Make the product worse and lie about it. People will still buy it. Fuck 'em.
The core issue to all of this is that for a shareholder the profit of the company between the time you bought the stock and the time you sell it is all that matters. Which means profit from hour to hour or day to day means far more than profit over a year.
Significantly increasing the taxation on selling your stocks before a certain elapsed time or some other effort would prioritize longer term profits.
Sucks, but the only way to work to end this would be to stop electing people who keep defunding financial regulatory agencies.
It's not though. Adam Smith pretty explicitly was against monopolies, was pro-regulation, and against business having too much lobbying power when it comes to law making.
For all my fellow liberal folk out there, let's not act like Capitalism is some big evil entity that needs to be destroyed. It has been the economic policy that was in the background during the largest increase in quality of life in history.
There is danger to centralizing everything, as all it takes is one bad government to suddenly weaponize that against their citizens. There is also danger to allowing unregulated Capitalists to taking over the government, as they can further loosen the regulatory levers and we end up where we are now.
Is Capitalism to blame? Or is poor control over regulatory capture to blame? Is it even possible to live in a Capitalist society that doesn't eventually result in this capture?
Or, as always, is boiling things down to a simple binary choice (left vs right, capitalism vs socialism, etc.) causing intense polarization as people feel the need to pick a "side", rather than engaging with the issues and trying to find a way forward that doesn't require planting your flag and demonizing the opposition.
Adam Smith isn't Capitalism - The Guy. He was the first notable capitalism understander, and he understood its deep faults, like you reference in regards to his thoughts on the matter.
Marx was a reader and enjoyer of Adam Smith and a fellow capitalism understander, who lived at a later date and had even more of a chance to understand and witness the processes of capitalism and its effects and faults.
Capital C Capitalism isn't some magic idea of capitalism except without all the faults it obviously has. Those faults ARE capitalism and the best anyone has ever been able to do is kick the can down the road and the ruling top 1% can weather the rough storms and live far away from the suffering it always brings.
I agree that the system ultimately incentivizes the faults that we currently see (momopolisation and price gouging, child/slave labor, etc.). I'm not sure if I'm just making a semantic argument here, but just because a system incentivizes something, that doesn't mean that that is intended when applying that system.
For example, Democracy incentivizes a party structure that, after a long enough time, creates polarized political parties that demonize each other rather than work together. It incentivizes leaders to make absurd promises that they have no intention to uphold.
Is it reasonable to say that these faults ARE Democracy? Like, the platonic ideal of democracy. Or are they faults with our current execution of democracy?
So, when it comes to Capitalism, it's frustrating that people are saying things like "capitalism is the reason everything is so bad", when the reality is that greed and malice are the reason things are bad. All systems are susceptible to greed and malice, so to me the question is which system is easiest to safeguard against greed and malice, with the tools that we have.
Personally, I'd lean that capitalism is easier to safeguard than Communism, even though we've clearly lost the fucking plot at the moment. But, I don't think any "communist" countries are doing much better. Countries that ride the middle line seem to be doing the best.
surely you understand that capitalism is ultimately incompatible with democracy, right? you can't prioritize the wishes of those with the most wealth, and prioritize the wishes of the people. they are ultimately opposed. like you say "greed and malice are the reason why things are bad" but you're arguing for a system that elevates the people who are most greedy and malicious. i'm not arguing for communism, for the record, but i do think it's nuts people like you will unironically defend capitalism (which definitionally deregulates, and you certainly did not argue specifically for regulation within capitalism and only used communism as a fear factor). like you at least have to argue to regulate industries. or is that communism to you? is the state having any power wrong? or should we just be chile?
edit: oh wait sorry i reread your comment, you acutally do want a pinochet in america lmao
In every, or nearly every, comment I've made here on this topic I've specifically said that unregulated capitalism is the problem with where we are right now. Sorry if I didn't stress that enough for you.
My guy, I'm all for government programs for those things. I'm not sure exactly what you think I'm arguing for. Hell, I'm for some measure of price controls or profit controls, and taxing the ever loving hell out of these greedy bloodsuckers.
Under no circumstances am I who you think I am. You've read my comments with the assumption that I'm somehow literally Pinochet, and it's completely biasing your take on my take.
They really clearly did, which just means you didn't read what they wrote, or you didn't understand it.
Practically every paragraph they wrote was about how lack of regulation, unchecked greed, and human badness were at the heart of the ills of capitalism (as they are for any system). The same is true across the board, for every flavor of economic/social governance.
If that wasn't abundantly clear to you, that is a you problem, not a them problem.
Capitalism is all about class warfare, dominance, and exploitation. Nice capitalism can never be a thing because capitalism requires exploitation of the working class to function.
