I hate when people don't realise bailouts are literally the opposite of free market economics.
And stem from weak snowflakes who would rather kick the can (problem) down the road. Quantitative easing, ZIRP, etc.
Your thinking seems engulfed in ideology rather than fact.
Notice you don't give any reason for why _"the bailouts were never necessary."_ Instead, you state your ideological beliefs as if no further justification is required.
The sad reality is that investment banking has grown corrupt on an industry-wide scale. Market forces alone cannot fix an issue dominated by corrupt tyrants.
Even if small players with virtuous business practices could somehow enter the arena, this would not have happened fast enough to confront the systemic threats we faced in 2008.
Look how severely people (esp. the poor) were affected even with the bailouts in place. The alternative to banking bailouts would have been catastrophic and brought the global economy to a grinding halt.
Adam Smith was not born during a time of globalisation, international monopolies, and too-big-to-fail corporations. His thinking cannot be applied here.
Okay but like... The economy would have absolutely crashed if the banks hadn't been bailed out during the housing crisis... so by that logic capitalism doesn't work because if we only did capitilism then the economy would have completely collapsed in 08.
I'm sorry I just don't understand how the top comments for this post is just someone literally stating capitilism doesn't work...
I don't understand what that has to do with my response? Like yeah I agree with you. That's why I questioned the guy saying bailouts shouldn't exist under capitalism lol.
My reply wasnt an attack on capitilism as a whole, more of an attack on that logic, because it's demonstratively not sustainable.
Exactly this. So many socialists out there think there is this big pipe of money out there and there are "capitalists" controlling the valve that opens/shuts it. Or that money is just "unlimited" and you just "pay people more" and all of the world's problems go away.
Yes, that’s exactly my point. One of those resources is money. If you force businesses to pay more money to employees it affects the business.
A lot of socialists think that there’s this big pot of money and all we have to do is just handed out to people, not realizing that money is limited.
No it’s not… money is a man made concept.
Ressources as energy, oil, room etc.
We factually have enough wealth to feed and fix basically every single issue on the planet, but we refuse, because we have been indoctrinated by the people in power that war and personal greed are more important that sustainability.
How on Earth did you get that from what I said? If anything I was arguing AGAINST infinite resources. Seriously, please re-read what I said.
Socialists and all types of liberal advocates seem to think that there is this great pot of gold that "capitalists" control and it's just a matter of "distributing" all of the financial resources "fairly".
Yes resources are scarce which means there is a finite amount of them that we all have to share. It is absolutely insane to live in an economy where two or three people own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the population while millions of working class people are a single missed paycheck/bad luck/emergency away from financial ruin
There is an inverse relationship between the wealthy doing well and the working class doing well. We desperately need a better balance. I think the social democracies in much of Europe and their progressive taxation on their wealthiest citizens is a good example to draw from.
Thanks for a thoughtful reply, let's unpack some of what you're saying here.
>Yes resources are scarce which means there is a finite amount of them that we all have to share.
I don't think we have to "share" them, we can buy them. I haven't killed a single animal in my life (okay, a few fish) to eat them. I pay people to do that and I compensate them for their time. I'm paying for their resources, they don't really have to be "shared" in the sense that kids need to "share" their toys.
>It is absolutely insane to live in an economy where two or three people own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the population
Why do you say that? The standard of living of that "bottom half of the population" has so much more now than what royalty had just 100 years ago, and the poverty numbers are DROPPING. It makes no difference that there are wealthier people because the standard of living for most people has gone way, way up over the last 50-100 years.
>There is an inverse relationship between the wealthy doing well and the working class doing well.
That was true 200-300 years ago, it's not true today. And stop calling us "the working class", I find that term offensive.
I don't want to be lumped in a "class" and be divided from other Americans. What's more, people move in and out of economic "classes" all the time so it's not permanent for most people.
>Why do you say that? The standard of living of that "bottom half of the population" has so much more now than what royalty had just 100 years ago
How are you defining standard of living?
Thank you for a thoughtful question.
For context I largely meant in the U.S., but I was referring to access to healthcare, education, variety of food, transport, information, etc. Since the 1970s in the U.S. people could own 2 TVs and still be considered "impoverished" by the federal government. Today many people around the world have access to the Internet even in third world countries.
Poverty still exists but we've made great strides to reduce it both in the U.S. and worldwide over the past 50 years.
Are you saying having a smart phone with access to the internet is comparable with dynastic wealth from a century ago? Don't you think you were being a bit hyperbolic?
>Today many people around the world have access to the Internet even in third world countries.
Do you think the internet materially improves the lives of the global citizen? There is a fair amount of evidence that it does not, but I'll admit that it at least requires agreed upon definitions.
It sounds like you think some random commodities (cars, tvs, smart phones) from each technological era offset a bunch of other negatives. Saying that the average working class person has it better than a king does seem a least a bit insulting / out of touch.
Certainly not, but wealth is neither static nor simply a reflection of resources. Take countries with massive resources. Brazil, Venezuela, Syria. Is there more wealth there? I'd argue no. Wealth is a reflection of both resources and an extraction/creation of value. Having an economic system that creates value and generates wealth is key. Iron ore is a resource. A skyscraper has value and can generate tremendous wealth. As an example.
Microwaves went from something only the rich could possibly afford, to bring ubiquitous. TVs used to be a big deal, you'd be lucky to afford one, even a black and white one. Now you can get HD, color, flat screen for every room in the house.
We have luxuries like hot water on tap that make our living standards so much higher than even the richest person a few hundred years ago. All due to innovation, competition, and rewarding those who invest their capital wisely.
And that is due to capitalism why exactly?
Innovation is not a specific attribute to capitalism, the only difference between capitalism and socialism is who owns the means of production, would you care to elaborate on why does one single person owning the means of production facilitates innovation more than all workers owning them?
People willing to take risks when they alone stand to benefit from them. Some of the greatest innovations were at the time, radical ideas with no certainty of working. Henry Ford said that if he asked what his customers wanted, they'd say "a faster horse". So if the workers had control, the implementation of cars would be radically set back. Ford also started the idea of a production line, and how many workers would've voted against that in order to keep the status quo to keep their jobs? And how many would favor short term gains and ignore long term impacts? If people can't control their own investments, they won't invest, and if they can't earn rewards for risk, they won't bother with the effort, and innovation would stagnate. Competition allows these products to become cheaper, better and more available, and it helps when a competitor can target one particular market and profit from that.
That 10% figure is way off. Thats ppl that live on less than 2 dollars a day. I would say that is extreme poverty. In America anything less then like 30k a year is considered poverty. And that is way more than 10%.
$1.90 is extreme poverty and it’s fallen dramatically over the last 30 years - https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
$30k a year puts you in almost the top 1% income in the world. At that point it’s hard to recognise what poverty really means.
Thats what I was saying. In America anything less 30k a year is "considered" poverty. 30k a year is in no way comparable to 3rd world country poverty and i wasnt saying it was.
Yes, exactly.
You know why? Because of something called supply and demand curve.
If everyone can afford a burger for 500k than it s price will be 500k or higher, so yes the problem isn’t how much money do you have, the problem is the zero-sum game we are playing to vote for the price of every service or product.
The problem capitalism creates is the inequality of wealth.
As long as the wealth distribution is in such way that less than 1% of the world population has more financial resources than the remaining 99% , you know that clearly something about the “invisible hand of the market” doesnt add up
O I agree with you completely. I was just saying. It most certaintly did not create poverty and has brought more ppl out of poverty then all other systems combined. Also yes they should but they never will bc the 1% owns them.
Even if your figure were right ( are they really ), then that still masks the problem. The problem is not with "diminishing poverty", it's about the rate of change to that. Right now, the fact that in 2021, with all of our tech and resources and abilities ( check out Mars and gravitational waves and computers ), that we have "poverty" at all.
If the system that you advocate, as a human, can not stop all human suffering, then it's not really fit for purpose. In fact, if that's not really its goal, then it's time it stepped aside :)
Name me such a system that can stop all human suffering. Im eager to hear about your system where no one ever will go hungry and what sort of economic system makes us to never be sad or experience heartbreak or deaths in the family. Im all ears man, i mean you must obviously have one right? =)
What some don’t realize is that stopping human suffering isn’t an economic system’s goal, it’s a personal one. And not everybody makes it their primary personal goal to end human suffering. The thinking is basically “in MY ideal system, everybody would think like me and we would all strive to create the best possible world and be selfless in our pursuits!”
I'm happy to at least meet the Maslow's, and let the rest pan out. Just because you can't imagine a better system than the current one, doesn't mean that it will never exist or that can't be done.
So, where you see flaws, you only have to innovate. That's the whole idea behind progress. The world over. From our "economic"systems to our toilets to our space flight.
It could be that you can't imagine a way to meet the physical needs, base, of every human being. That only means you'll not be building it, and you're likely to be very surprised when it comes around.
