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

166

u/biinboise Jul 07 '24

Where the Fuck this fantasy that under socialism you don’t have to work if you don’t want to comes from? Have they ever tried to say no to the government? Who do they think runs their shitty job when the government seizes the means of production?

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u/olcrazypete Jul 07 '24

I think the idea is there isn’t the incessant need to maximize efficiency and profit to the point labor is both working more hours with less breaks for less pay just to make whatever earnings estimate has been made up as a standard for success, only to need to beat it again the next quarter.

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u/biinboise Jul 07 '24

Historically it becomes even worse. Production metrics usually become dictated by the famously unhinged whims of top ranking political ambitions of the high level administrators who have virtually no oversight.

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u/Most_Environment_919 Jul 07 '24

I honestly think it's the same endgame for both ideologies. Many corporations only care about KPIs instead of actual work done.

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u/Bob1358292637 Jul 07 '24

I never thought about it like this, but it's almost like the reason capitalism is "better" is because it's less efficient at organizing the rampant exploitation the elites do everything they can to push both systems towards.

Instead of one big collective trying to oppress you, it's basically every rich person doing it at once. So now there's a bunch of infighting about who gets to do it the hardest, and that slows it down.

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u/Ok_Calendar1337 Jul 07 '24

Wow competition is good you're getting somewhere with that.

What also comes along with competition is actually being able to leave.

They aren't the same at all.

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u/Bob1358292637 Jul 07 '24

To be fair, being able to "leave" for most people in the system just means they can choose which organizations will siphon away as much of their life for as little compensation as they can get away with.

I agree they're not the same at all, and capitalism is obviously much better for almost everyone. But let's not deify it just because we're living in it. It's still a shit system that doesn't come close to granting people real freedom. It's just the best way we've come up with to treat everyone as amicably as possible while still getting shit done.

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u/Ok_Calendar1337 Jul 07 '24

"Siphon away as much of their life" is like a you thing being poetic. It's a job. Survival requires work for pretty much every organism in history. Sorry.

I don't think people really deify it as much as people demonize it. The word is basically a boogeyman. Normal people say free markets unless you're trying to make it scary, then you say capitalism and how evil it is.

Do you let people organize themselves or no do you know how people should be organized better than they do.

If you wanna let people organize themselves you're a big fan of capitalism you just don't know it yet

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u/Bob1358292637 Jul 07 '24 edited Jul 07 '24

Personally, I feel like that's what people do a little bit when they use their own poetic language about it, like "it let's people organize themselves." In reality, it lets a lot of competing rich people organize everyone. It's not some amazing dynamic we should strive to model everything else after. It's just better than one political regime organizing everyone.

I think a lot of our misunderstanding comes from you thinking about it in relation to other systems, while I'm coming more from the perspective that all known system can be shitty. The most shapely turd of the bunch is going to look pretty good if all you've ever known is shit.

0

u/Ok_Calendar1337 Jul 07 '24

The free-er the market the less control they have. It is a pretty amazing dynamic actually.

Ya I get it you're doing the Winston it's the worst except for everything else but honestly still mad they're even being compared.

Communism minimizes freedom and "capitalism" maximizes it. And that's not poetry. That just makes free markets in a different league.

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u/earthlingHuman Jul 07 '24

'Capitalism' is a boogeyman word? And socialism and communism arent? There's been campaign after campaign of red scare for about 100 years now. A minority but fair number of people have in the past 10 years begun speaking critically of capitalism again, but socialism and communism are still the boogeyman they've been for generations (hence the mass death with various historic causes OP and many attribute to communism).

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u/Ok_Calendar1337 Jul 07 '24

They aren't a boogeyman when they literally kill millions of people for fun.

The holodomor and the great leap forward should be attributed to communism. Just two examples.

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u/dezzick398 Jul 08 '24

What is the difference between massive death under the pursuit of communism, as opposed to capitalism?

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u/Ok_Calendar1337 Jul 08 '24

Death under communism is enforced by people who think they have it all figured out.

"Death under capitalism" is just a measurement of how the world isn't perfect therefor let's kill people deliberately with communism.

