It can. In theory.
The theoretical part is the “uncorrupt government” you speak of.
The only way to keep a govt “uncorrupt” as you put it is under pain of literal death. And even then its not foolproof. Some will still be tempted.
If you want a govt that will serve the people while being as incorruptible as possible you have to choose politicians by lottery instead of election. They get called, go serve, then go back to the life they had before. Like 4 years of Jury Duty. Political graspers, climbers, those will always trend towards corruption. Like that old addage, anyone actively seeking political office is unfit to serve in that capacity as their motivations are suspect. Power, authority, etc. All that is only intensified in a system as inconceivably corrupt and broken as ours is.
A bit late to the party
You’ll be happy to know there’s a social media site just like lemmy run by capitalists. It has all the benefits that capitalist ownership provides.
Wtf is an uncorrupt government?
All types of governance and economic systems are susceptible to despotism.
It takes a constantly educated and involved population to fight it.
You literally left Reddit because of what capitalism did to it.
Yeah but capitalism also made reddit great, before making it terrible.
There’s a balance in there somewhere. What we got ain’t it tho.
I mean the stages of economic transition have been “fuedalism->capitalism-> socialism” as each one is progressively more efficient and supercedes the previous.
I may be wrong, but I don’t see socialism and capitalism as hard opposites.
I see capitalism and communism are like hard opposites with socialism somewhere in between.
Capitalism is the state controlled by the capital owners with the workers repressed.
Socialism is the state controlled by the workers with the capital owners repressed.
They are literally hard opposites. One is a bourgeoise-state and the other is a proletarian-state.
I learned that “capitalism” is an economic system, not a system of government.
So you could have a socialist state that funds essentials like healthcare and transportation through taxes with a market (capitalist) economy.
That’s not a socialist state. It’s a capitalist state with welfare. If the political structure of the state itself has not been reworked to put the workers in power what you’re describing is just a state where the bourgeoisie (who control power) have decided to do welfare, usually for their own benefit such as reducing revolutionary energy by providing the workers with concessions (the welfare state). That is social democracy.
You do not have socialism without overthrowing the hierarchy that places the bourgeoisie as the ruling class:
Capitalism = Capitalists in power. Proles repressed.
Socialism = Proletariat in power. Capitalists repressed.
Communism = No more classes, only 1 class because the bourgeoisie have been completely phased out.
This just made China’s system click in my mind. Thanks Awoo
All of this sounds at odds with representative democracy. What political system would you see working with socialism as you describe it?
Reddit was never great lmaoo
It was a pedo networking tool reknowned worldwide for it’s jailbate and non-consensual creepshots. These moderators received awards from admins. Then it got too much attention and got a PR workover, burning a woman CEO at the stake to satiate the gamer-fascists before becoming a bland Atlanticist CIA sockpuppet front of bland corporate posts.
At no point during this entire thing did it ever approach anything comparable to greatness
Are you saying you used Reddit for its jailbait etc subs? Cause Reddit was much more than it’s jailbait subs.
…
Do you have a point?
Are you really trying to do that?
I meant the platform more than the company.
It’s my favorite format for social media… that’s why I’m on lemmy.
communism made lemmy so where does that leave us
I guess ‘a lot of free spare time in a socialized copitalism’ made lemmy.
activity = (forProfit) ? “Work” : “Hobby”
It was good when it had only a few hundred thousand users, but obviously you weren’t there.
no that was when it was a jailbait/creepshots/libertarian/“hacker” site. Still not good. Still pedo and soy.
There is no balance though, the shit-ification that happened to Reddit is a necessary function of capitalism. What we saw as Reddit at its best was, from a capitalist’s perspective, Reddit at its worst. I’m sure you’ve noticed a similar process taking place in lots of other areas as well.
What we saw as Reddit at its best was, from a capitalist’s perspective, Reddit at its worst.
And capitalists will allow this “at its worst” phase in order to capture the market, before squeezing it. This pattern is consistent in many industries.
I left Reddit because of short term decisions to squeeze money out of consumers to look good in an IPO, instead of having an actual long term thought.
You do realize that the incentives of capitalism necessitate that right?
Why’d you just repeat @[email protected]s statement?
You left reddit because of capitalism. What is an IPO? It is the launch of a business onto the public capital markets to release equity and to enrich its existing owners. What do all businesses on the markets operate on? Short term growth for the next financial quarter optimised to enrich their investors (shareholders) in the shortest amount of time possible.
Capitalism consistently destroys everything you enjoy and yet you defend it relentlessly while asking for long term thinking, which is not a feature of capitalism. When you wake up to this reality you might actually start to question “maybe the socialists are right about a few things” and spend some time with us learning what we actually believe.
