Because they benefit from it?

This is only part of it because the vast majority of people do not benefit from capitalism. Not anymore at least. Of those in the working class who defend capitalism I would say most are victim to the constant stream of propaganda that the media pumps out at the behest of the capital owning class. It's something that starts from birth in most western nations and permeates into the narratives people are taught in school in a way that requires deliberate and consistent work to unlearn and break away from.

Even more benefit from a social market economy, which might be an optimal sweet spot if done right.

Because they've been taught it's the best system and only one that works.

What other alternatives do we have? We have some experience with communism and, eh, that didn't go well either.
Not defending capitalism here, just saying that the alternative need to work. Really work. Not just in theory.

I think in some way capitalism is tied up with technological advancement and we like that. We probably shouldn't because it will be our undoing, but we do.

Because they think of themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires rather than wage slaves.

I dont want to interrupt but im still waiting on my money from the election in Berlin. We were promised a bonus if you win.

Do we? Isn't it mostly state capitalism and dictatorship, which has been falsely labeled as communism?
Not to mention American/western intervention to destabilise any remotely socialist/communist attempt, and constant fear mongering anti-communist propaganda.
Also capitalism doesn't really work itself, riddled with internal contradictions and frequent economic crashes.
If interested watch e.g. some LiterateMachine: https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=QaDtAOWgKdQ from 4:18

I am fearful about the extreme ignorance, simple mindedness and gullibility of some of the electorate. They are completely blind to the effects of neoliberalism, which is the main guiding force behind the bumptious, odious and fascist/racist Republican party who believe that competition is the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning. Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised; public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.
We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance, and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.

The main question was, what other alternatives do we have. Based on your comment, sounds like there are no reputable alternatives. I couldn't name one either.

What do they have to do with that?

How are you going to get "reputable" "working" alternatives without trying them? You're acting as if "theoretically" is somehow bad, while literally any system was theoretical before it was implemented.

But yeah, your mentality is showcasing exactly why we still have capitalism. People are afraid to try new things that might upset the status quo. They're more afraid of new, untested things failing, than known, bad things staying.

https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/

No arguments there

EDIT: I mean "can't argue with that". Just incase what I wrote originally didn't make sense

People go with the information they are given. People don't do academic research into these things before forming an opinion (myself included). Through cold war times, capitalism was advertised as a morally correct choice (and not just as one type of economic system). Even within this, the American flavour or neoliberal capitalism isn't the only choice. There can be a more heavily regulated capitalism like in Europe with elements of strong social support. America's economic success is taken as clear evidence that neoliberal capitalism is clearly the winning strategy and makes them the best.

These aren't isolated economic theory concepts anymore. These are ideas linked to people's identity, politics, social groups, morality and sense of justice/right and wrong. This is compounded by a false sense that we live in a meritocracy and just world. As if the world will give money and success to those who are right and good, so we shouldn't stand in the way of that.

Capitalism with a larger social safety net is still capitalism, and it relies on the exploitation of workers in the Global South to function. As the Global North’s capacity to imperialize the Globe South deteriorates, so too does its ability to bribe its own workers at home with treats.

this. i remember a few years ago i was somewhere that folks had put on the macy's t-day parade. it was the first time i'd really noticed the intensity of the propaganda. most of the themes and music were just about acquiring material things and how good and normal that is. the propaganda was so strong it made me viscerally uncomfortable to watch.

i personally believe that employee ownership of business with community oversight is the most reasonable way forward. it would be much more democratic than the economic autocracy most workers currently live under and communities affected by business decisions would have a say.

That's why I wrote "if done right".
A truly social market economy also has to make sure that workers along the whole supply chain have to get similar rights and treatment as local workers.

Besides that, centrally planned economies (being the opposite to plain free market capitalism), also don't really shy away from exploiting the resources of poorer countries.
(Looking e.g. at imperialistic China here).