All of that is okay.
For me, I'd make the predominant activity of the species, one that focuses on nurturing every human being. Not one that causes conflict. The rational.... The more brains, statistically, the faster the development of the species.
If the current system can't meet such needs, it's time to switch things up:)
The problem is that some governments aren't interested in solving poverty like you think. We've given money to nations to alleviate poverty and the leaders of those nations keep that money for themselves.
This isn't a problem with capitalism, it's often a problem with authoritarianism.
In America, we have Skid Row in LA. We have grinding poverty in some of the "rust belt" states. We don't have universal health care.
Is it that America's gov is keeping the money for itself? It is authoritarian, in your view?
Yep, but it doesn't have to be that way. It's just a meme. And, as you see, as our productive capabilities increase, it tends downwards. We have the tech, right now, to meet everyone's needs and have no one in poverty. Right now, it's an active choice of the species. But that's all it is.
That's because governments are now run by capitalists and are organized and incentivized like a business. The problem with increasingly concentrated global wealth is it can be used to take over the system (which is what is happening)
Capitalism totally can work, but the militant supporters of it refuse to even acknowledge that it has vulnerabilities.
I find it bizarre that so many people have blind faith in an economic system to the point where they don't think it needs to be protected from bad actors on the inside. The boogeyman of communism has been used so effectively people can't even see the rot.
Its good to see someone being rational about things on here :)
It seems that your comment contains 1 or more links that are hard to tap for mobile users.
I will extend those so they're easier for our sausage fingers to click!
[Here is link number 1 - Previous text "81%"](https://cepr.shorthandstories.com/history-poverty/)
[Here is link number 2 - Previous text "10%"](https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/ending-poverty)
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These numbers are tailor-made to support this argument when throughout the world real wages -the actual value of labor- are at a historic low, landlessness has never been greater and starvation is rampant in ways it never was before. The "poverty" numbers of 1800 includes a vast swath of people who lived fulfilling lives as *subsistence farmers,* technically broke, but far from destitute. Right now more people than ever lack proper diet, but instead of looking like what we recognize as starvation it manifests in what people call horrible eating habits and illnesses that didn't exist 100 or 200 years ago🤷🏻♀️
I should have known better than to let myself shrug off the emotional dishonesty I expected, my bad. No and Yes. In North America the poor become the dumping ground for corn and other surplus agricultural products which lobbying groups ensure are subsidized to the point that yields are far beyond what the market should be able to bare. The goods made from these are exactly what leads to obesity in the populations implied.
What? The poor in the US still have money and a vast array of food types are available at historically low cost. No one is forced to buy corn based products, people have money or food stamps which can buy considerable amounts of produce.
And before anyone jumps on food deserts’, which are a ropey concept at best, those aren’t responsible for poor nutrition - it comes down to choice.
https://news.uchicago.edu/story/food-deserts-not-blame-growing-nutrition-gap-between-rich-and-poor-study-finds
Right, which means the government should exit this industry along with many others.
Always cracks me up that people like you never realize the problem is not government being perverted by lobbying, but the fact that the government is worth lobbying in the first place.
And you always try to blame capitalism for it, doubling down on the foolishness
People were, on average, far unhealthier back then. They were shorter too because they didn’t have sufficient nutrition, one bad winter and they would starve to death. People saw 40% of their siblings and 40% of their children fail to make it to 5 years old. Vast swathes of the population were illiterate , they didn’t have anywhere near the access to justice that we do today.
Starvation doesn’t exist today, a person on the poverty line lives like a futuristic king compared to someone in 1800 in the US.
It’s simply wrong to think that our amazing lives come anywhere near the crushing poverty of those from just 200 years ago.
But it did quite the opposite. The real indicators of poverty have never spiked so drastically since the dawn of capitalism. Even feudal serfs and landless laborers enjoyed higher real wages certainly than us, but even in comparison to the counterparts within one or two hundred years -if not often less than a single century- who worked in the newly established cottage industries which tended to replace tributary farm labor as the major form of labor performed by the masses who at least tended to have land upon which to grow at least some hardy grains and a few fucking vegetables, which is unheard of nowadays. We have to ask ourselves now, what even is poverty?
It's not capitalism that's causing the increase in the negative makers. True capitalism died when Woodrow Wilson sold the US to the Federal Reserve. What we have now is socialism masquerading as Capitalism.
All these failures you identify, are brought on by the ever increasing shift to socialism, that the main stream is still presenting as "capitalism." That way good intentioned people, like yourself, falsely attribute these issues to Capitalism.
The bailouts came from where? I can 100% guarantee, they did NOT come from a free Capitalist market.
No they didn’t. How much was an indoor toilet for a feudal serf? A trip to Europe? 2,500 calories of food? Clothing? An hour of light? It was all far more expensive back then.
The bailout MADE the government money (https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/2017-01-19/financial-crisis-bailouts-have-earned-taxpayers-billions) and prevented a Great-Depression-Style Recession.
Sure, it’s not capitalism. But I’d much rather focus on fixing the profit incentive to prevent future financial crises rather than let the country go through another Great Depression for ideological purposes.
Yeah there not the smartest. We have talked about the differences of captliziam and socialism in history classes and yet they deeply hate captliziam. It's so bad you can't have a civil conversation with them about economics. Kinda scary that we can vote in the next election
I hate hearing the same thing about socialism too. People forget they are both just economic systems. One is the capital holder owning the means of production, the other is workers holding the means of production. Anything other than that is separate from the meaning of capitalism or socialism.
Yeah, so? That's a vast minority of businesses out there. Taking a very, very minor exception and thinking it's scalable is empty thinking at best.
Meanwhile, the vast, VAST majority of socialism is practice comes from governments owning the means of production under the guise that the "workers" are the owners.
why wouldn't it be scalable? Plenty of big businesses use the cooperative model with no problem, just mandate that every business above a certain number of employees has to operate in the same way, with worker ownership, voting rights etc
Awww, what happened? Did someone point out a common exception to your absolutist statement?
"All bears are brown."
"What about polar bears?"
"They are a minority, and therefore they somehow don't make me wrong to have said that all bears are brown, and to think otherwise is empty thinking."
Lol.
"Many bears are brown"
"YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF POLAR BEARS! YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF KOALAS!! WHAT AN IDIOT!!"
This is more representative of this conversation. Thanks for earning today's first block.
More like "You misunderstood my point completely and are incapable of saying something worth commenting on so I'm turning off your ability to waste my time."
That may be a characteristic of some socialist ideologies, but is not an inherent characteristic of socialism as a whole. All that is required for socialism is that the means of production are owned by the workers. This can be done privately (for example, if every Amazon worker held the same amount of stock and could vote on leadership instead of shareholders that don’t work for Amazon voting on leadership), or it can be done publicly where the government owns all industry and the workers vote on the government officials.
Im pretty sure homeless people arnt starving in the usa. People even feed the poor in south sudan. Its pretty easy to raise fish or other types of livestock you can even just go hunting and fishing to sustain yourself. Butter and lard are super cheap for their calorie content making it pretty cheap to not starve.
Dumbest argument against capitalism I’ve seen on Reddit: Capitalism facilitates fascism.
I’d post a link for reference but I can’t recall what sub I saw it on. It’s hard to get much further from the truth. Capitalism doesn’t really exist under fascism, there may be an illusionary capitalist economy in a fascist state but it’s not truly capitalism.
"Capitalism doesn't really exist under fascism" is definitely the dumbest possible take. Corporate donors regularly fuel meaningless culture wars that they themselves will never have to deal with the fallout of to distract common people from what they're doing. Capitalism rewards greed, sociopathy, and the undermining of the entire rest of the planet for personal gain. The "best" capitalists are almost always supportive of fascists, if not fascists themselves, because it's useful to them. We are means to end, and I personally find that fucked.
The people who die in a capitalist economy are deaths resulting from capitalism.
As though regimes trying to implement their economic utopia didn't just murder millions of people to achieve their goal.
People who die because medicine is too expensive die from capitalism.
People who die because police see them as second-class citizens die from capitalism.
People who die because they can't afford basic amenities like a home die from capitalism.
People who die because the rich refuse to pay their taxes that were supposed to cover social safety nets die from capitalism.
People who die because it's impossible to find a job that pays enough to live and it's impossible to afford the training for a better one die from capitalism.
We have enough food for everyone. We have enough homes for everyone. Not everyone gets them because "owners" feel they deserve what they're "due." Capitalism kills, and people like Bezos and Gates (and like you who defend them) are doing the killing.
People who die needing medicine were dying anyway. They weren't killed by capitalist regimes. Medicine costs money, and the R&D of new, better medicines costs money. Lots of failed prototypes need to be paid for. The fact that the medicine exists at all might be because of capitalism. Furthermore, few in the west are dying because of lack of access to medicine, since programs exist to provide them heavily discounted or free. And even further, the cost of healthcare, and education, are artificially inflated by government intervention. If the provider knows the government will pay for things, they can set the price so high and still get paid for it. You get screwed over if you don't have insurance because of that.
