And most of the time you’d be right.
And it’s the root cause vast majority of the time.
Not really
yes really
Really not really
whatever helps you sleep at night I suppose
Wherever there is a need there is potential for exploitation by greed. Of course capitalists without a leash are going to wreak havoc on everything.
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Why do you say commerce is specifically ethical? I’ve always considered it more neutral and up to implementation.
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I think you’re making a discussion into a spit fight for the sake of feeling better about yourself. I ask because I want to understand and for no other reason.
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Unsurprisingly, structural problems are the result of the structure.
The greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity.
Well, you’re usually in the general vicinity of the root cause of any problem by that assumption.
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In a real free market companies will lobby the government to bail them out.
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that wouldn’t be a free market
Yes it would, the banks are free to buy the influence of legislators.
The idea of a free market means that working hard makes you go farther.
No, that’s just a vague platitude, you might as well say that a free market is when happiness and icecream.
What we have is an oligarchy dicatorship
A dictatorship of capital, if you will.
Yep, it’s obvious that that’s how many people here see all their problems.
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What were you promised? Like, owning a home? Home ownership rates in the US have been in the 63-70% range during all of 1966-2023, almost completely stable. Local purchasing power is #5 in the world for americans. What exactly is the problem over there?
We in Europe are having it much worse if you look at the data, especially now when Russia is being fucking Russia.
It’s also clear that people who deny the extent to which capitalism actually makes the world worse either a) don’t know what capitalism is, or b) are rent seekers
Or perhaps we know history and economics.
I’d encourage you to expand your worldview - a lot of problems we attribute to capitalism are mostly because of hierarchy.
Capitalism is fundamentally hierarchy established in property rights. Doing away with hierarchy does away with Capitalism. Unless, of course, you’re arguing for Anarcho-Communism or something.
This is the neuance. Could there be a fair form of capitalism? It depends upon the systems and the people that run them. Centralisation of ownership is the next step beyond the centralisation of power, because after a while they become intrinsically the same. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, absolute wealth corrupts absolutely.
But also, the stock markets which can be beneficial are also forms of glorified gambling where the house always wins, the commodification of the housing market, the silly notion of shell and shelf companies (easiest, most effective way of side stepping regulations and laundering money), debt slavery, the price gouging of life saving medicine, the race to the bottom where costs, quality of product and salaries need to be cut, where the line between product and service becomes thinner for every day to the point where you retain less and less ownership by each year, which you can’t really blame anyone for, because all of these systems are designed to be a constant, churning, soul killing rat race, turning the pace of life to a literally unlivable speeds, which also reveals that even the ones up in the hierarchy become degenerate with greed, mostly because they live so far up that their human brains can’t fathom the effect they have down the chain, because it goes against their interests.
Instead of then going on another witch hunt, we need to look at these systems and the effects they have on the human psyche.
But hey, that’s just my take.
No there cannot be a fair form of capitalism because it is centered on exchange. You have to center your life on turning your time into a profit to afford the whole rest of society’s product also sold at a profit, at its most basic level it is unsustainable.
Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Like the idea of shell and shelf companies is a capitalist concept, that and mother companies, daughter companies, etc.
I particularly dislike shell and shelf companies, because they are almost always used to sidestep law and regulations, as well as money laundering. It’s a system whereby you can easily move around money, back and forth, up and down, to the point where the money has been obsfucated so much it requires a large team of exonomists AND all the accounts to figure out wrongdoing.
Because of this you could make a ton of profit off human trafficking, put that money into a south African shelf company, launder it for like a max 30% and boom: legal tender.
Capitalism causes tons of economic crime that can never be solved.
Nah, the problems are due to capitalist economic relations and systemic pressures these relations create in society.
I think so too. If there is hierarchy someone will abuse it. But i also think that capitalism creates structures of hierarchy in itself.
Not only capitalism entirely based on the hierarchy of ownership, but it also reinforces already existing social hierarchies as those in power receive more profits and capital, and thus more power and influence in a broader society. You cannot say hierarchy is bad and be pro capitalism. Leftist ideologies are ways to try to democratize the economy, which flattens hierarchy. Anarchism is inherently anti capitalist.
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