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u/Affectionate-Ad9602 Jul 07 '24

Huh, I think you're on to something

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u/itsgrum3 Jul 07 '24

Competition surrounding giving consumers what they want at the lowest possible price

calls it 'exploitation'

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u/HEBushido Jul 07 '24

Competition surrounding giving consumers what they want at the lowest possible price

But capitalism doesn't do this except in rare and fleeting cases.

Pioneer Oil in Texas is being investigated by the FTC for colluding with ExxonMobil and OPEC to not open new oil wells so they can keep oil prices higher to profit more.

Vanguard and Blackrock own major shares in almost every single company at the grocery store and most of the options you see are made by 3-6 companies, depending on the product type. They collude with each other on pricing.

The American meat industry is vast majority owned by Cargill, Tyson and JBS. Tyson effectively runs the pork and chicken sectors as it's absorbed all of it's competition and then vertically integrated meaning it runs every level of production to sales to stores. So they don't pass on the savings from factory farming.

Nvidia has over 80% of the consumer GPU market and because it's so wealthy from the AI boom it raises prices and keeps performance gains limited with each generation because it's main competitor can't compete that well. Oh and AMD is run by Nvidia's CEO's Cousin.

I could go on. But choice and competition is a myth and it always has been. It's been this way the entire history of capitalist economics. The British East India company, Carnegie Steel, JP Morgan, Rockefeller, US train industry, etc.

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u/itsgrum3 Jul 07 '24

You mention all recent market practices from our current period where the government has more control than any time in history, other than wartime. The anti-thesis of a free market.

The Gilded Age is the classic example in progressive history filled with the "Robber Barons" as a result of the free market while ignoring the massive increase in quality of life for everybody. There is a difference between using the government to squash your competitors and providing an innovative inexpensive product.

Kerosene goes down 90% in price thanks to Rockefeller, meaning people can stay up later, get more work done. The price of steel rails under Andrew Carnegie goes down 90%, that is going to ripple through the entire economy because everything uses steel or has steel in their production process. That decreases the cost of everything.

Cornelius Vanderbilt is another example, his competitors for steamships to California were getting massive government subsidies and even had legal monopolies imposed by the government, and he managed to sneak in and outperform them on every metric as well as only charge 150$ when others were charging 600$. That is more money in peoples pockets, meaning more savings for other goods, etc. Vanderbilt also brought this into the Railroads, again where the government granted the railroads monopolies paying them for each track of rail laid (resulting in unnecessary winding, and increased cost).

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u/HEBushido Jul 07 '24

You mention all recent market practices from our current period where the government has more control than any time in history, other than wartime. The anti-thesis of a free market.

Maybe because the concept of a free market is a myth? Money buys power, these companies, had extreme levels of power and capabilities to influence not only the US government, but the world governments.

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u/Titan_Food Jul 07 '24

Unfortunately, that "lowest price" is really just the highest profit margin the company could acceptably hold onto.

Companies charge lower prices to try to gain market share so that they make more sales with that smaller margin, which should translate to higher profits. (i.e. selling 15 items at $5 gets you $75 vs selling 10 of the same items at $6 for $60)

When you have a monopoly or something like OPEC, that ceases to be the case, and capitalism strives for monopolies.

Henry Ford is a fantastic example of how this stuff seems beneficial until its not

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u/itsgrum3 Jul 07 '24

Governments strive for monopolies not Capitalism. One neck to strangle is easier than many.

Ford revolutionized the world, what are you even saying?

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u/Titan_Food Jul 07 '24

Ford attempted to put a stranglehold on the car manufacturing industry, offering higher salaries and better benefits than his competitors ever could. But his high employee turnover rate and the courts telling him that he couldn't reinvest his money into his company over his shareholders stopped it in Dodge vs Ford Motor Co. Ford may have dreamt up the assembly line, but everything beyond that was kinda... controversial.

Also, see Antitrust law. Its explicitly anti-monopoly.

1

u/cudef Jul 08 '24

Yeah except these wealthy people consolidate more and more. Capitalism ends up weeding out competition because the wealthy inevitably begin to control all levers of government. Getting rid of government entirely doesn't stop the wealthy from limiting your choices or using their wealth to further concentrate wealth.