But you know what happened after Reddit turned to crap? Because no one actually has to use Reddit, because Reddit is just a bunch of bored nerds and Reddit is just a bunch of forums, eventually someone realised: “wait a minute, I can code this in a few weeks and make it way less crappy than most social media. And maybe if I make it all open, a whole ecosystem of social networks can grow together”. And when Reddit turned to crap, “the invisible hand” acted and people slowly started to migrate over to lemmy and other social media and now reddit is just a bunch of bots
A few weeks?
Mate please check my profile. I have been here for 3 fucking years. Lemmy did not magically appear in a few weeks that is incredibly offensive to the sheer amount of work my comrades have put in to make it.
And calling their work “the invisible hand of the market” is also nonsensical. Because the forces driving its creation, and the rest of us communists that support it, are the destruction of the markets. There is not one single jot of profit motive involved in Lemmy. You seem to recognise some of the problems of capitalism but consistently come to incorrect conclusions about everything because you have spent no time whatsoever getting a real political education and understanding the forces at work.
And you fail to ask yourself what happens to your “market forces” alternative to reddit. In any scenario where the market is responsible for replacing reddit the market will also bring it back to exactly the same point of self-destruction through pursuit of capital. You will hurt yourself all over again.
Reddit would probably never have existed without capitalism…
Yes because people never communicated over the Internet before Glorious Visionary Entrepreneurs from the Great Private Sector took hold of it and gave us all these Valuable Products, they just sat on their ass wondering what to do with such technology like complete idiots.
I swear free market ideology is the dumbest shit you can possibly believe in, I’d sooner become a fucking Mormon.
How would you have communicated without someone owning a server and paying for it? Reddit and other centralized platforms emerged for some reason… You would have to literally make that illegal, i.e. make it illegal to host your own server and let users use it.
You can’t just imagine some fantasy utopia, and compare that to the current system.
How would you have communicated without someone owning a server and paying for it?
You do realize the Internet first started being used by universities and the military, not the private sector, right? I see literally no reason why Internet infrastructure couldn’t be publicly owned. It could function pretty much like any other public utility.
And would it have grown into more than that? Into something that everyone, and not just military and scientists can use?
Why not?
Sorry I just don’t buy into the ideology that the free market has this kind of “magic sauce” that makes everything innovative and better.
The early Internet was filled of people doing all kinds of cool things for free just because it was interesting to do, the only thing the private sector did is provide the base infrastructure, this is something the state can easily do too. All kinds of communities, FOSS software and media popped up and none of them had VC funding or expected any money out of it.
It was only in mid-late 2000 that capital really sank its teeth into the Internet properly.
A world without capitalism or Reddit. The sheer thought warms my heart. 🥰
I know Hexbear skews very, very liberal. I haven’t spent much time in other lemmy places.
Hexbear also has a large number of Putin and CCP apologists. Authoritarian bootlicking isn’t liberalism.
if supporting a project that lifts 800M out of extreme poverty is wrong, I don’t wanna be right
Pushing Native Americans onto reservations lifted a lot of European immigrants out of poverty.
Burning fossil fuels lifted entire nations out of poverty.
Campaigns against the barbarians lifted many Romans out of poverty.
If you think this “lift” is some example of public good in action that hasn’t come at the cost of exploitation, you’re delusional.
China lifted 800 million people out of poverty by building healthcare, transport, housing, jobs, education and food security? Heh, but what about that time European settlers got richer by genociding Native Americans? Technically that was “poverty reduction” too, commie
Chinese poverty elimination didn’t come on the backs of any of those things you goober. “Well have you considered that sometimes OTHER countries did bad things to reduce domestic poverty, and therefore China doing so is inherently bad actually !?” Grow the fuck up, this isn’t a real argument.
The bias is justified. The left is correct. Markets don’t create wealth without necessarily simultaneously creating poverty
Well that’s just bullshit. Markets have brought more people out of poverty than anything.
Capitalism literally requires poverty to even function.
Lib - “Markets make everything cheaper, which is good.”
Leftist - “But if there is a labor market, won’t that make labor cheaper?”
Lib - “Yes, and that is good.”
Leftist - “How is that good?”
Lib - “It leads to more profits.”
Leftist - “But why is it good to have more profits?”
Lib - “Because a good country is when corporations make profits, and the more profits the corporations make, the gooder the country is.”
Love to spend insane amounts of resources on creating a phone that has the same tech and capabilities as all the other phones, but I can’t just get access to their research and they can’t just get access to mine.
