I would argue that the main issue with capitalism as it stands now, is capitalism.
Capitalism doesn’t make innovation, it stops people from pursuing innovation to focus on profitability. How many people could be contributing to the world, but are stuck struggling to generate revenue for some business so they can have their basic life needs met.
As Marx pointed out, capitalism is inherently destructive, in an ever-repeating cycle of destroying and recreating its own society for profit.
On one hand, this is good, insofar as it allows extremely rapid progress in pre-modern societies that have never heard of wireless communication. The old feudal ways are churned up and spat out; the old mercantilist ways are churned up and spat out; even previous capitalist ways are churned up and spat out. At the end of it, you do have a shiny new set of institutions that are better suited to current conditions than existed before. Capitalism prioritizes profitability over innovation; but profitability is still better by-proxy for innovation than valuing stagnation itself, as aristocracies do.
On the other, much more obvious hand to us, this is, uh, bad, on account of the process of destroying our society, and the cost of constantly recreating it. I think churning up some 2000 years of feudal privilege, which had resisted numerous previous movements and revolutions, is a… good run. It did its job, now it’s time to make sure it doesn’t overstay its welcome any more than it already has. Which it has, probably by about [checks notes] 108 years, say?
It’s time to take the system and its diminished returns to actual human wellbeing behind the shed before the net balance goes entirely negative.
… bruh I run a fucking comm called tankiejerk, I assure you, I am well fucking aware of the faults and flaws of the bureaucratic despotisms of China and the Soviet Union.
When I say it is destructive - and I thought I had pointed this out with unnecessary directness considering the leftist fucking comm we’re in, but apparently it was still too subtle for some guests/passers-by who fail to read the sidebar - I mean that it is destructive inherently, as a system, it has no deeper goal. Tyrants and despots throughout history have destroyed, typically for their delusional dreams or petty self-satisfaction. Capitalism, as a system, is oriented around constantly retooling, not just materially, but also organizationally.
Traditionally, societies entrench themselves in their ways of behaving once it’s established to be effective enough to survive. Capitalism, as an economic system, upends that because the transfer of power - through currency, which is not traditionally the main conduit of power - becomes extremely rapid and fluid. This means that more efficient solutions are, on a civilizational timescale, very quickly adopted in matters of internal and economic dispute, not just military advancements.
This also means, however, that capitalism is constantly building and rebuilding its own structures; seen in its most grotesque (but arguably not necessary) form as consumerism - this year’s model is out of date in a year’s time, even though it will function for another ten. Capitalism destroys the old, inefficient system, and replaces it immediately with a newer, more efficient system (or else pisses the money away, since failures are inevitable and capitalism is not a thinking system, it is a self-perpetuating system; “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent” and all that).
Capitalism, thus, incurs massive material costs for its increased efficiency of designs - billions of tons of steel are created and then discarded because the rapidly advancing nature of capitalism makes it more cost-effective, under current conditions, to immediately move on to the production of the next, 4% more productive model to stay competitive in the market.
Furthermore, it incurs social costs in that, especially since the period of heightened labor mobility since the 1950s, it freely breaks up traditional social groupings by offering economic incentives for labor to relocate where it is economically needed, not necessarily where it is most useful to general society. Again, this is both good and bad - good when you need traditional social groupings broken up, bad when it’s been picking up pace for two centuries now and counting, and we’re questioning our ability to create social groupings faster than they’re broken up.
Capitalism is destructive, as a system, not as a matter of decisions made or tyrannies enabled, but by its very nature, and this is both good and bad. We are fast approaching, with the efficiency capitalism has lent us, to the point where the bad may overwhelm the good - we are looking at industrial scale production creating shortages of raw material, excesses of pollution, and a rapidly changing climate that threatens economic and ecological devastation.
Pretty cool how you cherry picked the perfect images to illustrate your point.
The first photo?
Why not show the thousands of other soft drinks/fruit drinks that exist?
The second photo seems to be missing all the mom and pop cafes and sandwich shops that number in the hundreds of thousands that offer food from around the world.
The third photo is just too fucking stupid to even point out how fucking stupid it is.
