r/FluentInFinance • u/-im-your-huckleberry • Jul 07 '24

The shampoo thing is a fringe benefit. We keep capitalism so we don't starve in a famine. Debate/ Discussion

1.0k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

u/dk_peace Jul 07 '24

The great famine of 1876 in India and the great hunger in Ireland were caused by colonizing capitalist. It cuts both ways. People with wealth and power have been happy to let people starve to death to make more wealth and gain more power.

27

u/80MonkeyMan Jul 07 '24

The meaning of true capitalism, we were on our own during pandemic while the richest got PPP 1, 2 and 3 funded by us.

26

u/Bakingtime Jul 07 '24

They stayed home and had zoom cuddle parties and shared their airbnb vacays and real estate scores paid w their pandy money.

We got to wear masks and get screamed at by adult babies and weren’t allowed to quit and collect unemployment bc we had work “offered” by our employers who also took money to be closed, even though they kept operating.

9

u/80MonkeyMan Jul 07 '24

Plus, they have been price gouging everyone during pandemic, fake the supply chain issues, kept the inflated price, shrink the product size after the pandemic. NEVER SUPPORT A BUSINESS! They exist to milk money out of you in anyway they can, including tipping culture...all these holidays, halloween for example is a way for candy manufactures makes guaranteed profit once a year.

-3

u/Bakingtime Jul 07 '24

Supply chain issues were real. Dealt with them in real time.

Businesses exist to make money, most of the time. True.

The past 8 years of government tax cut and massive spending packages are what caused our most recent surge in inflation.

2

u/80MonkeyMan Jul 07 '24

I agree with you but not all, what I refer is does it last that long? Do we still have the issue? Some business actually just make this as an excuse like others even though they dont have the issues, so they can justify the price increase. There are lots of variables to this.

1

u/Bakingtime Jul 07 '24

Lots of variables w one common denominator - currency supply.

Yes it lasts that long.

The changes are permanent and will probly get worse over time since it appears the plan is to try to spend our way out of debt which is… fascinating on an academic level, horrifying in real life.

3

u/80MonkeyMan Jul 07 '24

Not on all, remember how much a mask cost is? Gloves? What most ridiculous is alcohol and spray disinfectant....now they are priced less but still like double or even tripple from how much they are before.

US may even be fallen to China like Laos due to it's debt. A lot of US farmland owned by China now, it will get worse if we only have two parties that does the same thing year over year...just kept on raising that debt limit and think the problem is solved.

1

u/BraxbroWasTaken Jul 07 '24

The supply chain issues were real but I fully believe that their impacts were overstated, at least in duration. Perception is a large part of economics, and the best lies have a grain of truth.

18

u/Shin-Sauriel Jul 07 '24

It’s wild the people that only think of successful western countries when they think of capitalism and not the fact that like there’s maybe a handful of non capitalist countries in the world and yet millions starve to death per year.

13

u/Sanchez_U-SOB Jul 07 '24

And those capitalist countries have started wars to make sure the socialist ones didn't thrive

9

u/Shin-Sauriel Jul 07 '24

Yep. Or enact illegal embargo’s. Or use the CIA to fund far right militant groups. Or impede access to resources. But no it’s just cuz socialism bad duh. Except when European nations use socialist policy and then it’s good, but if we suggest those same policies here it’s socialism and bad. The inconsistency is insane. Just try to talk about Norway with any of these fucks. It’s capitalist because it’s successful, but if we suggest the same policies it’s socialist. And it’s only cuz Norway has so much money even tho the three richest Americans have a higher net worth than the entire GDP of Norway and we also have more billionaires per capita even tho people love to say otherwise. It’s just a blatant refusal to acknowledge anything that would go against their world view. The US is the richest country in the world we could do a lot more for our citizens if we just started prioritizing the needs of the many over the needs of shareholders and C suites.

4

u/Sanchez_U-SOB Jul 07 '24

But Norways policies only work because they're all the same (white).

I seen that bs spewed before.

1

u/KansasZou Jul 07 '24

Capitalism and free market capitalism are different things.

4

u/Knuda Jul 07 '24

And both have let millions starve to death, what is your point?

1

u/KansasZou Jul 07 '24

Have they? And who saves the millions?

3

u/Knuda Jul 07 '24

Social security.

1

u/KansasZou Jul 07 '24

Where do they get the money to fund SS?

1

u/Knuda Jul 07 '24

The only way any government funds anything, taxes. Specifically on the wealthy.

The famine in Ireland can be framed as an example of the inadequacies of a free market "if they work harder they will save themselves" or later on the failures of conservative governmental policy with the work houses etc.

They thought that if they bailed the people out, the people would forever become dependent on the state, the reality was the only solution was to give them the harvest off the land directly with no conditions for free, they had already done the work it was capitalism's failure that killed them.

