This is the only reply of currently 40 that tries to honestly answer the question and of course it is down voted. People are not reading this post for honest takes, just gripes about "brainwashing", "ignorance" and "neoliberal conspiracies." It's basically an eco-chamber of grievance. It's pretty easy to make an argument for any position, and no one else even tried.

Propaganda and suppression of the left was successful and certain crumbs had to be given in the past decades, currently there's still enough comfort that many will defend their current status. A comfortable person isn't going to start asking or rocking the boat, it's in their interest that the boat is on the steady ride.

Deflection, gaslight and disciplining of those who find themselves in the "have not" becomes a way of comforting yourself that the ride was always within your capability and not dependent on the exterior mechanisms or just plain luck to be born in the lineage of "haves".

Because the people that "rage against capitalism", tends to put a lot of rollover effects occurring due to no guardrails. Onto being a fault of capitalism, rather than a fault of government.

We could tax inheritance 100% and most of the rollover issues are gone.

We could provide healthcare, public transportation and many other services. While maintaining a capitalistic based system.

Infinite growth is not a necessity of capitalism, that's a necessity for consumer franctic societies.

Right now there's a lot of countries looking towards Scandinavian models, they're capitalistic by nature and imo still lack guardrails against intergenerational wealth. Inequality is skyrocketing everywhere, but that's not a fault of capitalism. It will happen in unregulated capitalistic setups, but capitalism is really effective at guiding companies into providing the goods the populations need - And we have not theorised a better system yet.

But all of the top ranked countries are also capitalist economies

Capitalism has always sounded great in theory, just the way you described. But in practice it has never worked, it always results in the accumulation of wealth in few hands, who can then use that power to subvert democracy and get their way.

Why do you think inheritance, wealth, etc is taxed too little? Because wealthy elites have abolished and prevented those taxes through lobbying/corruption. Many countries had the exact social democracy model you describe, but abolished and privatized these systems because rich people paid the media and politics to make it happen.

Not to mention this analysis focuses only on material wealth. Capitalism brings with it a complete alienation, communities don't own their land, people don't own their work, and everything that was once a common good is slowly commodified and robbed of its soul. Art, music, relationships, capital fijds a way to monetize it eventually. But now we have online shopping and fast food! Hooray, happiness achieved!

we have not theorized a better system yet

That's an incredibly offensive claim. You just spat in the faces of nearly two centuries worth of academics and thinkers in myriad disciplines that have worked tirelessly, in the face of often violent or even fatal backlash from capital powers, to create and implement alternative concepts. Not to mention humans have experimented with various ways of living together for our entire history before capitalism.

socialism exists in the US

??? are you writing from a parallel universe or is this just "socialism is when the government does stuff"

it always results in the accumulation of wealth in few hands, who can then use that power to subvert democracy and get their way.

But that's not really capitalisms fault. We've seen higher degrees of inequalities in socialist countries and feudal economies could be claimed the inequality is a part of the design.

It's due to a lack of government rules.

Capitalism brings with it a complete alienation, communities don't own their land, people don't own their work

It opens up for the possibility of either owning your work or owning the value (wage) of your work. 2 millennia ago, when everyone worked in their own workshops and sold to the market, that was ultimately also a capitalistic economy.

Communities now can own their land, because everything is a commodity. Under other systems, the government, noble or other highly ranked owns the land and leases it out - We could argue that's still happening under capitalism, through property taxes.

I'm curious if you can expand on the alienation.

That's an incredibly offensive claim

Yet you're not highlighting any, because capitalism is a tad too efficient. The alterations we seek out to do, does not stop capitalism; Just changes the goals of it and the late stage setup to move more power/capital back to the people.

It makes sense. Most people have no idea about most of it. You have stuff. You buy and sell stuff. Ezpz.

Any alternative is demonised and fought about and undermined and misinformation'd.

Every modern economy is mixed to some degree.

Are you in the universe where people start sentences with question marks?

The major problem here is that you aren't looking at the system in its totality, and this leads you to make false conclusions. The reason capitalism cannot work and truly have guardrails is because the state is not a neutral entity, it belongs to whoever the ruling class of society is and takes on a definite form. Scandinavian countries are imperialist, relying on unequal exchange, and this is how they at least pacify their working class.

