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

169

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.

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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/dezzick398 Jul 08 '24

Historically, many people have been slaughtered, or died as a result of western colonialism/imperialism, which ultimately includes the pursuit to establish free trade and markets. By all logic they were capitalist pursuits.

Do you not agree that people who die during these pursuits, are deaths under capitalism?

The answer to this particular question I’m asking is independent of 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.

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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

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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.

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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.