- cross-posted to:
- microblogmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- microblogmemes@lemmy.world
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Wow it’s so weird. You can’t impose violence on someone without them being violent back. This is unfair.
If you were getting a billion dollars and had to pay like 10K extra would your reaction be “I am rich I shouldn’t stress about it” or would it be “I should fund and lead a nationalist movement”
Limiting someone’s ability to exploit upwards of a million of employees is “imposing violence” to you? Huh.
Makes sense it’s a parasite class using a parasite system.
Fascism is the natural conclusion of capitalism.
When the populace no longer aligns with the capital owners, they will remove the populace’s agency from obstructing them
It’s funny cause Musolini said it was the natural conclusion of socialism.
You could say it’s the natural conclusion of any system that consolidates power so much that a small number of people can take over the power in the country, bypassing (or abusing) the current system of power.
Doesn’t really matter if this happens because capitalism unifies the power in the hands of a few oligarchs, or if it’s socialsm that unifies the power in the hands of a few top-ranking officials or if it’s the military that blindly follows a hand full of generals.
Whenever you have a system that doesn’t balance itself, where power gets accumulated over time, then the natural conclusion will be some kind of dictatorship, and fascism is a popular variant of that.
The fact that so many Russian oligarchs have fallen out of windows really goes to show billionaires are degenerate gamblers when thinking the dictatorship will work for them
So, really we need to save them from themselves?
No, we need to start pushing them out of windows.
It’s proven to work! No need to reinvent the defenestration.
Correct
Billionaires aren’t supposed to exist. There isn’t any intrinsic human right that says that I have the right to hoard all resources to the level that I have the same as millions not people together.
The only reason they do exist is because we, the million people, don’t stand up and make it stop
I’d say, setup a new law that taxes networth. Have a dozen of tax brackets, the lowest being 0% for the poor, but reaching, say, 10 million dollars, the taxes go to 100%. Once you reach that, you can’t get any richer, all your surplus income.goes to the state which can use all that money for a shit tonne of social systems like free healthcare, free education, free basic food, free basic housing, universal income, and so on.
Own a company? That’s part of your networth. Your company gets worth more? Get other shareholders in. Companies too should be limited in maximum size to 1 billion networth and 1000 employees max.
This way no one gets too rich, no one gets to be poor
This way we can keep the freedom and raw power of capitalism, yet have a good strong socialist system in place
Companies too should be limited in maximum size to 1 billion networth and 1000 employees max.
That’s basically a medium-sized factory though.
so you’re saying it sounds like a very sensible number?
I mean, no? The whole point of capitalism is that successful actors can expand in order to further accumulate wealth. A core part of what makes a capitalist system useful is how you can go from having one factory to having ten factories, therefore aiding technological advancement of the supply chain; if you won’t allow this you might as well do something else.
Maybe that’s the scale where financial incentives top out? Beyond that, it’s individuals viewing the production of thousands as within their control by implication. Much like how the prisoner experiment shows it’s the mere organization of power that promotes shitty behavior, maybe we’re already far past what the vast majority of humanity should be entrusted with?
I think that’s the argument against capitalism though because if you have a system from which all power is financial eventually those with the power will erode the safeguards that prevent them from absorbing a disproportionate amount of the wealth. You’re literally handing a loaded gun to those most dangerous with it.
Ultimately any economical and Political system will struggle with this. Capitalism can work if you have a taxation and redistribution of the wealth. Otherwise all wealth eventually congregates like mass in a black hole. Simultaneously you can have a system that might have fairer basic ideals but ends up just as corrupt. See the various attempts at communism.
The tricky part is the vigilance. Imagine a Musk raising his arm for a hearty ‘sieg heil’ in 1945-80. Now he got away with it. Generations forget. Safeguards get erroded away over time as the greedy goblins hammer away at them like woodpeckers.
The loaded gun is always there. The dangerous men always try to get to it. We gotta guard it 24/7. Not an easy task.
Capitalism that you mention that could work was the capitalism we had until the 70s and it’s what lead us to the late stage capitalism we have today
Even if you reset you will end up at this stage because accumulation of wealth and thus power will always occur and then the capitalist class has both the means and incentive to change the rules of the system and then they get more wealth and power etc etc
You can’t guard it unless you have power and under capitalism you don’t.