The solution is socialism. Workers already run the world, we should own it too.

Capitalism includes the capitalist state, which is why these supposed guardrails do not exist. Further, capitalism with guardrails still has fundamental problems like the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, crisis of overproduction due to an inability to be coherently planned, not to mention surplus value exploitation leading to enshittification and all the problems with the profit motive.

Spanish speakers would be pretty surprised to hear that they are from the other universe

I think it's the propaganda of the billionaire-owned media companies. Also, factory owners, landlords and and the greedy ( a small percentage of all the humans) keep the lie alive for obvious reasons.

Workers already run the world, we should own it too.

Cooperatives is the solution you're looking for, and I agree. They work within capitalism.

Let workers inherit companies and you have the best of both worlds.

it belongs to whoever the ruling class of society is and takes on a definite form

And why can the majority not be the ruling class?

Scandinavian countries are imperialist

Two centuries ago, fair. Now? Not really, it does however benefit from knowledge transfer due to third world citizens seeking universities in richer countries.

Cooperatives are not the solution. They retain all of the core problems with capitalism, such as the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, class distinctions, the inherent chaos of markets, the inability to be coherently planned, and all of the major issues with producing for exchange, rather than use. Socialism is the answer, collective ownership at a societal level, not at the level of individual cells.

The majority can become the ruling class, but it must do so by creating a state in its own class interest. A capitalist state isn't a state that happens to govern capitalism, it's a specific form of state that exists exclusively with capitalism. Likewise, socialist states are their own specific forms.

Scandinavian countries are imperialist today. They all depend on super-exploiting the global south, through mechanisms like neocolonialism and unequal exchange. Monopoly finance capital expands outwards and preys on the overexploited countries. Systems like the IMF and NATO help maintain this system of international plunder. The bulk of what people in Scandinavia consume does not come from the sweat of their own brows, but through the labor of global south workers.

If you want to disparage socialists for mindlessly raging against capitalism, then I suggest you actually listen to what we say, rather than completely ignore core concepts like unequal exchange.

crisis of overproduction due to an inability to be coherently planned

Is your claim planned economy is better? Because history shows planned economies tends to underproduce on necessities.

not to mention surplus value exploitation leading to enshittification

There's still issues of people skimming, but because essential monopolies has been created historically. No one has others to buy from, so enshittification has no way to be challenged.

Capitalism is just really effective at sending signals back, as it hurts every part of the chain if the seller can't sell their goods.

The one socialist society that almost succeeded their market, but USA unfortunately fucked them hi Latam, essentially build market signals into their models and wasn't centrally planned.

like the tendency for the rate of profit to fall,

And why isn't this a positive? Goods being traded at the cost to produce. Not at some random markup, just because.

You probably interact mostly with people living in the west. Most of us in the western world live on significantly more resources than the global average. True equality on the scale of the whole planet means most of us lose our standard of living. If you do it on the basis of just one country, then that creates an incentive for people capable of earning more money in another country, to move to that country. To deal with that, you need to ban people from leaving the country and...

It's easy to see why communism tends to work best as a dictatorship. You need to use violence to keep the people in line, otherwise they'll want more than their fair share. Free markets (especially the labor market, being able to choose your own job is pretty nice) give people a sense of agency, even if it's misplaced.

I saw something really interesting the other day…

In our society, being good or bad depends on your net worth. If you’re rich, you are good. If you’re poor you’re bad.

Poor people know they can’t be good by being rich. They actually never even interact with actual rich people. Classes don’t really interact with each other in our society.

But what they get access to is the rich man’s ideology. Or what they think rich people are (what they actually see is the petit bourgeoisie, the lower capitalist class. Their bosses are the lower rung of the capitalists. Or the upper rung of the working class. Small business owners, management etc).

But the poor can at least be on the same team as the rich, fight for the same things, and in that way at least be on the “good side”.

They try to approximate goodness by ideology. They try to get closer to “good” by fighting in the name of the “good people”.

Then of course the actual rich people defend capitalism because it’s beneficial to them, materially.

