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We are indoctrinated
I’m barely getting my feet wet learning about different forms of government. I’m having difficulty wrapping my head around most of it. The most communist education we got was a small mention in a junior high history class that amounted to “in communism everyone is exactly the same so no one has any incentive to do better”
I do know this shit we have now is just exploited by the upper classes and it’s very obvious they want us poorly educated
Finally people are waking up. In my motherland (Russia) 40% of all wealth belongs to 500 families, what is about 1/10000 of Russian population. In average, according to Swiss bank's research, 1% of people own 43% of wealth in the world. And rich getting richer while poor are getting more poor
Nice, I’ve got exactly 3ct in my Swiss bank account.
My mother is from Ukraine and also tells that in the USSR it was much better than now. After the collapse the oligarchs started filling their pockets and basically started robbing the normal workers.
It was shock therapy when the USSR collapsed because most people had no idea how to live this new life where the state didn’t help them. Old pensioners got very screwed.
Those oligarchs were pretty much the government officials or those connected to the people running things in the USSR. They had the means to basically take over everything after the USSR’s fall.
People that advocate for communism are downright brain-dead.
Yeah, capitalism sucks ass but if you think communism is the right replacement, you are dead wrong.. I hear all the excuses "oh it just needs to be done right" fuck right off, it won't ever be done right it's way too exploitable... My family grew up in communism and seeing people supporting and asking for it genuinely disgusts me.
I'd rather see a dead Earth rather than Red Earth.
This is actually a good point. There was a time at some point when capitalism meant having a job that could reasonably pay for one's life, and over time greedy individuals have ruined it.
Capitalism isn't supposed to be about gaining as much money as you can to the point where it means everyone else can't even live.
It's supposed to be about everybody being able to work honestly and have enough to support their families while maintaining as few restrictive measures as possible to avoid a dictatorship. If you happen to do particularly well, that's fine, help others too and work honestly, right? The rich should be providing decent wages and good jobs for others to work, shouldn't they?
This is genuinely possible and has been done.
I don't think this is even specific to any political ideology, I think this is just what everybody has a right to live in.
Edit: damn I missed the hammer and sickle next to her name
No you’re right. It honestly doesn’t matter who this person is, facts are facts. If a communist says the sky is blue, are they wrong because they’re a communist? There’s solid data supporting this claim from gen Z and their parents, we have told the world how we feel and this person repeating it isn’t automatically wrong because they have problematic views. You may as well go around telling all the Zoomers that feel like this that they’re wrong because a communist agreed with them.
I'm honestly amazed how prevalent the red scare still is in America. Most of the people who are afraid of communists can't even explain why they're afraid of communists.
All those things happen in capitalist countries too. In fact I'd argue more violent revolutions have been staged by capitalists (usually backed by the US gov)
Well, that’s because the “communists” your grandparents were conditioned to hate and fear weren’t really even communists…just totalitarian regimes of various stripes.
The Red Scare led to an after effect of saying that positive social changes are Marxist and thus scaring those who lived through it. And since the politicians today lived through the USSR. They think that way too
Seeiouslyyyyy this. And anything they don’t like it “communism”, as is Red Scare tradition. We’ve had several “waves” of it, and I’d argue we’re in one now.
capitalists have really brainwashed generations into thinking communism is this big bad monster that is coming to get you... not everyone who thinks communism is a viable economical system is evil, in fact most of them are not, they're just looking for alternatives to the mess that is capitalism.
"Capitalism isn't supposed to be about gaining as much money as you can to the point where it means everyone else can't live"
That's the exact definition of capitalism, actually
Americans are brainwashed from the day they get dragged into the world to believe that the definition of capitalism is happiness and freedom. Most Americans genuinely couldn't tell you what it is in any coherent fashion if you held a gun to their head, they just know its good and they like it because authority figures told them it's good and they should like it.
It's factually in the name. What is the purpose of CAPITALISM if not the acquisition and leverage of CAPITAL to acquire more capital and political power. That's why SCOTUS ruled in Citizens United the way it did. Its morally repugnant but its factually in line with what capitalism is about and how it works. All they did was codify the quiet part the middle class and above never wanted to admit out loud.
Dude do you not see the irony in what you are writing? You are literally describing the goal of socialism-communism. You are making a bunch of should have statements based on a morality and expectations that never applied. Meanwhile capitalism is by definition an economic system where the means of production are privately owned and are "operated" for a profit. Why are you suprised when private owners didn't stop a a some magic amount of wealth, where they had just enough but not too much. Captialism was never about prioritizing the needs of the workers.
