That is the enevitable end state of capitalism. It concentrates wealth upward and consolidates power in the hands of the few. You can tack on an external system of regulation, but eventually that power becomes so concentrated that those with power reshape those regulations to allow them to gain even more (and the ones at the top are greedy to a fault, its how they got there).
I mean if you look at say the history of capitalism, the U.S. doesn’t show up in any of the development of it really. I don’t see how it could possibly be THE example of capitalism when the countries that brought it to the U.S. still exist.
Those countries, to a one, have significantly restructured their governments or have been dissolved and reformed to a system that at least gives lip service to being controllable by the masses. They didnt do it out of benevolence, but because there would have been riots and revolution otherwise. The US is a good modern example of capitalism because it was born after capitalism had already been developed and was privledged enough to gain an upper hand, through investment of existing powers and colonial extractivism (also a key feature of capitalism).
As an example, 1838-The People’s Charter was drawn up for the London Working Men’s Association (LWMA) by William Lovett and Francis Place.
The Charter had six demands:
• All men to have the vote (universal manhood suffrage)
• Voting should take place by secret ballot
• Parliamentary elections every year, not once every five years
• Constituencies should be of equal size
• Members of Parliament should be paid
• The property qualification for becoming a Member of Parliament should be abolished
What are you even trying to say. For one thing, the French Revolution can be argued was France saying, “Let’s capitalism harder!”
Everything you mentioned in the first chunk has nothing to do with capitalism either.
“Lip service to be Controlled by the masses” is exactly what the U.S. has been the entire time.
It doesn’t matter if we voted in new representatives monthly, yearly, every decade. The one main thing that makes a society capitalistic is private ownership of the means of production. So unless France, England, the U.S. or etc voted to ban private ownership of those means (which hasn’t happened) they have come no closer to getting rid of capitalism.
The context was that the previous economic mode was feudalism, in which the wealth was centralized under nobles and monarchs. The governments that supported those economic systems were deemed too oppressive by their people and forced to change. But the economic mode when it changed to capitalism didn’t differ that much in the long term. The wealth was redistributed initially to some extent with the changing of the government, but then reconcentrated into the hands of the few and then individuals were able to scale its extractive means globally.
The sentiment that forced the governments to change then was cooled by a change in system, and reality, but now we can see even more clearly that the issue is the concentration of wealth (and through it, power).
Now that we are back to a reality of inequality above previous levels (and we can see the outsize influence of the wealthy on every facet of policy), it is obvious that capitalism at this stage subverts the stated goals of democracy.
Idk how you live in this time and come to this conclusion. All of us are just the staff at Earth hotel while the richest of us do as they please, no matter how heinous. This is not a good system.
We and every other capitalistic nation that came before and after us. We are fucked but anyone who thinks the U.S. is where capitalism started is a doof just chasing hating on a country they don’t like. Really it is passion above education. Restricts learning. The U.S. has run and become a plague of capitalism… But if the U.S. never existed and France/Spain lost, and the British empire kept everything… What part of capitalism do you think would be “so non existent that none other could be considered THE place of capitalism”
Unchecked wealth that controls the government, doesn’t pay taxes, and bribes public officials to pick winners and losers is not.
That is what Capitalism is… the relentless pursuit of profit inevitably goes to what you seem to think are isolated problems.
Every economist agree you “can’t just always build a better mouse trap”. Building a better mouse trap is a common trope to exemplify how capitalism leads to efficiency and innovation but at some point you get to the end of the line.
You build a better trap than me, I lose business… then I build an even better one and take it back = innovation
At some point there is simply no way to build a better mouse trap, anything we do, increases the price more than the benefit of the innovation so we start making it cheaper = efficiency
Finally we reach a point where no more efficiency and no more innovation can be attained… so we either enshitify it and/or bribe a cheap gov officials to push the market my way. Cheaper to donate $10k to some political whore than risking $100K in R&D to change some law in my favour
Of course, once this path is identified, it is best to jump straight to the bribing and skip all the risky innovation and painful efficiencies
Here you may think “Hold on Jhex, I am saying to get money out of politics so no bribing allowed”
Good, if we magically, truly get all money out of politics and somehow also compensate for all biases, then capitalism does not work either because once you and I get into our high innovation / high efficiency models, nobody can ever get in the market (there is no way for them to compete) and we cannot keep forever growth which is a basic requirement of Capitalism.