You gave the loaded gun to the capitalist class and then try to force them to do the “right” thing and not use the gun for bad stuff, except they have the gun… they’re not going to listen to you
Communism could also work if… human nature wasn’t as it is People are simply too asshole-y for capitalism to work as intended.
But isn’t the problem rather that people can be easily convinced to vote against their self-interest? It seems the people at large are not selfish enough, and the rich are too selfish?
In other words, the problem is that those that don’t have, don’t want to have strongly enough, and those that already have, want to have too much. As an overarching group, not individually, of course.
It’s that those who don’t have can be easily convinced to (attempt to) have at the expense of their fellow have-nots than to unite against the haves.
Thou speaketh the truth. I wonder if there is some way to convince people not to listen to the siren song of “maybe billionaire one day”
Convince people an alternative than the shameful ladder of capitalism can work, and you’ll have a chance.
Capitalism is a funnel. Money goes from those without capital to those with capital. Simple as.
It has always been like this. For a lot of people this is a feature and not a bug.
It’s also the most productive economic system ever tried.
Everyone talks about regulation, or semi-socialism, or various other bandaids to make it work. But if you don’t remove the funnel action, it’ll eventually get to this state.
More likely, capitalism needs periods of major collapse and rebuild as major wealth redistribution events. French-style.
It’s also the most productive economic system ever tried.
I think whether this is true highly depends on the definition of productivity and circumstances.
What definition of productivity are we applying here? Capitalism sure is great at inflating useless statistics. It also seems to be decent for actually valuable products and services. However, depending on what you take into account, it’s not so clear that it’s the superior system.
Furthermore, there have been several cases of socialist governments improving the quality of life at a rate never seen in capitalist countries. Almost completely eradicating illiteracy in less than a year (Cuba). Or vaccinating half the population in a few months (Burkina Faso). Of course, those governments are rare and don’t last long thanks to the CIA.
Personally I’d say the most immediate solution - or more accurately, improvement - is to mix our current capitalist dystopia with as much socialist policies as possible. Many countries in the EU are doing thay and it seems to be working pretty well. Let’s just copy and build on that, then worry about the next steps.
French-style.
So transferring property and land from private and semi-state actors to rich speculators for pennies on the dollar? The French Revolution wasn’t very notable on the wealth redistribution front; if anything it made the rich even richer.
I think this is an argument against any system without checks and balances. Capitalism has some great features, but it absolutely needs regulations to prevent the wealthiest class from abusing it. Same can be said about socialism.
Checks and balances needs to be a core part of the design of any system. I think a function of fascism is to get rid of those checks and balances.
The problem is that you can use wealth and power to chip at (or on a good day take a sledgehammer at) those checks and balances, resulting in an inevitable shift form social democracy to fascism. Checks and balances are addons you layer onto the economic system at work that can change its workings to an extent but not fundamentally alter it; they can’t be core to the system due to their very nature. That’s why socialists (which, BTW, socialism is a wide category of systems characterized by the lack of private property and accumulation of wealth, not one particular system) call for the complete abolition of capitalism; whether you agree with that or not “but checks and balances” isn’t an adequate response.
My point is that even socialism needs checks and balances. And everything you said applies even to Socialism.
It doesn’t because the power and needs of the many are aligned in socialism and that’s not the case in capitalism
Within capitalism you need checks and balances so that the ruling class aka capitalist class doesn’t put their “needs” (more like desires”) above the needs of the majority
Within socialism the ruling class is the majority by definition they can’t exploit the system in their favor because that’s literally how it’s supposed to work.
So no, it’s very different
I get that in a utopian society, you are correct. But it’s not impossible for somebody to gain power and abuse this system. The socialist society would need to set up rules to prevent this from happening.
Ofc but those rules are there by design and are natural to the system
If the many have the control then it is hard for any one individual to gain control and rig the system for himself, because the many can kick him out
With capitalism you don’t have this natural control. You put in checks and balances that will fail eventually as they always did and then you’re screwed.