People are so dumb when they get caught up in the names of things.
We call our system democratic, when researchers looked at the facts of our system its much closer to oligarchy.
They took a look at what people want and what gets voted in. Congress now votes on the interests of the rich, this is proven from many research projects at institutions.
Thats the thing about labels and names, they are abused relentlessly. Every authoritarian regime does this, take a symbol used for good and abuse it to their will.
The nazis stole the swastika an ancient symbol meant to symbolize good things and corrupted it. They corrupt their symbols and use them for their will.
In the case of socialism, somehow it means bad. Even though socialism is just a name and the systems in place are closer to capitalism.
Fuck, China isn't even really communist anymore. Its more like authoritarian capitalist now.
You gotta look past the names. They are using the names to control you and the narrative. The names aren't even correct anymore. Do your own thinking, they are all lying to you.
Socialism doesn't mean anything, even the people that made the name don't know what it means.
At this point, people are just railing against an imaginary system, by imaginary enemies, implanted in your brain as wrong.
We want a good government system, the name doesn't mean shit anymore. The accountability is the most important thing anyway.
It usually isn't the system itself that fails anyways. Its that the system fails to protect itself from bad actors and corrupt people. Every system has trouble with these bad actors.
I just want a system that truthfully holds the powerful and rich accountable. That's the only system that matters anyway.
TL;DR U.S. isn't capitalist anymore, closer to oligarchy. China isn't communist, its authoritarian capitalist now, Nordic countries are socialist, but they support it with community oil. We do the exact same thing in Alaska and somehow its not socialism and good?
Instead of naming things for mental shorthand. We actually have to consider the systems, how they've changed, how they work and what they do. In many cases calling a system a name, isn't just wrong, its insidious and on purpose.
The mental shorthand is hurting a lot of people. Things are changing so fast, the names that once described something accurately, do not.
People getting so caught up in what a system says it does, they don't even consider what it actually does.
Capitalism was meant for those who could buy their way anywhere. And the disparity just gets bigger. I don't understand how regular people are fighting for capitalism. It blows my mind
It's because many people think that one day they can be that billionaire that exploits the masses and contributes to the suffering of many, despite the odds of that being drastically low.
The fact that this is getting upvotes shows that people on this sub lack the understanding of even the definition of capitalism
>over time greedy individuals have ruined it
\*greedy individuals succeded because that is what a system of capitalism rewards with power
>Capitalism isn't supposed to be about gaining as much money as you can to the point where it means everyone else can't even live.
Under capitalism gaining money rewards with more money and power, it is what happens over time, money accumilates more and more where money already is
>It's supposed to be about everybody being able to work honestly and have enough to support their families while maintaining as few restrictive measures as possible to avoid a dictatorship
it's not supposed to be anything other than a society where the means of production can be privately owned
Actually, during the "good era" that you're describing, it had a heavily socialist influence, (e.g., Roosevelt, FDR) were the Federal Income Tax for wealthy people was 70-90%. A lot of things were done to protect labor and worker's rights.
Now what we see is just capitalism going in hyperdrive, 100%, minimum wage not increasing for over a decade, and not keeping up with inflation and growth. And all due to capitalists buying politicians so the system is more capitalism and less social policies that help workers.
I think people our age are delusional and falling for boomer nostalgia. Also doomerism. Life was never that good.
1960: 7.7% attended college\
Today: 37.7% attended college
1960: 61.9% homeownership rate\
Today: 67.4% homeownership rate
1960: $13,250 disposable income per capita\
Today: $50,425 disposable income per capita
(These are “real” disposable incomes, aka already adjusted for inflation)
1960: 22.1% poverty rate\
Today: 11.5% poverty rate
And poverty is a relative statistic. The poverty threshold for a family of three in 1960 was <$2,359, while today it’s <$23,280. And we’re still doing so much better.
Also, for perspective, Americans have the second-highest median disposable incomes in the world, after adjusting for purchasing power and transfers. Median, so it isn’t just the rich pulling the number up. And adjusted for transfers, so paying for health insurance and other costs Americans have that most other citizens don’t is already accounted for.