In the best of theoretical models, Capitalism still ends exactly where it is right now (although it may take longer?)… barely any innovation worth while, barely any efficiency that is not entirely about me making money and fucking anything else, with most of the money in the hands of the ones who were “hard working enough” to be born to an rich family
I wasn’t the one making the statement, just offering an interpretation. I think a good case could be made that the US IS a shining example of mature capitalism.
Social democracy (regulated capitalism, or “checked wealth”) will always lead back into the kind of corruption and “unchecked wealth” that the US has, since it leaves the opportunity to gain more power and control politics intact. The wealthy elite will simply buy politicians over time, corrupt the news media, and play the divide and conquer game (mainly by means of racism and sexism to distract from their own power), as history has shown time and again.
If you insist that strict capitalism has never failed because neither the USA nor any other Western nation has ever practiced pure unadulterated capitalism, then you necessarily have to accept that strict Marxism has never failed either, because neither the USSR nor any other communist nation has ever practiced pure unadulterated Marxism.
Capitalism is fine.
Unchecked wealth that controls the government, doesn’t pay taxes, and bribes public officials to pick winners and losers is not.
Anyone who thinks that the US is a shining example of “capitalism” is a fucking imbecile.
That is the enevitable end state of capitalism. It concentrates wealth upward and consolidates power in the hands of the few. You can tack on an external system of regulation, but eventually that power becomes so concentrated that those with power reshape those regulations to allow them to gain even more (and the ones at the top are greedy to a fault, its how they got there).
The US is a shining example of capitalism.
And that’s how we know capitalism is not fine
The US is literally THE example of capitalism. It’s just a shit system that leads to bad outcomes.
I mean if you look at say the history of capitalism, the U.S. doesn’t show up in any of the development of it really. I don’t see how it could possibly be THE example of capitalism when the countries that brought it to the U.S. still exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalism
Those countries, to a one, have significantly restructured their governments or have been dissolved and reformed to a system that at least gives lip service to being controllable by the masses. They didnt do it out of benevolence, but because there would have been riots and revolution otherwise. The US is a good modern example of capitalism because it was born after capitalism had already been developed and was privledged enough to gain an upper hand, through investment of existing powers and colonial extractivism (also a key feature of capitalism).
As an example, 1838-The People’s Charter was drawn up for the London Working Men’s Association (LWMA) by William Lovett and Francis Place. The Charter had six demands: • All men to have the vote (universal manhood suffrage) • Voting should take place by secret ballot • Parliamentary elections every year, not once every five years • Constituencies should be of equal size • Members of Parliament should be paid • The property qualification for becoming a Member of Parliament should be abolished
Second example, The French Revolution
What are you even trying to say. For one thing, the French Revolution can be argued was France saying, “Let’s capitalism harder!”
Everything you mentioned in the first chunk has nothing to do with capitalism either.
“Lip service to be Controlled by the masses” is exactly what the U.S. has been the entire time.
It doesn’t matter if we voted in new representatives monthly, yearly, every decade. The one main thing that makes a society capitalistic is private ownership of the means of production. So unless France, England, the U.S. or etc voted to ban private ownership of those means (which hasn’t happened) they have come no closer to getting rid of capitalism.
The context was that the previous economic mode was feudalism, in which the wealth was centralized under nobles and monarchs. The governments that supported those economic systems were deemed too oppressive by their people and forced to change. But the economic mode when it changed to capitalism didn’t differ that much in the long term. The wealth was redistributed initially to some extent with the changing of the government, but then reconcentrated into the hands of the few and then individuals were able to scale its extractive means globally.
