• KindnessisPunk@piefed.caEnglish
    62·
    1 month ago

    I think that’s the argument against capitalism though because if you have a system from which all power is financial eventually those with the power will erode the safeguards that prevent them from absorbing a disproportionate amount of the wealth. You’re literally handing a loaded gun to those most dangerous with it.

    • justsomeguy@lemmy.world
      30·
      1 month ago

      Ultimately any economical and Political system will struggle with this. Capitalism can work if you have a taxation and redistribution of the wealth. Otherwise all wealth eventually congregates like mass in a black hole. Simultaneously you can have a system that might have fairer basic ideals but ends up just as corrupt. See the various attempts at communism.

      The tricky part is the vigilance. Imagine a Musk raising his arm for a hearty ‘sieg heil’ in 1945-80. Now he got away with it. Generations forget. Safeguards get erroded away over time as the greedy goblins hammer away at them like woodpeckers.

      The loaded gun is always there. The dangerous men always try to get to it. We gotta guard it 24/7. Not an easy task.

      • foggianism@lemmy.world
        14·
        1 month ago

        Communism could also work if… human nature wasn’t as it is People are simply too asshole-y for capitalism to work as intended.

        • manxu@piefed.socialEnglish
          12·
          1 month ago

          But isn’t the problem rather that people can be easily convinced to vote against their self-interest? It seems the people at large are not selfish enough, and the rich are too selfish?

          In other words, the problem is that those that don’t have, don’t want to have strongly enough, and those that already have, want to have too much. As an overarching group, not individually, of course.

          • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
            6·
            1 month ago

            It’s that those who don’t have can be easily convinced to (attempt to) have at the expense of their fellow have-nots than to unite against the haves.

      • JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world
        6·
        1 month ago

        Capitalism that you mention that could work was the capitalism we had until the 70s and it’s what lead us to the late stage capitalism we have today

        Even if you reset you will end up at this stage because accumulation of wealth and thus power will always occur and then the capitalist class has both the means and incentive to change the rules of the system and then they get more wealth and power etc etc

        You can’t guard it unless you have power and under capitalism you don’t.

        You gave the loaded gun to the capitalist class and then try to force them to do the “right” thing and not use the gun for bad stuff, except they have the gun… they’re not going to listen to you

    • Troy@lemmy.ca
      12·
      1 month ago

      Capitalism is a funnel. Money goes from those without capital to those with capital. Simple as.

      It has always been like this. For a lot of people this is a feature and not a bug.

      It’s also the most productive economic system ever tried.

      Everyone talks about regulation, or semi-socialism, or various other bandaids to make it work. But if you don’t remove the funnel action, it’ll eventually get to this state.

      More likely, capitalism needs periods of major collapse and rebuild as major wealth redistribution events. French-style.

      • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
        2·
        1 month ago

        French-style.

        So transferring property and land from private and semi-state actors to rich speculators for pennies on the dollar? The French Revolution wasn’t very notable on the wealth redistribution front; if anything it made the rich even richer.

      • DupaCycki@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 month ago

        It’s also the most productive economic system ever tried.

        I think whether this is true highly depends on the definition of productivity and circumstances.

        What definition of productivity are we applying here? Capitalism sure is great at inflating useless statistics. It also seems to be decent for actually valuable products and services. However, depending on what you take into account, it’s not so clear that it’s the superior system.

        Furthermore, there have been several cases of socialist governments improving the quality of life at a rate never seen in capitalist countries. Almost completely eradicating illiteracy in less than a year (Cuba). Or vaccinating half the population in a few months (Burkina Faso). Of course, those governments are rare and don’t last long thanks to the CIA.

        Personally I’d say the most immediate solution - or more accurately, improvement - is to mix our current capitalist dystopia with as much socialist policies as possible. Many countries in the EU are doing thay and it seems to be working pretty well. Let’s just copy and build on that, then worry about the next steps.

  • Phegan@lemmy.world
    22·
    1 month ago

    Fascism is the natural conclusion of capitalism.

    When the populace no longer aligns with the capital owners, they will remove the populace’s agency from obstructing them

  • Commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    7·
    1 month ago

    Good thing there’s no billionaire class then. You suddenly don’t turn evil or exploitative after going from $999.999.999 to 1 billion

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOPM
      20·
      1 month ago

      At a certain economic point, there seems to be a morality filter. Plenty of evil exploitative people never become billionaires. It just seems that decent, moral people never become billionaires.

        • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
          13·
          1 month ago

          Makes perfect sense to me. Becoming a billionaire requires making a chain of morally repugnant decisions. Beyond a certain point (which is definitely somewhere below $1B) it takes more than just having a successful business to continue growing because there are obstacles in the form of competition, market saturation, regulations, etc. There must exist some moral line which most wealthy people - having the resources and being in a position to do so - decide not to cross, and therefore don’t end up becoming an oligarch. In some cases that line might be lobbying the government to weaken or remove regulations(environmental, consumer and worker protections, etc.), or colluding with others to set prices, or exploiting tax loopholes and government subsidies. Every billionaire has done something like this to get to where they are. It is impossible to reach those heights with only conventional business practices.

          That isn’t to say that every wealthy business owner who isn’t a billionaire is a saint. They’re still engaging in exploitation to get ahead, but in most cases it is the conventional and societally accepted form of exploitation that we take for granted under capitalism. Billionaires aren’t just your average business owner, they’re the best at capitalist exploitation, and that takes more than just doing it by the books.

          • Commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            1·
            1 month ago

            Yeah, buying out competition and lobbying to try and make your business more monopolistic is somehow a special kind of “evil” (I love moralism) and definitely not something that’s allowed and actively encouraged by the system where the goal is to get as much profit as possible. But sure, it’s a personal failing.

            Heres a radical new idea: what if every single business owner, regardless of their wealth, is exploitative and therefore “evil” not because of their personal choices but because of how wages and profit works on a systemic basis? Workers do all the labor, the business owner gets all the value from that labor and abusing the fact that they own the means of production, they only pay workers a flat wage which is meant to merely “refresh their labor power”. Its textbook exploitation and the basis for how capitalists get their wealth.

            Though if you’re gonna moralize capitalists, I’d argue small business owners are more “evil” than any other strata - they don’t have the capital to fail and recover or start anew, so they’re constantly on the verge of bankruptcy which would have their biggest fear come into fruition which is not becoming homeless, but getting a job like the rest of unwashed masses. They have legal exemptions in terms of discrimination, they’re notoriously shit to work in because you get worked like a mule, and historically they’ve been primary supporters of Hitler, Mussolini, even Trump given their precarious economic position making them reactionary.

            • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
              1·
              1 month ago

              Are you incapable of holding two ideas in your head simultaneously? I agree that capitalism / the relationship between employers and their employees is inherently exploitative and I’m opposed to all forms of unaccountable hierarchy. I also believe capitalism places capital owners in a position to make a lot of moral decisions and that they can make better or worse ones, even if what they are doing is morally compromising from the outset.

              To give a clear and exaggerated example, imagine a slaver who owns a few slaves that they treat with backhanded politeness and allow to stay in a room of their mansion and eat with them, and a slaver who owns dozens of slaves on a plantation that they regularly abuse physically and mentally and are kept in a shitty barracks with a dirt floor and fed scraps. Both are engaging in a morally repugnant one-sided and non-consensual relationship, but one is clearly worse than the other. It doesn’t make it excusable, but people in a position of power and authority over others can make better or worse moral decisions, even if the fact that they are allowed to make them unilaterally is morally wrong in itself.