Be fair. If you’re going to hate on something, do it using real-world examples. Not ridiculous cherry-picked bullshit. Capitalism is flawed as any unchecked socio-economic system would be. But dishonesty in presenting an argument against it only impresses people that are dumb enough to not see it for the bad faith it possesses.
Tell me you don’t understand how competition breeds innovation without telling me.
Also, explain to me how nearly every country that exists, uses a capitalist socioeconomic system if it is such a failure.
And yes, capitalism is how we got not only the iPhone, but mobile phones in their entirety- along with the services that allow them to work- aerospace engineering, advances in pharmaceutical technology, and pretty much everything you see around you. Is it perfect? Fuck no- no unchecked system is ever going to be, but unless you have a working model to present that illustrates how you can get the largest superpower on the planet to convert its entire government and economic footprint- maybe can the smug bullshit.
Though do be sure to go ahead and keep using all the things capitalism allowed to happen as a result of a free market while pretending to stand firmly against it. I’m sure all the people in whatever circles you post in that are dumb enough to not see the hypocrisy will think you’re soooo kewl!
Innovation has always stemmed from some form of socialist institution - state funded research nowadays.
Free marked only enabled ethically-acceptable exploitation of the global south under the disguise of ‘rapid progress’, when in fact nothing society-breaking hasn’t been invented since the internet.
And if you know the history of the internet and technologies involved, you know how much capitalism has done for it - absolutely nothing.
Turns out its actually cooperation and not competition that breeds innovation. Capitalist firms artificially simulate this internally. I think it was Lowes that tried to run its departments through competition by pitting them against each other and the business nearly went under. Not to mention a lot of innovation ultimately comes from socialist funding of research in universitiese (eg iPhones, mobile phones and their networking, aerospace engineering, advances in pharmaceuticals, etc).
Sears did that too, so did AT&T, its really common for a CEO to drink the kool-aid and say “lets try capitalism inside the company!” Followed by disaster.
Can you name me the last drug that Pharma companies came out with that wasn’t developed in an evil socialist government funded university, and that wasn’t just a change in a single molocule in order to extend a patent so the CEO can buy another yacht?
The main issue with capitalism as it stands now, is the refusal to let things fail.
The issue is much, MUCH broader than that.
Capitalism is not a ‘rational’ system, it doesn’t seek even self-preservation. Capitalism is a self-feeding fever. And when you need to burn out a few thousand years of entrenched aristocracies, that’s not so bad. But when your temperature is 106 and still rising, you should be looking at how to fucking stop it.
Even if governments regulated capitalism in such a way as to allow perfect competition, the result of that would be that capitalist institutions would become more adept at their individual tasks without regard for the actual wellbeing of society. Shit, man, letting things fail doesn’t mean Google (which isn’t even 30 years old, for example) is felled and the people are free, it just means the next search engine giant is even better at tracking us and selling our data. “Perfecting” capitalism in this sense would not mean a necessary increase in our society’s wellbeing, only an increase in the efficiency of institutions which are already not-always net-positive.
How about we give power to workers to decide how the economy is run. Maybe we can call it socialism? Almost like if society runs the economy it would be better than two or three people running it.
I want successful companies to last for a maximum of 30 years, then die off
Feels too extreme to me, forcing change on customers as the companies they buy goods or services from cycle out feels unnecessary. Companies existing for a long time should be fine if they don’t pursue endless growth.
The main issue with capitalism as it stands now, is the refusal to let things fail.
“Too big to fail” just means “too big”, the company should never have been allowed to get so large.
I want successful companies to last for a maximum of 30 years, then die off so new people can create new companies and build innovation.
Companies should also not be allowed to buy eachother.
I would argue that the main issue with capitalism as it stands now, is capitalism.
Capitalism doesn’t make innovation, it stops people from pursuing innovation to focus on profitability. How many people could be contributing to the world, but are stuck struggling to generate revenue for some business so they can have their basic life needs met.
As Marx pointed out, capitalism is inherently destructive, in an ever-repeating cycle of destroying and recreating its own society for profit.