Planned economy is better once highly developed productive forces are achieved, and history shows that planned economies dramatically expanded production as compared to what came before. Rather than underperforming, the USSR was one of the fastest growing economies on the planet during its existence, while never once facing a crisis of overproduction:

The DPRK also outperformed the ROK until the ROK was flooded with western investment, and this was further hampered by the dissolution of the USSR. Today, however, the DPRK is steadily progressing (largely based on increased arms sales, such as to the Russian Federation), while the ROK appears to be in crisis.

Markets serve a progressive role historically when they stitch together disconnected production into production on a national and international scale. However, once they reach the national level, they quickly lose any amount of progressive quality and immediately become an impediment to further progress. At this point, planned economy becomes far better. This isn't a binary either, socialist countries like China leverage planned economy for their large firms and key industries, and marketize underdeveloped sectors.

Surplus value exploitation is not merely people "skimming." Capitalist profits come from exploitation of labor, paying workers less than the actual value they create. Ownership does not create value, labor does. Further, the fact that the monopoly stage has been reached does not mean we can work backwards, with monopoly scale comes technologies and productive techniques that can only be employed by monopolies. This is why markets lose their progressive character to planned economy as monopolies form, as planned production can make much better use of the scale developed by markets.

As for the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, it leads to crisis of profitability and economic collapse. This is a key force behind what turns monopoly capitalism into its imperialist stage, as capitalists chase increased absolute profits through market expansion to fight this. If they can establish an absolute monopoly globally, they can then price fix as they please, accelerating enshittification.

Because of ideological reproduction (educational systems, media and political discourses) which all normalize capitalist (and materialist, dualist, etc.) worldviews. There's a lot at stake in defending this as it is the basis of people's identity and how they construe meaning in life (through work, career, status, consumption). Colonialism has also been an effective project in destroying other worldviews and political systems and labeling them as primitive, backwards, etc.

I think there is a big discrepancy between what Captialism is defined as, what Capitalism actually is, and the 'Spirit of Capitalism' that a lot of folks buy into.

'The Spirit' is the idealistic bit. Competition breeding innovation. The better the service/product, the more successful you can be. Classic American Dream stuff.

In reality, its a race to the bottom where all principles and values are eschewed for profit.

Kinda like Communism where what it Should be or what it Could be are different than what we get in practice. And any given person is going to be thinking about it from a different lens, so you get delusional, idealistic, cynical, and occasionally reasonable takes all talking about the 'same but entirely different' thing.

Capitalism just had better PR.

People use the word "capitalism" to mean different things.

If you ask someone "Should someone who doesn't do any work get money from people who do?", a lot of people would say no. And they'd probably think you're talking about welfare or communism. But that's capitalism. The guy who "owns" the company can sit at home and watch netflix while all his office workers make stuff, and he keeps the profits. If you frame it right, you can get people to agree with you or suffer some cognitive dissonance.

But none of that is what some people are thinking of when they think capitalism. They think "free markets" and "competition". They often don't really think about how that trends towards monopolies or cartels. Either because of magic, or "the government will prevent monopolies." But not too much regulation. There's got to be a few decades of suffering before an intervention, typically.

There's also a lot of binary thinking. Either capitalism, or total state ownership and oppression.

Capitalism has always sounded great in theory,

I dunno, "People who don't do the work get rich" sounds kind of shitty.

Total state ownership isn't oppression for most people, though, assuming it's a worker-run state. It's also a necessary step towards building a fully classless society.

Communism isn't really "different in practice," people just confuse the socialist stage with the highly developed communist stage and judge past/present socialism against far-future communism.

I was born into the US and was a liberal for most of my life. I can explicitly tell you why so many of my countrypeoples defend capitalism:

Because they have the political education of an infant. You are told from a young age by everyone you trust that communism is bad and you never EVER get told the truth. There is absolutely no grand structure for learning about politics that isn't reactionary in nature.

What's left is an infinitesimal number of people with both the requisite curiosity and social opportunity to break out of liberal thinking. Most people are ingrained and never challenged their entire lives.

