Topic: Capitalism is destroying us. - page 3. (Read 1426 times)

How are entry costs enforced beyond regular market forces? How are monopolies maintained? Government. Monopolies can not exist without government to enforce regulations upon potential competing upstarts, raising the barrier of entry. This is not Capitalist. Capitalism encourages actual competition so that not only are resources used the most efficiently, but accurate price signaling can be created by free markets creating a timely and accurate pricing mechanism for resources.

Capitalism leads to totalitarism does it? Before impugning the system that gives you all of the things you enjoy in your daily life, maybe you want to look up the word totalitarianism, and you know maybe how it is spelled. Big corporations can't take control without the complicity of government. Even under a Socialist system this is still exactly just as much of a problem, so I am not sure what your argument is here. The world isn't perfect therefore Capitalism is a a failure?

You know who does need a centralized entity to regulate their lives for "the common good"? Socialists do. Otherwise how else can you rob people to pay for your handouts unless you have a government powerful enough to take the resources by force?

Capital comes from natural resources brought into the market by the induction of labor, usually by issuing credit. "the reward of capital" That is quite a detailed explanation!

Rich people get richer faster than anyone else because the market is willing to pay them the most for the goods and services they provide, because they have value. If they did not have value no one would pay for it. Now if you are talking about fraud and theft, that is not Capitalism, that is crime.

There is ALWAYS going to be a power hierarchy. It is the way it is in nature, and it is a natural organic structure within human society. Some people are natural leaders some people are natural followers. None of your wishing, praying to the ghost of Karl Marx, or theorizing will ever change that.

Also, the Rick & Morty reference used as if it has academic value gives you loads of credibility. After all, you have to have a high IQ to get most of the jokes in that show right?

Sure. But where does that come from?

It's a systemic problem, it comes from capitalism itself.

What's capitalism? The reward of capital. It means rich people get richer faster than anyone else. It means few individuals get most of what is produced. It means the very rich peopl get more and more power.

Capitalism leads to the power being owned by a small group of people, that's basically dictatoship with more steps xD

You're making one HUGE mistake here. You're forgetting the entry cost in an established market.

Let's take ANY MARKET YOU WANT! Food, distribution, internet, auto, construction... Anything you want. In any country. There are giant corporations that already own the market and are able to spend billions in marketing, adds or just to buy a possible concurrent.

The problem is that capitalism leads to totalitarism... Totalitarism of big corporations.

When you're small you just CAN'T compete with a company that is able to both corrupt/lobby politicians to keep laws and reglementation in their favor and to attract customer from dubious mass manipulation.

So those companies keep growing and keep gaining more power. Making them even more difficult to compete with.

Capitalism is destroying us by making new phones, cars, medicines, computers...
God damn it's bad!

@coins4commies Protip. Can you please learn to prune the quote pyramids a little? I'm sure that we will all get the context of what you are replying to, even with substantial pruning.

All I want to do is allow everyone to have the choice of workplace democracy or not.  I don't want to ban capitalism.  I just want a system where people aren't coerced into it.  I can't trust people who want to prevent democracy from being an option.  

Cooperatives still operate by market forces.  Of course things can function without external shareholders who contribute nothing but money.  It should be obvious that things will not only function, but function better if the surplus value of labor is kept in the system instead of being siphoned off and put into offshore accounts or who knows where.
  
There are organizations who currently work in communities to help people start cooperatives but it is always an uphill battle because cooperatives face more government regulation and tax problems than corporations.    In many states it is basically impossible.  I just want policy that encourages cooperatives instead of discouraging them.  







A lot of questions here.

1. Why do you think the people who work the production line should be poor?  This means you actually want there to be poverty.  I can't relate to the notion that people who work full time SHOULD be poor.   There is no ethical value to a system that insists workers be poor.

2. OK, where is the education being provided for poor, assembly line workers?  Its non-existent in the US and provided by government in more sensible nations.  This is actually one of the great ways worker cooperatives do with their surplus value.  They build worker skills within the company by providing extra training and education to the workers.  

3.  When you make less money, everything becomes "goods you can't afford", so you inevitably take on debt.  People who earn livable wages have disposable income.   Funny how that works.  Who are you to dictate what they "should not be buying"?  You just got done worrying about weather or not people would be able to buy 50 cars.    It is here where you are suggesting people who work certain jobs should not have any freedom, entertainment, or leisure.  These people work all day, have their money robbed, struggle to break even, and then you wonder why they abuse substances.    Then you expect them to magically come up with a fortune to spend on education.  Either you are out of touch or you are being dishonest.  

Drug addiction is not a choice.  Poor people suffer from addiction at a much higher rate which has a lot to do with their lack of healthcare and awful circumstances overall. Gallup poll suggests the poor drink less so there goes that.

It's funny how you mention the following : ''Workers are getting screwed over, the wealth they create is stolen.'' Whilst the opposite is true, ordinary workers keep most of their wealth in a capitalist economy. Do you actually think that in a SOCIALIST system that is implemented in my country : The Netherlands, ordinary workers get to keep more of their wealth? Just in income tax alone the workers here (including me) pay over 52% in taxes. It's over 70% if you include what the employer has to pay.