On one hand, this is good, insofar as it allows extremely rapid progress in pre-modern societies that have never heard of wireless communication. The old feudal ways are churned up and spat out; the old mercantilist ways are churned up and spat out; even previous capitalist ways are churned up and spat out. At the end of it, you do have a shiny new set of institutions that are better suited to current conditions than existed before. Capitalism prioritizes profitability over innovation; but profitability is still better by-proxy for innovation than valuing stagnation itself, as aristocracies do.
On the other, much more obvious hand to us, this is, uh, bad, on account of the process of destroying our society, and the cost of constantly recreating it. I think churning up some 2000 years of feudal privilege, which had resisted numerous previous movements and revolutions, is a… good run. It did its job, now it’s time to make sure it doesn’t overstay its welcome any more than it already has. Which it has, probably by about [checks notes] 108 years, say?
It’s time to take the system and its diminished returns to actual human wellbeing behind the shed before the net balance goes entirely negative.
Do you know what society has had the greatest leap forward ever? Ill give you a hint, its not a capitalistic one.
… bruh I run a fucking comm called tankiejerk, I assure you, I am well fucking aware of the faults and flaws of the bureaucratic despotisms of China and the Soviet Union.
When I say it is destructive - and I thought I had pointed this out with unnecessary directness considering the leftist fucking comm we’re in, but apparently it was still too subtle for some guests/passers-by who fail to read the sidebar - I mean that it is destructive inherently, as a system, it has no deeper goal. Tyrants and despots throughout history have destroyed, typically for their delusional dreams or petty self-satisfaction. Capitalism, as a system, is oriented around constantly retooling, not just materially, but also organizationally.
Traditionally, societies entrench themselves in their ways of behaving once it’s established to be effective enough to survive. Capitalism, as an economic system, upends that because the transfer of power - through currency, which is not traditionally the main conduit of power - becomes extremely rapid and fluid. This means that more efficient solutions are, on a civilizational timescale, very quickly adopted in matters of internal and economic dispute, not just military advancements.
This also means, however, that capitalism is constantly building and rebuilding its own structures; seen in its most grotesque (but arguably not necessary) form as consumerism - this year’s model is out of date in a year’s time, even though it will function for another ten. Capitalism destroys the old, inefficient system, and replaces it immediately with a newer, more efficient system (or else pisses the money away, since failures are inevitable and capitalism is not a thinking system, it is a self-perpetuating system; “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent” and all that).
Capitalism, thus, incurs massive material costs for its increased efficiency of designs - billions of tons of steel are created and then discarded because the rapidly advancing nature of capitalism makes it more cost-effective, under current conditions, to immediately move on to the production of the next, 4% more productive model to stay competitive in the market.
Furthermore, it incurs social costs in that, especially since the period of heightened labor mobility since the 1950s, it freely breaks up traditional social groupings by offering economic incentives for labor to relocate where it is economically needed, not necessarily where it is most useful to general society. Again, this is both good and bad - good when you need traditional social groupings broken up, bad when it’s been picking up pace for two centuries now and counting, and we’re questioning our ability to create social groupings faster than they’re broken up.
Capitalism is destructive, as a system, not as a matter of decisions made or tyrannies enabled, but by its very nature, and this is both good and bad. We are fast approaching, with the efficiency capitalism has lent us, to the point where the bad may overwhelm the good - we are looking at industrial scale production creating shortages of raw material, excesses of pollution, and a rapidly changing climate that threatens economic and ecological devastation.
Lmao…
So glad we’re killing the planet for all this innovation, thank you capitalism 07
Pretty cool how you cherry picked the perfect images to illustrate your point.
The first photo?
Why not show the thousands of other soft drinks/fruit drinks that exist?
The second photo seems to be missing all the mom and pop cafes and sandwich shops that number in the hundreds of thousands that offer food from around the world.
The third photo is just too fucking stupid to even point out how fucking stupid it is.
Be fair. If you’re going to hate on something, do it using real-world examples. Not ridiculous cherry-picked bullshit. Capitalism is flawed as any unchecked socio-economic system would be. But dishonesty in presenting an argument against it only impresses people that are dumb enough to not see it for the bad faith it possesses.
Capitalism is when iPhone amirite?
Tell me you don’t understand how competition breeds innovation without telling me.
