Low inflation might be the first step towards deflation. Many economists would argue that deflation is a worse situation for the economy because it leads to a sharp drop of consumption and therefore a huge recession follows?
Capitalism: a system so great it needs to be bailed out every 10 years
Edit: for those of you who refuse to look anywhere outside the US, the Nordic model has existed for over 90 years and is extremely successful. The countries that use it consistently rank highest in happiness, quality of life, work life balance, has low rates of corruption, and are economically competitive
Your taxes go towards funding the department, you have an emergency, they come save you.
Pretty straightforward; unless you live in one of those "unincorporated" hell-scapes where you have the option of donating to the volunteer department, and if you don't they don't have to help.
There is always going to be capitalism even in a socialist system.
We’ve unironically coup’d foreign governments(ie Iran) for threatening to do what Norway did with nationalizing their oil reserves.
It’s insane to me that we sell federal land to private companies to exploit, rape, and pillage for what would be pennies on the dollar for the amount of wealth they extract from it.
capitalism is when the corporations are by themselves private entities with a superable bureaucracy from the government. It's the difference between Amtrak and Union pacific.
Chinese corporations are government owned and managed. Nearly all are practically like Amtrak. In addition, privat property doens't exist.
Private property does exist - see Civil Code of the People's Republic of China. You can own a home, or an iPhone for example. Private businesses (Chinese owned like Temu or foreign owned like, say, Amazon China) also exist as well as the State Owned Enterprises that mostly cover key infrastructure. Its state capitalist, but it's capitalist.
Personal property: toothbrush, flatware, clothes, a PC, a home, a personal business like a cafe
Private property: utility providers, factories, farms, grocery stores, possibly even retail outlets selling personal property
See the difference?
China is strange; they have different "economic zones." Places like Hong Kong are a "capitalist zone," where foreign enterprises, like Amazon China, are allowed to incorporate and operate.
People have a hard time understanding what capital actually is. The biggest scam we've been sold is that our personal possessions are private property.
It's only land which cannot be privately owned in china. You can own a factory, so you can own a means of production and you can extract profit within a competitive market. Americans seem to have a peculiar view that if you don't own the land it's not private property. That view doesn't colour how the rest of the world operates!
Sooo... if Chinese government decides they want the land the factory you own is currently on, then what? Do you get to tell them to pound sand and figure somewhere else? Or do they simply take it, bulldoze your factory, and say "better luck next time?" If the government can annihilate your "means of production" without recourse any time it wants to, you don't "own" any private property. You operate at the pleasure of the government.
China is probably closest to state managed capitalism. The government chooses the battleground and the rules of engagement but then it a free for all from there. The US is currently suffering from being warped into a Capitalistic managed state where the businesses have controlled the government.
Arguably China has parts of it that are the most true form of capitalism on the planet. All systems have issues but right now China's is utilizing the best parts of capitalism better than almost anyone else.
China's state capitalism is still capitalism, and North Korea doesn't need to be sabotaged because it's already failing horribly (and no reasonable person would put forth North Korea's fucked up hyperauthoritarianism as a suggestion anyway).
You're gonna get hated on for suggesting that capitalism somehow isn't the great evil. At the end of the day, you're right -- it's always the powers that be exploiting a system, not the economic model itself.
That doesn't change the fact that some systems are more vulnerable to exploitation than others.
Any system that allows the concentration of power, be it capitalism, authoritarianism, or whatever, will end up in the situation we're dealing with now where those with the power will fuck everybody else over to hold on to it, regardless of how much suffering and death they cause.
Systems with flatter power curves are objectively better, the problem is implementing them in the shadow of the current wielders of power. This is why "eat the rich" is such a common sentiment, we can't move forward until we topple the power structures that are currently preventing us from having a chance to even try.
The only way to flatten the power curve is to constantly suppress any deviations. At what point in your ideal threshold does someone stop being a successful underdog and transitions to an oppressor?
The system is irrelevant. Even if the power curve is flatter, someone(s) are going to try to exploit that system -- in order to keep everyone on the same level, you have to actively take away resources from anyone that dips above the median while still allocating resources to underperforming entities.
That means an entity has to exist with the power to strip and provide responsibility and resources at will. Unless you're suggesting everybody starts tearing everybody down for having more.