The sentiment that forced the governments to change then was cooled by a change in system, and reality, but now we can see even more clearly that the issue is the concentration of wealth (and through it, power).
Now that we are back to a reality of inequality above previous levels (and we can see the outsize influence of the wealthy on every facet of policy), it is obvious that capitalism at this stage subverts the stated goals of democracy.
(Edited for tone)
All this defense of capitalism and you still ended up on the Tesseract list?
That guy must really suck ass at making a block list lol
I didn’t defend capitalism at all, you just have reading comprehension issues apparently
Idk how you live in this time and come to this conclusion. All of us are just the staff at Earth hotel while the richest of us do as they please, no matter how heinous. This is not a good system.
What conclusion are you saying I came to?
That the US is not the peak example of capitalism? Just because it didnt originate here does not mean that we cannot represent it.
We and every other capitalistic nation that came before and after us. We are fucked but anyone who thinks the U.S. is where capitalism started is a doof just chasing hating on a country they don’t like. Really it is passion above education. Restricts learning. The U.S. has run and become a plague of capitalism… But if the U.S. never existed and France/Spain lost, and the British empire kept everything… What part of capitalism do you think would be “so non existent that none other could be considered THE place of capitalism”
That is what Capitalism is… the relentless pursuit of profit inevitably goes to what you seem to think are isolated problems.
Every economist agree you “can’t just always build a better mouse trap”. Building a better mouse trap is a common trope to exemplify how capitalism leads to efficiency and innovation but at some point you get to the end of the line.
You build a better trap than me, I lose business… then I build an even better one and take it back = innovation
At some point there is simply no way to build a better mouse trap, anything we do, increases the price more than the benefit of the innovation so we start making it cheaper = efficiency
Finally we reach a point where no more efficiency and no more innovation can be attained… so we either enshitify it and/or bribe a cheap gov officials to push the market my way. Cheaper to donate $10k to some political whore than risking $100K in R&D to change some law in my favour
Of course, once this path is identified, it is best to jump straight to the bribing and skip all the risky innovation and painful efficiencies
Here you may think “Hold on Jhex, I am saying to get money out of politics so no bribing allowed”
Good, if we magically, truly get all money out of politics and somehow also compensate for all biases, then capitalism does not work either because once you and I get into our high innovation / high efficiency models, nobody can ever get in the market (there is no way for them to compete) and we cannot keep forever growth which is a basic requirement of Capitalism.
In the best of theoretical models, Capitalism still ends exactly where it is right now (although it may take longer?)… barely any innovation worth while, barely any efficiency that is not entirely about me making money and fucking anything else, with most of the money in the hands of the ones who were “hard working enough” to be born to an rich family
Capitalism is when an ownership class undercompensates labor and pockets the spoils. It’s theft. It is not “fine” in any way.
Thank you. I’ll never understand why people can’t be arsed to spend fifteen minutes learning what capitalism actually entails.
If the US economic system isn’t capitalism, what is it? Can you give an example of a currently existing national economy that is capitalism?
I don’t think it’s the capitalism part they were disputing, it was the shining example part.
So the US economy is capitalism, just a flawed version of it? If so, what would a “shining example” of capitalism be?
I wasn’t the one making the statement, just offering an interpretation. I think a good case could be made that the US IS a shining example of mature capitalism.
Social democracy (regulated capitalism, or “checked wealth”) will always lead back into the kind of corruption and “unchecked wealth” that the US has, since it leaves the opportunity to gain more power and control politics intact. The wealthy elite will simply buy politicians over time, corrupt the news media, and play the divide and conquer game (mainly by means of racism and sexism to distract from their own power), as history has shown time and again.
If you insist that strict capitalism has never failed because neither the USA nor any other Western nation has ever practiced pure unadulterated capitalism, then you necessarily have to accept that strict Marxism has never failed either, because neither the USSR nor any other communist nation has ever practiced pure unadulterated Marxism.