this post was submitted on 29 Feb 2024
719 points (90.3% liked)
Lemmy Shitpost
26634 readers
3842 users here now
Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content.
Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!
Rules:
1. Be Respectful
Refrain from using harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic: e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion.
Refrain from being argumentative when responding or commenting to posts/replies. Personal attacks are not welcome here.
...
2. No Illegal Content
Content that violates the law. Any post/comment found to be in breach of common law will be removed and given to the authorities if required.
That means:
-No promoting violence/threats against any individuals
-No CSA content or Revenge Porn
-No sharing private/personal information (Doxxing)
...
3. No Spam
Posting the same post, no matter the intent is against the rules.
-If you have posted content, please refrain from re-posting said content within this community.
-Do not spam posts with intent to harass, annoy, bully, advertise, scam or harm this community.
-No posting Scams/Advertisements/Phishing Links/IP Grabbers
-No Bots, Bots will be banned from the community.
...
4. No Porn/Explicit
Content
-Do not post explicit content. Lemmy.World is not the instance for NSFW content.
-Do not post Gore or Shock Content.
...
5. No Enciting Harassment,
Brigading, Doxxing or Witch Hunts
-Do not Brigade other Communities
-No calls to action against other communities/users within Lemmy or outside of Lemmy.
-No Witch Hunts against users/communities.
-No content that harasses members within or outside of the community.
...
6. NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that is NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that might be distressing should be kept behind NSFW tags.
...
If you see content that is a breach of the rules, please flag and report the comment and a moderator will take action where they can.
Also check out:
Partnered Communities:
1.Memes
10.LinuxMemes (Linux themed memes)
Reach out to
All communities included on the sidebar are to be made in compliance with the instance rules. Striker
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That is a wholly unsatisfactory response
Firstly capitalism does work, it is extremely efficient at what it does which is allocating capital, which I've never heard of a good alternative. Central planning seems pretty trash as an alternative example But where "capitalism" falls over isn't to do with it at all. Capitalism is an economic system, it doesn't dictate anything about how we setup things like welfare or even ubi if you want. Look at Europe, seems pretty chill to me in a lot of countries that are capitalist
Right so you would make any other structure of company illegal. I don't like that particularly, but from your moral system I get it. But then we probably have a fundamental disagreement there that can't be resolved easily
What really annoys me about socialists/communists is you always want to handwave your bullshit system. You don't even know how to start a business under your system but want to advocate for it! Being better than a moronic Marxist in this respect doesn't excuse you of understanding what your system entails Also please don't tell me to do my own research on your proposed system, you should be able to explain if you want entire countries to switch economic models
I don't owe you a "satisfactory" response. I have been trying to explain what system I favour and why given you hadn't heard of it before. This isn't a debate and I can't debate someone who didn't even know the thing I am talking about even existed before we had this conversation, so stop treating it like one. I am not an expert in any economic system, nor are most people and I doubt you are either. What I do know is that the current one definitely isn't good for many reasons. I also know that economics is largely pseudoscience and should be treated as such.
I actually live in Europe. That argument won't work on me. It's actually so absurd that Americans think Europe is this perfect place just because we aren't a third world country. There is a cost of living crisis ongoing where I live. I can't even find a job in my field despite having a masters degree (computer science), and had to move back in with my parents. There are homeless people on the streets. People regularly can't afford to heat their homes. There are loads more issues if you care to look for them too. Many of these are caused by capitalism.
I can't say anything about allocating capital because I am not an economist. I can say though the damage that has been caused to people and the environment. There is also no reason why something like market socialism would be less efficient to my knowledge as it uses many of the same ideas that capitalism does including the profit motive. I don't think it's a perfect solution by any means, and I am not confident a perfect solution is even possible. I do think it's something that's worth a shot.
What moral system do you think I follow exactly? All I want is a world where we don't have to exploit each other to survive, where everyone is looked after and the planet isn't dying. To be given the opportunity to improve yourself. Being rewarded for working hard or gaining skills would be good too, but not as important as the rest. Currently I am not getting any of these things and I am rightfully angry about that.
If you actually have a solution that would work better than I am all ears. I don't think social democracy and welfare can fix all that though, because I have lived in countries with those things and seen them fail. Even the ones that appear to do it well are normally exploiting the planet or other countries to do so.
If we humans can't work out how to make a system that works for everyone and for the planet then we don't deserve to be alive frankly. We deserve to go extinct and be replaced by something else.
That's actually one of the main issues I had with marxists funnily enough. That and some authoritarian tendencies. Though there are definitely some who have ideas on how to run an economy, and you might find some of these of interest.
Man I just find it frustrating that not a single socialist I've met or talked to can accurately explain their system given any amount of pushback
I can understand wanting to restructure your entire economy because you're currently facing issues with your current system. But in my opinion the failing isn't of the economic system but the system built around it. I truly believe with a well implemented tax system and regulations we could keep everyone's needs met Meaning potentially negative taxation for those of low income and higher taxation as you move upwards
I don't feel we can blame our economy for the way we're currently fucking over the plant it terms of climate. Many socialist projects were massively damaging to the environment as well, in both systems the only real fix is regulation. Which I wish we could pass but unfortunately the reality is that in a lot of places voters simply don't want it (which is dumb)
If you truly want to critique capitalism I think it would be beneficial to understand how it works and some level of the economics Which by the way if you can come up with a cohesive plan for socialism I'd love to see it. As I think fundamentally we want the same things, and I don't mind which way we go, it's just thus far socialism doesn't seem to be very practical
I dunno man, billionaires are a big failure of this economic system. So is alienation of labour. No one should profit from someone else's work. Even so I could forgive all that of it meant everyone had enough money from working say 20 or 30 hours a week, but that isn't the case.
