Capitalism in one picture

[Professor Emeritus]

The biggest problem with "capitalism" is that nobody ever practices it....but acts like it's the best system ever.

Because all the biggest proponents of "capitalism" beg their governments for money to cover their risks and failures.

The people subsidize the health insurance industry. The automobile industry. The banking industry. The housing industry. The professional sports industry.
Everything.

So anyone who wants to sit here and ask "what system is better?"....first answer me why everyone ALWAYS socializes the risks and privatizes the profits? Because in a capitalistic system, this would never happen.

I wouldn't say that's the "biggest problem", it's just the problem that exposes the hypocrites.

If anyone practiced "perfect capitalism" where even the rich weren't protected, it wouldn't turn out any better, it would just be such an obvious failure that even the rich would realize the system was total shyt.

 

[Umoja]

Posted from the comfort of your own home and smart phone/computer

Negged

 

[CopiousX]

What, do you seriously think we wouldn't have homes or technology without capitalism?

I don't like duality they draw as if the only options are capitalism vs communism.

There are all sorts of mixes in-between. For example, such a scene is incredibly unlikely in the semi-socialist metropolises of Helsinki or Stockholm

 

[kwazzy100]

Posted from the comfort of your own home and smart phone/computer

something a cac would say

 

[Professor Emeritus]

American Christians don't follow the teachings of Jesus. Capitalism and bigotry are their two main beliefs

You familiar with "American Civil Religion"? It's the real faith followed in America. Bears no semblance to Christianity other than the fact that lip service to Christian identity is one of its principles.

Other principles of allegiance/deification of the Constitution, allegiance to the flag, patriotism, respect for tradition and elders, professed belief in God, belief that freedom is granted by God via government, belief in American exceptionalism, pro-democracy, pro-capitalism, and basically all forms of "God bless America".

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Posted from the comfort of your own home and smart phone/computer

It's giving the elon musk "You criticise the way I run twitter as an active member using the same app to criticise me" energy

pro capitalist folks are not the most logical people

I remember back in the 1990s, how conservatives claimed that Black poverty is a myth because most inner-city homes still have TVs and refrigerators, which "Only the rich had 60 years ago".

Now the claim is that someone in a 3rd-world slum doesn't know "real" poverty cause they own a smart phone or have 24/7 electricity.

It's a moronic concept. "Technology advances over time, therefore poverty doesn't exist!"


I guess someone living in a mud hut isn't really poor if his ancestors were hunter-gatherers sleeping on the barren ground.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

I don't like duality they draw as if the only options are capitalism vs communism.

There are all sorts of mixes in-between. For example, such a scene is incredibly unlikely in the semi-socialist metropolises of Helsinki or Stockholm

Or anti-Marxist socialists like Peter Kropotkin or Martin Luther King Jr.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

If you're white and broke in America it's your own fault

Get a broader view of America breh. There are communities who are poor as fukk and don't have a single Black person. Their schools are shyt, their health care is shyt, their communities have no jobs, and the social fabric has crumbled. Some kid growing up in a community like that doesn't just magically pull themselves up by their bootstraps, even if they're white. Imagine your dad unemployed and possibly absent, your mom hooked on opioids that a paid-off corporate doctor prescribed her unnecessarily, unemployment is over 10% cause the factories left decades ago, schools and hospitals can't stay staffed cause no one with an education wants to live there. If everyone around you is white, then white supremacy doesn't have any direct impact on whether you can provide for your family or have a reasonable social safety net. You're still at the bottom in your community.

Owsley County in Kentucky is 98% white and has a median family income of $19,000. You think you can grow up there and not be impacted by the poverty?

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Read about this earlier today

Meet Strange Metals: Where Electricity May Flow Without Electrons | Quanta Magazine

For 50 years, physicists have understood current as a flow of charged particles. But a new experiment has found that in at least one strange material, this understanding falls apart.

www.quantamagazine.org

So many brilliant scientists and mathematicians basically went to chase the money.

YES.

I'm afraid this is going to get ignored because most people don't get the point.

I was educated alongside a lot of the most brilliant minds in America. When I graduated, they were all going into the defense industry because that's where all the jobs were. A couple years after that, they were all going to search engines and social media. A couple years after that, they were all becoming quants for Wall Street.

The vast majority of really bright people end up chasing money, just like everyone else. And if capitalism is directing the money towards ends which are not socially beneficial, then those smart people end up with an entire career of using their brains for nothing good, and often something quite bad.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

no, i think he was referring to the daily lives of the populace. for example, the fact that people are willing to float 80 miles across the ocean in a car tire, to get out of cuba and into florida

Why not compare like to like? Take a look at communist american-oppressed Cuba versus capitalist american-supported Haiti in the same time period. One of them was vastly better than the other.