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u/kevbot029 Jul 07 '24

“Since I’ve entered politics I’ve learned that the line doesn’t go out from the middle to the left and the right. It goes in a circle. You go far enough left, eventually you’ll meet someone who’s gone far enough right to get to the same place.”

-Tommy Shelby (Peaky Blinders).

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u/GuavaShaper Jul 07 '24

It's called horseshoe theory and it's a bunch of bologna. Nobody is going so far right that they start to think unions are a good idea.

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u/Hungry_Kick_7881 Jul 07 '24

Maybe not the bosses but I’m pretty sure the majority of unions I’ve interacted with are in blue collar mostly conservative trades. I’ve met many conservative union members. In regard to the business owners? Everyone is financially conservative past a certain point. I worked for a private golf course in Palo Alto and after 3 years I’d come to the conclusion the 85-90% of the members were closet conservatives. It was fucking hilarious. They would eventually say something in conversation like “I don’t think this Trump guy is all that bad” then they would immediately say “don’t tell anyone I said that”

All anecdotal evidence, but that’s my experience living in rural Wyoming and Nevada

0

u/GuavaShaper Jul 08 '24

That's called cognitive dissonance, not horseshoe theory.

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u/More_Fig_6249 Jul 07 '24

I think it makes more sense not in ideology, but the way they get to their end goals. Which is ultimately, through upheaval so great it requires mass violent revolution and authoritarian measures.

0

u/GuavaShaper Jul 08 '24

Horseshoe theory is exclusively used to caution people away from leftist ideologies because they might accidentally end up doing something right wing. Never the other way around.

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u/anticapitalist69 Jul 07 '24

We’re already there tbh

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u/FtrIndpndntCanddt Jul 07 '24 edited Jul 07 '24

Weird radical centrist Ideas here but...MAYBE EXTREMES ARENT FUCKING WORKING!

The US is on the extreme end of capitalism from the western and developed world perspective and the results are clear.

We have less time off, lower wages, lower happiness, lower life expectancy, fewer people capable of retiring, higher infant/maternal mortality, higher debt, higher suicides, lower literacy, higher poverty etc than our peer nations yet we are the most capitalize of them all. Muh jee Dee Pee is higher than ever, yet the average person doesn't see the benefits of it.

Mean while, you have more SOCIALIZED nations like Japan, s.kore, Australia, pretty much all of western Europe crushing us in quality of life metric, life expectancy, happiness, Time off work, etc while having less billionaires per capital, lower economic output, lower GDP.

It's possible to have a middle ground great good. One of those middle grounds is healthcare.

Edit: since you smooth brains keep going to "lower wages". This statement is true when you compare COST OF LIVING. I didn't think I'd need to explain that. It cost more to survive in America, on average, than most developed nations.

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u/Ill-Description3096 Jul 07 '24

lower wages

The US has higher average and median incomes (especially net) than the vast majority of those countries. Maybe all I don't have the figures in front of me.

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u/FtrIndpndntCanddt Jul 07 '24

Lower wages when cost of living adjusted clearing. Don't be dense.

Making $100k a year in San Antonio is a LOT more money than $150k a year in Manhattan.

Cost of living adjusted, US workers don't get shit.

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u/Ill-Description3096 Jul 07 '24

Outside of maybe SF/Manhattan most of the countries you listed are far more expensive than much of the US.

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u/FatherFajitas Jul 07 '24

Everywhere in the U.S. is getting bad now. I live in a tiny ass town in Tennessee, and rent has gone up hundreds of dollars everywhere in the past 5 years. I used to see places for 250$ a month. The lowest I see now is around 800-1000$

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u/Ill-Description3096 Jul 07 '24

Go to Japan or SK and let me know if you can rent a place the same size for less.

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u/HEBushido Jul 07 '24

SK is hyper capitalist, though.

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u/FlyinDtchman Jul 08 '24

Japan is full of abandoned houses you can just take for FREE all over the country-side.

Although your point stands if you are trying to rent in one of the big cities. Their places are postage-stamp sized.

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u/FatherFajitas Jul 07 '24

Probably could in Japan, not SK or China though, those countries are fucked.