Don't get me wrong, our society is getting more and more exploitative. It's a huge problem and it needs to be addressed. Just tearing down the infrastructure won't solve the problem as written.
There is a fucking galaxy of space between "dips above the median" and "three guys own 75% of the world".
This is the problem I have with trying to have this discussion. Everybody opposed to flattening power curves seems to think that there are two options: crush anyone who grows an inch above anybody else, or allow anybody to take everything for themselves regardless of who it hurts. This is a fucking child's understanding of politics, economics, and power structures. We can absolutely build a system where some people have more than others for a variety of reasons, but nobody goes without the necessities for survival and nobody is allowed to have so much that they can rule over everyone else.
I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but that doesn't mean it's not worth trying.
Hold on. I'm talking about a theoretically flat society. There's a fundamental flaw in the system where some entity needs to exist to control excess, and that be definition creates an organization that inevitably has de facto power to control resources available to people to prevent excess. Right? Unless you have an alternative.
My problem with 'capitalism is evil' is that it's universally unhelpful. It's just one economic system among others alongside its respective government. Any time you have a grouping of people -- including a collection of workers aggregating the power of their production -- you inevitably create a gradient, and it is typically in the collective's best interest to increase that gradient and centralize wealth as much as possible.
But yes, the current umbrella or corporations and billionaires is insane. They have reached heights the robber barons couldn't have begun to imagine.
I wish I could remember the book or essay, but an author made an excellent point about how any organization almost inevitably corrupts to its lobbyists, because the centralization of interest is in the affected party and not the broader public.
How then would you model such a society? This isn't a rhetorical question. What is your suggestion for an ideal society where the economic model, government model, and social structure builds real equality? "Tear down capitalism" doesn't suggest an alternative, it's only destructive on its own.
I don't know. The problem is that we can't even get most people to admit there's a problem that needs fixing to begin with, which makes it impossible to have the chance to sit down and have a discussion about ways we can try to move forward. I don't have all the answers to fix society, but I know that if we don't start looking for some soon we're fucked. If we can't even get to the point where people understand why capitalism's aggressive consolidation of power inevitably leads to disaster then we're never even going to have the chance to find something better.
Personally I'm an anarchist at heart, but I'm also old and experienced enough to know that the vast majority of people probably aren't ready for that yet, if we ever will be. I still think it's the best way to structure things, but if it's ever gonna happen we're going to need to do a lot of work getting humanity to the point where empathy, compassion, and community are the default.
But until then, I know that moving in that direction will still make things better even if we can't ever make it all the way to utopia.
they do exist under complete hostility from the global hegemony. the us busts in it sleep over the idea of over throwing them to get at those sweet sweet resources
There is a lot of right wing propaganda to convince Americans the Chinese can’t be trusted and wants to fight. This is bogus. But, the Chinese do steal corporate tech and methods from any and all who try to do business in China and they see it as their birthright. So there is Chinese anti-western sentiment for sure. We also sell more to China than to anyone else, food, tech, finished goods, etc. It’s a two-way street and China is more of a friend and partner than a country like North Korea or Russia but many Americans think Russia could one day be our friend and that’s naive and imbecilic.
Communism recognizes that people are greedy, and distributes goods and wealth evenly to ensure that everyone gets some. It fails because it doesn't account for the fact that people are lazy, and won't do the work required to be a healthy society without motivation.
Capitalism recognizes that people are lazy and rewards people for working hard. It fails because it doesn't account for the fact that people are greedy and will hoard wealth, causing many to go without.
Both systems fail because they don't account for the fundamental flaw of Mankind: people are assholes, and no matter what system you use, someone will fuck it up just because they can. I don't have a system that accounts for this. When I think of one, I will start a revolution. Don't hold your breath however, because I am too lazy to start anything.
Capitalism can be pretty great when it's restrained by laws to help keep things balanced. Back in the 1950s the highest tax bracket in the U.S. was around 90%, IIRC, and they were more serious about breaking up monopolies and "trust busting". Unions were pretty strong. Minimum wages were reasonable. Things weren't perfect, but they were pretty good.
The problem is that powerful corporations and the wealthy seem to eventually find ways to get rid of or disable the restraints, to tilt things in their favor. And they just keep tilting things further and further in their favor. They find ways to make most unions go away. Allow monopolies to persist. To push more and more of the tax burden on the non-rich and non-corporations. Prevent the minimum wage from keeping up with inflation. They demonize government handouts to individual people, while corporations get huge subsidies and bailouts constantly.