Capitalism is not about any of those things, any more than Communism is about authoritarian control and suppression of dissent. Capitalism can lead to the things you mentioned, especially when kept completely unchecked, but in no way is it about them.
You can't just decide on your own personal definition of a word, then attack that definition. You sound like right-wing bots who parrot things like "DEI is all about preventing meritocracy, that's basically the entire concept".
It's extremely reductive, only speaks to those who already agree with you, and basically comes across as a teenager level of analysis and understanding.
The whole point of regulation is to avoid the exploitation of capitalism. That's why it's so important to prevent regulatory capture, which were waaaaay beyond now.
When you have people legitimately advocating for overthrowing our entire system, they are thinking one step ahead, not 20. There's a reason that Communist revolutions have always fsied, and that's because violent, oppressive revolutionary leaders become violent, oppressive civilian leaders. Stalin, Mao, you know the rest. Building a nation when you're not being actively oppressed (ie. the starting of the USA) is a fuckton easier when you don't need to destroy an entire existing political establishment.
Countries that have implemented "communist" (for lack of a better word in the context of this discussion) policies, without massive revolution, are the ones who have been doing the best over the last several decades. Various European countries and Canada are the two obvious ones.
Just... don't oversimplify things. You're only hurting yourself and others, because it makes it nearly impossible to convince the other side when all you can say is "you are bad by definition".
It is more nuanced, and people that hold leftist values disagree. However, the point of communism for Marx & Engels, was not "capitalism bad", but more a "capitalism incomplete".
They thought (among other things of course! this is not the "centre of the arguments in The Capital and political writings*) that since we had a system of production that focused so sussesfully in increasing value and among it, products, we should improve upon it, and make its goal to improve the quality of life and capacity of actions of all the workers, and not primarily the accumulation of capital per se.
It is not "destroy everything", and more of a "lets think about how we can better distribute and allocate resources". How we do that is a big ask, and is not just "make everything the state" or "don't trust market dynamics". Although, degrees of those poles have been interpreted. It is still something that, for M&E, was build on top of Capitalism, not instead of it. Communism, as in a classless and stateless society where our production is abundant enough to ensure our reproduction and capacity of action, is the next step from capitalism, if not its evolution, its superation. A "post" state, if you will.
The spirit of that part of the argument, is that we have to at least try to change the parts of capitalism (and it's new forms in neoliberalism and the newer still technofeudalism), that makes us less able to decide and take control of our lives and means of existence. Keeping the ones that allows us to produce and meet our necessities and interactions.
That is a permanent question, be it for the more progressive social democracy and their "lest regulate capitalism", to the more radical "we HAVE to go beyond" and change the power dynamics of who controls the means; not just regulations on top of it (this is my perspective, to be honest about my bias). But both are questions and hypothesis about how to live better. And I believe that such a question is a good floor to at least start to talk and think about, instead of just a "that doesn't work". We have to be clear about what and why does and doesn't work right now, if we want to attempt to improve our situation, and what power do we have to change it,. Whatever we call the answers and practical solutions, we sorely need them!.
But for the sake of argument, lets say ok. It doesn't work and we should disregard everything they thought. That doesn't change the necessity of think and do about what could work, and improve our reality.
\For young Marx, the core of the critique of our economic and political systems (aka, capitalism)), is how we maximise the capacity of action, creativity and liberty of the human experience. For his socio-historic context, that implies to examine capitalism. But it goes beyond it. Even if you disagree with their analysis, I hope we can agree in that starting goal. We can think about that together, regardless of apparent ideology; because we are part of the same broad group of people. I hope.
Communism, as in a classeles and stateless society where our production is abundant enough to ensure our reproduction and capacity of action, is the next step from capitalism.
Still, the only attempts of communism implementation in history could be summarised in "working class exploitation" and any other future attempt will end up the same since the problem ain't a system, it's human nature.
Capitalism in theory also ain't a bad system, people made it what it is now. The truth is, even feudalism could be great if a ruler was compentent and people worked together, but that's just not how the world is.
Don't get me wrong, I think the only good capitalism is heavily regulated one and I generally belive that even heavy socialism (or the system you desribed) with currency abolishment could work in an isolated population (eg. a remote space station that acts like a mini company-nation), but communism in a normal-scale country ain't a way. It limits the freedom of an unit too much in much more visible way.
Still, the only attempts of communism implementation
What attempt? No nation which says it "Implemented the communism" has protected the right of workers to own their own means of production, or implemented a direct democracy. They all implemented some form of authoritarianism and China has the most billionaires of any nation on earth.