So what is the answer? People that are criticizing capitalism never have the answer, but are you able to name a single economic system that has been proven to work better than capitalism?

There is an economic ladder that you can move up.  Within a cooperative, you can move into a higher paying job or can be elected to the board that runs the cooperative.  Cooperatives often use their extra money to provide education and training in house. 

Where is your understanding of worker cooperatives coming from to claim I do not understand them?  Have you found a cooperative the functions the way you describe?  Its definitely *possible* since anything workers decide is possible under democracy but I have never seen a worker cooperative where everyone is paid exactly the same.  The same job with the same experience will probably give the same pay but thats about it.

The only poor people in this system are people who do not work. 


According to economic theory, wages and productivity should be increasing together, but they aren't because locusts are sucking out the gap between the two lines on the graphs.  This gap is why workers have become increasingly poor.  Workers only doubled their productivity over that time.  So tell me, what did workers do to make themselves poor while doubling their productivity. 

And we can see by examples how good socials countries are doing, and how many people are moving to those from those rich slavery capitalist countries

I am trying to change ownership from rich to workers, not necessarily to the poor.  The working class should have never been poor to begin with.  Capitalism is the root cause of a poor working class.  

You could own multiple companies by working for multiple companies.  Your share of ownership is based on your share of the work.  If you leave a company or stop working, you no longer own that company.  When you are hired and start working, you own shares of the company based on the proportion of work you have done. There cannot be a mandated way for this to happen and each cooperative decides on the bylaws democratically.  

The point is that ownership is connected to labor and it extends from the idea that people are not free if their labor productivity belongs to someone else.  

Yes I want people to be able to start cooperatives but is very difficult for many reasons.  I want tax reform and programs like the Marcora laws that were successfully used in Italy to level the playing field for cooperatives to begin.  There are already cooperatives everywhere but other than Emilia-Romagna (30% of their GDP), where these laws were implemented, its just unlikely workers in a sector will find each other and the funds at the opportune time.  They usually only start because of charity or collectively wealthy workers.  

The mondragon cooperative was only able to begin because the local leader of the catholic church realized his parishioners were being oppressed by capitalism and the church put in the seed money to get it up and running.  

Legally, worker cooperatives are a pain in the ass for disputes/taxes and most of the working class has no idea they are even an option.  People generally want to own their own company but just don't think its possible.  I want people to have the choice. I haven't said anything about forcing anything on anyone.  If people choose to vote for a dictator to run the company because that person is very smart fine.  If they choose to pay that person 3,000 times more than them then that is fine too.  Its just about democracy.



 

Basically you get to choose between the sociopaths being in business or in government. Pick your poison.

Cooperative prices are still driven by the market.  Executives decide on salaries and base those decisions on market analysis.  All of those processes still exist in a cooperatives, its just that the decisions are made via democracy (or elected peer executives beholden to the workers) instead of dictatorship.  How does this lead to central planning? 





There are plenty of very successful worker cooperatives that not only have not been run to the ground, but lead their industry.  I've been fascinated with Mondragon in Spain.   Why would smart people leave because there is no external ownership?  As you stated, any moron can own a captalist company with no knowledge of how the company functions.  How is that better for the smart people in the company?











Why would we limit what people can buy?  People can buy whatever they want. 

You are paid more because there is no profit being extracted from your work.  If you don't like your company, you go to a company with more motivated workers and make more money.  The thing is, when people work for their own company, they tend to work harder than they would when working for the man.  What you can't do is earn a fortune off of other peoples' work without working at all.

 If your goal is to earn "passive income" or become rich through something other than work, then no, this system is not for you and you will be absolutely miserable. 

Nothing about the system I have described would stop you from doing any of this.

Eh, that is not completely true. Yes stupidity can corruption can exist under any form of policy, Socialism and Communism just make it exceptionally easy for them.

s/Capitalism/Capitolism/ig

Just to be honest, stupidity of the government has nothing to do with its declared economical policy.
Just compare china to north korea or japan to mexica, and you will see what do I mean.

Capitalism is not a good force, at least not any longer. It causes some to buy up medical companies with good cures and kill the medicine, just to protect older patents which has not yielded profit yet, money > medicine. Some also prevent curing dieases while there are expensive medicines that slows a disease down, money > life. We frac, use tar sand, drill oil at sea and devastate rain forests to export meat, money > environment. We work and work and most of the tax money goes to paying national dept interest and the military sector, money devastates our planet and creates a war machine to protect it. We must have better goals then this, when money is the goal, we only enter a state of cyclical consumption, things are simply made and thrown away over and over. A good society should not behave like this, it should stagnate and be maintained like anything else that has been created to its optimal state.