I don't like communism, and I don't like Castro (or even Che), and I don't like totalitarian governments. "Some" of the people who left Cuba did so due to legit persecution, which was bullshyt. But at the same time, it's undeniable that Cuba had vastly better education and health care than any other independent nation in the Caribbean, and had life expectancies and health indicators similar to the USA despite being under a massive trade embargo and vastly poorer as a result. And that wasn't because of the totalitarianism.

Cuba was straight up training and supplying doctors to countries all around it, while the USA's health system would collapse if it wasn't for the constant inflow of doctors and nurses from other countries. Why is that?

 

[the cac mamba]

Why not compare like to like? Take a look at communist american-oppressed Cuba versus capitalist american-supported Haiti in the same time period. One of them was vastly better than the other.

I don't like communism, and I don't like Castro (or even Che), and I don't like totalitarian governments. "Some" of the people who left Cuba did so due to legit persecution, which was bullshyt. But at the same time, it's undeniable that Cuba had vastly better education and health care than any other independent nation in the Caribbean, and had life expectancies and health indicators similar to the USA despite being under a massive trade embargo and vastly poorer as a result. And that wasn't because of the totalitarianism.

Cuba was straight up training and supplying doctors to countries all around it, while the USA's health system would collapse if it wasn't for the constant inflow of doctors and nurses from other countries. Why is that?

 

[Professor Emeritus]

[When a poor person criticizes capitalism]

Capitalist bootlicker: "You're just criticizing it because you're poor and jealous. Maybe it's you who needs to do better."


[When a rich person criticizes capitalism]

Capitalist bootlicker: "Oh, look at you criticizing from your ivory tower, you know nothing about poverty! Why don't you give up your wealth if you don't like it?"


[When a rich person gives up their wealth to fight in protest of capitalism]

Capitalist bootlicker: "What an idiot, you should have used to wealth as leverage to push for the changes you want, now you've fukked up and want everyone else to do it for you."


[When a person from outside the capitalist society criticizes capitalism]

Capitalist bootlicker: "What do they know about us, they don't even live in a capitalist country!"


There's literally no position from which capitalists will accept that criticism of capitalism is valid. It doesn't matter if you're a businessman, an academic, an activist, a religious person, a philosopher, young or old, rich or poor, living in a capitalist or socialist country.....no matter WHO you are, they will find an excuse to discredit your critique without even dealing with it.

where did we as humanity go wrong for you to get comfortable in your apathy like this

That poster is the purest distillation I have ever seen of this meme:

So far as I can tell, he knows virtually nothing about any subject whatsoever, has never researched anything ever, may not have read a single book in his adult life, yet he brags that he has an above-average intellect and thinks he has the right answer for everything no matter how little he knows about it.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

people don’t even know what capitalism is.

Most people who say that will just make up whatever arbitrary definition suits their argument at the time.

Or not even offer a definition, because trolling with the claim was more important to them than actually defending it.


Personally, I think modern capitalism is defined by

* a financial system based on money created via loans granted with interest
* a legal system revolving around the strict protection of "private property" over community interests
* a labor system characterized by a large number of wage-earners who don't own the means of production and a much smaller class of capitalist owners who profit off of their labor
* large wealth disparities driven by a social system which ensures that the best of everything (education, health care, legal help, political power, etc) is available primarily to those who own more capital than everyone else.

I don't really care what you call it or how you define it. If you change those four things about it, I'll be happy.

 

[Jalether]

Ironically some of the capitalist bootlickers in here also complain about the rent and housing crisis in the country yet stan for the system that created this

Jeff Bezos-Backed Real Estate Company Launched A New Fund To Acquire More Single-Family Homes Across The U.S.

Many of the world’s largest investment firms have launched new funds over the past couple of years aimed at acquiring or building single-family homes to use as rentals. This comes as no surprise considering that the increased cost of buying a home has forced many Americans into being tenants...

finance.yahoo.com

Jeff Bezos-Backed Real Estate Company Is Launching A New Fund To Acquire More Single-Family Homes Across The U.S.​

"Many of the world’s largest investment firms have launched new funds over the past couple of years aimed at acquiring or building single-family homes to use as rentals"

 

[Jalether]

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Would you look at that, two of the biggest capitalist countries on earth, US and israel, have the highest poverty rates in the developed nations at 18% while two countries that practices a mix of capitalism and socialism, finland and Denmark, have the lowest rate at 5-6%

But capitlaist bootlickers remain adamant that the American model is the one to adopt