The incentives for supporting capitalism and rejecting communism are powerful and alluring in this country. But it is not an excuse. The books are out there. You absolutely must read.

Uno signo de interrogación de apertura, is different than your freestyle butchery.

Care to explain the main idea of your inference?

Measuring the percentage of private vs state ownership of the means of production isn’t going to tell you whether that state is a capitalist one or a socialist one. The salient question is, which economic class wields the power of the state to suppress the other class? Socialism isn’t a slider bar, it’s a matter of political power in the class war.

Previously:

The US government was never not captured by the bourgeoisie, because the US was born of a bourgeois revolution[1]. The wealthy, white, male, land-owning, largely slave-owning Founding Fathers constructed a bourgeois state with “checks and balances” against the “tyranny of the majority”. It was never meant to represent the majority—the working class—and it never has, despite eventually allowing women and non-whites (at least those not disenfranchised by the carceral system) to vote. BBC: [Princeton & Northwestern] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

Because capitalists can afford all of the bot farms and media adds.

It really makes you actually understand the whole, "the revolution will not be televised"

People fear change and the unknown. That makes one cling to whatever is familiar, even if it's causing suffering. It takes effort to zoom out, see the big picture and how many problems can be traced back to capitalism.

In the US specifically, capitalism has been taught as the only way towards success. This has happened for decades, at least. It is deeply engrained in that society.

When capitalism fails, as has been apparent so many times lately, it is blamed on something else. And as the excuses run out, the scapegoats get more and more inventive.

That's one reason why the current administration wants to you blame immigrants for everything: because it buys more time for the capitalists to make more money and shift the narrative again.

Check this out..

Why It's So Hard To Imagine Life After Capitalism by Second Thought

https://youtu.be/PaASqPnpq5Y

conditioning

Also, it's really funny how people think that private ownership by a small percentage of the population is somehow better than state ownership. It's peak temporarily embarrassed billionaire mentality.

It is worse, most people equate capitalism with the monetary system and get confused how they could buy something without capitalism.

Decades of totalizing propaganda, along with merciless suppression of alternatives.

What's capitalism?

Hi, I am probably one of the few right-libertarian capitalists on Lemmy (I love FOSS!). I’m also a former employee of the Foundation for Economic Education, one of the oldest libertarian institutions dedicated to explaining capitalism. I will do my best to give a big picture answer to your question, but it’s such a huge topic so feel encouraged to ask follow ups (in good faith please).

First of all, different people define capitalism different ways. When it’s proponents defend it, what we mean is a system of free markets and free enterprise based on a system of property rights. An essential part of this is the allocation of capital through investment, with profit and loss signals directing this capital. We don’t mean rich people trampling on the property rights of poor people; we would call this “corporatism” or “crony capitalist.” The current United States economy has capitalism in some areas, but corporatism in many others.

We believe that capitalism leads to the best possible outcomes for the most people. This doesn’t mean that its outcomes are perfect, or that there are zero people who get left behind (there certainly are), but that compared to all other existing possible systems, it is the best on a relative basis. Yes the rich get richer, but the poor also get richer relative to where they were in generations past (and, on average, over the course of their own individual lifespan). We also believe that capitalism is the most moral system in that it respects individual rights, or which a core part of this are their property rights. Systems that initiate force against peaceful people to take from some and redistribute to others violate people’s individual rights. This doesn’t mean that we oppose charity or don’t want to help people, we very much do, but that we see the initiation of force as a moral wrong in that pursuit.

We believe that capitalism is the only system that can lead to a consistent and rising quality of life for the masses for many reasons, but perhaps the biggest is the free price system. Prices being allowed to move through supply and demand, rather than being set by central planners, are necessary for the efficient allocation of scarce resources to their most needed ends. Without this, economic dysfunction is inevitable. (This is known as the Economic Calculation Problem or the Knowledge Problem, and the landmark essays in the history of economics that discuss it are Ludwig Von Mises’s “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” and F.A. Hayek’s “The Use of Knowledge in Society.”)