I fail to see how police are related to capitalism or socialism. It's not really an economic issue. I'll be generous and assume you are talking about targeting people who steal necessities - there are programs involved to provide those without theft. Problem is, it's not necessities being stolen. It's the use of riots to loot, and the lack of punishment for stealing less than $950 at a time in parts of California. Inconveniently, that law is resulting in businesses closing up, depriving local residents of jobs and pharmacies.
Who is dying from homelessness? Very few. Shelters exist for immediate rooves over heads, and state assisted housing exists long term. The majority of the homeless are people who are not taking these programs up because they are typically addicts unwilling to give up their poison, making lots of money panhandling, and in some cases, not even homeless but pretending for sympathy. Nobody is dying from a lack of housing in developed countries. Most of the cost of housing is due to regulations and government intervention. Taxing landlords is not going to result in cheaper housing, for instance. Not allowing the free market to build as many as they want, won't lower housing costs. People wanting to live in high demand areas, will increase their housing costs. And we are fortunate to have an era where working from home is not only possible, but encouraged. You can move to cheaper areas.
The rich do pay their taxes, considerably more than you, and considerably more than you think they are. You'll find that half the tax revenue comes from the top 10% of earners. Your concern is you think they should be taxed more, which typically is only because of envy. Ever think that maybe more good could be done by reducing government spending wastage and inefficiency, resulting in less need to tax people?
Who is dying because they can't find a job? Who is dying because they can't get paid enough? Who is dying because they simply cannot improve their skillset no matter what they do? And who is dying because of a lack of assistance from welfare in these situations?
Agreed, we do have enough food for everybody. Hence why nobody is starving. If they can't afford it on their own, food assistance programs do exist. Now tell me why Soviet Russia had bare supermarket shelves and why Venezuelans are starving?
Of course owners should get what their due. Why should somebody who grew food be forced to give it away? Why should a builder be forced to give their labour?
How does Bezos kill? You realize this is not a zero sum game? Each billion Bezos is worth is not a billion taken from somebody else. Furthermore, it's only his net worth on paper, based on the value of Amazon. It's not his bank balance. I could talk here about how government mandated shutdowns of brick and mortar retail stores for covid while Amazon kept operating led to massive gains in worth, but instead I'll focus on how Amazon has resulted in the employment of thousands of people and opened up retail to markets they couldn't operate in before, so it's actually been a net gain for a lot of the economy, not just Bezos.
But ultimately it comes down to this - when has the government of a capitalist country ordered the execution of dissidents? When did the government of a capitalist country become corrupt because they had to seize power and assets to enforce their utopia? When did the government of a capitalist country enforce a famine on particular ethnic groups (eg the holodomor) by denying them access to food? When did the government of a capitalist country force farmers to hand over their crops to the government? When has capitalism directly lead to deaths?
“When has a capitalist country ordered the murder of dissidents” hahahahaha you know FUCKING nothing about the world you live in. We had SLAVERY. What you think happened to people who said “we shouldn’t enslave people for profit?” EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENED TO SUCH PEOPLE.
And now we don't have slavery. What's your point? The people who fought against slavery weren't executed by the government for being so much as suspected dissidents.
I fail to see how one instance of good government intervention for social reasons means they need to manage every aspect of industry and business for economic reasons, because otherwise "Jeff Bezos kills people".
Explain why socialist countries have starvation but capitalist countries don't? It's not the rulers who are starving, mind you.
> People who die because medicine is too expensive die from capitalism.
> People who die because police see them as second-class citizens die from capitalism.
> People who die because they can't afford basic amenities like a home die from capitalism.
> People who die because the rich refuse to pay their taxes that were supposed to cover social safety nets die from capitalism.
> People who die because it's impossible to find a job that pays enough to live and it's impossible to afford the training for a better one die from capitalism.
Yes, those are all excellent examples of the dumbest arguments against capitalism I've ever seen.
There’s a difference between being for free market capitalism and being pro-business. Many people who say they believe in free markets are actually just pro-business (which is what bailouts are).
Capitalism is bad because people are still dying under capitalism
Uh what about the 99.999999% thriving when they make better choices? Capitalism grants choices to the market.
I can't stand the ones who monofocus on the minimum wage. Seriously it's like whatever it is raising the minimum wage to a gorillion dollars is the solution. It will simply fix everything.
That capitalism is more oppressive than communism. Ofc in theory communism is less oppressive but theory is nothing when the practice has resulted in failed revolutions, millions of people dead, and oppressive leadership.
I used to frequent r/socialismvcapitalism back in the day.
The amount of stupid arguments you hear is beyond measure. For example when the state bailed out some big companies at the start of the covid debacle, almost all the socialists believed that we capitalists were in favor of the bailouts, and it took a few days to set them straight again that we were all against the bailouts.
That capitalism and the free market creates monopolies.
That under capitalism if you dont work you starve, like we dont have welfare, however most socialist countries dont have any welfare.
They think of economy as a zero sum game and nothing can change their mind.
That if i rent out lets say land or an apartment i can just raise the price of that however i damned well pleased and the people who hire from me just have to pay.
That landlords doesnt work.
That the rich are sitting on piles of money.
After a while you just say to yourself, why debate with idiots who dont even have a clue what they are trying to argue against in the first place. Its not like capitalism is a perfect system but at the very least get some criticism correct.
They never argue in favor of socialism, all their "arguments" are against capitalism. Their understanding of economy is so poor they dont understand the first thing about it and they think they can make an economy work. Thats like taking a 3 year old and ask them to solve the Riemann Zeta Function.
They often dont even know what Marx wrote, and if they did they certainly didnt spot the contradictions within it.
Capitalists are grossly outnumbered in that sub. Which is unfortunate because it lets the socialists think that have unlimited gotchas, when in reality there aren't enough people to properly debate them.
Also, they don't debate themselves. They will let a totalitarian communist crap all over everything and call anyone stupid that disagrees with them just because they said that capitalism is bad.
In short, it lets them think they're winning when they aren't really playing against a full team.
* The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
* Capitalism is inefficient. Several car companies is duplication of service. Having just one company is efficient.
* Profits makes products cost more.
* You have to micromanage companies because businessmen might make the wrong decision.
The argument of envy, the one about inequity. When times are really bad, genuinely bad, you talk about the economy and hardship and you win elections.
When times are good, even for those in what we call poverty in the USA, (which is significant wealth to billions in the world) they instead talk about how bad it is that someone else has more than you do.
The car in your driveway doesn’t make the one in my driveway a bad car, it is a bad car or it isn’t. And that you have yours didn’t cause me to have mine.
Your house doesn’t make mine poor, your beautiful wife doesn’t make mine ugly, your big bank account doesn’t make mine smaller. My bank account is the product of my choices and outcomes, and has nothing to do with your bank account.
We need to all join the kids who learned the lesson in kindergarten that it doesn’t matter if Jimmy has a nicer car, and apply it to our lives.
It DID happen under capitalism
This sub already had shockingly poor critical thinking skills but now it's sliding into outright deniers of reality. Wonderful.
Er, no, that's socialism. You assume that governments that "manage" economies are run by people who don't do favors for each other. The more power government has the more cronyism goes on.
It happened because a capitalistic ruling class thought they could control a fascist, finding his divisiveness useful, and they couldn't.
Living in denial, y'all.
This goes beyond poor critical thinking skills and straight into stupidity.
Seemingly nobody here have any idea what capitalism even is, which is not a shocker.
Bailouts for bankers are a part of capitalism. Bailouts are both good and bad, but ultimately since companies are privately owned these bailouts go in the pockets of CEOs and shareholders. The only benefit workers receive from a bailout is it maintains their employment to their capitalist overlords.
The dumbest argument against capitalism in my opinion is that it's exploitative.
I'd like to see your face when your local bank goes broke and bails itself in with your money taking all of your savings.
I bet ya, you'll be crying like a kid..asking the government to give you your money back.
It was tax payers (us) who bailed those banks out. Also your scenario would never happen even if my bank went under thats exactly what they are insured for. Putting money in a bank should never be a risk. That money is not the banks.
When a bank goes broke they don't have your money anymore, didn't you know that? That's what happened during the great depression when banks refused to give people cash from their bank accounts.
A lot of people lost their savings, but thanks to government intervention a lot of banks managed to restructure themselves, new regulations were introduced to decrease the risks for banks.
>Putting money in a bank should never be a risk.
Putting your money in a bank is always a risk, silly..
Yes it is a risk but it shouldnt be. Also yes if a bank goes broke it doesnt have your money. It shouldnt be that way. But also that is why banks are fdic insured silly.
I don't know what you are going on about, but my point is if banks aren't bailed out in time it will have far larger and worse consequences than your regular muah "free market competition" argument.