If the many have the control then it is hard for any one individual to gain control and rig the system for himself, because the many can kick him out
Have you never witnessed “the many” being manipulated by a small number of people into doing things that are against their best interest? There is nothing “natural to the system” that protects against this. It is just hope that the many will stay aligned with the goal of the system. And that each generation keeps this alignment.
You build your system on a set of rules, but then you need to maintain that system. If you don’t, the system will warp.
Billionaires are leeches and a symptom of social disease.
Lampreys. Slimy, invasive in many places, and they weaken and kill the host.
this post isn’t very evident without timestamps
The sad thing is it doesn’t matter.
Early Nov 2018/2024 FYI
I’d say it makes it more evident because it’s something that has ALWAYS been true.
if there was just two hours between the posts, it would still be true.
Good thing there’s no billionaire class then. You suddenly don’t turn evil or exploitative after going from $999.999.999 to 1 billion
At a certain economic point, there seems to be a morality filter. Plenty of evil exploitative people never become billionaires. It just seems that decent, moral people never become billionaires.
Yeah, most business owners choose not to be ultra successful because of their conscience. Makes sense…
Sigh.
Makes perfect sense to me. Becoming a billionaire requires making a chain of morally repugnant decisions. Beyond a certain point (which is definitely somewhere below $1B) it takes more than just having a successful business to continue growing because there are obstacles in the form of competition, market saturation, regulations, etc. There must exist some moral line which most wealthy people - having the resources and being in a position to do so - decide not to cross, and therefore don’t end up becoming an oligarch. In some cases that line might be lobbying the government to weaken or remove regulations(environmental, consumer and worker protections, etc.), or colluding with others to set prices, or exploiting tax loopholes and government subsidies. Every billionaire has done something like this to get to where they are. It is impossible to reach those heights with only conventional business practices.
That isn’t to say that every wealthy business owner who isn’t a billionaire is a saint. They’re still engaging in exploitation to get ahead, but in most cases it is the conventional and societally accepted form of exploitation that we take for granted under capitalism. Billionaires aren’t just your average business owner, they’re the best at capitalist exploitation, and that takes more than just doing it by the books.
Yeah, buying out competition and lobbying to try and make your business more monopolistic is somehow a special kind of “evil” (I love moralism) and definitely not something that’s allowed and actively encouraged by the system where the goal is to get as much profit as possible. But sure, it’s a personal failing.
Heres a radical new idea: what if every single business owner, regardless of their wealth, is exploitative and therefore “evil” not because of their personal choices but because of how wages and profit works on a systemic basis? Workers do all the labor, the business owner gets all the value from that labor and abusing the fact that they own the means of production, they only pay workers a flat wage which is meant to merely “refresh their labor power”. Its textbook exploitation and the basis for how capitalists get their wealth.
Though if you’re gonna moralize capitalists, I’d argue small business owners are more “evil” than any other strata - they don’t have the capital to fail and recover or start anew, so they’re constantly on the verge of bankruptcy which would have their biggest fear come into fruition which is not becoming homeless, but getting a job like the rest of unwashed masses. They have legal exemptions in terms of discrimination, they’re notoriously shit to work in because you get worked like a mule, and historically they’ve been primary supporters of Hitler, Mussolini, even Trump given their precarious economic position making them reactionary.
Are you incapable of holding two ideas in your head simultaneously? I agree that capitalism / the relationship between employers and their employees is inherently exploitative and I’m opposed to all forms of unaccountable hierarchy. I also believe capitalism places capital owners in a position to make a lot of moral decisions and that they can make better or worse ones, even if what they are doing is morally compromising from the outset.
To give a clear and exaggerated example, imagine a slaver who owns a few slaves that they treat with backhanded politeness and allow to stay in a room of their mansion and eat with them, and a slaver who owns dozens of slaves on a plantation that they regularly abuse physically and mentally and are kept in a shitty barracks with a dirt floor and fed scraps. Both are engaging in a morally repugnant one-sided and non-consensual relationship, but one is clearly worse than the other. It doesn’t make it excusable, but people in a position of power and authority over others can make better or worse moral decisions, even if the fact that they are allowed to make them unilaterally is morally wrong in itself.
No, being evil or exploitative increases the likelihood that you’ll reach that level of wealth.