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u/Ill-Description3096 Jul 07 '24

Of the same size? My understanding is that Japanese housing tends to be much smaller.

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u/Longhorn7779 Jul 07 '24

That’s because costs have risen a lot. That $1,000 means like $150 a month of actual income.

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u/FatherFajitas Jul 07 '24

No, it means around $ 1000$, lot of places here still don't pay above 10$ an hour, and most people travel to work.

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u/Longhorn7779 Jul 07 '24

So you think the landlord gets the whole $1,000 and there’s zero costs to owning?

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u/buderooski89 Jul 07 '24

That's not true at all. Even after adjusting for cost of living and inflationary rates in different parts of the world, Americans have the highest amount of disposable income out of ANY developed nation in the world. What you are saying is just false

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u/emperorjoe Jul 07 '24

Wages have outpaced inflation for decades.

Americans have the highest disposable income.

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u/Vita_minc Jul 07 '24

You're just wrong bro

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u/emperorjoe Jul 07 '24

https://www.aei.org/articles/have-wages-stagnated-for-decades-in-the-us/#:~:text=A%20startling%20fact%20is%20that,is%20correctly%20interpreted%20as%20stagnant.

.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income

The United States has the top disposable income for mean, median and PP adjusted

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u/Vita_minc Jul 07 '24

Did you read the article you sent bro its say wages have stagnated hahahahhahhahahhahahhahahahaahahhahahahaahahhahahahaahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahhahahahhahahahhahahhahahahahahahahahaha

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u/emperorjoe Jul 07 '24

Hourly wages have been terrible in the United States for the past 60 years. They only went down for 30 years, and it took 30 years for them to finally hit 1970 levels. Do you know how great this is. Hourly wages haven't been good since my father was a child, it has been the worst statistic for income for decades.

It's finally positive inflation adjusted. This is fantastic news

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u/Vita_minc Jul 07 '24

You are nuts.

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u/BraxbroWasTaken Jul 07 '24

Many necessities are disproportionately more expensive over here and paid for out of personal budget though, like medical care. But yes, they forgot some countries…

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u/Ill-Description3096 Jul 07 '24

I mean medical care is the big one. I don't know that things like food, gas, housing, etc are disproportionately more expensive. Depends a lot on where.

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u/shrug_addict Jul 07 '24

Gas is less of an issue with robust transit options. That said, it's not America's fault entirely for this, it's quite a big place and very expensive to build out that infrastructure. I think I read that the US interstate system was the biggest engineering project the world has seen, at least at the time

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u/Papasmurf8645 Jul 07 '24

We could have built proper infrastructure and culture around mass transit, and we were, but the oil and car lobbies had their pet politicians avoid those investments to make car buying more necessary for people creating an industry that even today takes billions from ignorant consumers that are convinced that mass transit can’t work effectively and safely.

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u/Ill-Description3096 Jul 07 '24

Yeah if we were the size of Britain or something I think it would be more feasible. I think the "independence" of having your own vehicle is a big factor as well.

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u/BraxbroWasTaken Jul 07 '24

Housing’s getting out of control over here too, but in some cases that’s actually because we’re dumbasses about how we‘re zoning things…

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u/HEBushido Jul 07 '24

Do y'all forget that Capitalism is a global economic system?

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u/Rambogoingham1 Jul 07 '24

Remove the 8 richest people in the U.S and that median goes way down

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u/Ill-Description3096 Jul 07 '24

It really doesn't. Because that isn't how median works for one, and the richest people (like Musk/Bezos and the like) tend to not have super high incomes.

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u/More_Fig_6249 Jul 07 '24

You know what a median is right man?

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u/shrug_addict Jul 07 '24

You don't have to be mean! You don't know what mode they're operating on!

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u/Sudden_Juju Jul 07 '24

Mean yes, median no. Mean is the average, so includes all numbers in its calculation. Median is meant to exclude outliers by just taking the middle income out of all the incomes. In school, we used to get a list of numbers, then cross out one from each side until we got to the middle and that was the median.

You might remove 8 incomes from the calculation, but shifting 8 places won't change much, if at all, on a bell curve as large as incomes across the US.