Love to spend insane amount of time working up a cure to covid, but I can’t share my research with others and they can’t share it with me, yay this is awesome.
Love to spend insane amount of resources working out how to make people want to buy a sugary drink and then spend even more to make them want to buy my drink specifically.
Love to build empty houses and love to create 1.21 times more food than we need.
Love to do all this as the world is burning and people are starving.
Capitalism is the most efficient distribution of resourcesKid: “Mommy, what’s a strawman?”
Mother: “Take a look a this post here. See how they speak for both sides of the argument?”
Kid: “Yes, they’re arguing with themselves.”
Mother: “Exactly, and they can make their opponent say what they want.”
Kid: “That seems like an easy way to make your argument look good”
Mother: "Yes. It’s like fighting someone who can’t put up any resistance. They could be made of straw. A strawman. "
Kid: “Oh, I see.”
You didn’t engage with their argument, but good try nonetheless. It’s nice to see you cling to a fallacy rather than engage in good-faith discussion of an argument clearly illustrated for you to relate to.
For more information, research “surplus army of labor”, “primitive accumulation”, and “accumulation by dispossession”.
Primitive accumulation is a bad term. It works if you’ve read the theory behind it, but otherwise it sounds like someone saving up a bunch of money then starting a successful business compared to what it is which was colonial genocide, enclosure of the commons, and mass starvation as people were ripped from agricultural labor and cast into the factories and mines to work for feudal lords turned industrial capitalists.
I agree but in this context I’m literally telling them to read about it.
I was just summarizing for the people who are too lazy to go read anything and will just stop here
Socialists don’t hate markets, they hate workers not having any power or democratic choice in how they interact in the market.
Workers owning the means of production just means the workers are doing the same work but they are in ownership of the factory and the profits. They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
I, a socialist, hate markets. They are simplistic and functional artifacts of the available way to pass information.
So, you would never trade with someone else something you have for something they have? You want to be entirely self sufficient?
If this isn’t true, why do think markets serve no purpose?
Do you really think all exchange of goods is a market?
Do they actually trust their coworkers to run the company without tanking it almost immediatly? Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks without fucking something up, let alone actually having input on how the business is run.
Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks without fucking something up
This is a problem with the company you work for, not your coworkers. I’m sure if they were paid more, were given more agency, and received better training, they’d be better elployees
No, they’re just idiots. Myself and others have had the same training and responsibilities and do fine. It’s not that difficult of a job.
i shall surely reap the rewards of working at the same level as these irredeemably dumb people. then i will prove my point online or something
Either that or the reason they purposefully hire meth-addled freaks is because they want desperate people who won’t fight for any of those things.
Source: Friend who works in a warehouse and has coworkers who are obviously there to get a paycheck to afford their fix and then move on. It’s the company culture. They could choose to hire better people, or mentor the people who could grow, they don’t.
Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks
I guess you haven’t met many CEOs, then.
if you dont raise your children to be adults, they won’t act like adults when they grow up. A revolution would mean people learning entirely new skills, like making decisions in the workplace. Most workers have no agency, theyre treated like machines, so I dont expect people raised in that society to know how to run a completely different one from scratch. Revolution is a process, it has to be built. Keep shitting on your coworkers tho, im sure its a productive activity
They can’t even learn to do the tasks they are expected to do now. Even with frequent coaching. How the fuck can you expect them to learn to make business decisions?
You’ve clearly never worked close with anyone making business decisions in the real world.
I used to work for a food type company and the way they decided to import and sell stuff locally was if the board of directors (the CEO who inherited the company from daddy + his siblings) liked the item. They hired someone, my coworker, to actually run the market tests and everything and then promptly ignored any suggestion she had to make about the viability of this product on the local market, instead relegating her to a busser that was in charge of ordering the samples they decided they wanted.
I remember one item nobody liked (they would give us the remaining samples in the break room like some dogs getting the leftovers), but one of the siblings liked it and they got that close to putting it on the market because of it.
Honestly, I think capitalism wouldn’t be so bad if it was limited to what it’s good at. Fashion, tech, entertainment, snacks, ect.
But essential food, housing, water, healthcare, even electricity and internet access, the idea that these things that will always have infinite demand is haphazardly controlled through profit motive is disgusting.
Infrastructures should be government controlled and free. Essential resources should have some sort of universal basic “food stamps” system. Then actual money just becomes the luxury “fun bucks” that you don’t lose out on if you don’t have a lot. For example pet owners would be given a credits for pet food and free vet care, but a silly pet costume would use money.
Disclaimer: This is just a personal idea I’ve been mulling over, I’m sure there’s a million holes in it.