China isn’t exploiting anyone. You really need to start questioning what your own empire accuses its enemies of. Previously:

• The Atlantic, 2021: The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth
• Jason Hickel, 2026: Is China doing “colonialism” in Africa?
• Deborah Brautigam, 2019: A critical look at Chinese ‘debt-trap diplomacy’: the rise of a meme
• 📺 Michael Hudson & Radikha Desai, 2024: The truth about China's economy: Debunking Western media myths

Those that benefit from it spend a lot of money on trying to make sure the majority of people don't realise it's fucking them over

Stockholm syndrome.

In America, we grow up to really cherish liberty and freedom of choice (even if it just the illusion of choice) and so we really idealize entrepreneurship.

Capitalism is the only economic system that allows upward class mobility

The examples of socialism/communism collapse are all within the lifetimes of most (or not far off for those of us under 40). Capitalism hasn’t quite failed yet (2008 hurt a lot and woke some people up to its failures).

It may not be popular with some of the instances on the fediverse but capitalism is the least flawed of all the flawed economic systems. The systems are flawed because they are ran by flawed humans. The best societies take strengths of each system and combine them to mitigate the flaws of each. Capitalism with strong social safety nets is probably the best that humans can do.

China isn’t exploiting anyone.

Total Imports 2025 EU / China:

Mineral fuels, oils, distillation products $467.75B / $442.95B
Plastics $68.38B / $56.48B
Pearls, precious stones, metals, coins $56.12B / $118.02B
Articles of apparel, knit or crocheted $53.13B / $3.74B
Articles of apparel, not knit or crocheted $48.56B / $5.79B
Iron and steel $44.08B / $30.86B
Edible fruits, nuts, peel of citrus fruit, melons $31.17B / $20.69B
Fish, crustaceans, molluscs, aquatics invertebrates $29.23B / $19.93B
Rubbers $26.46B / $20.57B
Footwear, gaiters and the like $26.30B / $5.70B
Copper $18.63B / $74.63B
Oil seed, oleagic fruits, grain, seed, fruits $18.63B / $57.02B
Pulp of wood, fibrous cellulosic material, waste $11.87B / $21.98B

So, looking at the absolute numbers, China is eploiting the world's resources in a similar fashion as the old style European Union, so I have to disagree.

I won't comment on the content of your provided reports and youtube videos (of which at least two look a little... juicy... at first glance), as me just providing you with a bunch of counter-reports and videos, whose reliability you would question in a similar way as I am questioning yours, won't change anything.

Capitalism requires brutal resource extraction, by force, from poor countries and that is usually done by killing, bombing, and using other forms of violence to enforce this extraction of resources.

We (USA) are literally doing it to Venezuela and other countries right now. I’m guessing you are American if you think capitalism with strong safety nets is the best.

You mean Capitalism with Strong safety nets for YOU. Not for people from South America, Africa, South Asia, etc. Americans (among other euro countries and some Scandinavian and east euro countries too) would have to give up a few apparatuses of luxury for the world to be able to afford even half of what we enjoy on a daily basis.

Ironically enough, I wish we had stockholm Democratic Socialism while also suffering Stockholm Syndrome.

Wait... So all of those rich and billionaires in socialist countries are just figments of imagination?

Also, have you looked at how terrible the US upward mobility rankings are now? Under Capitalism you aren't likely to move anywhere unless you're born into it.

Edit: I brought receipts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index

That last sentence is a mixed economy system, which should probably be the best, current way of doing things. Taking the benefits of each successful economical system. Yes, communism was successful in converting Russia from am agricultural-servant nation to an industrial powerhouse. Also, communism didn't collapse by itself, the USA made everything they could to boycott it, and they still do because they are afraid of it. They are perpetrating their own silent genocide in Cuba, just to ingrain in our brains that communism is sentenced to collapse.

I think a lot of people does fine under it. They are also very vocal, because they are in a relative position of power. For example, little bosses in front of a couple of employees will make more noise than their employees regarding capitalism and entrepreneur values, while the employees will basically survive.