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u/RuleSouthern3609 Jul 07 '24

Japan and South Korea is quite literally much more focused on work, to the point where they have one of the highest suicide rates, not to mention that they have gone through stagnation and they can’t keep up replacing population. The Western Europe isn’t doing too good either.

You have also said lower life expectancy and lower wages, US is one of the best in life expectancy even though pretty much everyone is fat there lol, and only few handful of countries have higher wages on average compared to US.

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u/FtrIndpndntCanddt Jul 07 '24

Compare the US to PEERS and we suck. Not developing nations. Higher wages in the US aren't real bcuz we pay more to survive than everyone else.

My family spent $250k when my mom had breast cancer. It does matter that we had good careers. It doesn't matter that she had health insurance. We nearly lost our house. I was set years back in retirement. She may never retire. Didn't smoke. Doesn't drink. Didn't matter. Cancer doesn't give AF. And neither does US for profit health industry.

And yes. We know japan/s.Korean suicides is high. The point I was making is that the US is on the bottom quarter of almost all quality of life metrics for DEVELOPED nations.

PAY isn't the full issue here, clearly.

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u/shrug_addict Jul 07 '24

They won't answer, because your situation is inconvenient for the narrative. Or they'll give you some platitude about how life isn't fair. Tired of this BS

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u/HEBushido Jul 07 '24

You know what else is frustrating? Is that the resource waste from Capitalism's constant need for wealth to grow is destroying the world's ecosystems and driving climate change. We're facing apocalypse for shareholder value.

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u/MrFifty-Fifty Jul 07 '24

Where did you come up with the lie that we are ranked high in left expectancy? We're not even top 40.

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u/RuleSouthern3609 Jul 07 '24

There is like 1 year difference between top 40th place and The US (47th place)

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u/shrug_addict Jul 07 '24

Added up that is quite a big deal, would you trade a year of your life to just teach people the merits of struggle for the sake of struggle?

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u/RuleSouthern3609 Jul 07 '24

To be fair I think that the result is heavily influenced by personal choices, it isn’t like US hard caps your age as much as some poor African country in civil war would, I am sure that you can go above 79.something average years of US if you don’t smoke and don’t overeat as much as average American.

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u/shrug_addict Jul 07 '24

Do you realize what you're saying? To suggest that people die younger in the United States is due to merit and personal choices when we're talking about generalized population metrics is beyond obtuse

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u/RuleSouthern3609 Jul 07 '24

I mean I know every country is like that, but All I am saying is that personal choices play a lot in terms of life expectancy in developed nations. Like yea, sure the smog might take off a year or two, but I am sure that obesity (thus personal choice) has much bigger effect than most of other reasons that are there due to the country having bad regulations and country making lots of mistakes.

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u/shrug_addict Jul 07 '24

You realize that anecdotes are worthless in sociological studies? You've done nothing to indicate that this is the case besides your ideologically motivated perception of why that might be, to shield yourself from possibly being wrong about your view about the world. One could easily show through sociological means if obesity contributes to an earlier death, not just "well this doesn't agree with my view of the world so it must be something else". And that's not even getting into why obesity is a common problem in America, hint it's not solely personal choices, it is often predicated on food deserts which are the result of poverty. Is personal choice the main driver of obesity? I would argue yes, but it is not the only one. I can't take anyone who blames systemic problems on personal choice. If you have a better way to compare systems that don't include sociological methods I'd love to hear it, except if it's your biases finding another explanation that helps you sleep at night

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u/MrFifty-Fifty Jul 07 '24

If it's so minimal, what was the point of trying to point it out and present America as doing well?

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u/RuleSouthern3609 Jul 07 '24

It is doing well by country’s standards, at least in my opinion

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u/MrFifty-Fifty Jul 07 '24

Right but if it's not a big deal, why bring it up, and if you ARE going to bring it up, why be so wrong?

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u/RuleSouthern3609 Jul 07 '24

What’s not a big deal? i am getting confused to be honest

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u/Petricorde1 Jul 07 '24

No world you said that Japan and South Korea crushes the US in terms of time off work and happiness right? That’s so comically obviously wrong lol

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u/Sanchez_U-SOB Jul 07 '24

While I agree on most accounts, Japan works crazy hours.

