Comment on Borrowing money against their stuff to get more stuff to borrow money...
hector@lemmy.today 12 hours agoAll capitalist countries have elements of socialism, a mix is probably the best scenario, and indeed to have private benefit corporations and co ops to fulfill needs the private sector is unwilling and unable to provide the needs for equitably.
The idealogues of the right talk a lot of shit, but capitalism doesn’t work without controls, the free market destroys itself, and leads to consolidation, to one company, becoming sort of communist as the opposite ends come back together in a circle between free market and controlled economy. Somalia should be a free market paradise according to the dogma of the billionaires funding libertarianism and the republican party’s think tanks.
Capital is too greedy to do what’s in it’s own interests and will destroy itself like yeast in a wort producing alcohol that will kill that yeast above a certain percentage.
merc@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
If you read the writings of people like Adam Smith, they expected the government to have a lot of control. Their idea of capitalism involved a lot of government supervision. The core idea of capitalism that everyone would benefit because of competition. Competition leads to winners, but if the winners get too big then they can squeeze out their competitors. That’s why capitalism only works if there’s a government to step in and keep the “winner” from getting too big so it can dominate.
When a lot of people say they hate capitalism, what they really hate is the winner-take-all part, which isn’t supposed to happen if the government is doing its job. 10 companies all trying to win your business by offering the best product for your needs at the best price they can manage is great. One company that operates at a choke point in your world and squeezes as much money out of you as possible sucks.
You could argue that communism is also supposed to work if the government does its job and ensures that everybody’s needs are met and that everybody is equal. IMO the difference is that capitalism at least sort-of works in practice, not just in theory. Yes, there’s a lot of corruption, regulatory capture, etc. in a capitalist system, which isn’t supposed to happen. But, you still can get upstart businesses displacing old and dominant companies that fail to innovate. Meanwhile, supposedly “communist” governments very quickly collapse into authoritarian systems with an elite class that siphons off the wealth of everyone else. It’s a great system in theory, but in practice it just doesn’t seem compatible with actual fallible, corruptible people. Maybe capitalism is more successful because it accepts that people are flawed and greedy and tries to channel that in ways that benefit the public. Communism seems to believe that people don’t have those flaws. As a result, there doesn’t seem to be part of the communist approach that allows people to channel their competitive and greedy impulses. So, instead, they just corrupt the system and establish themselves as a ruling class.