In the U.S. capitalism is like a garden, where the weeds somehow convinced the owner that the garden would be better if the weeds were never pulled out or restrained in any way. The weeds (the rich and corporations) are now choking out the rest of us.
Other countries have figured it out. But in the U.S. a large percentage of the population has bought into the propaganda that restraining capitalism = socialism = communism = evil. It's crazy and maddening how many people believe it.
This fails to understand WHY America was able to do these things.
America in the 50’s and 60’s were exploiting the labor of foreign countries. Destablizing their governments and killing their leftists for daring to try and make life better for them.
America would fund right wing groups to kill the dissenting leftists who were trying to make their countries better. Capitalism has been a blight on the global south before it was called Capitalism.
America destabilized Guatemala for the capitalist interest of the United Fruit company in 1950 by overthrowing a left leaning (but still capitalist) Juan Jacob Arbenz) because he had the audacity to try and make his markets work for his people
America caused massive destabilization of the Middle East, because they were scared of left leaning politicians coming into power and ridding the influence of the West.
Cuba basically has been under the American stranglehold for decades because they overthrew the American backed military dictator. America has done everything in its power to weaken Cuba, and they blame the struggles on communism but it’s really capitalism
There’s literally dozens of these. Capitalism only works when there are people to be exploited.
I don't disagree with any of your facts, but I think Capitalism is being mixed up with politics, government, and other things.
Let's use the analogy of a car. I think of Capitalism as the engine. I think of politics and government as the driver. I think of labor as the fuel. Exploitation could be considered stolen fuel.
All the immoral stuff you listed was done by politicians, the government, the driver, to keep the engine running faster.
Your argument is that Capitalism is inherently evil and only runs on stolen fuel. I think that the driver makes the evil choices, the engine is not inherently evil at all. And I think that while the engine has probably never run on 100% non-stolen fuel, it easily could. And it has run on mostly non-stolen fuel. The fact that no driver has ever avoided at least some stolen fuel doesn't mean the engine can't run just fine without it.
And whenever exploitation needs to be done in order to maintain your profits. That’s also stolen fuel.
Which has been the backbone of capitalism since its inception. If it isn’t wage theft it’s slavery.
Capitalism is political, and you can’t seperate the two, because for capitalism to work it must erode protections so that it can flourish. So whenever capitalist get in power, they run the government.
Capitalism isn’t the engine. It is the driver. You need to use your car, labor provides the fuel, the engine and everything else.
Capitalist demand that you do their bidding, and it will give you its scraps. If you choose not to, you die because everything has been made to prop up capitalism.
If capitalism was so grand, it wouldn’t need to dedicate billions of dollars a year to assasinating political opponents and sanctioning communist countries so that they fail.
Yeah, I don’t know how can people believe the US is still a capitalist system nowadays, free market competition is a joke and monopolies/oligopolies are pretty much the norm on almost every sector that matters, regulatory capture is rampant and the consumer pretty much as no longer any say beyond choosing between Coke or Pepsi.
The Nordic model is capitalist, it's just a social democracy.
There are ways in which Sweden is more market oriented than the US, and way's it's not. What isn't arguable is that sweden has much better social safety nets. Sweden had previously been much less market oriented but has liberalized it's economy since the 80s/90s.
On certain market freedom indexes Sweden outscores the US. Sweden has much higher %Gdp as government than the US, but the US also has a lot more trade barriers, and subsidies, and other bloat that makes it hard to do a 1:1.
Because Keynes is a hack who only gets used because it justifies the government spending money. You don't need a bailout if you just actually let poor business models fail
Nordic countries are capitalist countries. They implement programs and policy that are socialism in ways, but the economies by and large are capitalistic.
Have insurance? Pay for it every month? Something bad happen to you that you need insurance for? Sorry too bad you had your child in the car so actually we are just going to pretend like you didn’t have insurance through us for the last 6 months and retroactively revoke your insurance through us.
Don’t like that? Well guess what we have a completely different business that actually makes sure you are covered in that type of situation, and you get to pay them too, ontop of your insurance premium, so now you’re paying your car payment for a car that’s realistically worse in every metric than it was than even just 10 years ago, you pay your “full coverage” insurance, and now you get to pay your broker.