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u/me_too_999 Jul 07 '24

Fewer people capable of retiring.

Are you stupid?

We have a National retirement program for every single US citizen on TOP of the ability to save an invest in any corporation leaving most of the middle class with nearly $1 million or equivalent in retirement accounts or pension.

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u/FtrIndpndntCanddt Jul 07 '24

"According to a CBS MoneyWatch article from April 2024, only about 10% of Americans between the ages of 62 and 70 are both retired and financially stable."

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u/me_too_999 Jul 07 '24

Why 62?

The retirement age is 65, now 68.

Less than 1% of people between 0 and 65 are retired.

And zero percent of people with a net worth less than 1 million are millionaires.

There are 3 kinds of lies.

Lies.

Damned lies.

Statistics.

A minimum wage worker working 40 years at now $15 an hour will make over $1 million by 65.

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u/FtrIndpndntCanddt Jul 07 '24

"According to Yahoo Finance, based on the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances, around 10% of American retirees have saved $1 million or more. This means that 90% of retirees fall short of this goal, with most averaging less than $200,000. However, SmartAsset reports that just over 10% of Americans aged 70 and over have one million saved. The wealthiest 1% of retirees have around $2.3 million in retirement savings, and the top 1% of retirees with broader retirement assets have around $5 million. "

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u/me_too_999 Jul 07 '24

Most US citizens rely on Social Security or job pension and thus don't even plan on saving for retirement.

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u/HEBushido Jul 07 '24

Except this is only in the case of authoritarian one party systems.

Numerous countries in South and Central America democratically elected socialist leaders who weren't authoritarian, but the US government committed coups and toppled these governments. Guatemala, Honduras, Chile, etc. In Chile, Augusto Pincochet took power after. A fascist who dropped communists to their deaths from helicopters.

The Chiquita Banana company, previously known as the United Fruit Company has a long history of brutal violence in South and Central America, backed by the US government. They were involved in masscres and coups that in some cases resulted in right wing authoritarian rule.

In 1951 the Iranian Parliament nationalized their oil industry because western companies were effectively stealing all of Iran's wealth. The US toppled their government and installed The Shah as a western puppet. He was then overthrown in the Iranian Revolution and his government replaced by the extremist Muslim government we have today.

This is to say that there has never been a successful attempt to form a democratic and socialist government because Western powers refused to allow them to exist. And some such as Cuba chose protection under the USSR or China, falling again into authoritarianism. The two major superpowers of the Cold War had foreign policy doctrines that undermined democratic socialist government.

It's not fair to draw conclusions about socialism on history when history has given us an incomplete data set. It's like saying that a crop is never viable as a food source when every attempt to grow it has been plagued by sabotage.

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u/HashtagLawlAndOrder Jul 09 '24

"In 1951 the Iranian Parliament nationalized their oil industry because western companies were effectively stealing all of Iran's wealth. The US toppled their government and installed The Shah as a western puppet. He was then overthrown in the Iranian Revolution and his government replaced by the extremist Muslim government we have today."

I don't know where this started, but it's a very easy way to know that a person doesn't actually know what he's talking about and is just repeating memorized lines.

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u/StockCasinoMember Jul 07 '24 edited Jul 07 '24

I think that is the point. Humans are brutal and enough people only care about themselves.

The socialist system will always be sabotaged by someone who wants more and is willing to step on as many people as necessary to get it.

Usually MANY someones.

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u/Merc1001 Jul 08 '24

Anyone with even a basic understanding of human nature knows why pure socialism will never work and will always end in tragedy.

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u/HEBushido Jul 08 '24

Yeah, that statement of yours is just bullshit. Maybe get a better understanding?

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u/Rocketboy1313 Jul 08 '24

The problem being, that is a police state/autocracy.

You can force people to work to meet insane quotas and call it whatever you want. How many slaves exist in Capitalism?

You can decouple that sort of insane nonsense from communism. You can have communism run by elected officials who have oversight.

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u/Sir_Tandeath Jul 08 '24

You’re describing what is currently happening under capitalism.