Why do some people defend the billionaires and capitalism?

They really think billionaires are like them, the only difference is that someone else goes to Walmart for them

Or they take capitalism as good and freedom as an axiom.

I believe your comments is just a paraphrase of: "They are being stupid"

In my opinion this is a very toxic way of thinking and does not try to understand the arguments "the other side" presents.

It's the American dream. What is the quote? We're all embarrassed potential millionaires?

This has been studied, and the ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaires’ idea is actually wrong.

The real reason is because some people (especially conservatives, because it’s a core part of conservative ideology) believe that in order for society to work, a hierarchy must be maintained wherein the ‘deserving’ are at the top, and everyone else is in their rightful place. Any threat to the natural hierarchy will undo the societal order and bring chaos and carnage.

This is why Obama becoming president was such an affront – because his presence outside his ‘rightful place’ was an existential threat to the natural order.

This belief has its roots way back when feudalism began to fail and the moneyed classes needed to find a new way to retain their power – both capitalism and conservatism were born at that time, with ideologies shifting from birthright to ‘earned’ status, which enshrined the haves and have-nots into literally sacred structures of meritocracy and social darwinism, and colonialists specifically fostered strict adherence to the social order. It became ingrained culturally that adhering to your station, whatever it is, is crucial for society to function. That there’s honour in being a cog in the machine, and that not accepting your lot in life is a danger to everyone. (eta: this is mostly subconscious, but you can see it if you ask ‘why’ enough times of someone who idolises Musk, for example. You’ll eventually whittle them down to these themes.)

That’s a nutshell view of a complicated topic, but these people don’t believe they’ll strike gold one day. They believe people who are rich deserve to be treated as kings, for the same reason monarchist peasants did.

A slave doesn't dream to be free, but to be a king

The idea of meritocracy is such a bullshit lie it's laughable. We need it so our children don't live in a world without hope but much like santa claus they should shed the idea around the time of college. There are merit based reward systems. Ladder climbing is real. Only, many of them are corrupted by politics and mismanagement. Even if you succeed in an isolated merit based system it's only to incentivize more production and you will never reach the level of CEO or what ever.

What we should teach young adults is that life is a lottery inside a lottery inside a lottery. Success is about increasing your odds by taking as many smart bets as you can. Bets where the reward is great and where you don't have much at stake if you lose. Betting with other people's money is the most efficient way of extracting value. The meritocracy isn't real, so neither is the morals around it. If you want nothing but an easy life this is how you do it. If your can't in good conscious gamble with other people's livelihoods we will see you on the ladder.

I think decentralization of power is a nice feature too. Billionaires are power centers outside of the government, judiciary, or military. They exist as a result of lax control on the markets by the government. In countries without capitalism and property rights, the billionaires are the government and the judiciary and the military. So, even though it might seem like nationalizing their wealth would decrease inequality, if there aren't good safeguards for decentralizing government power, it would result in a less equal society.

Part of the existence of billionaires is the ability to actually determine which money is theirs. In autocratic governments, you can't really say who owns what because you never know what the government might decide to take.

I don't defend billionaires, I think power should be spread more fairly, but eliminating them via the government needs to be done wisely in order to maintain decentralization.

Pretty sure they'd take everything you just wrote and say, "that sounds like critical race theory, which Jesus said was bad."

It doesnt even require that much reading of such subjects. All it takes is to not be brainwashed by media and politicians.

Critical thought and self awareness is all it takes

I guess the central premise of capitalism is that while every society has its haves and have nots, capitalism is supposed to encourage the haves to invest in the economy rather than hoarding their wealth. In return, they stand to get even wealthier, but a stronger economy ought to generate more employment and generally improve the lives of commoners as well.

Nitpicky, but that's the premise of Liberalism, not Capitalism. Capitalism emerged not because it was an idea, but an evolution in Mode of Production. Liberalism is the ideological justification.

Unfortunately, in a never-ending quest to make wealth-generation more efficient and streamlined, employment is being eliminated through automation, outsourcing, etc. and the system is eating itself out from the inside. I doubt it can persist much longer, but what will replace it remains unclear. I pray that it will be something sensible that ensures everyone has their basic needs met and can still find rewarding pursuits in life. But there are so many ways it could go very wrong, and that includes staying on the current course.

Have you read Marx? He makes the case that due to Capitalism's tendency to centralize and form monopolist syndicates with internal planning, the next mode of production is Socialism, ie public ownership and planning of the syndicates formed by the market system.

Your username on a post about capitalism makes me giggle

I like how these pretty neatly map to the three I gave for defending billionaires, even though they're worded very differently and probably thought of completely independently. We even ordered them the same way.