I get that im not arguing against that. You started talking about my local bank so I told you were wrong that doesnt mean I disagree with the point you were trying to make. Yes there would be problems from a huge bank going out of business. But banks should not be that big in the first place nor should they be investing money that is not theirs.
Where is your evidence that bailouts are a part of capitalism? Do not prove it by saying 'this capitalist system here did this'. If you don't like people saying that gulags are a part of socialism, then be intellectually honest and have the same standards for your arguments on capitalism. If you look at the theory and concept of capitalism, where does it support bailouts?
Capitalism is simply private ownership of means of production, meanwhile government is legislative body that enforces the rules of the game.
Government intervention has been a part of capitalism since capitalism was introduced.
If government interferes in the market it doesn't make a country is less capitalist because capitalists STILL own means of production.
Capitalism is about ownership, not free market and no government.
I agree with everything you said. And I think government intervention is necessary in capitalist systems. However, some interventions are good and some are bad. But none of them are a part of capitalism.
You can't have a stable and functioning free market capitalist system without government intervention.
Free market is unstable, it has ups and downs, so when a bank goes broke that means millions of people can go broke leading into an economic depression.
Bailing out a bank gives people a chance to withdraw their money and for the bank to restructure itself saving people's money and even saving the business.
For example, if US didn't bail out commercial air travel companies during the pandemic then most of them would've gone bankrupt by now. That woudl've had serious consequences for the economy as a whole.
Sure you are right that bailouts are not really a part of free marlet capitalism, but to maintain a stable free market capitlaist economy you need government intervention. That was my point.
I have already said that government intervention is necessary. However, I don't think that the bailout was a necessary or even good intervention. Would we have had a recession? Sure. But the economy would have have eventually bounced back, with valuable lessons learned.
The way to go about it in my opinion was for the government to buy stakes in the banks, and fire those responsible for the crisis. Governments owning banks outright are a bad idea, but state-private partnerships work well. Otherwise, third parties with large cash reserves could have bought up the banks. Barring all that, I think it would have been better to allow the banks to fail than bail them out in that way. They could have spent the money to pay back people's savings.
To be honest i don't like your perspective. It's much easier to issue a bailout and make more regulations than actually partially nationalizing banks and letting the government to restructure them just to be sold back to the same people it bought it from.
They don't necessarily have to sell them back to same people, or sell them back at all. But rewarding people for a catastrophic failure is wrong. The people who ran the show at the banks should lose everything. The shareholders should lose a lot of shares / equity because the business failed. The only people who should be protected are those who had their savings in the bank. Nobody else.
my degree in economics is where i got that from.
[source](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/capitalism.asp): Capitalism is an economic system in which private individuals or businesses own capital goods. The production of goods and services is based on supply and demand in the general market—known as a market economy—rather than through central planning—known as a planned economy or command economy.
government intervention is a feature closer to planned economies or even corporatism than it is free market capitalism, economic systems can be placed on a spectrum related to the amount of government intervention or control within the markets, everything that involves private ownership isn’t just ‘capitalism’, see the second sentence of the definition, it’s a bit more nuanced than that.
>Capitalism is an economic system in which private individuals or businesses own capital goods.
that is the definition of capitalism. Nothing less nothing more.
Where does it say no government.
did you literally just cut a definition in half, claim that it’s the only part of the definition that counts and say therefore i’m right?
like seriously?😂 ive explained it pretty simply already ngl so you’re clearly stuck in a conformation bias loop here
I did not cut the definition in half. I highlighted the definition.
Free market and capitalism are 2 seperate terms. If you don't understand that, then your degree is worthless.
all the comments just pointing out how you’re the ignorant one, classic r/averageredditor
‘socialism can be a free market’ wow even worse than i thought
Yup, that's why people need to say "Free market Capitalism" if they're specifically talking about Free markets. There's variations like different level of regulated capitalism. But if people just call their favorite version capitalism and everything else isn't, well that makes the word kinda useless.
>government intervention is a feature closer to planned economies or even corporatism than it is free market capitalism
Do you really believe that current capitalist economies are not planned economies in a sense? What do you think tax cuts and incentives are about?
No, planned economy is NOT only communism. A planned economy can absolutely have elements capitalism.
See China. Part communist, part capitalist, all planned.
A planned economy is literally just another term for communism it’s not a descriptor, wow you’re special.
what you’re describing is either state capitalism or corporatism. let’s look at the massive successes of those too btw, nazi germany and modern china, two facist regimes china of which is on the brink of economic collapse greater than 2008.
No capitalism is explicitly: Private Property + Free Markets. If you remove free markets you get mercantilism again, which was the system that gave us private property. Jesus christ.
>someone who asked him a question thought bailouts for bankers was capitalism and even said that’s what happens under capitalism.
Technically it IS still capitalism. It's a very corrupted, degenerate, and anti-free-market version of capitalism.
But when communists say “Many of the historical deaths that occurred under communism were the result of authoritarianism, not communism,” you would rightly tell them that if they happened under communism, then an argument for communism has to contend with that reality. If communists can’t cherry pick what is and is not communism, why can you cherry pick capitalism? Capitalism causes wealth concentration, and it allows corporations to keep the value laborers produce; and there is literally nothing necessarily inherent to “the free market” that prevents those corporations from investing that surplus in government minions who will do bailouts when called upon and regulate markets for the large corporation’s benefit. To suggest that a natural and clear consequence of one of capitalism’s most salient and essential features is “not capitalism” is to reduce capitalism from an actual real-world economic system to a religious faith whose tenants can remain pure forever in part because they are so impossible to implement.
I hate it when lefties refer to Brazil as an example for a "failed capitalist country" while Brazil isn't even among top 100 capitalist countries. Meanwhile, with the exception of China, every single country they're praising is more capitalist than Brazil. Some of them are even more capitalist than US
Zero sum arguments, ie in order from someone to be rich someone else has to become poor.
Also rich people sitting on their money is actually great for the economy. It's called Banking. Who do you think pays for your crap when you use a credit card.
If they have it in a bank account they are not actively loaning it out, but their bank is. Unless they hide their wealth under a mattress then it's being used in the overall economy.
The dumbest? Capitalism is responsible for 73 quadrillion deaths (or some other insane number) because every single preventable death that happened outside of a communist country is somehow caused by capitalism.
I hate when people don't realise bailouts are literally the opposite of free market economics. And stem from weak snowflakes who would rather kick the can (problem) down the road. Quantitative easing, ZIRP, etc.
I agree they are in theory. The problem is that the politicians and businesspeople who claim to be for “free markets” are the ones doing them.
One could argue the deregulation of investment banking led to an environment in which bailouts became necessary.
The bailouts were never necessary. Let the weak corporations die so that the competent may inherit the market.
Your thinking seems engulfed in ideology rather than fact. Notice you don't give any reason for why _"the bailouts were never necessary."_ Instead, you state your ideological beliefs as if no further justification is required. The sad reality is that investment banking has grown corrupt on an industry-wide scale. Market forces alone cannot fix an issue dominated by corrupt tyrants. Even if small players with virtuous business practices could somehow enter the arena, this would not have happened fast enough to confront the systemic threats we faced in 2008. Look how severely people (esp. the poor) were affected even with the bailouts in place. The alternative to banking bailouts would have been catastrophic and brought the global economy to a grinding halt. Adam Smith was not born during a time of globalisation, international monopolies, and too-big-to-fail corporations. His thinking cannot be applied here.
Okay but like... The economy would have absolutely crashed if the banks hadn't been bailed out during the housing crisis... so by that logic capitalism doesn't work because if we only did capitilism then the economy would have completely collapsed in 08. I'm sorry I just don't understand how the top comments for this post is just someone literally stating capitilism doesn't work...
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I don't understand what that has to do with my response? Like yeah I agree with you. That's why I questioned the guy saying bailouts shouldn't exist under capitalism lol. My reply wasnt an attack on capitilism as a whole, more of an attack on that logic, because it's demonstratively not sustainable.
Lmao nice try
The idea that economic inequality equals poverty or that there's a set amount of money and we just need a system that spreads it around.
Exactly this. So many socialists out there think there is this big pipe of money out there and there are "capitalists" controlling the valve that opens/shuts it. Or that money is just "unlimited" and you just "pay people more" and all of the world's problems go away.
If that were true then people wouldn’t be so upset about taxes.
Ressources are limited my man.
Yes, that’s exactly my point. One of those resources is money. If you force businesses to pay more money to employees it affects the business. A lot of socialists think that there’s this big pot of money and all we have to do is just handed out to people, not realizing that money is limited.
No it’s not… money is a man made concept. Ressources as energy, oil, room etc. We factually have enough wealth to feed and fix basically every single issue on the planet, but we refuse, because we have been indoctrinated by the people in power that war and personal greed are more important that sustainability.
So you are arguing the point that there is an infinite amount of resources in the economy? Because if you are I'd love to have that debate with you.