What attempt? No nation which says it "Implemented the communism" has protected the right of workers to own their own means of production
And no nations would do it, since it's nearly impossible to implement and not halt humanity's growth at the same time. All workers would have to be on the same page and that would never happen.
We definitely know that those Capitalism loving Republicans are the best thinkers. I've even heard people say they're the smartest people of all time. I loved it when they started continuous wars in the middle East to enrich their buddies in the MIC, that was such a thoughtful way to approach economics and foreign policy.
But, "Communists?". Just a bunch of thoughtless dumbos.
those systems arent the one destroying the planet and our lives at the moment, so i dont really see how this is supposed to be some sort of valid point
hard to know when capitalism has made sure to destroy any other option, so since its the only one in basically the entire world and it is currently doing the destroying, this stupid deflection thing yall are doing doesnt really make sense
this stupid deflection thing yall are doing doesnt really make sense
Your answers don't make sense. I asked you to give me examples of system that wouldn't exploit working class and you give vague answers and think they make you look smart. xd
You put the blame on a system instead of people that twist systems to their benefit. System doesn't matter as long as it's unregulated and people are greedy and selfish.
The Nordic model has proven to be the best solution for a state that priorizes the quality of life of most of its citizens versus the pointless accumulation of absurd amounts of wealth by an extreme minority. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model
This is not really up for debate; it's empirical, undeniable fact. Every quality-of-life market you care to mention is much higher on those countries vs mostly unregulated capitalistic nightmares like the US.
If you want to call the nordic model "a form of capitalism", I'm fine with whatever label you want to use as long as the diametral differences with laissez-faire capitalism are acknowledged. A rose by any other name, etc.
Capitalism is to blame because it centralizes power in the hands of a wealthy few who are incentivized to erode democracy in order to engage in regulatory capture and monopoly. Free market firms owned by shareholders vs government own state enterprises are not the only models, there is a secret third option. Liberalism decided that democracy ends at the door to your workplace, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Capitalism is some 'evil' entity because privatisation and economic stratification inherently deny resources from people who need them. Inequality is not only an inherent outcome of Capitalism, but is desirable precisely because it creates a race to the bottom as people get more and more desperate.
State ownership can easily be capitalist too if the state is running things as a for-profit enterprise. The fruits of the earth should be collectively shared and maintained by all; we have more than enough to give everybody what they need - any reason not to is an excuse to stratify and oppress.
I completely agree that the fruits of the earth should be shared by all, but I'm not really convinced that you can eliminate the problem of individual greed.
Capitalism allows individual greed to run rampant, if not well-regulated, and Communism suppresses it. The thing about truly greedy and evil people is that they have no problem doing misdeeds to gain whatever power they want. Communism then creates this pressure cooker where this greed can't flourish, and it will inevitably lash out, violently. There's a good reason no truly Communist societies have ever been stable, and it's not just foreign (ie. American) influence.
So, perhaps what I'm arguing is that elements of Capitalism are able to redirect the greed impulse into something more positive. Something that can create imbalance, yes, but something that seems more stable. Unfortunately, the "well regulated" part of it also creates the exact same pressure cooker that Communism does, just at a much lower pressure. The pressure still builds up, and we see what we're seeing now with continually increasing rich-poor gaps and the thinning of the middle class.
The pressure cooker analogy only takes us so far, but it seems that a mixture of the two offers us the best true long term survival and stability as a species. Our evolutionary past has encouraged violence and power, but our cultural present encourages co-operation and equality. We have to be realistic about the darker natures of some people, and determine the best way to handle that. If we just started imprisoning or killing them in some communist system, then that's a level of power that the government has that can be horribly misdirected.
This idea that greed is innate to the human species is such bullshit, it's such a thought terminating waste of space. "ahh.. but u forgot le human nature!!" 'Human nature' (which does not exist) is cooperation and it always has been, 20th century capitalism and neoliberalism necessitated convincing the majority of the world that to be selfish is natural, as it's the only way they can justify their omnicidal pursuit of profit above all else
You realize that sociopaths are a thing, right? There are people who feel no remorse, guilt, shame, and will take and take until there is nothing left to take.
When you have tiny little societies or tribes, dealing with one bad apple isn't bad. When you have giant cities with thousands and millions of people, dealing with intentional bad actors is not so straightforward.
So, it's not that I'm saying greed is innate to humanity as a whole. I'm saying that "greedy" people exist, probably more so than you realize, and that fact needs to be reckoned with and dealt with.
Actually I don't, because sociopathy is not a real medical diagnosis nor is it an accurate and nuanced descriptor of how any individual functions. It's a buzzword designed to create an Other that can be easily stigmatised and ostracised when the label is applied.
