this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19046336

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[–] DancingBear@midwest.social 70 points 2 months ago (5 children)

i hate it when I hear people making the claim that it is capitalism that has helped so many people in the world with better quality of life and more opportunities and better outcomes, etc.

Capitalism is a fucking disease that we need to rid ourselves of, it is worse than Ebola the way it infects our minds with the dumbest shit.

You know what has made lives better for billions of people? The washing machine and the cotton gin and fucking electricity.

Capitalism has fought against progress every step of the way.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 45 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Capitalism was nice when it first popped up. Because it was an improvement over feudalism.

Actually, it wasn't that nice when it first popped up, considering the first capitalist ventures were colonialism (including the conquest of the Aztec and Incan empires and the east Indian tea company that was worse for India than Hitler was for Europe).

But it was relatively nice because before capitalism, most development needed to be done by the king, who had limited funds. Bankers had been building wealth and capitalism allowed them to become new sub kings with their own empires. More empires meant more development, which also means a lot of employment, so it did increase the quality of life for many people as they got paid to improve things around them and new products popped up.

But we've since outgrown the whole kings thing for control of a geographic or political region while corporations are still run like dictatorships (with the executive team acting as sub kings for the board, which acts as sub kings for the shareholders, where institutional investors dominate, which just makes the whole thing less transparent because those institutions also have similar command structures).

So while there is some truth to capitalism having had a positive impact, the overall story is more complicated than that (the plunder from colonialism made it look a lot better at a high price in the colonies, and it was a relative improvement to "only the lord of the land can develop it and benefit from that improvement") and society has generally since rejected that model for running political regions but the economic model has yet to catch up.

The capitalists are resisting that change similarly to how the kings resisted changing from monarchies to republics and have been since around WWI and the fascist regimes of the 20s and 30s were a result of capitalists siding with them to prevent various leftist movements from gaining power.

[–] P1nkman@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

Fucking well put!

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 12 points 2 months ago

Colonialism was pursued under the economic theory of mercantilism and capitalist thinkers explicitly separated their ideas from it (among other things by emphasis on the idea that the best kind of wealth is tools instead of gold and as a result the pursuit of wealth can be cooperative instead of zero sum game), but otherwise sure it all looks the same in the end. It's not like capitalists ever stopped and said "No, don't invade that country for its natural resources, that goes against our principles of making more money."

[–] Gsus4@mander.xyz 21 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Capitalism puts greed at the wheel and, naturally, ~~inventions~~ products are churned out, some really useful, some terrible. To make it work, you need to regulate hard to keep the greed from taking over the innovation.

[–] TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Suffering as a means of production is the heart of capitalism

[–] primrosepathspeedrun@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

its not the means, its the product.

[–] demizerone@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Just look at all the shit on Amazon to know that capitalism puts out a bunch of garbage all that stuff is a waste of resources.

[–] GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Capitalism that is bounded by strong regulations that are consistently and fairly enforced by government (the people) entities isn't that bad.

It's when those regulations get watered down or just removed in the name of "freedom" that we get what we have now.

[–] archomrade@midwest.social 8 points 2 months ago

Any form of capitalism that permits the accumulation of wealth will lead to deregulation and economic collapses with increasing frequency.

[–] DancingBear@midwest.social -1 points 2 months ago

We’re beyond that. Capitalism is a disease.

[–] uis@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

In other parts of the world total literacy, universal healthcare and more was made without capitalism.

[–] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago

Propaganda conflates industrialization with capitalism continually, obscuring the possibility of any other economic system.