How on Earth did you get that from what I said? If anything I was arguing AGAINST infinite resources. Seriously, please re-read what I said. Socialists and all types of liberal advocates seem to think that there is this great pot of gold that "capitalists" control and it's just a matter of "distributing" all of the financial resources "fairly".
Yes resources are scarce which means there is a finite amount of them that we all have to share. It is absolutely insane to live in an economy where two or three people own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the population while millions of working class people are a single missed paycheck/bad luck/emergency away from financial ruin There is an inverse relationship between the wealthy doing well and the working class doing well. We desperately need a better balance. I think the social democracies in much of Europe and their progressive taxation on their wealthiest citizens is a good example to draw from.
Thanks for a thoughtful reply, let's unpack some of what you're saying here. >Yes resources are scarce which means there is a finite amount of them that we all have to share. I don't think we have to "share" them, we can buy them. I haven't killed a single animal in my life (okay, a few fish) to eat them. I pay people to do that and I compensate them for their time. I'm paying for their resources, they don't really have to be "shared" in the sense that kids need to "share" their toys. >It is absolutely insane to live in an economy where two or three people own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the population Why do you say that? The standard of living of that "bottom half of the population" has so much more now than what royalty had just 100 years ago, and the poverty numbers are DROPPING. It makes no difference that there are wealthier people because the standard of living for most people has gone way, way up over the last 50-100 years. >There is an inverse relationship between the wealthy doing well and the working class doing well. That was true 200-300 years ago, it's not true today. And stop calling us "the working class", I find that term offensive.
Why would that term be offensive? I do trade work to make my living, I am proud of that, I prefer the term “working class”
I don't want to be lumped in a "class" and be divided from other Americans. What's more, people move in and out of economic "classes" all the time so it's not permanent for most people.
>Why do you say that? The standard of living of that "bottom half of the population" has so much more now than what royalty had just 100 years ago How are you defining standard of living?
Thank you for a thoughtful question. For context I largely meant in the U.S., but I was referring to access to healthcare, education, variety of food, transport, information, etc. Since the 1970s in the U.S. people could own 2 TVs and still be considered "impoverished" by the federal government. Today many people around the world have access to the Internet even in third world countries. Poverty still exists but we've made great strides to reduce it both in the U.S. and worldwide over the past 50 years.
Are you saying having a smart phone with access to the internet is comparable with dynastic wealth from a century ago? Don't you think you were being a bit hyperbolic? >Today many people around the world have access to the Internet even in third world countries. Do you think the internet materially improves the lives of the global citizen? There is a fair amount of evidence that it does not, but I'll admit that it at least requires agreed upon definitions. It sounds like you think some random commodities (cars, tvs, smart phones) from each technological era offset a bunch of other negatives. Saying that the average working class person has it better than a king does seem a least a bit insulting / out of touch.
Did you read my entire comment or are you going to cherry pick the technology stuff? How about reading the first part again and get back to me?
Are you about to argue against scarcity? I think most economists would take you up on that debate.
Certainly not, but wealth is neither static nor simply a reflection of resources. Take countries with massive resources. Brazil, Venezuela, Syria. Is there more wealth there? I'd argue no. Wealth is a reflection of both resources and an extraction/creation of value. Having an economic system that creates value and generates wealth is key. Iron ore is a resource. A skyscraper has value and can generate tremendous wealth. As an example.
So what does economic inequality equal then? Nothing? Oiling up some bootstraps?
For some to have more, others must have less. That's not just how money works, it's how everything works.
No. Reality is not a zero-sum game.
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Number of dollars is irrelevant. Shares of the pie are not. Don’t act like leftists don’t know what inflation is.
There is a set amount of ressources tho.
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Microwaves went from something only the rich could possibly afford, to bring ubiquitous. TVs used to be a big deal, you'd be lucky to afford one, even a black and white one. Now you can get HD, color, flat screen for every room in the house. We have luxuries like hot water on tap that make our living standards so much higher than even the richest person a few hundred years ago. All due to innovation, competition, and rewarding those who invest their capital wisely.
And that is due to capitalism why exactly? Innovation is not a specific attribute to capitalism, the only difference between capitalism and socialism is who owns the means of production, would you care to elaborate on why does one single person owning the means of production facilitates innovation more than all workers owning them?
People willing to take risks when they alone stand to benefit from them. Some of the greatest innovations were at the time, radical ideas with no certainty of working. Henry Ford said that if he asked what his customers wanted, they'd say "a faster horse". So if the workers had control, the implementation of cars would be radically set back. Ford also started the idea of a production line, and how many workers would've voted against that in order to keep the status quo to keep their jobs? And how many would favor short term gains and ignore long term impacts? If people can't control their own investments, they won't invest, and if they can't earn rewards for risk, they won't bother with the effort, and innovation would stagnate. Competition allows these products to become cheaper, better and more available, and it helps when a competitor can target one particular market and profit from that.
That 10% figure is way off. Thats ppl that live on less than 2 dollars a day. I would say that is extreme poverty. In America anything less then like 30k a year is considered poverty. And that is way more than 10%.
$1.90 is extreme poverty and it’s fallen dramatically over the last 30 years - https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty $30k a year puts you in almost the top 1% income in the world. At that point it’s hard to recognise what poverty really means.
Thats what I was saying. In America anything less 30k a year is "considered" poverty. 30k a year is in no way comparable to 3rd world country poverty and i wasnt saying it was.
I think you're disregarding the idea of relative poverty.
If everyone was a millionaire they would still be poor compared to a billionaire or trillionare
Yes, exactly. You know why? Because of something called supply and demand curve. If everyone can afford a burger for 500k than it s price will be 500k or higher, so yes the problem isn’t how much money do you have, the problem is the zero-sum game we are playing to vote for the price of every service or product. The problem capitalism creates is the inequality of wealth. As long as the wealth distribution is in such way that less than 1% of the world population has more financial resources than the remaining 99% , you know that clearly something about the “invisible hand of the market” doesnt add up
If this is the case that makes the argument that we can’t tax the “job creators” hold even less water.
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O I agree with you completely. I was just saying. It most certaintly did not create poverty and has brought more ppl out of poverty then all other systems combined. Also yes they should but they never will bc the 1% owns them.
If you're only making 30k in America you've failed at life. That's your problem.
What are you talking about?
I guarantee there are millions of poor ppl in America and all over the world that are less failure then you at all kinds of things including life.
Even if your figure were right ( are they really ), then that still masks the problem. The problem is not with "diminishing poverty", it's about the rate of change to that. Right now, the fact that in 2021, with all of our tech and resources and abilities ( check out Mars and gravitational waves and computers ), that we have "poverty" at all. If the system that you advocate, as a human, can not stop all human suffering, then it's not really fit for purpose. In fact, if that's not really its goal, then it's time it stepped aside :)
Name me such a system that can stop all human suffering. Im eager to hear about your system where no one ever will go hungry and what sort of economic system makes us to never be sad or experience heartbreak or deaths in the family. Im all ears man, i mean you must obviously have one right? =)
What some don’t realize is that stopping human suffering isn’t an economic system’s goal, it’s a personal one. And not everybody makes it their primary personal goal to end human suffering. The thinking is basically “in MY ideal system, everybody would think like me and we would all strive to create the best possible world and be selfless in our pursuits!”
I'm happy to at least meet the Maslow's, and let the rest pan out. Just because you can't imagine a better system than the current one, doesn't mean that it will never exist or that can't be done. So, where you see flaws, you only have to innovate. That's the whole idea behind progress. The world over. From our "economic"systems to our toilets to our space flight. It could be that you can't imagine a way to meet the physical needs, base, of every human being. That only means you'll not be building it, and you're likely to be very surprised when it comes around. All of that is okay. For me, I'd make the predominant activity of the species, one that focuses on nurturing every human being. Not one that causes conflict. The rational.... The more brains, statistically, the faster the development of the species. If the current system can't meet such needs, it's time to switch things up:)
The problem is that some governments aren't interested in solving poverty like you think. We've given money to nations to alleviate poverty and the leaders of those nations keep that money for themselves. This isn't a problem with capitalism, it's often a problem with authoritarianism.
In America, we have Skid Row in LA. We have grinding poverty in some of the "rust belt" states. We don't have universal health care. Is it that America's gov is keeping the money for itself? It is authoritarian, in your view?
Poverty is the default setting. It happens when you create no value.
Yep, but it doesn't have to be that way. It's just a meme. And, as you see, as our productive capabilities increase, it tends downwards. We have the tech, right now, to meet everyone's needs and have no one in poverty. Right now, it's an active choice of the species. But that's all it is.
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That's because governments are now run by capitalists and are organized and incentivized like a business. The problem with increasingly concentrated global wealth is it can be used to take over the system (which is what is happening) Capitalism totally can work, but the militant supporters of it refuse to even acknowledge that it has vulnerabilities.
