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What's a scam that's so normalized that we don't even realize it's a scam anymore? (lemm.ee)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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[–] 14 points 3 years ago (8 children)

Unregulated capitalism imo. I don't buy the idea I've seen around here that capitalism itself is the problem and switching to communism would solve all the problems. Both are systems that have merit, but when left unchecked all the power and money will go to the few, like we have now.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (3 children)

    If by "have merit" you mean "has some positive aspects", sure. Every system has merit. Slavery had merit (slave owners got cheap cotton). The Holocaust had merit (antisemites felt better). The issue is weighing the merit against the negatives. You can't just say two systems have positive aspects and call it a day.

    Are you a fan of democracy or authoritarianism? Capitalism is a system where productive forces are driven undemocratically, in the name of profit instead of by worker democracy. The commodification of everything exists in a world of private property:

    • our bodies (labor power)
    • our thoughts (intellectual property)
    • the specific ordering of bits on a hard drive you own (digital media, DRM)
    • the means of production (which exist as a result of collective knowledge, infrastructure, and labor)

    These things being commodified and privatized are ridiculous in any democratic, non-capitalist system.

    However, these ridiculous conditions are absolutely necessary in a capitalist society. Without them the system falls apart. And as society continues to progress, the situation gets more and more ridiculous.

    What about when AI "takes away" jobs for 50% of Americans (as in capitalists fire humans in favor of AI)? That'll collapse our society. Less work would be a good thing in any reasonable system, but not in capitalism. Less work is an existential threat to our society.

    If we ever have an AI that is as capable as humans are intellectually, the only work left for us will be manual labor. If that happens, and robots get to the point of matching our physical abilities, we won't be employable anymore. The two classes will no longer be owners and workers, they'll be owners and non-owners. At that point we better have dismantled capitalism, because if we don't then we'll just be starving in the street, along with the millions who die every year from starvation under the boot of global capitalism.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Everying in your comment can be solved with regulation. A capitalist society can enact socialist policies to take care of the lower class or unemployed. It's not a "pick one" situation.

    You're arguing against the unregulated capitalism we live in, but also comparing capitalism as it exists today to fuckin slavery is just a ridiculous false equivalence.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 child)

    I didn't compare capitalism to slavery. I said the word slavery. The first paragraph wasn't demonstrating a comparison, it was demonstrating a principle (principles are universalized, comparisons aren't). The idea that every system has positives, but those systems can still be horrifically bad.

    I don't know if it's emotion that's clouding your reading comprehension, I hope it is, because then you can calm down and have a reasonable conversation. If it's not, then this conversation isn't worth having because you won't understand half of what I'm saying. Literally 50% of your last message was you misrepresenting what I was saying.

    A capitalist society cannot enact socialist policies. It can enact "social" policies. These policies are inspired by socialism, and often advocated for by socialists, but the policies themselves are not socialist policies. Capitalism is an economic system where the means of production are privately owned, and socialism is an economic system where the means of production are socially owned. If private (not personal) property exists, it's not socialism. It's not necessarily capitalism (you could have other systems with private property), but in our world it always is.

    Welfare capitalism, where these social policies exist, is a well established ideology that has been around for about 80 years in any serious form, and yeah welfare can be used to address some of the negative tendencies of capitalism, but it doesn't fix them. It's applying a band-aid fix, not addressing the problem. In the real world what this means is there's a class of people always working to remove those regulations and welfare because their class interests are opposed to ours.

    Class distinctions cannot be solved with a regulation, they have to be solved with a societal restructuring. Our legal system does not support the idea of abolishing private property and by extension classes.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    IMO American style capitalism is completely broken, but that’s not the only way to run your economy and still call it capitalism. Particularly in the EU area companies don’t always have the upper hand. Consumers and employees have the kinds of rights Americans can only dream of.

    Don’t really know much about communism, but clearly USSR didn’t survive, and that may have something to do with the system. ML-people here can probably tell me how China, Cuba and other communist countries are doing today.

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  • [+] -23 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Arguably, socialism is a bigger scam given its history of failure.

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