People who defend billionaires either have a vested interest, have actually bought that they’re 1000x smarter than normal people, or have some (possibly vague) abstract moral position that overrules the basic idea of fairness. Often it’s more than one.

I suppose the 1000x smarter thing isn't the only propaganda reason given, but I'd say meritocracy is by far more pronounced than inherent property rights or red-baiting in today's mainstream media. People who go with the latter two tend to learn it through personal connections.

Because the average person doesn't have any real time to think deeply about politics.

Because the economic elites have engineered it that way.

They flooded the workplace with double the workers (both men and women), thereby depressing wages and forcing both parents to become wage earners to survive. Then, with both parents working outside the house, childcare and chores sucked up all available free time, and even more household costs went towards outside help (daycares, etc.).

Then they began a tradition of kicking children out of the house when they became adults, thereby putting strain on infrastructure and increasing the demand for housing.

Then they began a push for higher education, thereby saddling young adults with ridiculous amounts of debt at the point of their lives when they could least afford to shoulder said debt.

All this makes us extremely time poor and resource poor, such that we cannot afford the head space to consider anything beyond where we put the next step or two that we make. As a society, the common man becomes far too busy just treading water to be concerned about in which direction they should swim.

As such, most people take massive amounts of cognitive shortcuts, relying far too much on things spoon-fed to them from the very news sources that should be unbiased and impartial, but which are nearly always owned by the Parasite Class, which favour deeply regressive conservative policies that benefit only themselves at the expense of the common person.

And most people don’t think deeply not because they cannot be bothered to think for themselves, but rather because they have far too much on their plate to afford to do so. They quite literally would mentally burn out if they were to do so.

my retirement is non-existent

This is the answer, right here

I think more important than that, is the reason for liberalism, which is the base, ie the Mode of Production.

There are however a lot of problems with capitalism and should be held on a very short leash. Or else monopoly happens. The most effective actions to keep capitalism at bay: strong anti-trust laws, strong worker protection (this includes a lot of stuff), wealth tax.

Capitalism eats the leash, you can't avoid this.

The PRC is absolutely a viable alternative, it's a Socialist Market Economy that has been steadily transfering Private Property into Public Property as markets coalesce into monopolist syndicates, which are then capable of central planning.

I think the real issue is that no viable alternative is presented to most people.

As Marx said, "the ideas of ruling class are the ruling ideas"

The alternatives presented are Russian-style authoritarian oligarchy, Islamofascism, or a Venezuela-style “socialism” in which the narrative only focuses on poverty.

Funnily enough you are proof of your previous statement above. The ruling class is presenting any, both better or worse alternatives to you in such form that you immediately dismiss them.

Excellent answer and I'll also jump off this to say this applies to marginalized groups just as much as anyone else, in a way I see a lot of people forget all about. Some percentage of marginalized people, through being in the right place and/or putting themselves there, do experience upward mobility through capitalism and therefore identify with it.

People forget that queer conservatives exist, but think about a gay couple with a lot of wealth, living a fairly standard nuclear family existence with an adopted kid or two, integrated into a society that probably still doesn't fully trust them but sees enough signifiers of "normality" that they're willing to let it slide. Which side of the political divide benefits them the most to align with? And what ideological principles will they come to internalize in the long term? Might they come to see themselves as somehow different or better than others in their marginalized community?

I'm getting tired of the fluff pieces expressing shock at the fact that some % of black voters are conservative, clutching their pearls at the thought of that number increasing, and speculating about black churches and "social conservatism." While also completely disregarding the fact that black voters have always leaned left yet are also affected by some of the same political shifts that every other demographic is. Our first loyalty is generally to our class.

The American Dream” was when everybody could afford everything on minimum wage but capitalism

Everybody except blacks of course...

Gold age of America wasn't golden for everybody.

And after civil rights the regime punished the whites for siding with the blacks. So now we are all field ******

Which is why the conservative mandate is to defund education and keep people as ignorant as possible.

I mean, to keep the common man as ignorant as possible -- the children of the elites will always go to prohibitively expensive Montessori schools, which will better prepare them for critical thinking and bullshit detection so that they may better rule over and parasitize off the common man.

I genuinely want to know from those that defend them.

Pretty sure its fishing.

Socialism is the successful successor to Capitalism. Socialism isn't an idea you implement, but a consequence of markets coalescing into monopolist syndicates that make themselves ripe for public ownership and planning.

People will find ways to accrue wealth and power even if you change the rules of the game. Sometimes people on this platform make it sound like socialism or communism can solve our problems. but it's not that simple.

Blaming individuals produced by the system and not the system itself is strange. That's like saying the IDF isn't the problem, the soldiers are.

Can you name a billionaire who doesn't match that description?

ones that used shady methods to amass their wealth.

Can you provide an example of one who didn't?