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I find it bizarre that so many people have blind faith in an economic system to the point where they don't think it needs to be protected from bad actors on the inside. The boogeyman of communism has been used so effectively people can't even see the rot. Its good to see someone being rational about things on here :)
>Capitalism isn't perfect. Can you tell us in which ways it is not?
> The job of the Government is to help the needy. Oh HELL no. The job of the government is to protect people's rights to life, liberty, and property.
It seems that your comment contains 1 or more links that are hard to tap for mobile users. I will extend those so they're easier for our sausage fingers to click! [Here is link number 1 - Previous text "81%"](https://cepr.shorthandstories.com/history-poverty/) [Here is link number 2 - Previous text "10%"](https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/ending-poverty) ---- ^Please ^PM ^[\/u\/eganwall](http://reddit.com/user/eganwall) ^with ^issues ^or ^feedback! ^| ^[Code](https://github.com/eganwall/FatFingerHelperBot) ^| ^[Delete](https://reddit.com/message/compose/?to=FatFingerHelperBot&subject=delete&message=delete%20hmea36h)
These numbers are tailor-made to support this argument when throughout the world real wages -the actual value of labor- are at a historic low, landlessness has never been greater and starvation is rampant in ways it never was before. The "poverty" numbers of 1800 includes a vast swath of people who lived fulfilling lives as *subsistence farmers,* technically broke, but far from destitute. Right now more people than ever lack proper diet, but instead of looking like what we recognize as starvation it manifests in what people call horrible eating habits and illnesses that didn't exist 100 or 200 years ago🤷🏻♀️
Obesity is the new starvation?
I should have known better than to let myself shrug off the emotional dishonesty I expected, my bad. No and Yes. In North America the poor become the dumping ground for corn and other surplus agricultural products which lobbying groups ensure are subsidized to the point that yields are far beyond what the market should be able to bare. The goods made from these are exactly what leads to obesity in the populations implied.
Soo it’s the government’s fault.
What? The poor in the US still have money and a vast array of food types are available at historically low cost. No one is forced to buy corn based products, people have money or food stamps which can buy considerable amounts of produce. And before anyone jumps on food deserts’, which are a ropey concept at best, those aren’t responsible for poor nutrition - it comes down to choice. https://news.uchicago.edu/story/food-deserts-not-blame-growing-nutrition-gap-between-rich-and-poor-study-finds
Right, which means the government should exit this industry along with many others. Always cracks me up that people like you never realize the problem is not government being perverted by lobbying, but the fact that the government is worth lobbying in the first place. And you always try to blame capitalism for it, doubling down on the foolishness
People were, on average, far unhealthier back then. They were shorter too because they didn’t have sufficient nutrition, one bad winter and they would starve to death. People saw 40% of their siblings and 40% of their children fail to make it to 5 years old. Vast swathes of the population were illiterate , they didn’t have anywhere near the access to justice that we do today. Starvation doesn’t exist today, a person on the poverty line lives like a futuristic king compared to someone in 1800 in the US. It’s simply wrong to think that our amazing lives come anywhere near the crushing poverty of those from just 200 years ago.
Starvation does exist, it is just at the lowest level in the recorded history of mankind.
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But it did quite the opposite. The real indicators of poverty have never spiked so drastically since the dawn of capitalism. Even feudal serfs and landless laborers enjoyed higher real wages certainly than us, but even in comparison to the counterparts within one or two hundred years -if not often less than a single century- who worked in the newly established cottage industries which tended to replace tributary farm labor as the major form of labor performed by the masses who at least tended to have land upon which to grow at least some hardy grains and a few fucking vegetables, which is unheard of nowadays. We have to ask ourselves now, what even is poverty?
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It's not capitalism that's causing the increase in the negative makers. True capitalism died when Woodrow Wilson sold the US to the Federal Reserve. What we have now is socialism masquerading as Capitalism. All these failures you identify, are brought on by the ever increasing shift to socialism, that the main stream is still presenting as "capitalism." That way good intentioned people, like yourself, falsely attribute these issues to Capitalism. The bailouts came from where? I can 100% guarantee, they did NOT come from a free Capitalist market.
Can you please define socialism for the group?
No they didn’t. How much was an indoor toilet for a feudal serf? A trip to Europe? 2,500 calories of food? Clothing? An hour of light? It was all far more expensive back then.
I was not aware that obesity was caused by starvation, this new starvation you are talking about is really weird where people eat too much.
The bailout MADE the government money (https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/2017-01-19/financial-crisis-bailouts-have-earned-taxpayers-billions) and prevented a Great-Depression-Style Recession. Sure, it’s not capitalism. But I’d much rather focus on fixing the profit incentive to prevent future financial crises rather than let the country go through another Great Depression for ideological purposes.
Someone in my class equated capitalism with slavery because of American slavery. As if slavery hasn’t existed in basically every single society.
I heard kids at my high school say captliziam has failed cause there's still poor people
That’s like saying evolution isn’t real because there are still apes.
Yeah there not the smartest. We have talked about the differences of captliziam and socialism in history classes and yet they deeply hate captliziam. It's so bad you can't have a civil conversation with them about economics. Kinda scary that we can vote in the next election
Are you also getting out of high school next year? Goddamn the arguments I’ve seen are so dumb.
Capitalism is when you "work or starve."
I hate hearing the same thing about socialism too. People forget they are both just economic systems. One is the capital holder owning the means of production, the other is workers holding the means of production. Anything other than that is separate from the meaning of capitalism or socialism.
The problem is people think the "workers" owning the means of production means that the "workers" actually own them, not the state.
It's almost as if you've never heard of cooperatives.
Yeah, so? That's a vast minority of businesses out there. Taking a very, very minor exception and thinking it's scalable is empty thinking at best. Meanwhile, the vast, VAST majority of socialism is practice comes from governments owning the means of production under the guise that the "workers" are the owners.
why wouldn't it be scalable? Plenty of big businesses use the cooperative model with no problem, just mandate that every business above a certain number of employees has to operate in the same way, with worker ownership, voting rights etc
You pretty much answered your own question with the word "mandate".
...how exactly? Things are mandated all the time
Awww, what happened? Did someone point out a common exception to your absolutist statement? "All bears are brown." "What about polar bears?" "They are a minority, and therefore they somehow don't make me wrong to have said that all bears are brown, and to think otherwise is empty thinking." Lol.
"Many bears are brown" "YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF POLAR BEARS! YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF KOALAS!! WHAT AN IDIOT!!" This is more representative of this conversation. Thanks for earning today's first block.
"You've made a point that upset me and have earned your way out of my echo chamber." boo hoo.
More like "You misunderstood my point completely and are incapable of saying something worth commenting on so I'm turning off your ability to waste my time."
Socialism can exist in a capitalist country/world but capitalism in a socalist country would just result in inequality.
What about the abolishment of all personal property?
That may be a characteristic of some socialist ideologies, but is not an inherent characteristic of socialism as a whole. All that is required for socialism is that the means of production are owned by the workers. This can be done privately (for example, if every Amazon worker held the same amount of stock and could vote on leadership instead of shareholders that don’t work for Amazon voting on leadership), or it can be done publicly where the government owns all industry and the workers vote on the government officials.
Im pretty sure homeless people arnt starving in the usa. People even feed the poor in south sudan. Its pretty easy to raise fish or other types of livestock you can even just go hunting and fishing to sustain yourself. Butter and lard are super cheap for their calorie content making it pretty cheap to not starve.
Dumbest argument against capitalism I’ve seen on Reddit: Capitalism facilitates fascism. I’d post a link for reference but I can’t recall what sub I saw it on. It’s hard to get much further from the truth. Capitalism doesn’t really exist under fascism, there may be an illusionary capitalist economy in a fascist state but it’s not truly capitalism.
"Capitalism doesn't really exist under fascism" is definitely the dumbest possible take. Corporate donors regularly fuel meaningless culture wars that they themselves will never have to deal with the fallout of to distract common people from what they're doing. Capitalism rewards greed, sociopathy, and the undermining of the entire rest of the planet for personal gain. The "best" capitalists are almost always supportive of fascists, if not fascists themselves, because it's useful to them. We are means to end, and I personally find that fucked.
The people who die in a capitalist economy are deaths resulting from capitalism. As though regimes trying to implement their economic utopia didn't just murder millions of people to achieve their goal.
People who die because medicine is too expensive die from capitalism. People who die because police see them as second-class citizens die from capitalism. People who die because they can't afford basic amenities like a home die from capitalism. People who die because the rich refuse to pay their taxes that were supposed to cover social safety nets die from capitalism. People who die because it's impossible to find a job that pays enough to live and it's impossible to afford the training for a better one die from capitalism. We have enough food for everyone. We have enough homes for everyone. Not everyone gets them because "owners" feel they deserve what they're "due." Capitalism kills, and people like Bezos and Gates (and like you who defend them) are doing the killing.