The rich and powerful in socialist countries were born into it.

I can’t argue with social mobility being harder than ever under capitalism now. But perception often lags reality which is why people defend the broken system

same reason they defend religion, indoctrination.

I agree with a lot of what you say. But I'm not sure that social mobility being desirable should be taken as self-evident.

I believe equality is good for us, so if social mobility results in greater inequality, for me that is bad.

And of course social mobility goes both ways when there are finite resources. It can go downwards. You recognise the need for social safety nets, and I would say that these are both more necessary and harder to supply in a more unequal and 'socially mobile' economy. At least that is what is happening in English-speaking countries like mine and yours.

The basic assumption is that we should be able to work our way from poverty to prosperity, but I'm saying that all of us should be kept somewhere roughly between the two.

If you believe food comes from a field, you will defend the field. If you believe the food comes from the supermarket, you will defend the supermarket.

They get told all those horror stories about 'the others' who hate us for our freedoms and want to rule the world, where they have to work real hard and still can't afford a house, and the regeeeem is spying on them all the time.
We wouldn't want to live like that would we?

Country X importing from country Y doesn’t magically equate to country X exploiting country Y. Exploitation is a matter of unequal exchange, and not every exchange is unequal. Exchanges coerced through classical imperialism or through neoliberal debt trap peonage are unequal.

Looking at the top 3 exports of China (by a wide margin before anything else):

Electrical, electronic equipment $1016.58B
Machinery, nuclear reactors, boilers $603.82B
Vehicles other than railway, tramway $248.31B

That's all high price stuff.

Combined with its huge trade surplus, this is a classical "Buy cheap resources - sell expensive highly processed commodities back" scheme, the same as e.g. the uprising European industrializing nations employed as a strategy during their colony exploiting times (and to some degree still do in a similar fashion as China).

No, there is nothing equal here.

I haven't read any theory yet but I've heard from other people that under communism, you can still buy and sell goods and services right? Usually capitalists point out that people are naturally greedy so they need to be able to consume goods and accumulate wealth.

Somehow you’re still ignoring how those Euro-American exchanges occurred under duress, at the point of a gun.

Buying raw materials at a freely-agreed upon price, and then applying labor to them to create a finished good, is not exploitation. No one was coerced into anything.

Where are China’s guns? In China. The US has over 800 overseas military installations, while China has one, an anti-piracy port in Djibouti.

You should probably read more, lol.

But that free international market argument applies to all (well, most of all...) countries, which is exactly my point. Modern China is as exploitative as any other highly developed modern country, independent of economic system.

Sure, as long as you insist on misdefining exploitation in that way, then by your self-serving definition, modern China is just as exploitative as the imperial core.

That’s the definition the imperial core wants to promote, because if they can’t look good, they can at least claim that their enemy is just as bad. But the majority of the world isn’t buying the hogwash that the always the same map minority is pushing.

They don't even know socialism exists in the US.

Also what you say is more tied to political identity instead of your actual beliefs whether or not the belief falls anywhere close to truth.

Except that's not what the data shows:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index

What exactly does the data show? The only socialist country on the list in China at #45 while the US is #27 (not great)

If you are saying that the US should be more like Northern Europe then I agree

They don’t even know socialism exists in the US.

You don’t know that it doesn’t and never has.

It's a lot simpler than what everyone here is saying tbh. They don't know what it is. Most of them think capitalism is just markets existing. Or some other random definition they made up in their head. So they're defending the imaginary version of it that they made up, which of course they like.

successful brainwashing.

In fact the Epstein class wants you to be miseducated about capitalism. They have class consciousness and want that we don’t.

People are specifically afraid of trying things that have led to extremely bad outcomes for countries that tried them...like millions dead from famine bad. This isn't let's experiment for fun territory. If there was a single non-capitalist success story, that would probably help.