Only 9 percent of Americans younger than 30 have a “very positive” view of capitalism, according to a new CBS/YouGov poll.
That shows a stark generation between Generation Z and older generations.
The data arrives amid a surge in democratic socialist victories across the U.S. — and not just in progressive corners of the country. Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon (D) on Tuesday beat out the more moderate Alex Vindman (D) in the Democratic Senate primary in Florida, a state known for its sunshine, not socialism.
I’m fine with well-regulated, yea sufficiently-regulated, capitalism. But I really don’t care what you call it.
There should be some profit motive or I think it falls apart. But first and foremost, it has to be fair. We shouldn’t have billionaires. I don’t care if we have millionaires. But not one fucking stupidly-fucking-rich person until the social safety nets take care of every last one of us.
And the oligarchs built their wealth on the backs of the rest of us, and on the public services that WE fucking pay for. They need to pay their FAIR share, which is a fuck ton more than they are.
So beyond that? Details that people smarter than me can work out.
Am I anti-capitalism? Meh. I care less for what we call it than what it does and how it treats people.
Well regulated capitalism is socialism. The more you think about it and dig at it, the more you realize that what you want actually just is straight up socialism and explicitly not capitalism.
The capital in capitalism is the power to the money, a positive feedback loop. And that socialism is all the stuff that people actually like. It gets into ownership and copyright and what is ownable, but all of that is very important to consider when making or thinking about worldviews.
Somebody more awake than me can put out names and concepts. The world is a weird place and it can change in an instant. I wish I could live forever and see where it goes and ride that ride.
But line must go up. At all costs.
But that’s the thing that’s most frstrating of all: Line still go up with fuckign social safety nets. (cussing at the fascists and oligarchs, not you). heh
One flaw in capitalism that I often think about is its inevitable that the ones who hold the most valuable resource writes the rules of capitalism. Even when well regulated, even if we get rid of lobbying, even if we get reverse Citizens United, whoever holds the most desirable thing holds influence, and influence is destined to become corrupted in a system that divides people into winners and losers via competition.
I think economies at a bare minimum should be optional to engage with for luxuries only and that we as a species should learn to value more meaningful things other than pretty metals and hollow social praise from strangers.
Honestly I think capitalism was born of the mental immaturity of our species. It sounds great if you don’t know much about the world, but the more you do the less capitalism makes sense.
Nobody invented capitalism, it just developed from people buying and selling stuff. Specialization meant people didn’t produce all of the things they needed themselves. So people had to trade. From there systems developed.
And it’s generally a good thing that people can choose for themselves what they value and buy the things they want. What’s important to you, won’t be important to me. There won’t be a world where we all want the same things unless you make it so everyone in the world thought exactly the same way. And that doesn’t sound like a better world to me.
You are reading this on an electronic device. Do you need that device, or is it a luxury? In the Soviet Union they decided only party leaders needed telephones, so only the party leaders had them. Seems convenient logic whenever those with power need things everyone else doesn’t, but you can understand the logic. Why would someone working in a factory need to own a telephone?
It’s better to have people have the choice about what they want to buy and have a system that’s simply producing the things people want to buy. But that means some people will buy luxury items. But how do you even determine what is a luxury item? Is a telephone a luxury item? If people can buy what they want and items people want to buy are being produced and the price of those items is determined by the value of the resources used to make those products, no one needs to worry about what is a luxury and what isn’t.
Yes that means some people will get wealthy. How about just taxing the wealthy people?
Ultimately every system ends up with inequality. Somehow it needs to be determined what people need and what are luxuries they don’t need. People in power will always decide they need to have more than everyone else. Best you can do is have an educated population that has the ability to remove people from power when they abuse it. But even then, people will be stupid and get scammed. But that will happen in any system.
Sure, but I think that’s a little bit like saying that democracy is the worst form of government - except all the others.
Rip out capitalism completely, and what do you get? You start over with everyone substinance farming. How do you get people interested in making things if not the promise of profit?
Also, I don’t believe anything is destined, personally. It’s all choice, and sure, natural human nature, but we can work against those things.
People WANT to make things and profit has nothing to do with that desire. In our grind culture we often can’t help but think how we could turn a profit from our hobbies but that’s a perversion driven by capitalism. People make art, clothes, food, games, movies, music, we innovate with ways to save time or make something easier or more accessible, we solve problems in creative ways, and we do it all without a profit motive. Making things isn’t a problem capitalism solves - it extracts value, it drives greed, it demands growth.