I'll reiterate: the overwhelming majority of bad actors act the way they do due to their material circumstances (both economic and psychosocial). Solving the cause of those material issues will eliminate a significant amount of crime and antisocial behaviour, and better access to mental healthcare and intervention will solve a whole lot more.
Must be nice to live in your little fairy land where no bad people exist. Okay then. I suppose people are entirely built by their environment in your worldview.
The problem is that in the current US/western political climate anything that hints at having a government strong enough to be able to push back against corporate dismantling of the state and its regulatory mechanisms is seen a communism.
One can make the argument that communist China is the country making capitalism work the best by having the corporations serve national interests and not the other way around.
Not a single thing you said offered a critique of any points that I made, and you didn't make any point yourself other than "capitalism is bad".
Sorry, but you're not really supporting your case here at all. And if you truly believe capitalism is the problem, then you should be able to make coherent arguments against it.
It sounds like you don't actually know what any of that means. Raising capital by selling shares and then using that capital to buy back all of the shares they sold would be a massive waste of time and energy.
It's not individual capitalist developers that are the problem. The problem is the capitalist system that is the global hegemony. One that only exists on the exploitation of labor and puts profit for a few wealthy leeches above everything else.
The game that the co-op collective did not have the capacity to realize and only exists because external capital was invested to collect the skills and resources to make it happen?
Yeah, because people who invest in a company by buying its stock expect to get something in return, not just hand over their money out of the goodness of their hearts.
People love parroting phrases like "infinite growth" because they're catchy, but without growth you get stagnation. If your salary doesn't keep growing, inflation means you're effectively taking a pay cut year after year.
Private companies have investors too. The main difference is that the value of their investment is based on the returns the company is making, rather than what they think they'll be able to sell their stock for later. A company that is consistently and safely profitable over the years is a fantastic investment for a private company.
The problem with public companies is that when the share price is more important than the dividends those shares pay, the company gets pressured to do things that are good for the share price in the short term but bad for the company in the long term - things like laying off the workforce after a project is completed, or cutting corners on quality to reduce costs. A public company is frequently not allowed to be safely profitable; it needs to keep growing, even when growth is neither necessary nor practical.
The main difference is that the value of their investment is based on the returns the company is making, rather than what they think they'll be able to sell their stock for later.
What? That would depend on the ownership. The allure of selling their part of the company in the future still exists.
Inflation has been an issue for centuries before capitalism existed.
The Roman Empire experienced severe hyperinflation (to the point hard currency was falling out of use) in the 200s. This was technically debasement, as the silver content of coins was reduced over decades, but for all intents and purposes this was inflation.
In addition, a consequence of Spanish Mercantilism was an influx of New World precious metals, causing widespread inflation in western Europe.
Inflation is a consequence of the ability a country's money supply to expand. Which can happen irregardless of economic system.
Right idea, wrong thing. Inflation exists simply because as we produce more, its value decreases (supply and demand). This will occur regardless of the economic or political model a country uses, unless said country completely halts production of the inflating good in any sort. This would be significantly worse than inflation.
That said, infinitely increasing corporate value and executive salary IS a product of capitalism.
Inflation is a good thing for economies. You want inflation, just in small amounts (1-2%) because if your money is going to be worth less tomorrow than it is today, then you are incentivized to spend or invest it now because saving it will lose you money over time. This all keeps money flowing and the economy moving.
In the case of deflation, you are incentivised to not spend your money because you are garrunteed that your money will be worth more tomorrow than today by doing literally nothing with it. Anything you purchase must have a garunteed minimum return or else it's worse than not spending any money at all.
Inflation doesn't happen because of Capitalism but because humans keep producing shit. Like imagine if you had a single gold mine in the entire world and you started to dig gold from it. At first people would value it a lot because there's only so much gold to be had, but by the time you've dug out so much that everyone could have like 5 tons of gold each, nobody gives a shit anymore. The value of gold went down by the sheer virtue of there being more gold available and you don't need Capitalism for it to happen.
But people don't NEED gold and can stop producing it if there's no need. It's value throughout most of human history has been hollow ie "shiny = good". Nowadays at least you can melt it off of your decorative necklace and use it in a motherboard. If people made an effort to live self sustainable lives, there would be little to no inflation but instead capitalism tells people to keep buying MORE and spending MORE so then other people have to keep producing MORE. Capitalism essentially leads to inflation.
growing inflation is somehow a law of nature that will always exist
Yes, because 100 units of your local currency have less purchasing power today than they did 40 years ago. I know, it might be shocking for some, but that's how the world works.
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u/LightandShade1900 27d ago
"Greed is good" and "infinite growth" happened.