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.
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u/Samhain_69 7h ago
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.