Also, explain to me how nearly every country that exists, uses a capitalist socioeconomic system if it is such a failure.
And yes, capitalism is how we got not only the iPhone, but mobile phones in their entirety- along with the services that allow them to work- aerospace engineering, advances in pharmaceutical technology, and pretty much everything you see around you. Is it perfect? Fuck no- no unchecked system is ever going to be, but unless you have a working model to present that illustrates how you can get the largest superpower on the planet to convert its entire government and economic footprint- maybe can the smug bullshit.
Though do be sure to go ahead and keep using all the things capitalism allowed to happen as a result of a free market while pretending to stand firmly against it. I’m sure all the people in whatever circles you post in that are dumb enough to not see the hypocrisy will think you’re soooo kewl!
Everyone else will see it for what it is.
Innovation has always stemmed from some form of socialist institution - state funded research nowadays.
Free marked only enabled ethically-acceptable exploitation of the global south under the disguise of ‘rapid progress’, when in fact nothing society-breaking hasn’t been invented since the internet.
And if you know the history of the internet and technologies involved, you know how much capitalism has done for it - absolutely nothing.
LMAO!
Turns out its actually cooperation and not competition that breeds innovation. Capitalist firms artificially simulate this internally. I think it was Lowes that tried to run its departments through competition by pitting them against each other and the business nearly went under. Not to mention a lot of innovation ultimately comes from socialist funding of research in universitiese (eg iPhones, mobile phones and their networking, aerospace engineering, advances in pharmaceuticals, etc).
Sears did that too, so did AT&T, its really common for a CEO to drink the kool-aid and say “lets try capitalism inside the company!” Followed by disaster.
Whatever makes you feel better. There is no point in debating this with people that will force their opinion to be the correct one.
Of course it encourages innovation, but you seem to think that innovation is exclusive to capitalism.
One of the big reasons is the US “spreading democracy”, among others
This is the point. It’s been allowed to go so out of control that people want radical change now
Capitalism != market economy
Cool, so we agree it’s not that capitalism is the problem- it’s that it’s been unchecked that’s the problem.
Makes me wonder what unchecked socialism would look like. Maybe we should ask Bulgaria.
Unchecked capitalism? How do you check it? Please explain, oh great intelligence. (Before you say regulation I need you to think).
How do you check ANY rampant system?
You think socialism is impervious to corruption? If so, Bulgaria would like a word with you.
I hope for you that one day you grow up.
… said the child, arguing in defence of a dumb meme made by a teenager.
Can you name me the last drug that Pharma companies came out with that wasn’t developed in an evil socialist government funded university, and that wasn’t just a change in a single molocule in order to extend a patent so the CEO can buy another yacht?
If a company builds a surplus of useful capital and becomes so entrenched in the economy that it functions as a utility, I don’t want it to fail.
I want it unionized, organized into a national planned economy, and regulated to maximize utility divided by cost.
The issue is much, MUCH broader than that.
Capitalism is not a ‘rational’ system, it doesn’t seek even self-preservation. Capitalism is a self-feeding fever. And when you need to burn out a few thousand years of entrenched aristocracies, that’s not so bad. But when your temperature is 106 and still rising, you should be looking at how to fucking stop it.
Even if governments regulated capitalism in such a way as to allow perfect competition, the result of that would be that capitalist institutions would become more adept at their individual tasks without regard for the actual wellbeing of society. Shit, man, letting things fail doesn’t mean Google (which isn’t even 30 years old, for example) is felled and the people are free, it just means the next search engine giant is even better at tracking us and selling our data. “Perfecting” capitalism in this sense would not mean a necessary increase in our society’s wellbeing, only an increase in the efficiency of institutions which are already not-always net-positive.
How about we give power to workers to decide how the economy is run. Maybe we can call it socialism? Almost like if society runs the economy it would be better than two or three people running it.
I think the main problem is the private ownership of the means of production.
Feels too extreme to me, forcing change on customers as the companies they buy goods or services from cycle out feels unnecessary. Companies existing for a long time should be fine if they don’t pursue endless growth.
Yeah, I was a bit on the fence on this when I wrote it…
It is a hard balance to strike.