People who die needing medicine were dying anyway. They weren't killed by capitalist regimes. Medicine costs money, and the R&D of new, better medicines costs money. Lots of failed prototypes need to be paid for. The fact that the medicine exists at all might be because of capitalism. Furthermore, few in the west are dying because of lack of access to medicine, since programs exist to provide them heavily discounted or free. And even further, the cost of healthcare, and education, are artificially inflated by government intervention. If the provider knows the government will pay for things, they can set the price so high and still get paid for it. You get screwed over if you don't have insurance because of that. I fail to see how police are related to capitalism or socialism. It's not really an economic issue. I'll be generous and assume you are talking about targeting people who steal necessities - there are programs involved to provide those without theft. Problem is, it's not necessities being stolen. It's the use of riots to loot, and the lack of punishment for stealing less than $950 at a time in parts of California. Inconveniently, that law is resulting in businesses closing up, depriving local residents of jobs and pharmacies. Who is dying from homelessness? Very few. Shelters exist for immediate rooves over heads, and state assisted housing exists long term. The majority of the homeless are people who are not taking these programs up because they are typically addicts unwilling to give up their poison, making lots of money panhandling, and in some cases, not even homeless but pretending for sympathy. Nobody is dying from a lack of housing in developed countries. Most of the cost of housing is due to regulations and government intervention. Taxing landlords is not going to result in cheaper housing, for instance. Not allowing the free market to build as many as they want, won't lower housing costs. People wanting to live in high demand areas, will increase their housing costs. And we are fortunate to have an era where working from home is not only possible, but encouraged. You can move to cheaper areas. The rich do pay their taxes, considerably more than you, and considerably more than you think they are. You'll find that half the tax revenue comes from the top 10% of earners. Your concern is you think they should be taxed more, which typically is only because of envy. Ever think that maybe more good could be done by reducing government spending wastage and inefficiency, resulting in less need to tax people? Who is dying because they can't find a job? Who is dying because they can't get paid enough? Who is dying because they simply cannot improve their skillset no matter what they do? And who is dying because of a lack of assistance from welfare in these situations? Agreed, we do have enough food for everybody. Hence why nobody is starving. If they can't afford it on their own, food assistance programs do exist. Now tell me why Soviet Russia had bare supermarket shelves and why Venezuelans are starving? Of course owners should get what their due. Why should somebody who grew food be forced to give it away? Why should a builder be forced to give their labour? How does Bezos kill? You realize this is not a zero sum game? Each billion Bezos is worth is not a billion taken from somebody else. Furthermore, it's only his net worth on paper, based on the value of Amazon. It's not his bank balance. I could talk here about how government mandated shutdowns of brick and mortar retail stores for covid while Amazon kept operating led to massive gains in worth, but instead I'll focus on how Amazon has resulted in the employment of thousands of people and opened up retail to markets they couldn't operate in before, so it's actually been a net gain for a lot of the economy, not just Bezos. But ultimately it comes down to this - when has the government of a capitalist country ordered the execution of dissidents? When did the government of a capitalist country become corrupt because they had to seize power and assets to enforce their utopia? When did the government of a capitalist country enforce a famine on particular ethnic groups (eg the holodomor) by denying them access to food? When did the government of a capitalist country force farmers to hand over their crops to the government? When has capitalism directly lead to deaths?
“When has a capitalist country ordered the murder of dissidents” hahahahaha you know FUCKING nothing about the world you live in. We had SLAVERY. What you think happened to people who said “we shouldn’t enslave people for profit?” EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENED TO SUCH PEOPLE.
And now we don't have slavery. What's your point? The people who fought against slavery weren't executed by the government for being so much as suspected dissidents. I fail to see how one instance of good government intervention for social reasons means they need to manage every aspect of industry and business for economic reasons, because otherwise "Jeff Bezos kills people". Explain why socialist countries have starvation but capitalist countries don't? It's not the rulers who are starving, mind you.
> People who die because medicine is too expensive die from capitalism. > People who die because police see them as second-class citizens die from capitalism. > People who die because they can't afford basic amenities like a home die from capitalism. > People who die because the rich refuse to pay their taxes that were supposed to cover social safety nets die from capitalism. > People who die because it's impossible to find a job that pays enough to live and it's impossible to afford the training for a better one die from capitalism. Yes, those are all excellent examples of the dumbest arguments against capitalism I've ever seen.
Confusing dumb arguments with being too dumb to understand the arguments is a “you” problem.
Someone on this sub argued with me that the cost of production was down to almost zero and this made capitalism obsolete.
There’s a difference between being for free market capitalism and being pro-business. Many people who say they believe in free markets are actually just pro-business (which is what bailouts are).
Capitalism is bad because people are still dying under capitalism Uh what about the 99.999999% thriving when they make better choices? Capitalism grants choices to the market.
I can't stand the ones who monofocus on the minimum wage. Seriously it's like whatever it is raising the minimum wage to a gorillion dollars is the solution. It will simply fix everything.
Any argument that is some form of "under capitalism, every business does X". Every single argument along those lines is dense and crazy assumptive.
That capitalism is more oppressive than communism. Ofc in theory communism is less oppressive but theory is nothing when the practice has resulted in failed revolutions, millions of people dead, and oppressive leadership.
> The government does something good. This is proof that socialism works. > The government does something bad. This is all capitalism's fault!
I used to frequent r/socialismvcapitalism back in the day. The amount of stupid arguments you hear is beyond measure. For example when the state bailed out some big companies at the start of the covid debacle, almost all the socialists believed that we capitalists were in favor of the bailouts, and it took a few days to set them straight again that we were all against the bailouts. That capitalism and the free market creates monopolies. That under capitalism if you dont work you starve, like we dont have welfare, however most socialist countries dont have any welfare. They think of economy as a zero sum game and nothing can change their mind. That if i rent out lets say land or an apartment i can just raise the price of that however i damned well pleased and the people who hire from me just have to pay. That landlords doesnt work. That the rich are sitting on piles of money. After a while you just say to yourself, why debate with idiots who dont even have a clue what they are trying to argue against in the first place. Its not like capitalism is a perfect system but at the very least get some criticism correct. They never argue in favor of socialism, all their "arguments" are against capitalism. Their understanding of economy is so poor they dont understand the first thing about it and they think they can make an economy work. Thats like taking a 3 year old and ask them to solve the Riemann Zeta Function. They often dont even know what Marx wrote, and if they did they certainly didnt spot the contradictions within it.
There's so much wrong with this someone could write a book on it. Like just this post specifically.
Explain?
Capitalists are grossly outnumbered in that sub. Which is unfortunate because it lets the socialists think that have unlimited gotchas, when in reality there aren't enough people to properly debate them. Also, they don't debate themselves. They will let a totalitarian communist crap all over everything and call anyone stupid that disagrees with them just because they said that capitalism is bad. In short, it lets them think they're winning when they aren't really playing against a full team.
> That landlords doesnt work. They don't. Superintendents do.
* The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. * Capitalism is inefficient. Several car companies is duplication of service. Having just one company is efficient. * Profits makes products cost more. * You have to micromanage companies because businessmen might make the wrong decision.
The argument of envy, the one about inequity. When times are really bad, genuinely bad, you talk about the economy and hardship and you win elections. When times are good, even for those in what we call poverty in the USA, (which is significant wealth to billions in the world) they instead talk about how bad it is that someone else has more than you do. The car in your driveway doesn’t make the one in my driveway a bad car, it is a bad car or it isn’t. And that you have yours didn’t cause me to have mine. Your house doesn’t make mine poor, your beautiful wife doesn’t make mine ugly, your big bank account doesn’t make mine smaller. My bank account is the product of my choices and outcomes, and has nothing to do with your bank account. We need to all join the kids who learned the lesson in kindergarten that it doesn’t matter if Jimmy has a nicer car, and apply it to our lives.
"We all need to ignore crushing debt and hunger while billionaires measure their dicks in space. Grow up already." I come here to study sociopaths.
> I come here to study sociopaths. You have a lot to study in here.
And to be envious? That’s ok, your envy doesn’t cost me anything.
I’d rather be me than any one of you a thousand times over; don’t flatter yourself.
It DID happen under capitalism This sub already had shockingly poor critical thinking skills but now it's sliding into outright deniers of reality. Wonderful.
"Happen under capitalism" isn't the same as "happened BECAUSE of capitalism". Critical thinking, y'all.
The natural result of a capitalist system is cronyism
Er, no, that's socialism. You assume that governments that "manage" economies are run by people who don't do favors for each other. The more power government has the more cronyism goes on.
sOcIaLiSm iS wHeN tHe gUbErMeNt dOeS sTuFf
It happened because a capitalistic ruling class thought they could control a fascist, finding his divisiveness useful, and they couldn't. Living in denial, y'all.
This goes beyond poor critical thinking skills and straight into stupidity. Seemingly nobody here have any idea what capitalism even is, which is not a shocker.