We know this to be true on a theoretical basis, but empirically looking historically and cross-culturally, we see that societies with more capitalism consistently outperform those with less capitalism. We see China’s economy dramatically advance by switching to an overwhelmingly capitalist mode of production, and economies that switch to socialist/communist mode of production stagnate and induce starvation and suffering. We don’t see the authoritarianism of communist nations as merely an accident of history, but as the necessary result of trying to force an impossible economic system to continue through its failure.

Capitalism, as we see it, requires a legal order that protects property rights (whether this legal order must come from government or not distinguishes “anarcho-capitalists” from “minarchists” who believe a small limited government is necessary). We do not believe that companies should be allowed to pollute other people’s property or cause damages to them, yet in a proper legal order we do not believe regulation is necessary to achieve this either. Instead, a system of common law and torts require damages to be paid to those whose rights are violated, with these damages to outweigh the benfits to corporations from taking such actions, thus incentivizing them not to engage in the rights violations to begin with. In our current system, corporations work with governments to regulate themselves out of such liability (this is called “regulatory capture”), which we oppose.

I’ve written a lot but only just touched the surface. With more narrow questions, I can provide more specific answers.

Short answer: people are dumb and gullible

that's not really capitalism's fault

Inequality is baked into capitalism the same way it is in feudalism. Capitalism is literally based on the idea of a two-class society, capital owners and labourers. Social democracy is just the attempt to curb raw capitalism, but the inequality in capitalism is not a side-effect, it's a core feature.

2 millenia ago, when everyone worked in their workshops and sold to the market, that was ultinately a capitalist economy

No it wasn't, and also, not even close to everybody did that. The world economy was far more diverse back then, and selling your labor to a capital owner for a wage would have been a pretty wild concept pretty much anywhere.

I'm curious if you can expand on the alienation

Sure! It's a long topic with books dedicated to it, but here's two small factors briefly touched on: 1. your workplace is owned by somebody else and you don't have a say 2. Commodification of culture and third spaces means that everything becomes a transaction

you're not highlighting any

There's a long long list, but market socialism or syndicalism might be most interesting for you to look up first. Basically the small step of making companies owned by their workers, while conserving markets.

It feeds many.

Three big reasons:

1. Capitalism thrives on the promise of social elevation. You can become billionaire too, you know, you just have to put in the work and be smart. And many are willing to sacrifice their living standards for the hope of making it big, however unlikely the latter is.

2. Capitalism is a current economic system in the majority of places, and most people are afraid of the change. They'd rather maintain the status quo - this is why, for example, socialist countries had majority of the population supporting socialism - not because they got enlightened to its potential, but because they already lived under it.

3. Privately owned media. Most people get their information from the corporate platforms, which, being owned by wealthy individuals benefitting heavily from capitalism, obviously downplay the horrors of capitalism and exacerbate issues of socialism. It is them who propel the "hope" narrative (see point 1) and thwart any serious attempts to popularise socialism. Even if you manage to host socialist media on socialist platforms and outplaying the algorithms, good luck getting corporate funding to make quality content with high level of reach when your platform is anti-corporate.

Capitalism is easy to understand.
You do something and you get something - even if you cheat by "outsmarting" someone else. The reward is tied to your actions. Like doggy treats. At no point is it revealed that your effort might be worth more than you get. This doesn't matter because it appears as a direct transaction. Work = pay.
It's not though, but that's what it appears like to anyone who doesn't think further than to getting their paycheck.

Socialism disconnects the transactions. Roughly put, the work that everyone puts into the system is used to pay out to everyone. You're no longer working directly for the hand that feeds you.

Like many places elsewhere, Denmark has social security system that sort of works like this. Everyone pays taxes and the pool of money is distributed to those who needs it, based on all kinds of things other than what people paid into the system themselves. It disconnects the effort and the payout.

This has good and bad effects in comparison to capitalism. A bad thing is that people who don't understand the larger picture will still look at it from a transactional point of view. Suddenly they think they deserve to get free money, and start making up their own explanations of why. They'll also look at it as a zero sum game, where they believe that if anyone else gets something then they must also have the same or else they'd feel that other people take more than they deserve. All kinds of racism and fasicm grows in those capitalistic arguments when applied to a social system.
The good thing though is that they're actually right in saying that they deserve more even if they don't contribute. Everyone deserves more than nothing from a system. It's possible, because it's not a zero sum game. It raises the lower bar, and keeps more people healthy and thus capable of producing more.

