Not talking about obvious things like crime.
I mean things that people just accept as part of life.
Things everyone does, but when you really think about it, it actually makes no sense.
Not talking about obvious things like crime.
I mean things that people just accept as part of life.
Things everyone does, but when you really think about it, it actually makes no sense.
Capitalism.
Now there are all kinds of things people think of when you say capitalism, the free market, democracy (for some reason), etc.
But I mean the idea that the guy that owns the means of production should get the value produced by labor.
If you boil it down to that, it’s kinda crazy. You want to start a company digging holes, but you don’t have enough money to buy a backhoe.
Fred has plenty of money and can afford a backhoe. He buys it and makes you a deal, you can use his backhoe and he will own the company, you go out and dig holes and he will pay you a couple bucks an hour.
Obviously he has to charge the people that want the holes dug more than he’s paying you to make it worth his while, and he has to recoup the money he spent on the backhoe in the first place.
Fred will never pay you enough to live and save up to buy your own backhoe. After a while he’s made back all the money it cost him to purchase the backhoe.
So now the situation is this. A customer wants a hole dug, you come and dig the hole, and Fred, who has done nothing and already recouped all the money he spent to purchase the backhoe, gets most of the money. And that arrangement just goes on forever. When Fred dies, Fred Jr will inherit that backhoe, Fred Jr will have never spent a dime for that capital, in fact Fred Jr will have had a very comfortable life paid for by the sweat of your labor digging holes.
Fred Jr will get most of the value of your labor for his whole life for doing nothing at all, just because he happened to be Fred’s son.
This is the way we decide who gets the rewards of all the work humanity collectively does (under capitalist systems) and it’s resulted in a hundred or so people so insanely wealthy we can’t even conceptualize how much money they have and everyone else scraping by.
And very serious people (often paid by those billionaires) will be on the news (or replying to this very comment) telling you how this is just the only system that makes sense. But listen closely when they do, they will always say it’s good because of free markets, or competition, or democracy or something that is NOT capitalism. Capitalism rarely defends itself by talking about why it’s good for the rich guy that owns the capital to get all the value, it always misdirects you to something else, a free market or freedom just generally. The freedom to pick between 10 different ultra wealthy companies that own everything and work to make them even more wealthy for your entire life.
it continues to amaze me that we can cure diseases, go to the moon, reflect on all of human history, and still the “best” we can collectively achieve in societal progress is elevating a select few while crushing the majority underfoot. The means of repression differs from feudalism to capitalism to communism, but the underlying failure remains constant: someone benefits, most do not.
The dark triad personalities have been a part of humanity for a long time. They’ve had time to use all their tendencies to shape the thing only for them
Hmmm.
I’m a self employed IT consultant.
On the plus side, I pay nobody except insurance, fuel, tax etc
On the minus side my earning potential is limited to the hourly rate I earn fixing stuff.
Am I still a capitalist in this case?
No, you’re just an expert. They’ve always existed – a master blacksmith would make a decent living before capitalism, much better than the common serf. Nobody’s against highly talented hardworking people making more money than average, I think we all agree they deserve it.
The capitalist would be someone like you bribing the state government to create a new regulation that your profession requires a special license and your company is the only one in the state with the license and you hire in all your competitors at a wage 20% what you bill them out at. Then on your deathbed you donate a couple million for the local hospital and you go down in history as an American Hero.
That’s why there are some capitalists hate crony capitalism.
If I have a lot of rich friends who need IT support and I get exclusive deals with them, making it impossible for experts like you to get freelance deals, and practically force you to work for me for a wage, that’s capitalism. I don’t know anything about IT. I get all the contracts thanks to my connections. You do the job and get a fraction of what you would have gotten if you were able to freelance.
I worked as a conference interpreter and it works exactly like that. We cannot directly contact the clients. There are a few interpreter offices. Clients call them, they call us. They get half the payment for playing telephone.
Thank you for understanding and clearly explaining capitalism (spit).
“erm… but don’t you know that we tried ‘communism’ (marxism-leninism) which is the only possible alternative to capitalism and it didn’t work? this means that capitalism is natural and inevitable and nothing can change or else we’ll end up with a dictatorship that’ll kill millions of people! 🤓”
trying to figure out if you got downvoted because a .ml got mad or because a not-.ml has bad reading comprehension
Lemme know when you convince a critical mass of people to adopt communism and I’ll get right on board with that.
Best I can do is offer you a 3000 page manifesto on how much capitalism sucks and why communism is a great idea :^)