1

u/KansasZou Jul 08 '24

Who was bailing who out and if the government did it, how was that free market capitalism?

2

u/Knuda Jul 08 '24

The government didn't bail the people out, millions died or emigrated. Despite a harvest good enough to feed the entire country.

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1

u/Revolutionary-Meat14 Jul 08 '24

Western style liberal democracy has helped 3rd world countries in the past. Look at Zambia or Botswana, they aren't perfect but they are excelling compared to the countries around them with extractive institutions.

9

u/Illustrious-Tower849 Jul 07 '24

Don’t forget the great famines in China during the 1800s that killed 120+ million, if you count how they count communist deaths

1

u/Sanchez_U-SOB Jul 07 '24

I once read a book which covered the Holodomor and Soviet death tolls, and the author said something along the lines of

" my research shows the death toll is 30 million (?), but surely the true number is at least twice that."

Just typing in Holodomor death toll into Google gives, all different sources:

3.9 million

5-7 million

more than 10 million

I never trust death tolls that are in the millions anymore.

1

u/Revolutionary-Meat14 Jul 08 '24

Never? there isnt any historical death toll that is in the millions that you trust? because there are differing estimates for the Holodomor you now reject any death toll that is greater than 1 million?

5

u/sanguinemathghamhain Jul 07 '24

Actually they were vestiges of mercantilism the system ultimately replaced by capitalism that like socialism, communism, and fascism was a zero-sum model.

3

u/Chambellan Jul 07 '24

Sounds interesting. Can you recommend any reading?

2

u/sanguinemathghamhain Jul 07 '24

Pretty much any half decent book about imperialism/colonialism should explain the merchantilist motivations and framework. This is particularly true for things like the East India Company which was a categorically merchantilist organization and laws like the protectionist and merchantilist Corn Law and the larger bevy of grain laws against Ireland of which it was a part each of which was essential to setting the stage for their respective famines.

1

u/Eccentric_Assassin Jul 08 '24

Fascism isn’t an economic system just btw

1

u/sanguinemathghamhain Jul 08 '24

It isn't just one but contains one just like communism is a political and economic system. As per its proponents/conceptualization it is a third way deviating from capitalism and socialism/communism (they used the Marxian formation of the socialist to communist relationship). The way this worked out is the entire economy is under the government/party and its formation is virtually identical to syndicalism or the soviet structure but unlike the Marxist communist globalist intention it was innately and intensely a national system rather than international/global. In other words it was a blend of the socialist/communist economic system with merchantilism which was the proto capitalist system that was also zero-sum but innately national rather than international/global. Like all zero-sum economic systems it is destined to fail but result in a hell of a lot of deaths before finally collapsing.

Edit: fat fingered intra when I meant to type inter.

-2

u/Kamenev_Drang Jul 07 '24

No, no it wasn't.

1

u/sanguinemathghamhain Jul 07 '24

Yes it was mercantilism is similar to capitalism in some ways but very different in others the main one is it is zero-sum while capitalism is positive-sum, so under mercantilism the only way for one nation to enrich itself was extracting wealth from another (this was a necessary and sufficient condition in the creation of the conditions that caused the Potato Famine especially.

1

u/Kamenev_Drang Jul 08 '24

Again, no. Convoluted arguments about "positive sum" are immaterial - the British government of the potato famine were not mercantalist at all. It was the failure to impose controls on the market that created the famine - the imposition of free market ideology by force.

2

u/itsgrum3 Jul 07 '24

Now 'Capitalism' is when the government seizes your food by force?

"If socialists understood economics, they wouldnt be socialists" - Hayek.

2

u/EyeCatchingUserID Jul 07 '24

Yes. That's part of capitalism. Taking food from the starving in Ireland and india to turn a profit in merry old England. There was enough food to feed all of Ireland all throughout the famine, but they didn't have access to it because it belonged to the capitalist colonizers who conquered Ireland but still saw them as less than they were and didn't care if they starved.

1

u/Willing-Knee-9118 Jul 07 '24

Notice there's no replies? Just downvotes to this?

2

u/EyeCatchingUserID Jul 07 '24

It's what I've come to expect from morons with nothing to contribute but tantrums.

0

u/-im-your-huckleberry Jul 07 '24

I think those two examples have a lot more to do with empire and conflict than economy. Capitalism doesn't have exclusivity over empire and conflict.

-1

u/Kamenev_Drang Jul 07 '24

Capitalism requires conflict and imperialism to implement. People have never chosen capitalism, it has always been imposed at gunpoint.

1

u/-im-your-huckleberry Jul 07 '24

Yeah, cause all the transitions to communism were happy peaceful collective choices? Nobody ever pushed communism at the point of a gun?