Now you need to make basically the median wage of the country just to afford having a car.
Both groups have this idea that socialism and capitalism are mutually exclusive. The Nordics are a good example of how you can benefit from both systems. Sweden for example is very pro business and has a lot of capitalistic ideals woven through their policy. Yet they still have a ton of social safety nets and common sense for the greater good policies that are ideals normally found in socialism doctrine. Hell in America our eras of greatest growth and progress go hand in hand with the spreading of wealth AND supporting business and capitalistic competition. Things like the GI bill allowed a ton of new businesses to start and flourish which in hand with the monopoly busting of the 1880's fostered an environment of competition in the market and opportunity for both consumers and producers.
I want the USA to move towards a more Nordic model like we were closer to in the 50s. I also think the Nordic model would have to be modified to work in a country has geographically big, diverse, and economically massive as the US. That doesn't mean we can't make it work.
No shit, so if you want anyone to take you seriously, maybe you should be applying the same realities to whatever you're in favor of, instead of implying that removing capitalism = utopia.
Wow sure yeah let me just drop decades of lived experience and economic theory into this reply real quick cause you got defensive after someone pointed out the need to bail out capitalism regularly.
I mean I would but you’d not take any of that seriously either.
Its not your individual comment, its reading this OVER and OVER and OVER. I'm not asking for any anecdotes or google links, I'm only pointing out, again, the hypocrisy in those who have nothing to do other than whine about capitalism incessantly.
I literally just posted a comment on how neither of those are true. Get off Google AI, stop believing everyone who merely claims a specific nationality on the internet, and actually educate yourself with travel and the real literature that informs the definitions in the topic, rather than the definitions found in an English dictionary which are only descriptive of common usage, which is unsurprisingly heavily influenced by American political claims.
Socialism allows for private enterprise. That's one of the only things that separates it from communism. A "capitalist system with a social state system" is just a dumbass way of saying "socialist".
You should also read the whole arguments you're presented with, not just cherry-pick the parts you could describe as "personal anecdotes" as if I didn't posit any of the rest of the argument based on the actual definitions posed by the relevant literature.
The first usage of the word "socialism" alongside meaningful definitions were used in the 1830s by Pierre Leroux, where he used the word in an article published in "Le Globe", as well as widely and independently used by followers of the British socialist Robert Owen.
In both cases the term refers to an economic system that shares the interests of all it's people. Which would be more specifically defined in coming politics by social systems that prioritize peoples' needs regardless of economic input or output, rather than an individualist system that prioritizes capital gains.
No, it is not fallacious to expect an adult to be capable of learning something without the chalk and black board. We do it all the time.
capitalism is killing around 25k a day through starvation because it isnt profitable to feed everyone and would rather farm cash crops. I mean there a countries where capitalist bought all the land to farm cash crops leaving nowhere for the people to farm food
I read the whole article and it's talking about the entire world not just the united states only about 50 people die of malnutrition daily In the united states saying that 25000 die daily is misconstrued and I'm not down playing those 50 people that die in this country everyday but we do not have a food problem in this country unless you want to call out the obesity problem this country has. The united states has an overeating problem not a starvation problem
I said capitalism kills 25k from hunger. the us foreign policy in places like Cuba, who the us government is starving out as we speak, and the us corporations that have the us government backing and the imf which is made from us ideals are all capitalism. when people claim capitalism brought all these people outta poverty, they like you, only think of the us and disregard the countries that the capitalist world keeps poor for cheap resources and cheaper labor. the us is prosperous as a direct result of the suffering of the "developing nations" that is all part of capitalism.
Millions per year would be the case with Communism as proven by Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. Profit from food sales is the only thing that motivates farmers to make as much food as possible. Also, never before has the world seen nearly as much philanthropy as after Captialism dominated.
no there is documentation that in the ussr they had better food then in the us. clearly china is doing fine. and pol pot was never communist. capitalism puts millions into food insecurity so they can grow cash crops. communism puts meeting people basics needs as the priority so they focus on making enough food to feed the citizens. also no profit isnt the only motivation for farming people have been farming for millenia and capitalism is only about 500 years old
Exactly. There are dozens of experiments with socialism, short of communism, in the western hemisphere in even the last 50 years. And they all fail miserably.