I mostly agree; personally I see it more as a minimums covered than specific sectors, so, capitalism is acceptable -and might be a better environment for personal growth than most- as long as everyone has the basics covered, so a roof over their head, basic food, basic clothing, minimal energy to cover AC/Heating and other minimal usage (that would need to be set by specialists, but you get the idea, X KW/h free per person/month), good public transportation, full healthcare and communication access. And then, depending on your situation you can improve over it, by paying the extras, like, example, I think everyone should have access to a 5Mb Internet access for free (Maybe a 5Gb data cap to prevent abuse, but, after the 5GB it slows down, so, you never actually lose the access). That is good for basic browsing, messaging and Social Media applications, with that, people are never locked out of the online world, allowing for job hunting, for appointment taking and other similar necessities, communication with friends and family, but also, public organisms and private companies. This access is either managed by the government via Public Companies, or mandated to Private Companies as a necessary requirement to be allowed to work in the Country (like, you need to have a $0 plan available or you are not granted the bandwidth usage). Then, if you are interested, you can buy higher packages, those would be “controlled” by the Private Companies in a “capitalistic” way.
Why I like this approach? I think that the current “deification” of work is wrong -pushed actually by wealthy capitalists-, people should be allowed to simply exist, even if they do not work (they can be lazy, yes -and I do not see anything wrong with it-, but also, they can be deeply depressed, heavily disabled -or taking care of someone that is- or simply focusing on art, sports or other activities that not necessarily grant income), my approach would allow for it, but then you can also work if you want/can -for as long as you want/can- to have more (bigger house, better Internet access, designer clothes). I am privileged, I worked hard to get where I am, but I am in a good position, I would not stop working if only my basics would be covered, for me, the work I get paid for is an acceptable trade off for getting a bit more, but even then, I would be way more relaxed and enjoying life, if I knew that losing my job would mean losing my “small luxuries” but not condemning myself to poverty.
That’s why I don’t fully agree with your division by sectors, because some can be very clear -snacks-, but others are more complicated -like tech, having the latest smartphone very year is a luxury, having a simple working smartphone is a necessity in today’s world-, or it can even vary -Like Internet was a luxury 20 years ago, but it is a necessity today-.
I hope you get the idea, sorry for the wall of text.
I think capitalism wouldn’t be so bad if it was limited to what it’s good at. Fashion, tech, entertainment, snacks, ect.
The thing is that capitalism isn’t “good” at anything; all value is produced by workers. Fast fashion is an environmental nightmare, development of tech is in the interest of capital (automation shouldn’t be a threat to workers), most entertainment is constrained by the diktats of massive corporations, the vast majority of snacks are either unhealthy or extremely overpriced, and workers (particularly in the Global South) are being abused in all four cases
Capitalism is definitely good at some things. Specifically generating wealth. If you’re a developing country you want to use capitalism because it will grow your economy as fast as possible. I think once a county has built enough wealth, they should switch to a blended system.
No, if you’re a developing country, you want a planned economy. The only reason to allow private capital would be to gain access to foreign technology and to stave off imperialism until you’re capable of self-defense
I know a lot of you are meming, but the amount of dogshit takes here is almost depressing.
There is no single answer to what a good government looks like, there is no “best one” and surely any single one that is based purely on ideals or idealized human behavior will fail, no matter how hard you believe in it.
One of the arguably most successful governments is the Chinese one and they are and were neither just, nor friendly, nor purely capitalist, communist or authoritarian. They are very China first and fuck everyone else and that works because of a lack of conscience and them adapting to everything without a second thought. Looking away and screwing people over as needed. You can be capitalist as long as it works for them. You can do whatever if it benefits them.
The US does this too, in different ways with similar effects.
the amount of dogshit takes here is depressing. This guy just praised the chinese government.
Do conservatives on lemmy ever do anything but whine that they’re not immediately worshiped for their opinions?
I wish it was just “towards the left”.
I’m very much on the left socially and left of center economically, but even I feel like every other comments section on here reads like some insane tankie commune.
It’s always a weird flavor, too. Like “I’m communist but only if I get all the wealth. Also I hate minorities but love the LGBT.”
For some reason it just makes me think of Dennis on 30 Rock. “Fiscally liberal, socially conservative.”
I’m communist but only if I get all the wealth. Also I hate minorities but love the LGBT
Where did you see that?
It’s a bit of hyperbole, but Lemmygrad and Hexbear aren’t far off.
A lot of their users believe that Russia is a communist state, not some crony capitalist society that would make Bezos blush. They also seem to really love Trump for some reason.
No where. “Centrists” love strawmen.
