watched it. Found it terrifying.
The work and environment wasn’t the scary part, but how much people were willing to do something they felt hatred towards without protest.
I would drag my balls over broken glass at the moment for a secure job where I did something mundane. Ideally one that doesn’t actively worsen the world. I’ve already done too much of that.
I’m obviously not saying the past was perfect, I’m saying we remember a world where a lot of families got on pretty well with 1 parent working paying for a home, cars, vacation, hobbies, etc.
I also took a pretty US centric view of your comment. If you’re from a country in which the 90s were indeed The Good Times, just ignore me.
In the US, there were probably more people living stable middle class lives than there are today but there was still a very large and mostly ignored underclass, and there always has been.
Yeah I really don’t see how my comment would lead anyone to believe that I thought that wasn’t the case? Obviously
What I mean is that it wasn’t the good times for the millions of people.
I certainly don’t.
i’m 36. i have young coworkers and i try telling them that even 10-15 years ago it was not like this.
Maybe not in the “developed” countries, but capitalism been fucking the rest of the world for a long while.
Also, are you forgetting the economic recession in 2008? That also wasn’t terribly fun. Millenials haven’t had a great go at this “good old days” either. Maybe when we were children, but it’s not like we were out buying houses then.
Also, 10 years ago was 2016, which is when all this awful really dove off a cliff for those in the “developed” world.
it’s difficult to explain concisely, it boils down to this; ten years ago i could rent an apartment while serving tables, today i cannot.
In order to have a middle class, you need government subsidies for the working class and regulations on the robber baron class.
FDR started to do that. And do it went for a couple decades. Hence the booming 50s with a house and car got everyone on a single income.
Then, in 1981, Reagan happened. The subsidization of the working class was slowly peeled back. More was given to the robber baron class.
Which brings us to where we are now. + Dictator voted into office on top of that. So, no help there.
I find it amazing how so many bad things in America can be traced back to Reagan.
It’s all a game of 6 degrees of Ronald Reagan.
If I could erase one person from history it would not be Adolf Hitler. It would not be any other dictator alive or otherwise. It would be Reagan. The amount of harm he caused not to just the US but the entire world is astronomical and has caused the suffering of hundreds of millions of people and the death of tens of millions.
I mean both are horrible, but the problem with Reagan is that he knew how to hide his atrocities. People don’t really grapple with how bad what he did was because he wasn’t overthrown by the Allies in a Great War, there was no purpose-built death camps, he didn’t make rambling speeches declaring entire races as vermin.
He just quietly let AIDS happen, pretending it’s not a real thing. He deregulated banks for the sake of “competition”. He fucked with the Middle East.
We compare Trump to Hitler a lot, but he’s like a more outwardly fascist Reagan.
Hitler vs Reagan in a steel cage match. You’ll never believe who they’re rooting for.
In Eastern Europe people seem to love capitalism because the “old days” were living in the Soviet bloc and they think things are much better now than they used to be. Wonder how long it’ll be before they too begin to recognise severe capitalist decay
Most people do see it, but that doesn’t mean to not condemn the old regime as well.
Millennial here. I don’t remember that either. I feel like my life has been in survival mode from one once in a lifetime crisis to the next and my dad died from issues from agent orange exposure in Vietnam and my mom died from early onset Alzheimer’s after she worked hard her entire life and lost everything after 2008 not because she didn’t work hard and save but because she was layed off at the height of the Great Recession and burned through her deflated 401k and then began to get sick and lost her home and moved in with me but I couldn’t access healthcare for her in this evil system and her slow horrible death was beyond traumatic for my small family. Things keep getting more expensive and corrupt everyday. When is it time to burn this mother down? And hold the pedofile parasite class accountable and take our power back?
I think it going to be folks like you, who choose to say “Fuck it, we ball”, rather than get up and go to work.
Or someone whose fam was kidnapped or murdered.
Its gonna pop off.
I am GenX and in my 20s lived stuffed into houses with 2 other couples so that we could make rent, I am not sure why people think we were skating on minimum wage, it was shit. If you put 6 wage earners in a house you can make it today too.
On college cost, that is absolutely true I do agree, it’s gotten so expensive it is not an automatic choice among my kids. Those who went straight out of school mostly didn’t have to borrow, nor did I pay much, they got scholarships to cover it.
My impression is that Zoomers in the USA have been told that the abysmal, violently upward-distributing societal scheme prevalent in America in the 21st century is “Capitalism” and everything else is “Socialism” which “doesn’t work.”
That is not so. The world has a vast spread of free market capitalist countries, and none of the other ones have a model similar to America’s. What is most telling is that other countries kept the model that America came up with after World War 2, while America destroyed it and refashioned is as corporatism starting in the 80s.
It’s as if someone had replaced “We The People” with “We The Corporations.” It’s telling that a lot of people measure the welfare of the commonwealth by stock market indices, because those measure the welfare of corporations.
