Funny how every time anyone talks about replacing capitalism everybody trots out the examples of innovation and competition as things we would lose. Meanwhile capitalists are over here doing their level best to sabotage innovation and buy or legislate their way out of competition so they can remain complacent in their dominant market position. ‘Won’t someone please think of the billionaires’ is wearing kinda thin when they’re actively undermining the purported benefits of their wanton exploitation and delivering nothing but stagnation and enshittification.
(Premise - suppose I accept that there is such a definable thing as capitalism)
Because people praising capitalism understand it just as badly as people blaming it for all problems, usually.
People blaming capitalism for everything then build a country that imports grain, while before them and after them it’s among the largest exporters on the planet (if we combine Russia and Ukraine for the “after” metric, no pun intended). There’s a common Soviet joke about Sahara, communism and deficits of sand. Or these people build a country which is “not capitalist” because there are no two corporations on its territory, only one, which is also the government, but its interactions with the rest of the world are like corporate b2b and their interactions with their citizens are like corporate cities in China. Or both. Or they don’t build anything and don’t react to grim reality, because it’s more pleasant to whine about climate change when their chances at good future are being murdered much faster in the political and social field.
People praising capitalism create conditions in which there’s no reason to praise it. Like, it’s competitive - they kill competitiveness with patents, IP, very complex legal systems. It’s self-regulating and self-optimizing - they make regulations and do bailouts preventing sick companies from dying, make laws after their interests, then reactively make regulations to make conditions with them existing bearable, which have a side effect of killing smaller companies. It’s voluntary - they intentionally create levers which mafias in control of governments use to introduce violent pressure as normal part of the system, thus slowly people owning huge chunks of economies are also members of ruling clans.
That’s the problem, both “socialist” and “capitalist” ideal systems ignore ape power dynamics. Both imply that humans act altruistically or in their own best interest in the framework of assumed moral borders. Except those borders don’t exist. Such systems should be designed on top of the fact that jungle law is always allowed, similarly governments and people and ideologies and your friends lie to you more often than they say truth. You can’t assume if you want to devise something with a chance to work.
(Premise - suppose I accept that there is such a definable thing as capitalism)
I’m not sure why you feel the need to state this in a discussion that already assumes it as a necessary precondition of, but, uh, you do you.
People blaming capitalism for everything then build a country that imports grain, while before them and after them it’s among the largest exporters on the planet (if we combine Russia and Ukraine for the “after” metric, no pun intended).
…what?
What does this have to do with literally anything, much less my comment about innovation/competition? Even setting aside the wild-assed assumptions you’re making about me criticizing capitalism means I ‘blame [it] for everything’, this tirade you’ve launched into, presumably about Ukraine and the USSR, has no bearing on anything even tangentially related to this conversation.
People praising capitalism create conditions in which there’s no reason to praise it. Like, it’s competitive - they kill competitiveness with patents, IP, very complex legal systems. It’s self-regulating and self-optimizing - they make regulations and do bailouts preventing sick companies from dying, make laws after their interests, then reactively make regulations to make conditions with them existing bearable, which have a side effect of killing smaller companies.
Please allow me to reiterate: …what?
Capitalists didn’t build literally any of those things, governments did, and capitalists have been trying to escape, subvert, or dismantle those systems at every turn, so this… vain, confusing attempt to pin a medal on capitalism’s chest for restraining itself is not only wrong, it fails to understand basic facts about history. It’s the opposite of self-regulating because it actively seeks to dismantle regulations (environmental, labor, wage, etc), and the only thing it optimizes for is the wealth of oligarchs, and maybe if they’re lucky, there will be a few crumbs left over for their simps.
That’s the problem, both “socialist” and “capitalist” ideal systems ignore ape power dynamics.
I’m going to go ahead an assume that ‘the problem’ has more to do with assuming that complex interacting systems can be simplified to ‘ape (or any other animal’s) power dynamics’ than with failing to let the richest people just do whatever they want.
Such systems should be designed on top of the fact that jungle law is always allowed
So we should just be cool with everybody being poor so Jeff Bezos or whoever can upgrade his megayacht to a gigayacht or whatever? Let me say this in the politest way I know how:
LOL no.
Also, do you remember when I said this?
‘Won’t someone please think of the billionaires’ is wearing kinda thin
You know, right before you went on this very long-winded, surreal, barely-coherent ramble? Did you imagine I would be convinced by literally any of it when all it amounts to is one giant, extraneous, tedious equivalent of ‘Won’t someone please think of the billionaires?’
Simp harder and I bet maybe you can get a crumb or two yourself.
