Hi all,
I’m seeing a lot of hate for capitalism here, and I’m wondering why that is and what the rationale behind it is. I’m pretty pro-capitalism myself, so I want to see the logic on the other side of the fence.
If this isn’t the right forum for a political/economic discussion-- I’m happy to take this somewhere else.
Cheers!
It also infuriates me that when anyone says “I worked hard to build this business!” that they really are saying “I had to sacrifice my humanity to beg other people to do work that benefits me more than it benefits them.”
And then you look at their business and a portion of their work is simply trying to make sure the hired workers don’t ever stop working. The main reason being is because they want every last drop of productivity from their workers. The worker is not a person, they are an asset. Even if there’s nothing left to do their job is to then hastily grab the broom or something.
indeed - we went from having ‘personnel’ departments to having ‘human resources’ departments - the person has been entirely eliminated in an even referential manner
That’s not always true. Handymen, for example, often do much of the work and hire others only when needed. Entrepreneurs sometimes run their businesses all on their own selling products they personally designed.
The difference is that you often don’t achieve the higher levels of those professions being a one person team. At that point you need others to work for you and in only the most extreme cases does the profits get spread evenly.
Now don’t get me wrong, the owner of the business does take on responsibilities and risks the employees don’t but at some point you’d expect those costs to drop down to nearly nothing. Instead the business grows, more risk and all the employees stay at the level of benefit while the owner’s benefit increases.
Your last sentence made me think. It’s not necessarily true that the employees’ benefit does not increase, but what if it didn’t?
Normally employees gain experience and the money to hopefully move away from their current position, but it’s a great point that capitalism has no response to positions of pure stagnation. I don’t think that the answer is communism, but introducing social systems around those edge cases in the economy is incredibly important.
I think your examples aren’t as “normal” as you think.
Yes one can gain experience but unless it’s experience to rise above your position it shouldn’t be viewed as a benefit. One would expect of you’re working in a kitchen to learn how to cook. The situations where you’re actually gaining from your job is when you gain experience that actually advances your career. I’ve interviewed a lot of people in many varying fields and this doesn’t happen as often as one would hope.
And the compensation is not anywhere close to allowing people to move out of their situation. I’ve moved out of state before and if it wasn’t for the fact my current job at the time allowed me to move and keep the same role it would have been extremely difficult. Financially we are talking moving costs, first/last/security on a new place, starting all utilities, etc and chances are your old place won’t refund anything. In 2015 moving two of us a state over and doing it all by myself (no movers) we were still looking at a couple grand once you include rentals, gas, etc. If you’re already living paycheck to paycheck that’s not even possible. Took me over a year of saving with a good paying job to not have that kill us.
Capitalism in no way makes the worker’s life easy. We pretend like they benefit from it but that’s only as far as their boss is willing to allow it.
I agree. The issue is that in the US capitalism already controls our government. Take healthcare for example. Let’s say we move to a single payer system. This would mean that the government would select some entity to define the costs of all medical procedures. And who do you think the current federal leaders are going to pick? Someone who is going to look out for those groups who currently line the pockets of the politicians such as Big Pharma and Big Medicine. Rather than saying the cost of materials for an arm cast comes to $10USD they will opt for every crazy extra the hospitals charge today. The $30 arm cast will become $300 because those who make the money on medical pay the politicians to allow them to continue to make money.
Now how do we do this with business and the economy. We currently see with capitalism that only in the extremely rare cases of monopolies does the government truly come in and enforce regulations. We have laws about pollution and yet they allow for Cap and Trade rather than just forcing everyone to be good. We see labor laws that stop horrible things from happening but God forbid they pass a tax bill that says “you must spend this rebate on your employees direct paychecks.” Nope it all goes to shareholders. Our government is impotent and cannot actually help the middle class. At least not in it’s current state.
I don’t know. I get way more done and thus better money working for somebody who knows how to deal with all the bullshit like legal issues, marketing and sales.
Nobody has a problem with people being specialized or having roles. If anything anti-capitalist rhetoric is rooted in making sure all specialized roles get paid well instead of just the ones at the top.
We all need garbage collectors and sewage treatment workers but for some reason we want to pretend those working these jobs deserve to be paid less than executives make in a day.
The idea that workers, the people who are actually making a product, should have (at the very least) a stake in owning the means of that production, should be self-evident. There is an entire class of people, who have all the power and money, that are essentially unnecessary middle men that add nothing of value to society.
And somehow, they’ve convinced most of the world that we should be grateful for it.
I’m sure most of the world think differently if they had the time to think and discuss the underpinnings of our society. Most people are getting home off a 9 hour shift and don’t want to read about philosophy even if they had endless free time.
However, as far as I know, every communist experiment has replicated a class system based on the prestige of one’s occupation. A cleaner wasn’t quite the same person as a high-ranking member of the communist party in Soviet Union, for instance.
I’m very interested in learning about theories how to circumvent such structures and systems from happening. It seems to me like it cannot be done with our current species, and communist theory definitely wasn’t enough to counter that (apparently) natural process.
So if you are ever critical of capitalism you’re part of whatever communist experiment you’re talking about?
Seems like quite the assumption and justification for the world being unjust. Capitalist realism isn’t something you should fly as a defense of capitalism, it just shows you aren’t willing to be critical of it and therefore have to be critical of something that many could argue never existed as Marx even said communism can’t really exist unless everyone is living in a stateless and classless society.
Might I add it’s really wild you think the economic system that has existed for maybe 200 years of the hundreds of thousands of human existence as natural.
I mean… you made lots of good points and then you end with this:
Don’t do that. It invalidates your message.
Sorry, was an attempt to come off as light hearted and not a pedantic asshole but I think you’re right and it makes me seem more the latter.
Division of labor and delegation can be good things. The problem is tying that to incentive structures and tying those incentive structures to the most basic necessities of human life.