this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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it is a requirement if you want to do that without oppessing brown people elsewhere.
the important thing is not socialism: it’s a government that deals with negative externalities
socialism tends to do better at that simply because often it often does better at long-term planning (but that’s not a given either), but capitalism without corporate bullshit, stock markets, etc (ie actual ownership over a business rather than just ownership over a vague thing where you’re only concerned with line goes up not long term business health) has pretty much the same drivers: long term sustainability and this holding others to account for their negative externalities
What you describe as "corporate bullshit" and "stock markets" are just a symptom of later stages of Capitalism. You cannot maintain the small stages forever, eventually they will coalesce into large firms and syndicates. You can't simply bust up monopoly either, manufacturing gets so complex that it needs to be done by large companies to handle the scale.
This process doesn't stop, though, it becomes better and more efficient to publicly own and plan these large firms as they get larger and larger. This is why Socialism is a necessity regardless.
i don’t disagree of course, and i wasn’t saying capitalism is the only way; i think capitalism like this is absolute trash as well… i’m simply saying that those qualities are neither intrinsic to, nor exclusively found in socialist systems
perhaps, but honestly i don’t think we’ve actually even tried. we jumped straight from feudalism to some form of capitalism to some socialism. we’ve never had a system that tried to keep things small - and i’m not saying we should either necessarily
but these arguments are all reasonably theoretical
socialism is perhaps part of a solution but dealing in absolutes is rarely ever correct
Corporate bullshit and stock markets and whatnot are magnified in impact and scale in Capitalist systems, surely that's relevant?
As for "trying to keep things small," that's been tried. Trust busting was attempted, protectionism has been attempted, but regardless of will, material processes continue.
As for Socialism being a necessity, it's true. It will have various forms, but eventually as production gains in complexity it necessitates public ownership and planning to continue to be efficient.