You write many words yet fail at basic reading comprehension. Typical for communists, by the way. One can’t compensate inability to think with verbosity.
Hmm, obvious troll is obvious. My apologies for assuming that you were merely confused rather than confused and malicious. I won’t make that mistake again.
Yeah the whole “capitalism fuels innovation” thing is dead. Anyone that still believes this is braindead. It optimizes towards killing competition by any means, not innovating.
Funny how every time anyone talks about replacing capitalism everybody trots out the examples of innovation and competition as things we would lose. Meanwhile capitalists are over here doing their level best to sabotage innovation and buy or legislate their way out of competition so they can remain complacent in their dominant market position. ‘Won’t someone please think of the billionaires’ is wearing kinda thin when they’re actively undermining the purported benefits of their wanton exploitation and delivering nothing but stagnation and enshittification.
(Premise - suppose I accept that there is such a definable thing as capitalism)
Because people praising capitalism understand it just as badly as people blaming it for all problems, usually.
People blaming capitalism for everything then build a country that imports grain, while before them and after them it’s among the largest exporters on the planet (if we combine Russia and Ukraine for the “after” metric, no pun intended). There’s a common Soviet joke about Sahara, communism and deficits of sand. Or these people build a country which is “not capitalist” because there are no two corporations on its territory, only one, which is also the government, but its interactions with the rest of the world are like corporate b2b and their interactions with their citizens are like corporate cities in China. Or both. Or they don’t build anything and don’t react to grim reality, because it’s more pleasant to whine about climate change when their chances at good future are being murdered much faster in the political and social field.
People praising capitalism create conditions in which there’s no reason to praise it. Like, it’s competitive - they kill competitiveness with patents, IP, very complex legal systems. It’s self-regulating and self-optimizing - they make regulations and do bailouts preventing sick companies from dying, make laws after their interests, then reactively make regulations to make conditions with them existing bearable, which have a side effect of killing smaller companies. It’s voluntary - they intentionally create levers which mafias in control of governments use to introduce violent pressure as normal part of the system, thus slowly people owning huge chunks of economies are also members of ruling clans.
That’s the problem, both “socialist” and “capitalist” ideal systems ignore ape power dynamics. Both imply that humans act altruistically or in their own best interest in the framework of assumed moral borders. Except those borders don’t exist. Such systems should be designed on top of the fact that jungle law is always allowed, similarly governments and people and ideologies and your friends lie to you more often than they say truth. You can’t assume if you want to devise something with a chance to work.
I’m not sure why you feel the need to state this in a discussion that already assumes it as a necessary precondition of, but, uh, you do you.
…what?
What does this have to do with literally anything, much less my comment about innovation/competition? Even setting aside the wild-assed assumptions you’re making about me criticizing capitalism means I ‘blame [it] for everything’, this tirade you’ve launched into, presumably about Ukraine and the USSR, has no bearing on anything even tangentially related to this conversation.
Please allow me to reiterate: …what?
Capitalists didn’t build literally any of those things, governments did, and capitalists have been trying to escape, subvert, or dismantle those systems at every turn, so this… vain, confusing attempt to pin a medal on capitalism’s chest for restraining itself is not only wrong, it fails to understand basic facts about history. It’s the opposite of self-regulating because it actively seeks to dismantle regulations (environmental, labor, wage, etc), and the only thing it optimizes for is the wealth of oligarchs, and maybe if they’re lucky, there will be a few crumbs left over for their simps.
I’m going to go ahead an assume that ‘the problem’ has more to do with assuming that complex interacting systems can be simplified to ‘ape (or any other animal’s) power dynamics’ than with failing to let the richest people just do whatever they want.
So we should just be cool with everybody being poor so Jeff Bezos or whoever can upgrade his megayacht to a gigayacht or whatever? Let me say this in the politest way I know how:
LOL no.
Also, do you remember when I said this?
You know, right before you went on this very long-winded, surreal, barely-coherent ramble? Did you imagine I would be convinced by literally any of it when all it amounts to is one giant, extraneous, tedious equivalent of ‘Won’t someone please think of the billionaires?’
Simp harder and I bet maybe you can get a crumb or two yourself.
You write many words yet fail at basic reading comprehension. Typical for communists, by the way. One can’t compensate inability to think with verbosity.
Hmm, obvious troll is obvious. My apologies for assuming that you were merely confused rather than confused and malicious. I won’t make that mistake again.
Yeah the whole “capitalism fuels innovation” thing is dead. Anyone that still believes this is braindead. It optimizes towards killing competition by any means, not innovating.