• RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    The only real problem I have with capitalism is the people that refuse to consider any other way of operating, refuse to rein it in, or immediately make it a binary choice between capitalism and “scary” communism.

    Economic systems don’t need to be corralled into boxes and never be allowed cross lines. The people forcing that take are the ones profiting from the status quo, by power and/or wealth.

    Any of the systems can be combined, the problem is fight against greed that makes people bend the system to funnel power money to a specific group. Whether it be the dictator and his cronies or a bunch of oligarchs. If this cannot be prevented, then no system will work without eventually crushing the average person.

  • atro_city@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    Socialism and capitalism have a lot of overlap. This belief and meme that they are completely separate is incredibly simple-minded and indicative of US thinking patterns. US Americans have had it beaten into their heads that there are only two sides for so long that it permeates their very being.

    To have a fair system, components of multiple philosophies and systems will have to be mixed. Treating capitalism as all bad is plain dumb.

    • GladiusB@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I mean it’s a tweet. The very essence isn’t long from and open to discussion of every permutation of capitalism. It’s like taking a snarky sarcastic comment and fully flushing it out and realizing there are hella holes in the comedy. Well yeah. There are ways to make it work. But those ways are being ignored for the profits. Which is implied in the sarcasm.

      • atro_city@fedia.io
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        21 hours ago

        So I can reduce anything complex to a misrepresentation, tweet it, and claim “well, you know what I mean right? I don’t have enough characters to express my actual belief, so this is fine”. Got it.

        • GladiusB@lemmy.world
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          18 hours ago

          I’m saying it’s a consequence of the format. Not the subject. Which I clearly stated. The whole context is that the format limits the interaction and in essence is part of the enshitification.

  • Shard@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    We’re angry about unbridled end-stage capitalism

    Just like with everything in life, there’s a right amount of something and its not zero. Properly regulated free market is probably the best economic system we’ve come up with. I challenge you to come up with a better system.

    Its the fact that we’ve voted in greedy leaders and have such lax rules about lobbying and open bribery that’s allowed so much shit to happen.

      • Shard@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        It’s not but it can’t be divorced form capitalism either.

        A farmer does not produce grain out of the goodness of his heart. He’s doing it to provide for his family’s needs and wants, maybe new clothes for his kids or a new stove, etc. We work jobs to get paid so we can feed ourselves and our families and maybe buy something nice or shiny once in a while and save for retirement.

        Production of commodities and services, profit-motive, capital accumulation, If that’s not the basis of capitalism, I’m not sure what is?

        • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
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          1 day ago

          That has been gone over by Marx over 150 years ago. I’m not going to go over everything Marx said about capitalism, he wrote an entire book called Das Kapital about it. Here’s a summary that does a pretty good job at getting Marx’s ideas across. You can skip the first 2-3 chapters as the main criticism of capitalism starts around chapter 4. But some things refer back to the previous chapters so you might want to watch them if some parts of Marx’s ideas aren’t very clear.

          As for you points, I’ll do a short summary:

          • Production of commodities and services is not capitalistic, we’ve been producing commodities and services for more than a millennia before capitalism was even a concept.
          • Profit-motive is a poorly defined concept if we want to divorce it from capitalism. Profit-motive in the sense that I want to make all the money is capitalistic. But if we talk about the “profit-motive” in the sense that I want money so I could buy things I want to use, Marx argues that is not capital and not capitalism.
          • Marx has a very specific definition of capital where capital is something that exists for the purpose of making more capital. If you make $10 mil and you buy a fancy house, that $10 mil you got is not capital and the house you bought is also not is not capital, but if you take that $10 mil and you for instance invest it with the purpose of getting $20 mil later, now it’s capital. The capitalist definition of capital doesn’t acknowledge the purpose money or things, so everything is capital which also makes it impossible to separate capital accumulation from just owning things you need to live your life. Your house is not capital, your car is not capital, your phone is not capital, the money you’re saving up for a trip to the Bahamas is not capital. But if you own a company and the means of production within that company and you’re buying in labor to use your means of production so you could siphon surplus value from the laborers work, that’s capital.

          The things you’ve brought up aren’t necessarily the basis of capitalism. They’re the basis of capitalism only if you want them to be the basis of capitalism.

        • orcrist@lemm.ee
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          22 hours ago

          That’s why you need to define the term. Here’s the first result I got when I searched for a definition of capitalism.

          An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development occurs through the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.

          Can commerce occur in other systems? Of course it can. It has, it does, it will continue to do so.

        • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          Capitalism is private control over the factors of production. So you can for example have a socialist society in which the factors of production are owned by the community, but there’s still markets and commerce.

          • gerbler@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            One hurdle we have to deal with is the assumption by the general public that markets = capitalism.

            You tell people capitalism has failed them and they worry that you mean to take away their ability to buy a latte.

        • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          To answer your rhetorical question, a lot of people think Capitalism stands for the corrupt ignoble western governments, unlike their own glorious reputable eastern “socialist” governments. /ironic

  • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    People don’t realize that not every implementation of Socialist policies have to involve a vanguardist dictatorship like China or USSR (which is what almost every American have in mind when they think of “Socialism”)

    • volodya_ilich@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      I’m sorry but calling the USSR a “vanguardist dictatorship” is just not historically accurate. Plenty of democratic mechanisms in the USSR, at any rate much better than anything else we’ve had so far. For a dictatorship, it dissolved itself quite peacefully didn’t it?

      Sadly, attempts at socialism in which workers didn’t take the power of the state, ended up like Salvador Allende in Chile, like Mosaddegh in Iran, like the Spanish Second Republic… Idealism only gets you so far, sadly.

      • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Plenty of democratic mechanisms in the USSR, at any rate much better than anything else we’ve had so far.

        Fucking lmao

        For a dictatorship, it dissolved itself quite peacefully didn’t it?

        I’m sure you’d say the same about Pinochet, wouldn’t you? :)

        Sadly, attempts at socialism in which workers didn’t take the power of the state, ended up like Salvador Allende in Chile,

        Yes, if only Allende was a dictator, THEN he wouldn’t have trusted Pinochet. That was what planted that seed of trust in Allende’s heart - not being a dictator.

        like Mosaddegh in Iran,

        Ah, yes, when Social Democrats are overthrown by Western powers, they’re good comrades; any other time, they’re social fascists.

        like the Spanish Second Republic

        The same Spanish Second Republic which was backstabbed and destroyed by Soviet-bootlicking MLs?

  • Rhoeri@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Here’s an idea from WAAAAY out there, but what if they both suck? Because it’s just bad logic to assume that one is good because the other is bad.

  • 5714@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    Well, sometimes events pushed into motion or accelerated by a “root cause” develop lives of their own. Without concerted effort neither with capitalism nor with the absence/alternative of/to capitalism will we solve climate change or patriarchy.

    • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Patriarchy appears to have been solved in Rojava/Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. Though I’m afraid not for much longer.

          • 5714@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            2 days ago

            Well, you cannot just declare the dissolution of Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition and expect everything to follow along. We need centuries of conditions of antipatriarchial policy to be able to claim eradication of patriarchy.

            I would not even be saying we eradicated classist aristocracy in European republics, because the ideology is still relevant.

            • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              Good point. I’ve read that the Kurdish leadership is trying hard to integrate Arabs into government, making everything available to read in Arabic, etc. I just hope they can hang on and continue to improve. I don’t trust HTS at all, and the Turkish government are doing their damnedest to eradicate Rojava.