I guess there some celebrities now in that club... But I can't even get behind these regime removed. They have no solidarity with the people from which they leech

Liberalism doesn't exist because of moral failures of individuals, but because the Mode of Production supports the laws, ideology, art, culture, etc. that exist from it.

I defend capitalism NOT because I want to fit in, but because it is the right thing to do.

Talk about a hot take haha

I defend capitalism because it is the most equitable and productive economic system that has ever existed, lifting more people out of poverty than ever before.

Incorrect, Socialism gets that honor, the PRC is responsible. Read Socialism Developed China, Not Capitalism.

Free markets create space for those who don’t fit in. As an autistic person, I appreciate a world where I can find a way to survive other than convincing a committee that I deserve to exist.

This is an absurd strawman of central planning.

Under a free market, one gets rich by providing value. Economic relations are mutually consensual. That’s the definition.

Even more absurd. Individuals get wealthy by exploiting laborers. Economic relations are enforced by the system itself, not consent. The Laborers must work to not starve.

What is called “capitalism” these days is, generally speaking, the places where the free market has broken down. Slaves aren’t a free market scenario. Only having one available job isn’t a free market scenario. Big corporations controlling the government to prevent their competition from surviving or arising isn’t a free market scenario.

Yep, Capitalism defeats itself. You can't turn the clock back.

All the “worst aspects of capitalism” that people complain about are exactly the aspects of the world that most resemble capitalism’s alternatives like anarchy and centralized command economies.

Correct, Capitalism socializes itself and paves the way for central planning.

We need more free market, not less. We need to let people buy a pack of cigarettes and then sell them for $2 a pop to make a profit, not kill them for doing this.

An absurd comparison and a strange call to go back in time to less developed Capitalism.

The anti-capitalist hate is the result of decades of anti-working class propaganda that has made generations of people dedicated to destroying the very thing that gives them hope and possibility in the world.

Capitalism's decay.

Biggest psy op in history, as Marx himself would be the first to recognize if he were alive and commenting today. I defend capitalism NOT because I want to fit in, but because it is the right thing to do.

Marx would be elated to be proven correct.

If wealth is accumulated due to merit, why does wealth tend to accumulate within families? Are these families somehow more meritorious than the rest of the population? Is it perhaps the multi-generational connections made in industry providing additional benefit to those families?

As for the free market, the FDA was formed because bakers in the free market realized that sawdust was cheaper than flour. The free market also requires perfect information to function correctly, but even if you have that how will it help if there is no better regulation. Once upon a time the only kind of match you could buy were made with white phosphorus, despite how dangerous it was to work with. It took regulation to switch to red phosphorus, even though the expense was only slightly higher.

What's your take on this video?

'Is capitalism actually reducing poverty?' w/ Richard Wolff

https://youtu.be/Co4FES0ehyI

The simple fact is that capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty historically than anything else.

This is patently false, the PRC holds that record and it was due to Socialism, not Capitalism.

Not true. Here you go..

https://youtu.be/Co4FES0ehyI

In late-stage capitalism, they are.

Except without regulation businesses will do what they want and that usually isn't the best thing for society.

We need a well regulated capitalistic society

For every person who is "super rich", thousands, if not millions, will go through strife and unfair hardship

Well you are not going to be super rich, and even if you were, there probably would be tons of people who have to live in hell 24/7 in order for you to be super rich.

Lack of good examples of countries that are successful without being capitalist?

There are many. The USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, etc. Have all drastically improved on previous conditions, achieving large increases in life expectancy, democratization, literacy rates, access to healthcare, housing, education, and more. Read Blackshirts and Reds.

Pretty ubiquitously non-capitalist countries have a pretty poor track record.

This is false. What are you specifically tracking? Freedom for the bourgeoisie?

I often hear the phrase, capitalism is terrible, but it's the least bad of the terrible options.

The phrase is typically used to describe democracy, not Capitalism.

As an aside, I'm arguing here for capitalism, not billionaires. Supporting capitalism isn't an endorsement of a complete lack of controls and safeguards.

It doesn't matter what you support, the Superstructure, ie laws and safeguards, comes primarily from the Base, ie the Mode of Production.

Markets move themselves regardless of people's will towards centralized syndicates, monopolies over production. These make themselves ripe for siezure and central planning, markets themselves prepare the proletariat for running a socialized economy as they coalesce over time. This is why Marx says the bourgeoisie produces "above all else, its own gravediggers." There is no maintaining Capitalism, it eliminates itself over time.

Socialism has been proven to do far more for its citizens than Capitalism. Capitalism is just a phase in development, Socialism supercedes it.

Do you want some salt with that boot?

Bootlicker

That's only because capitalists are deaf to reason and demonstrable facts.