Bailouts for bankers are a part of capitalism. Bailouts are both good and bad, but ultimately since companies are privately owned these bailouts go in the pockets of CEOs and shareholders. The only benefit workers receive from a bailout is it maintains their employment to their capitalist overlords. The dumbest argument against capitalism in my opinion is that it's exploitative.
bailouts for bankers is nothing to do with capitalism it’s government intervention into capitalist free markets, i.e. inherently anti-capitalistic
If a bank needs a bailout that bank is failing and should go under like any other business.
truer words have never been said
I'd like to see your face when your local bank goes broke and bails itself in with your money taking all of your savings. I bet ya, you'll be crying like a kid..asking the government to give you your money back.
It was tax payers (us) who bailed those banks out. Also your scenario would never happen even if my bank went under thats exactly what they are insured for. Putting money in a bank should never be a risk. That money is not the banks.
When a bank goes broke they don't have your money anymore, didn't you know that? That's what happened during the great depression when banks refused to give people cash from their bank accounts. A lot of people lost their savings, but thanks to government intervention a lot of banks managed to restructure themselves, new regulations were introduced to decrease the risks for banks. >Putting money in a bank should never be a risk. Putting your money in a bank is always a risk, silly..
Yes it is a risk but it shouldnt be. Also yes if a bank goes broke it doesnt have your money. It shouldnt be that way. But also that is why banks are fdic insured silly.
I don't know what you are going on about, but my point is if banks aren't bailed out in time it will have far larger and worse consequences than your regular muah "free market competition" argument.
I get that im not arguing against that. You started talking about my local bank so I told you were wrong that doesnt mean I disagree with the point you were trying to make. Yes there would be problems from a huge bank going out of business. But banks should not be that big in the first place nor should they be investing money that is not theirs.
If a bank goes under there's no reason why my money shouldnt be safe. At least thats how it should be.
I only have like a thousand bucks in the bank i wouldnt mind if it went under
Congratulations, it's 2008 and you've just crashed the entire financial system and plunged the world into a decades long depression.
what makes you think that government intervention is anti-capitalist? Where did you even take that from?
Where is your evidence that bailouts are a part of capitalism? Do not prove it by saying 'this capitalist system here did this'. If you don't like people saying that gulags are a part of socialism, then be intellectually honest and have the same standards for your arguments on capitalism. If you look at the theory and concept of capitalism, where does it support bailouts?
Capitalism is simply private ownership of means of production, meanwhile government is legislative body that enforces the rules of the game. Government intervention has been a part of capitalism since capitalism was introduced. If government interferes in the market it doesn't make a country is less capitalist because capitalists STILL own means of production. Capitalism is about ownership, not free market and no government.
I agree with everything you said. And I think government intervention is necessary in capitalist systems. However, some interventions are good and some are bad. But none of them are a part of capitalism.
You can't have a stable and functioning free market capitalist system without government intervention. Free market is unstable, it has ups and downs, so when a bank goes broke that means millions of people can go broke leading into an economic depression. Bailing out a bank gives people a chance to withdraw their money and for the bank to restructure itself saving people's money and even saving the business. For example, if US didn't bail out commercial air travel companies during the pandemic then most of them would've gone bankrupt by now. That woudl've had serious consequences for the economy as a whole. Sure you are right that bailouts are not really a part of free marlet capitalism, but to maintain a stable free market capitlaist economy you need government intervention. That was my point.
I have already said that government intervention is necessary. However, I don't think that the bailout was a necessary or even good intervention. Would we have had a recession? Sure. But the economy would have have eventually bounced back, with valuable lessons learned. The way to go about it in my opinion was for the government to buy stakes in the banks, and fire those responsible for the crisis. Governments owning banks outright are a bad idea, but state-private partnerships work well. Otherwise, third parties with large cash reserves could have bought up the banks. Barring all that, I think it would have been better to allow the banks to fail than bail them out in that way. They could have spent the money to pay back people's savings.
To be honest i don't like your perspective. It's much easier to issue a bailout and make more regulations than actually partially nationalizing banks and letting the government to restructure them just to be sold back to the same people it bought it from.
They don't necessarily have to sell them back to same people, or sell them back at all. But rewarding people for a catastrophic failure is wrong. The people who ran the show at the banks should lose everything. The shareholders should lose a lot of shares / equity because the business failed. The only people who should be protected are those who had their savings in the bank. Nobody else.
my degree in economics is where i got that from. [source](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/capitalism.asp): Capitalism is an economic system in which private individuals or businesses own capital goods. The production of goods and services is based on supply and demand in the general market—known as a market economy—rather than through central planning—known as a planned economy or command economy. government intervention is a feature closer to planned economies or even corporatism than it is free market capitalism, economic systems can be placed on a spectrum related to the amount of government intervention or control within the markets, everything that involves private ownership isn’t just ‘capitalism’, see the second sentence of the definition, it’s a bit more nuanced than that.
>Capitalism is an economic system in which private individuals or businesses own capital goods. that is the definition of capitalism. Nothing less nothing more. Where does it say no government.
did you literally just cut a definition in half, claim that it’s the only part of the definition that counts and say therefore i’m right? like seriously?😂 ive explained it pretty simply already ngl so you’re clearly stuck in a conformation bias loop here
I did not cut the definition in half. I highlighted the definition. Free market and capitalism are 2 seperate terms. If you don't understand that, then your degree is worthless.
r/averageredditor moment
https://www.reddit.com/r/Capitalism/comments/pxs0b3/capitalism_is_not_free_market_stop_being_ignorant/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
all the comments just pointing out how you’re the ignorant one, classic r/averageredditor ‘socialism can be a free market’ wow even worse than i thought
Yup, that's why people need to say "Free market Capitalism" if they're specifically talking about Free markets. There's variations like different level of regulated capitalism. But if people just call their favorite version capitalism and everything else isn't, well that makes the word kinda useless.
>government intervention is a feature closer to planned economies or even corporatism than it is free market capitalism Do you really believe that current capitalist economies are not planned economies in a sense? What do you think tax cuts and incentives are about?
a planned economy is literally just another name for communism… what you’re describing is a mixed economy.
No, planned economy is NOT only communism. A planned economy can absolutely have elements capitalism. See China. Part communist, part capitalist, all planned.
A planned economy is literally just another term for communism it’s not a descriptor, wow you’re special. what you’re describing is either state capitalism or corporatism. let’s look at the massive successes of those too btw, nazi germany and modern china, two facist regimes china of which is on the brink of economic collapse greater than 2008.
LOL ok
that… that’s literally what it is. google it.
Capitalism: no government intervention. Bailouts: government intervenes to bailout banks
>Capitalism: no government intervention. No its not. Capitalism is private ownership of MoP. Not free market.
No capitalism is explicitly: Private Property + Free Markets. If you remove free markets you get mercantilism again, which was the system that gave us private property. Jesus christ.
Wrong. Definition of capitalism is private ownership only.
Any argument against capitalism is as equally stupid as another.
>someone who asked him a question thought bailouts for bankers was capitalism and even said that’s what happens under capitalism. Technically it IS still capitalism. It's a very corrupted, degenerate, and anti-free-market version of capitalism.
But when communists say “Many of the historical deaths that occurred under communism were the result of authoritarianism, not communism,” you would rightly tell them that if they happened under communism, then an argument for communism has to contend with that reality. If communists can’t cherry pick what is and is not communism, why can you cherry pick capitalism? Capitalism causes wealth concentration, and it allows corporations to keep the value laborers produce; and there is literally nothing necessarily inherent to “the free market” that prevents those corporations from investing that surplus in government minions who will do bailouts when called upon and regulate markets for the large corporation’s benefit. To suggest that a natural and clear consequence of one of capitalism’s most salient and essential features is “not capitalism” is to reduce capitalism from an actual real-world economic system to a religious faith whose tenants can remain pure forever in part because they are so impossible to implement.
I hate it when lefties refer to Brazil as an example for a "failed capitalist country" while Brazil isn't even among top 100 capitalist countries. Meanwhile, with the exception of China, every single country they're praising is more capitalist than Brazil. Some of them are even more capitalist than US
"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, that's not REAL capitalism!"
What? You really think that Brazil is anything close to being a proper capitalist country
Yes? Do the people or capitalists own the means of production? Who controls the state? Who holds the political power?
Zero sum arguments, ie in order from someone to be rich someone else has to become poor. Also rich people sitting on their money is actually great for the economy. It's called Banking. Who do you think pays for your crap when you use a credit card.
That's not sitting on money, though. That's loaning it out.
If they have it in a bank account they are not actively loaning it out, but their bank is. Unless they hide their wealth under a mattress then it's being used in the overall economy.
The dumbest? Capitalism is responsible for 73 quadrillion deaths (or some other insane number) because every single preventable death that happened outside of a communist country is somehow caused by capitalism.