“Uncorrupt government”
This is as delusional as anyone can get.
A wise man said it all once: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Oh so pragmatism would have that we abandon any hope at equality and we should accept to be slaves for the rich?
I don’t get why the only solution is to trust others to take care of you. I have some bad news: No one gives a crap about you. The sooner you realize this the better. You should be responsible and learn more on how to manage your assets, investments, money, etc. In my opinion, this idea that we have to keep trusting the elite to run our lives is ridiculous. People should be more responsible and manage their money in an independent way.
I like cryptocurrency for this, because I have full control on my money and no government will be able to rehypothecate my money for whatever risky nonsense they’re doing. But you don’t have to be like me or like cryptocurrency. All you have to do is start thinking of a solution that works for you. You can start saving now, diversify in the world economy, and take risks that are appropriate to you, and prepare for your retirement. No need to act as if you have zero power when there are enough tools to give you power over your own money.
I’m the kind of guy that takes all my matters into my own hands, because I trust no one. I even run my email server, my cloud, my VPNs, my everything. I don’t need anyone, company or government, and I have calculated risks in all my endeavour. I can migrate whenever I want. I believe everyone in the world should strive towards that. But we’re living in a centralized world where google alone can just block almost everyone’s life. I’m not in that club.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
~Carl Sagan
You will always have people taking care of you, from the clothes you wear to the things you eat. There is no escape.
Not even by living on your own are you not using other peoples knowledge or products.
I don’t get why the only solution is to trust others to take care of you.
Society is built around people “taking care” of you in different ways. Like being a doctor, a teacher, an employer, the police, etc.
That’s why we grew out of being caveman, because we’re built to be cooperative with each other in our DNA. If we didn’t, we’d either be small tribes or individuals and probably die out really fast. It’s because we need others to rely on or we’d literally be extinct.
I don’t think you understand what trust means. There’s almost zero trust with doctors, teachers, etc. You don’t trust doctors out of the blue, but you build an informed decision from the reviews of such a doctor by seeing if they’re good at what they do. This hunky dory delusion that everyone trusts everyone is not real. The doctor, teacher, etc, will be punished if they misbehave and that’s what the free market is about. Keeping them in line as a kind of incentive to behave well.
On the other hand, what you guys want to do is hand all your wealth and power to elites that don’t give two craps about you, have zero consequences in the case they mess up, and have zero incentive to do the right thing (as opposed to make it look like they’re doing the right thing), and then expect them to not steal your hard earned money, and then cry about it when they do it. Well, guess what? I don’t trust the fed has my best interest when they printed 80% of the US dollar money supply over the last 3 years. Why should I store my wealth in USD? Now you go ahead and trust them and do that, and keep complaining on lemmy that the rich are getting richer (NOT because of the printing) when someone tries to talk sense into you. I guess everyone will pay for their decisions after all.
Doctors are doctors because they passed their doctorate.
Someone more knowledgeable than you set the minimum bar of skill they require to practice their craft.
You don’t get to make trust based decisions on doctors because you don’t know what a good doctor looks like. You lack the knowledge to do so. Unless you are yourself a doctor.
I have even less trust in corporations than the government.
If you let those, they would bring slavery back if they could. Since that improves their bottom line.
Dude everything you said is wrong… doctors don’t have doctorates… PhDs do. Also you didn’t invalidate my point, which is that trust isn’t blind. You sound like a teenager. When you grow up you’ll understand what accountability means and how governments have none.
So not only do you have no idea what you are talking about, you also fall back to ad hominem fallacies because you are unable to debunk the stuff I said.
Your knowledge is lacking, so your opinion on who you can trust is worthless.
You sound like a science-denying anti-vaxxer.
Boot-flavored capitalist Kool-Aid must be so refreshing during such a torrid summer
To paraphrase this cool guy named Ernesto: Its not our fault reality is marxist
The amount of left wing folks on some of the more extreme instances bashing the most left wing people in the American Democratic party because they’re not complete socialist idiologes is just wild. Like I want to see a major shift towards some form of democratic socialism in America and think we definitely need real change in that direction, but the hatred for elected officials closest to your views just because they aren’t extreme enough for you is silly.
I don’t understand why they feel the need to attack the left win branch of the DNC when Joe Manchin equists. When the Republican party exists. Focus efforts on some positive change and getting people you want in office instead of trying to tear down what should be an ally. Make the people you think aren’t extreme left enough the conservatives of a new wave. The defeatest attitude that just criticizes the closest thing they have to what they want is just silly.
Other than a violent change of the guard/revolution. It’s not going to be an instant process. You have to accept small progress where you can get it.