I know capitalism isn't purely to blame for the environmental problems we have, but it is a major component. You can see this with oil companies and their owners lobbying governments not to pass legislation, producing propaganda, and funding bad science.
I actually understand some level of how capitalism works already. Maybe I could learn more, but honestly what I have learned already I find disgusting. How anyone who actually understands it doesn't find it irredeemable I struggle to understand. That being said it's certainly a complex system, that certainly seems efficient if you don't actually look too hard. I think that's what stops people seeing the very obvious flaws.
I don't consider it bad for people to make a profit off my work though. They're always risking something in order for me to be in a position to make profits to begin with. If they weren't I wouldn't need the employer, I'd just have a risk free business that I'd run myself
I don't think the oil companies are a failure of capitalism either. I understand how it looks that way, as they do some real sketchy stuff in the name of profit. But at the end of the day our governments should be regulating them to death, but they aren't and the reason sadly enough is likely that the average citizen simply doesn't care. In countries where an actual majority of the population care you see much better results Even under full on communism you could still run in to this issue anyway. Oil is a big industry for a reason, it's really useful and relatively cheap you could easily see a communist society choosing to use it ignoring the downsides
I think capitalism's flaws are obvious, which I like. Because we can easily rectify them with government regulation Do you have an example of a flaw of capitalism that can't be solved? Other than just the idea that profiting off someone else's labour is wrong, as I think that's really more of a philosophical question that I don't think 90% of people would agree with
It's not just about risk though. It's about having the capital to start with. Most people would never have enough capital to start a large business like amazon. Even if they did you have to get obscenely lucky and be at the right time on the market. Rich people might technically be taking a risk, but they have the money to finance many, many of these risks and so long as at least some pay off it's a net profit for them.
Capitalism inevitably leads to government corruption. There is as far as I can tell no easy solution for this besides removing them for the very economic system they are supposed to legislate for - which obviously has other issues. That's why government regulation doesn't work and isn't a solution. As they say: money is the root of all evil.
First you can't have a communist government do any bad things, because communist governments don't exist! It's a contradiction as there is no state under communism. You mean Marxist governments practicing state socialism, and I have already said I have issues with Marxists. I also think it's pertinent to mention that state socialism is meant to be temporary in a Marxist regime, and not all Marxists advocate for state socialism either.
Market socialism (which isn't communism - not even close) could theoretically have these issues yes. There are however no billionaires to bribe anyone, so in practice I think these issues would be less severe.
A large part of the problem with the climate issue is public education - that's why people don't care. Education is something even state socialist economies have generally done well at. Obviously this can never be done perfectly, and there are always some idiots when it comes to issues like this and things like anti-vaxxers. That being said there is a lot that can be done when people aren't being brain washed for profit. Conspiracy theorists make bank off of people who are gullible - removing the profit motive there would actually be useful here. I can see it being a problem in an economy under market socialism as the profit motive still exists.
Just on the risk point. To reduce the scope a bit
People not having the assents to start large businesses is of course a thing. You need to be quite lucky to start a business to begin with, I wouldn't dispute that and I hate the dumb thing the right does where they assume everyone can start a successful business
However I would like to know, in your ideal system where would the starting capital come from? And how do we decide which businesses should have capital allocated to them? Your comment on "communism has no government" would make this seemingly quite difficult
I am not advocating for communism though. I am explaining what communists believe to the best of my ability - which is somewhat limited because I am not a communist. There are also no "businesses" as such under communism, and also no money for starting capital. There is also no profit. You are asking the wrong questions to the wrong people here. Also "communism has not government" isn't my comment, it's a statement of fact you would know if you actually spoke to communists or made an attempt to understand their ideology.
I asked for your ideal system. I was saying further that communism would have a hard time here. But please do explain for market socialism/whatever you prefer
Sorry when I say business replace with whatever name you want for the organisation you'd replace it with. My point being, lets say I want a place that makes a new kind of product that I have an idea for. Now 10 other people have ideas for other products, not necessarily in the same sector If the market can't decide, and government doesn't exist. Then how do we decide what gets resources allocated? Do we do direct democracy?
I'm more interested in your system than communism though of course, as communism seems impractical
And please don't tell me "maybe you should talk to them or try to understand". I literally am, but communists seem far to quick to just say "capitalism bad" and call it a day, or somehow worse "I don't know how it'll work, we'll work that out after the revolution"
The point is not necessarily about profit rather about what the profit comes from namely the positive (property rights to produced outputs) and negative product (liabilities for used-up inputs), which together are the whole product. A basic tenet of justice that capitalism violates is that legal and de facto responsibility should match. In a worker coop, the workers are held jointly legally responsible for the whole product matching their de facto responsibility for producing it @lemmyshitpost
Is this a bot?
No @lemmyshitpost