When privatization hit the health care sector and schools in my country it went to shit right away. Rich areas got better schools and hospitals instantly, leaving large groups with few teachers  and long health care waiting times in the poorer and more overpopulated areas.
Capitalism leads to corruption and violence on a grand scale. There is no dam room to start your own company, if 3 billion did that right now do you think they will have costumers??? Do you thing the system can support everyone to get rich from working?
NO, it is designed to make very few very rich and put the rest in day labor, going from pay check to pay check, your story is great but this feat can only be achieved by a very few, the economy is NOT growing, it is impossible for a company to grow without another LOOSING value, its just quick maths, simple facts

Resources today is being used to profit, even water are being used to make nice cloths and produce meat, while many have none to DRINK. This is insane, waste away water to create products that only a few % of humanity can afford or enjoy, when we run out of clean water, is capitalism still good? when we have no rain forests and massive amounts of pollution due to capitalistic interests and our atmosphere goes to crap, is it still good?

Anyhow capitalism will be what destroys the earth, we already behave like a virus for the earth and we are growing fast in numbers while the economy is stagnated = more poverty + depletion of resources.

The world has begun to divide at two levels. Such problems in any field of any industry may be extinct in the future, or human beings are always selfish. This is a terrible reality. We must face it.

Those are great questions and I applaud you for asking the most appropriate questions related to socialism I have ever seen on this site.
Collective ownership does not mean equal salary and your share of the wealth would likely depend on your share of the work.  There is no specifically prescribed way that this would be done, as workers would vote on it democratically, but most cooperatives have rules and penalties in place for showing up to work.  Keep in mind the entire purpose it to give the wealth to the people who produced it and not some lazy person who isn't even there.  That is how we feel about capitalism.

You still end up with more educated people accumulating more wealth

In a democracy decisions are made upwards.  The government is not dictating downwards how company decisions must be made.  Its hard for our minds to grasp how true democracy works because we have only seen governments where decisions made at the top are enforced downwards.  

Perhaps there are still socialists who want to confiscate wealth but that is a very fringe type of socialist.  We simply want to make sure no new wealth is confiscated.  

 Giving everyone their fair say and fair share doesn't mean talented people cannot be rewarded more for their work.  

Worker cooperatives already exist and some are very successful.  Most cooperatives vote on a salary structure and many have rules where the person at the top can only make x times the person at the bottom.  They all vote on x and they vote in the interest of making the company function because if they vote in a way that runs away the rare talent, then their own job will not be sustainable.  

Any system in place for penalizing lazy workers in a capitalist company could still be implemented in a cooperative.   The difference is that they have democratically agreed to these systems.  Again,  people don't want to work while lazy people next to them benefit, so they wouldn't vote on measures to structure the company that way.  

Large cooperatives vote on board members but always have the ability to call a vote to replace them or overrule an unpopular decision.  Cooperatives that make "bad" decisions will end up with less money to share while more successful cooperatives that make "good" decisions will be the ones that attract and reward talent, make more money, and end up with more wealth to share.  

Entrepreneurs who do not have people working under them would not be affected at all as they are the "workers" and already own the means of production.  
If someone knows of an obvious inefficiency or fault in a company, then they will bring it up at a stakeholder meeting, propose what they are recommending, and people would vote on the change because at the end of the day, they have vested interest in the success of the company they work for and own.  Any company that offered highly skilled professionals minimum wage, would not have any highly skilled professionals and would not have a company.  

If one cooperative fails, it doesn't mean the entire system fails just like if I open a business and that business fails, the economy doesn't crash.  The important thing about a bottom up democratic system is that the largest level of decision making is done at the local community level.  It seems you are thinking about the entire economy running as one cooperative instead of thousands of small ones.

I don't like the doctor example because healthcare is a controversial sector, but lets say its any other sector because your point still stands.  If a brilliant engineer has his own ideas, he could propose them to other cooperatives, become a consultant, or start his own company with these core ideas.   Workers woul flock to join his cooperative and invest their labor because of his great ideas.  
What we mean by social ownership is that ownership of the means of production is never attached to one person.   The key is to distinguish between personal property and private property.  Each person has thier personal property.  Their home and belongings but no ownership over the personal property of others.  You cannot have a large factory or apartment building owned by a single person.

For cooperative companies, the workers of the company all own the company together.  Ownership and decision making is only made by the people affected by the actions of the company.  No external shareholders.   This means no one person should own another person nor should they own another person's personal property which is required to live (labor, home, etc) .

Workers invest their labor by working

You can't have capitalism without capital, and the banking elite has been sucking the capital out of companies, governments, pension funds and savers. Capitalism has been destroyed and replaced by debt, and that is the source of our current economic ills.

Capitalism only destroys those on the wrong end of the stick, those who don't understand the power they also have to use it to their advantage.

I think it is due to a horrible educational system. They essentially sell slavery to people and make it seem like going to work for someone else is the best thing you can do with your life, when becoming the boss, investing in smart assets and never going into debt is the key to "success," not understanding calculus and how to use semicolons. (depends on your line of business though).

If guess if you wanted to find a problem with capitalism, it would be that it's unsustainable in the long-term. The most profitable ventures are often not the most environmentally friendly or even healthy for human beings. Supply and demand doesn't take ethics into consideration and is sometimes cruel. Many profitable businesses are responsible for killing people- pharmaceutical industry, fertilizer business, tobacco, antibiotics (leading to antibiotic resistant bacteria). Maybe this is population weeding though who knows. Not enough good physical resources for everyone.