Hi all,

I’m seeing a lot of hate for capitalism here, and I’m wondering why that is and what the rationale behind it is. I’m pretty pro-capitalism myself, so I want to see the logic on the other side of the fence.

If this isn’t the right forum for a political/economic discussion-- I’m happy to take this somewhere else.

Cheers!

  • @[email protected]
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    462 years ago

    Are you a billionaire? Or at least a +100millionare? If not, you are not pro-capitalism you are brainwashed

  • Nougat
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    2 years ago

    I find that many people conflate capitalism with free markets. They are different things.

    Free market economies are ones where many businesses which provide competing products can use price as a parameter on which to compete. Even in famously free market economies, e.g, the United States, some things have prices regulated by the government. Think electricity, certain prescription drugs, other things deinfed in the arena of “utilities” or “necessities” for the general public.

    Capitalism, on the other hand, is where there is an ownership class (which does little or no labor) and a labor class (which does most or all of the labor), and an portion of the compensation for the value that the labor class produces is redirected to the ownership class. Some of that is reasonable; I think it’s true that putting capital at risk in order to start and operate a business should come with some kind of reward.

    However, the amount of reward that the ownership class realizes is often far more than is reasonable, and the effect is that the labor class is drastically undercompensated. This amounts to wage theft, above and beyond the already common kind of wage theft that includes unpaid work hours or withholding agreed upon compensation for unjustifiable reasons. Furthermore, again in the US, the amount of risk that owners assume when staking their capital is very low or nonexistent; profits are privatized, losses are socialized. The labor class gets the double whammy of being undercompensated on one side, and paying for business failures on the other.

  • @[email protected]
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    -12 years ago

    I think capitalism is fine to an extent. It’s when companies become too large that their scale and power enshittify things.

  • jerry
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    1452 years ago

    Capitalism is just a continuation of the feudal system. Great for owners / gentry, bad for serfs /workers. Labor creates all value, and should be rewarded as such.

  • @[email protected]
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    2 years ago

    A lot of people here are giving various answers, and that’s for 2 reasons. You asked a very loaded question in a lemmy instance that started with an explicitly socialist bend, and you’re essentially asking people about very personal reasons they hold a political belief.

    Everyone’s political beliefs are shaped by the conditions of their life. For example, I grew up poor on a rural farm in the Midwest of the US. Over time due to various things, I had several life situations impact my views on politics and the world. I started to learn things, things that didn’t make sense, things that challenged my world view, things that I knew were wrong but didn’t know why they happened. Eventually, I rejected liberalism and needed to find something else. That something else came in the form of a walkout at my workplace. I was thrust into the labor movement. Now I’m an anarcho-syndicalist (I believe all hierarchy is bad including capitalism and governments, and the people should govern themselves through unions and other forms of organizing).

    This is a very, very brief description of my life from when I was born to literally right now, and how it impacted my beliefs. This process of life impacting personal political beliefs is called our “material conditions”. People may have similar material conditions and completely disagree, or drastically different material conditions and agree on everything. More and more Americans are seeing and feeling the dramatic impacts of capitalism and the power of a few people on the top. That is driving people both to the anticapitalist left and to the fascist alt-right. Whatever reasons you read here, know that they’re justifications for their material conditions causing them to take a radical position.

  • donuts
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    2 years ago

    Capitalism has given a lot of people out there a raw deal: low wages, increasing gap between the rich and the poor, home ownership is out of reach to many, healthcare is unaffordable to many, having a family is prohibitively expensive, we own almost nothing and rent almost everything, even basic necessities like food, water and clothing are painfully expensive. What’s more, when you look at the systems in place today, it appears that these aren’t bugs, but features.

    I’m a socialist because I believe that society ought to use its collective power and money to guarantee all of its people a minimum of the basic, essential things that they need to live, by subsidizing food, water, shelter, clothing, heat, electricity, data, education and healthcare.

    Outside of those crucial things, capitalism is just fine, as long as people are being paid fairly for their time. And, as we’ve all seen, capitalism needs strict rules and guard rails to make sure that workers aren’t being constantly exploited. If capitalism was working well for everyone, we were all getting paid fairly for our time, and people could take care of their needs (not to mention their wants), then nobody would have any reason to care or complain about capitalism. But sadly, as it is today, capitalism is just not working for a lot of people, and many people out there are not even having their basic needs met (even despite getting an education, taking out loans, getting a job, getting a second job, working hard, etc.).

    To me, creating a prosperous and happy society is much more complex than picking capitalism or socialism, and some mix of both is probably the best of both worlds.

  • @[email protected]
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    632 years ago

    Simply because it’s a system based on infinite growth in a finite world.

    Look at what the greed of capitalism is doing to our planet.

    In a perfect world where humans aren’t greedy, maybe it could work, but humans are evil and greedy and it’ll never work.

  • @[email protected]
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    642 years ago

    Capitalism requires coercion to function. Capitalists openly admit this by being staunchly against removing ‘incentives’ (read the coercion) to work. The ‘incentive’ is goddamn starvation and being exposed to the raw elements with no shelter. And apparently, if this was a basic human right provided to everyone, we’d all stop working over night and become lazy. It’s just such an ass-backwards way to look at the world. People are not inherently lazy. But they need to be forced to work shitty jobs under unacceptable conditions. That’s the crux of the matter. The ultra-rich require wage slaves. Not free-thinking, educated people who go after their own interests and are productive in their own ways. I’m interested to see how the system will hold up when all the shitty jobs have been automated away. My guess is that the rich will flee to some kind of Elysium type paradise, while robot police keeps the masses in check and ‘poor’ people, aka 99% of humanity goes extinct.

  • hydro033
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    2 years ago

    I am pro-capitalist myself because there is literally no evidence for anything else working well on earth. Capitalist systems (albeit with regulations to maintain free markets - ie snuff monopolies and anticompetitive practices) have improved the standard of living for people more than any other system ever has. But I full expect flurries of downvotes because of where I am and the group think circle jerk here.

  • @[email protected]
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    162 years ago

    Personally I am against filthy rich. I don’t mind people having money and owning property. It’s when they habe way more than they could ever spend, that I am against it. There I no reason to have that much value/money

  • KᑌᔕᕼIᗩ
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    -22 years ago

    I’d say that unless you are pretty wealthy then you’re pro- something designed to optimally exploit you while making you think that it’s the greatest system on Earth and that society can’t possibly do any better.

  • @[email protected]
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    312 years ago

    Capitalism is fine as long as its well-regulated and is only one component of a larger system. It’s no accident that the best countries in the world to live in all rely in part on well-regulated capitalism together with robust democracy and relatively high levels of what in the US would be called socialism.