There's this quote "a greatness of a nation can be measured by how it treats the poorest". It's a mis-quote, but it's true. Capitalism can not achieve the same when there's no lower boundary to poverty. It will still have the costs of sickness, homelessness and poverty even if it tries not to pay for it by closing their eyes.
A socialist system is the key the solving this. So maybe we do sometimes pay people who doesn't deserve it, but it's still cheaper than to have to pay for the costs of the problems in capitalism.

I have to admit, Lemmy is so politically uniform that I kinda welcome something else.

Question: how do libertarian capitalists expect to combat corporatism? If anything, capital has a tendency to grow or die, and economies of scale along with vertical integration dictate higher survivability and profits of larger businesses vs smaller. And so, corporate structures appear again. What can be used to prevent it?

Also, if you allow me to comment on some of the key points raised...

The rich get richer, but the poor also get richer

One of the most common criticisms of late-stage capitalism is exactly that poor do not get richer anymore.

For example, here are nominal and inflation-adjusted median household incomes in the US:

Considering that inflation metrics count the whole economy, and not particularly basics like housing (which went through the roof and yet accounts for a huge share of expenses in a median and especially poor household), it's not unreasonable to assume poor people are worse off than they were 20 years before.

Prices being allowed to move through supply and demand, rather than being set by central planners, are necessary for the efficient allocation of scarce resources to their most needed ends.

The socialist criticism is that "most profitable" and "most needed" are two different things. Suppose you made a meal, and offer it to a millionaire and a broke homeless individual. Most likely, the latter will need it more, but won't be able to pay for it as much as the former.

We see China’s economy dramatically advance by switching to an overwhelmingly capitalist mode of production

And we see USSR economy skyrocketing after socialists came to power. And yes, extreme growth went way beyond New Economic Policy.

What we need to look for here, if we must be honest, is externalities. China switching to a more capitalist mode was net benefit because it enabled global trade as opposed to relative economic isolation. One of the main issues dragging socialist economies behind was that, being formed mostly of a few countries tilted into extreme poverty by previous regimes, they never got to access the same volume of trade and capital investment as their capitalist counterparts. When even these markets started to crumble through the Cold War, China had little other options.

USSR, on the other end, started on a low enough point that first advancements were relatively easy and investments paid off rather quickly. And, of course, there's gulag, too.

Well, the wealth gap between rich and poor people nowadays is higher than it was a the time of the French Revolution (we still refer to Marie Antoinette's "why don't they eat cake" as a despicable blindness of an ultra-wealthy person to the condition of the world she inhabits, but the rich today are far, far more removed from those who try to survive without having their basic needs met and that removal its just accepted by most or even idolized by some).

How, if this is the state of the world today and as you said, the protection of property is the de facto leading legal principle of a society under capitalism, can the immense wealth that has been accumulated by all of us working (seen or unseen) in this system but is manifesting itself as the property of a select few be considered a consistent rise in the quality of life of the masses? Isn't it true that the planet is dying because capitalism can only work in a world with unlimited resources, which is not ours? That the number of armed conflict is the highest since WW2, because this is capitalism's answer to realizing this planet's resources are not unlimited? That fascism is on the rise again because a society without discrimination would not work for a capitalist economy that needs people who have to do underpaid, life-threatening work or right out forced labor so that companies can join the free market with a competitive price (the holocaust btw happened under capitalism and many companies e.g. VW got big because they relied on detainees from the labor camps to give their lives working for them)? That the low birth rate in many countries puts women's bodily autonomy in danger, because capitalism needs a stable influx of new people to join the workforce (and the military, see above) and if this is not a given, because nobody who isn't rich can afford children and keep their current living standard anymore, measures will be put in place to enforce a stable birthrate in the future?

A rising living standard for the masses is an outdated, ideological assumption about capitalism.

People confuse private with independence and state with dominance because they don't see the state as a product and tool of class struggle.

Precisely, Anna Louise Strong puts best it in This Soviet World:

Yep, almost done reading this book too!