You're viewing a single thread.
Especially when someone blames capitalism for something which has been a problem since the dawn of humanity, and if anything, has improved under capitalism.
Care to share a representative xample?
Snakes
Greed. Violence. Self-interest. In vs. Out groups. Shall I go on?
...those are all significantly worse under capitalism, how does that help the argument?
There are different kinds of capitalism, just like there are different types of socialism.
Authoritarian socialism or communism is the worst, and crony capitalism is what we currently have, and is pretty bad too. But there are things like democratic socialism and stakeholder capitalism which attempt to balance competing interests.
For example, stakeholder capitalism is where all of the stakeholders benefit from their contributions, including labor. Workers get a share of the profits of the company, and are paid well as stakeholders in the company. The workers often own part or all of the company. There are also cooperatives, where the customers own the enterprise. Cooperatives work great for healthcare and necessities like groceries.
People tend to pick the worst examples of capitalism and socialism, but those are not the only flavors.
...okay? that wasn't the question being asked. did you get confused at some point?
like, i agree with what you said, just...what does it have to do with the current state of affairs?
the entire comment chain talks about the past and how capitalism has (supposedly) improved conditions. (since that "improvement" is implied to have already happened by the past tense, we're talking about the current system. without specifying anything about exactly "who" those conditions have improved for...conveniently)
so i fail to see the connection to (largely) theoretical improvements to capitalism...
We actually used to have some form of stakeholder capitalism, at least practiced at a large number of companies. This is before the greedy corporate raiders ruined it, where they made investors the priority. It only existed for a short period, between the abuses of the past, and the abuses of now. But it was long enough where some people enjoyed an entire career.
At these companies, employees used to have jobs for life, pensions, and generous benefits. But then the corporate raiders took that all away. That is also about the time that employee's wages stopped growing and started to stagnate or worse.
Was it perfect? No. But it was better than communism, and better than laissez-faire capitalism, and better than crony capitalism, which we have now.
The good news is that some people are trying to bring stakeholder capitalism back. Many states now have something called a "public benefit corporation" which is legally required to consider all of the stakeholders, not just the investors. These laws would prevent corporate raiders and investors from gutting these companies at the expense of the workers and consumers.
Plus, cooperatives and employee-owned companies have been around for a long time. Both employees and consumers are treated much better at these enterprises than they are at their investor-owned counterparts.
It is a model that works, and must be protected.
"You don’t hate women and feminism. You hate capitalism."
https://slrpnk.net/post/17820010
As if misogyny is a new thing that came along with capitalism. Women have been second-class citizens for most of recorded history. While they're still not on par with men, if anything it has improved in the modern, capitalist world.
"It is always capitalism's fault"
https://lemmy.world/post/23607277
Despite the nazis being fascists, somehow it's not their fault, it's actually capitalism that's at fault.
Lemmy search isn't very good, but I've replied to a bunch of Lemmy posts over the last while where the argument is basically that capitalism is the worst possible system. They seem to be unaware of just how brutal and awful life was under Manorialism / Feudalism. They seem to equate every modern ill with capitalism, even when it's something that was 1000x worse under say fascism.
I thought that had more to do with the rise in misogyny from men looking to blame something that isn't capitalism. I would say the the issue is more complicated then capitalism, but capitalism is definitely a major factor.
Look at just the advertisements in mainstream culture. Ads designed for men appeal to masochism, but modern society, or at least the white collar work that society tells men they want, has no need for manliness. You get this glitch in people's minds and men fall into a Man-o-sphere spiral. It's actually stunning how actuate Fight Club predicted types like Trump and Tate. Only real issue with Fight Club is that Tyler Durden had to have believable charisma. His real life counter parts have the charisma is a wet paper bag.
I'm not trying to argue the point of "capitalism good or bad", I just feel you misunderstood the posts you linked.
The first one does not say that misogyny in general is begotten by capitalism, just that the current problems that today's misogynists experience and attribute to women and feminism today are actually caused by today's ruling class under capitalism.
An the second one faults capitalism for enabling nazism, it does not say "it's not the fascists fault", but that "capitalists are fascists with the mask not yet fully off".
All I'm saying it's different arguments.
Hunger. What other form of economic system has kept people this fed? All communist countries have had famines mass killing their population.
The dust bowl ran a few thousand deaths in America compared to Mao's famine killing millions, Soviet famines killing millions every couple decades, the '90s North Korean famine killed God knows how many people. Americans get fed dogshit slop, but they don't starve.
It's kind of hard to critique communism when capitalism declares war against every instance that sprouts up
Mao was an idiot tho
I'd urge you to compare systems by comparing other factors as well. We know communism produced Stalin, but it produced Stalin as an alternative to the Tsars, who were not much better. The Chinese Empire was also not famous for its humanitarian values. We don't know how Socialist America would look like because it's never happened.
I'm not here to advocate for anything, to be honest I'm on the side of "let's solve actual fucking problems before arguing ideology", but I feel comparing the USSR to the US is a stupid comparison.