• penquin@lemm.eeEnglish
    31·
    2 days ago

    One massive example is Louis Rossman. I love Louis, he’s done so much good. He’s been trying so hard, but all of his 1000 complaining videos are 100% because of capitalism and he STILL loves it and says he’s not a “commie”. It just doesn’t make sense. You’re advocating for socialistic things, but you’re not a “commie”? You have been fighting capitalism and its evil for years, and yet you’re still a “free market man”? There are plenty that are like that and it never made sense to me.

    • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      141·
      2 days ago

      I think there’s a distinction to be made between free market economies and capitalism. Capitalism, with limited-liability shareholder corporations and such, allows businesses to scale and concentrate wealth in a way that markets by themselves do not, and that’s where the problem lies.

      • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        Capitalism is more broad than that. The Soviet Union was state capitalism. Basically a capitalist economy with only one company, the government, and thus no free market (monopoly on everything).

        • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 day ago

          At any rate, to someone who likes competition and the free market but dislikes getting screwed and exploited by megacorps, it seems like state capitalism would be the worst of both worlds.

          Assuming that attitude describes a lot of people in a country like the US (excepting the psychopaths in the owner class), and I think it does, it goes a long way towards explaining why “communism” (read: state capitalism) is wildly unpopular compared to “capitalism” (read: the opposite, in the minds of black-and-white thinkers). It seems to me that driving a wedge to separate the ideas of “free market” from “capitalism” in people’s minds would be the necessary first step to effect change.

          • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            1 day ago

            Somehow the term free market became a bad word for many people. People think that a free market leads to a monopoly as one company eventually buys out its competitors. But if you look closely enough, nearly all monopolies are possible only with government interference in the market, either through tariffs, intellectual property laws (trademarks, patents, copyrights), or even direct monopolies over radio frequencies in the spectrum auctions.

  • Troy@lemmy.caEnglish
    15·
    2 days ago

    Can we have a post-scarcity managed economy of abundance a la Star Trek? Plskthx

    • adarza@lemmy.caEnglish
      91·
      2 days ago

      having basically unlimited clean energy and replicators probably helps just a smidge there.

      • Zorque@lemmy.worldEnglish
        61·
        2 days ago

        A smidge, yes, but scarcity can be enforced. Which is what happens in capitalism, for the most part. Those with means undermine methods of creating cheap abundant supplies, because it would overwhelm demand and there would be no profit. It’s not even necessarily intentional. There’s just point in investing in an over-abundance of supply, as your returns would never make it worth it.

        It’s as much, if not more, about intention as means.

      • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        1 day ago

        If we’re not losing half or more of the human population to various crises in that time I’d say that’s doing pretty good