So clearly I take issue with the question of how to get people to make things. I don’t have an easy answer for how we motivate people to do garbage collection or brain surgery without money but I also think we could figure it out if we had any amount of time where we weren’t consumed by trying to make more of it.
I think part of the solution is to give people free stuff - but make those items generic. People like having identity. So we give everyone access to a basic toothpaste, but they can choose to buy a luxury paste that is orange-flavored toothpaste. Same goes for clothing - a basic clothing set that can be obtained for free, but things like print patterns, graphics, and so forth, have to be bought.
In effect, people spend money to make their life more interesting. Generic food, universal services, and so forth are all boring, functional, and free.
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My concepts are a bit more involved than what I described here, as there are multiple angles that can be applied towards preventing fiscal obesity and political corruption. For example, an absolutely fixed income for jobs might initially sound limiting for the rank and file, but capitalism uses “circumstance” to judge the worth of workers - which gives leaders an excuse to cut wages to the bone, or to fire people they dislike, or to give the executive class fancy compensation packages. We can create floors and ceilings to what a worker can have.
More approaches, such as requiring workers to periodically elect the leadership of their companies, would also help.
Why wouldn’t we at least want democracy in the workplace?
I’m partial to a Cooperative Economy, a form of stateless market socialism, in conjunction with something like the Economy for the Common Good as an alternative to GDP, a measure for economic growth, and can be used for the purpose of determining tax brackets and providing subsidies for example. Implementing the right incentives to make the transition could begin to provide a significant break from capitalism.
The problem with the unregulated capitalism we’re seeing globally, is intergenerational wealth. In very short, it’s inheritance.
If everyone were to build themselves up from nothing, we’d have a pretty strong merit based system.
But when rich fucks can hand millions upon millions to their off spring, so no matter their ability to understand the world will live comfortably. Then everything breaks apart.
Ultimately will unregulated capitalism always see wealth/profits drift towards the already wealthy families. Where as resetting wealth every generation, would make dynasties way less likely to exist.
Why would we want a “strong merit based” system? Congrats, you won the genetic lottery and are healthy with attentive parents! Your life has more value than others!
So experts are in a position of power and knowledge creation.
We want whoever is better at a topic, to excel at the topic and be able to research within the topic. Likewise we want ministers of health, whom actually understand health and the science behind it
I don’t disagree, but it’s the building of massive wealth that I find problematic in addition. But I agree that inherited wealth is a massive problem as well.
Also can we just get rid of publicly traded stocks as well. That shit makes Capitalism explicitly worse and I’m like 90 percent sure it actively would corrupt any system it’s present in at this point.
If you want to sell stocks for mining expeditions for example then fine, but the company should be dissolved afterwards or otherwise take the total financial damages for failure.
Right, stocks mean that instead of a company benefiting the employees or clients, it has to solely prioritize this third party who is completely detached from the business at all. No good can come from that.
Kind of feels like I’m beating off a dead horse when I talk about cooperatives, but multi stakeholder models can solve a lot of the issues with publicly traded stocks. Namely the perverse incentive to appease shareholders over workers or consumers. At least give workers majority stake, so they can install their own board of directors instead of all the voting power unfairly given to the sociopaths with the most money.
I’m all for getting rid of it completely though.
You can still have privately traded stocks just not publicly traded. I believe WinCo does that.
Right, but capitalism is exploitative by its very nature. Profit is evidence of underpaying labor. There is a massive difference between something like a small business where the owner is working to provide the products/services themselves vs somebody buying a factory/plant/farm/whatever and paying others to do the work for them while they collect millions merely for owning the means of production. Is it possible for a small, single owner/worker/operator business to profit? Yes. The business profits by paying the owner less than their labor was worth, but it’s ultimately identical to paying the full value and then them choosing to invest their money back into the business. But you’d be braindead to do that because of how taxes on businesses work compared to income tax.
To be clear, it’s not that it’s called capitalism that’s what is pissing people off. It’s that people are going deep into debt to get degrees that they were promised were tickets to making enough money to live comfortably in a house that they could own, and instead everybody is so broke that simple purchases now require financing while working 2-3 jobs. Everything is getting worse and more expensive and it’s because of the economic expectation of infinite growth in a real world with finite resources. Speculative value is falsely inflating the value of an increasingly fundamental cornerstone of the US economy, and therefore a significant chunk of the global economy. AI as a tool can be useful in targeted usecases, but its parading as a solution for everything is a ruinous fucking bubble that’s spreading and consuming at a civilization-ending rate; it’s collapse if it pops, and it’s dystopian hell if it doesn’t.