Literally none of those are socialist. Denmark even made a point to ask Bernie Sanders to stop calling them socialist.
Social Democracy and Socialism are not synonyms. Social Democracy is at its core capitalism with a hefty social welfare safety net and strong regulations.
Agreed, except that's clear proof that what the US has is not real capitalism. Not that capitalism is full proof, but if the US is constantly ready and able to subsidize, it's not real capitalism.
Norway was very poor and had no economy prior to their discovery of their massive oil reserves. They are also relatively low population. There’s nothing that probably wouldn’t work for them as long as they managed that oil correctly, which they did. Not really a great point of reference.
> The Scandinavian economic system, often referred to as the Nordic model, combines free-market capitalism with a strong welfare state. It includes countries like Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, and is characterized by high taxes to fund strong social safety nets such as universal healthcare, free higher education, and generous unemployment benefits.
No, they are not economically competitive or successful. Sweden abandoned its wealth tax and has been lowering taxes since the 90s. Norway is a petrostate more similar to Saudi Arabia than a socialist country. Their entire economic model is to sell oil and gas and use the money to invest in.... The US economy. Not sure what the plan is without a United States to piggyback from. Denmark and Finland are non-factors in the world economy. None of these countries can defend itself.
By all means. If you think it's better there, move there. Nothing stopping you except their restrictive immigration laws.
It’s actually the opposite: it’s government intervention in free markets…. Literally making policies that favor their mega corporation donors . In this sense, the US is moving closer to Soviet or Chinese socialism.
This is the most crucial thing when discussing capitalism. We do not live in a genuine capitalistic society. We have moved into crony-capitalism and plutocracy further and further. The wealthy mega-corps are allowed to openly lobby our politicians and basically buy them and the elections, to a high extent, to push their goals.
Exactly, and it goes so far as to make us literally controlled by international (= foreign) corporations.
In this sense, whether you hate or like “conservatives” or not ….. the idea of a “tea party” or “drain the swamp” is something liberals actually believe and agree with …. And so liberals have their own anti establishment movements like “no kings”, “occupy Wallstreet”, “blm” , anti ICE etc…
The problem that conservatives and liberals have with each other is that either the leaders of these movements or the tenants of these movements tend to be extreme and not appealing to the middle….. so, “tea party” got us Ted Cruz (who is just another swamp creature), “drain the swamp” and America first rhetoric got us Donald Trump (who is the swampiest Israel shill I’ve ever seen), blm got us money funneling extortionists, occupy Wallstreet just for totally forgotten and derailed by the Dodd Frank…
I think the establishment powers that be are really good at corrupting the movements we make, or even worse, they create these movements so that we feel like we have a voice but then they don’t really give us a solution except the ones they create (there is a name for this?, I can’t remember, is it Hegelian Dialectic?) . That, or our “hero’s” are just easily corruptible. But I also think of the fake “abortion” debate…. It’s a manufactured political foil. I’ve read lots of studies that seem to indicate that like 90% or people are against abortion accept in cases of rape and incest, and even most women who get abortions don’t want abortions and wouldn’t get them if they had support from their family or partner. But instead of having some sort of consensus of the 90%…. What we have is “no abortion ever” vs “abortion in demand at any stage for any reason” because it’s the extremists who drive votes and move people to the polls. It’s better the demonize your opponent than to make them out to be a rational person with slightly different understanding or values with which a reasonable compromise might be reached…. No, we need to make the opponent into an extremist, it’s a crisis! All that matters is that Blue (or Red) get elected this year to stop the “fascists/communists”! Meanwhile nothing actually happens other than the people in power increasing their power but you can be happy because the person in power is wearing the right colored hat this year.
Very well said on all points. The two party system, in collusion with mega-corps, is tearing down the fundamentals of the country and succeeding at pitting the people against each other. To use leftist language, the Bourgeoisie (Marxist definition, not traditional) are very real, and if we don’t somehow come to terms with each other as a society the lives of the general population will continue to decline.
But there is also the sense that “the people” can prevent monopolies apart from government… but they can’t prevent government favoritism. Like boycotts work…. But what happens when the government makes boycotts illegal ? (As they have done with Israel)
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u/StuartMcNight 9h ago
Low inflation might be the first step towards deflation. Many economists would argue that deflation is a worse situation for the economy because it leads to a sharp drop of consumption and therefore a huge recession follows?