this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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That's a fair criticism, we do need to find a better way
The Nords found it because they keep their capitalism restrained as it should be to serve the interests of the people in their societies instead of the reverse as it has become here.
The problem, of course, is the market crony hyper-capitalists that spawned mostly out of the US are using their power/capital to do what they did here everywhere else in it's insatiable quest for growth/metastasis. The UK has already fallen to the faustian bargain of "YOU can live large, just sell out your fellow citizens." Germany is getting on board, France's people are fighting but losing. Unrestrained capitalism high on its own greed is absolutely cancerous and deadly.
Capitalism CAN when tightly, tightly straight jacketed, be used to incentivize labor as communism cannot, but it must be tempered by the heaviest of taxation for the commons. Being a doctor or a lawyer should yield better rewards than a janitor, but within fucking reason/sanity.
Should a Doctor be able to afford a bigger house and a nicer car than an average worker for their effort? Sure. Should they be able to afford 3 houses to the janitor's studio apartment in a bad neighborhood? No, both provide essential services to society after all.
There needs to be a drain for out of control capital acquisition or that capital will eventually be used to propagate greed and capture the regulatory bodies meant to keep the sociopath that is capitalism sedated and restrained. No individual should possess enough capital to have more power over socetal structures than their single vote allows.
In exchange for not allowing greed to run absolutely rampant as it does here, they go to college based on merit, get healthcare when they need it, don't end up homeless in hard times, don't sweat job security, on and on...
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/happiness/
At least until the global markets find enough greed driven traitors in those societies to "turn the bull loose" there too. Because once they get a foothold, that's the ball game until collapse. Once that happens, they start using their for profit media machines to propagandize division within the citizenry, ensuring no meaningful counter movement, they use their power over government to indoctrinate children through education to call greed "rational self-interest," deify profiteers as "job creators," to feel hatred rather than empathy towards those that are struggling(herp derp those evil powerless homeless people are lowering my property values! If they can't/won't work, why won't they just die?), etc. That's why the US will need to collapse under the weight of its own corruption before things can even begin to improve. We're too far captured.
Amazingly well put. Capitalism is necessary. Unrestrained capitalism is deadly. The unfortunate reality of capitalism is that even as it is in the process of burning everything to the ground, it looks for all the world like glorious success. And it is glorious success, if you don't compare it to what could be in a system where it was properly restrained.
Capitalism isn’t necessary; a new economic system that takes some aspects of capitalism is necessary. If you have to strip capitalism of all of its core features to make it work, you’re no longer dealing with capitalism but rather a different economic model.
I agree. People who say, "nuhuh, capitalism works!" are 99% of the time thinking of the basic concept of markets or money. Which ... Very specifically, are NOT capitalism.
They are used (and abused) by capitalists, but they are not inventions of capitalists.
Reason 1 that I'm happy to ditch reddit for Lemmy completely is watching these ideas explained by other people, every day.
Not having to explain the difference between capitalism and commerce feels 😩🔥
So what’s the difference between capitalism and markets? I would have thought the freer the market the more capitalistic it was, not so much that there’s a separation of the two.
Ownership of Capital. Capitalism has markets, but not all market systems are Capitalist.
Market Socialism, for example, has competing worker-owned entities like Co-operatives in a market system, with no Capitalists.
Capitalism is a relatively new phenomena in the grand scheme of things.
Can a cooperative compete in a capitalist market? As in shouldn’t the better system win out in a free market?
Kind of. The market can have Capitalist entities and Socialist entities, but the market itself isn't Capitalist.
Not necessarily. Co-operatives are more difficult to start in a predominantly Capitalist system, and Capitalist entities usually can exploit their workers more in order to gain temporary competitive advantage. I don't believe this is sufficient reasoning to value Capitalism over Socialist entities.
I'm not a Market Socialist, for clarification, as I do think there are issues. However, Capitalism isn't markets.