You are now antifa. Capitalists are willing to throw you in jail until you die. The profit motive of prisons you demand to exist be sufficiently regulated have deemed you a terrorist. Accept your fate for the prosperity you assume will occur afterwards.
Or consider that capitalism has fundamental issues and a profit motive is probably one of them. The wish to rule the world is the end goal of capitalism, no? If the maximum to capitalism isn’t ruling the world, what’s your proposal for the ceiling of capital? Why cant that ceiling have any more profit? Why is the profit motive limited at a certain point if fundamentally a profit motive is necessary? Unless you are willing to admit that there is a maximum amount an individual can have to be satisfied with life and exceeding it is pure gluttony? If you say that, you are an anti capitalist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSPM-7
https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/how-nspm-7-seeks-to-use-domestic-terrorism-to-target-nonprofits-and-activists
eh. I get the logic of your conclusions, but I disagree.
That is, for example, the end goal of unfettered capitalism, but I support heavily regulated capitalism.
And I support capitalism that still allows people to reach some level of wealth - just not to the degree of wealth inequality we have allowed now.
Mainly I support capitalism because I have not seen another system that has worked to a tenth of the degree.
I’d love some Star Trek bullshit where money doesn’t exist and everything gets done, but I don’t buy it.
So from a pragmatic point of view, I’ve ended up in support of heavily regulated capitalism, which allows governance by democratic socialism, for instance.
The problem with capitalism is that it is inherently designed to unevenly accumulate capital to the owners of the means of production. These owners will always use their capital to influence the governments that are supposed to moderate their greed.
Yes, I agree. And the problem with anything else is that it doesn’t work at all. lol.
But that’s the point of heavily regulated capitalism - to keep those influences in check. And it works, more or less, in some of the highest rated countries in the world (i.e. the US is not in that list) - think where the scan the navy in. :)
There is something that works better though. Co-ops offer a path towards democratic control of the economy and it is more than just idealistic.
Greater job stability than traditional businesses
Higher productivity
Higher profits
More resiliant during economic downturn
Decrease in inequality
Greater job satisfaction
https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-expertise/insights/2018/aug/why-the-us-needs-more-worker-owned-companies.html
According to who? China is a socialist government where the state has the power to take control over the means of production of any corporation in the country. It has gone from one of the poorest nations on the planet to one of the greatest super powers in a few decades.
Cuba has survived as a socialist nation and has done so despite being neighbors with a country that’s been stepping regime change for over 50 years.
Vietnam defeated the most powerful country in history and has dragged itself out of poverty…
Yes… The point is once people accumulate enough wealth they can influence the government that is regulating the economy. The countries who follow the Nordic model also have the benefit of being relatively small populations who control a vast amount of or natural resources, which allow them to create large sovereign wealth funds.
Evenso wealth and income inequalities are already rising in these nations. Right winged parties have already started to gain traction in a lot of these countries due to immigration scares.
Cuba had struggled - although US sanctions are a big part of that - but they have somewhat recently started allowing some small businesses more officially.
China is pretty capitalist these days. Sure, lots of central control. They are very much not communist or socialist.
Vietnam I don’t know as well, but they seem pretty capitalist to me, but I will refrain comment.
:shrug: I’m not changing my opinion that the most successful countries use capitalism, but also that capitalism unfettered leads to really bad problems, too. Thus I go back to highly regulated capitalism. heh.
I don’t totally disagree with you by any means, but I do end up with somewhat different conclusions. I can see your point, but I see my own point, too. lol.
Socialism is the transitional period between capitalism and Communism. Just because a socialist country has a mixed economy does not mean it isn’t socialist. So long as the government has the ability to control the means of production then it is a socialist country.
It depends on how you are defining success. If you are judging it by acquisition of capital, then yeah… But we must be honest and realize that has only been possible by exploiting their own citizens, and by involving themselves with decades if not hundreds of years of imperialism over the southern hemisphere.
Highly regulated capitalism is still dependent on exploitation of the 3rd world.
Elon Musk’s companies directly employ roughly 150,000 to 160,000 people globally, Who do you employ?
I never claimed to be anyone. Who the fuck are you?