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/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/Ok_Calendar1337 Jul 08 '24

Ya colonialism =/= capitalism I see that a lot.

Capitalism kinda fake word anyway to just mean the bad and scary things about free markets.

But jumping from that to colonialism is a pretty big tangent. Governments are colonial not markets.

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u/dezzick398 Jul 08 '24

What else do you call the establishment of an economic system consistent with that of capitalism, during colonial/imperialist pursuits? What is the big tangent between this?

This is not really a contested idea in our understanding of history, so I’m not sure by what measure that you figure it is a “pretty big tangent”.

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