It’s wild that people think we’re living in some sort of decay. I acknowledge that there are issues, especially housing in coastal cities, but we literally live in one of the richest countries in the most prosperous time in history. Doomers and communists complaining about “late stage capitalism” should spend some time abroad and look up some historical data, imo.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attainment-in-the-us/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20about%2037.7%20percent,population%20had%20graduated%20from%20college.
https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/housing-trends-visualized/
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income#Median
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/09/10/how-the-geography-of-u-s-poverty-has-shifted-since-1960/#:~:text=It's%20worth%20noting%20that%20as,according%20to%20Census%20Bureau%20data.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/income-poverty-health-insurance-coverage.html#:~:text=Official%20Poverty%20Measure-,The%20official%20poverty%20rate%20in%202022%20was%2011.5%25%2C%20with%2037.9,was%20the%20lowest%20on%20record.
https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-series/historical-poverty-people/hstpov1.xlsx
Thank you for that. I hate it when so many people fantasise about the "golden age of US" in 50s and 60s that they only know through media and propaganda posters that focused on lives of wealthy individuals and not through actual statistics.
Blud
“Capitalism isn’t supposed to be about gaining as much money as you can to the point where it means everyone else can’t even live”
It literally is, the point of capitalism is to have as much as money as possible, so it will thru any means, including making the general populace poorer
>Capitalism isn't supposed to be about gaining as much money as you can to the point where it means everyone else can't even live.
Whoever said that? History suggests otherwise. Capital accumulation has been recorded since the early days. Some will win and some will lose in the battle of the market. Winners will consolidate: monopolize. Capitalism transforming into crony capitalism and then corporatism is a natural evolution of capitalism because those with the most money have the most influence on our politics. They buy our politicians. You can observe this phenomena all around you.
>It's supposed to be about everybody being able to work honestly and have enough to support their families while maintaining as few restrictive measures as possible to avoid a dictatorship
You're conflating liberalism with capitalism. They are two distinct things. Those who subscribe to liberalism tend to subscribe to the notion that market freedom = freedom proper. Ask Chileans how they feel about their market freedom. Ask the third-world how they feel about free markets being imposed upon them by the IMF.
>There was a time at some point when capitalism meant having a job that could reasonably pay for one's life, and over time greedy individuals have ruined it.
Those with the power to sway politics will use their power to make things easier for themselves. The working class don't have the money to sway politics the way that the ultra-wealthy do. This power dynamic will only ever serve to diminish our (the working class) rights and abilities.
>Capitalism isn't supposed to be about gaining as much money as you can to the point where it means everyone else can't even live.
Expect that's exactly what capitalism is about. Gaining as much money as possible that is, what that leads to is irrelevant. Capitalism relies on people doing this, the whole incentive for investment is that you'll get more out than you put in.
The fact is that during the dawn of capitalism shit sucked really fucking badly and quality of life for a lot of people for way worse. We had children dying in coal mines, a transatlantic chattle slavery industry more brutal than all slavery before it, families sleeping draped over ropes because they couldn't afford even a floor to lie down on etc. It was awful.
Things got better because, despite its faults, the system did allow large investments into industrialization so production capacity drastically increased - but workers only saw a chunk of this when they organized and governments got so scared of communist organizing they made concessions.
We're suffering now because those things have been reversed. We're regressing back towards the living conditions of earlier capitalism because they're no longer scared of workers organizing. Why should they be? They can just move their businesses to the other side of the planet instead.
It was doing much better when we had strong unions and a regulatory government with teeth.
And then the neoliberals and Kapitalists came along and started preaching freedumb and the dummies fell for it.
Still falling for it. They somehow think it's okay to pay a private insurance company 2000 a month than pay the goverment 20. Something about freedumb again.
The issue with that statement is that capitalism is a broad ideology with many different sub-groups. Blaming the problem on capitalism is akin to blaming our current political issues on democracy. The issue isn't with capitalism itself but the way it is implemented nowadays.
This is not true at all. Zoomers and Millenials keep saying this but it has never been true. Right now is the best time for the average quality of life for people in this country. [Zoomers have a higher home ownership rate than their parents](https://www.carriermanagement.com/news/2024/01/17/257878.htm#:~:text=Even%20so%2C%20most%20Gen%20Zers,2022%2C%20according%20to%20Redfin's%20data). I understand you're likely just entering the workforce and don't make enough to make a living. Guess what, that's always been in the case. I keep seeing this pop up in TikTok where Zoomers are gaslighting themselves into thinking that someone working at Target had enough money to live a comfortable life in a big city.
This delusion is creating 2 things. Zoomers somehow thinking that their material conditions are terrible, when they're not which adds a ton of negativity to their life. And the worst thing it does is it robs you of agency, which I think adds to the reasons why younger generations are so depressed. Right now you think that the only way you can be happy is if you hold a violent revolution that has like no popular support. Instead of doing everything you can to make yourself happy, you are making it so that it depends on the actions of others. Gen Z definitely has way more problems than past generations. I really do feel of you, but all of these things seem to stem from lack of purpose rather than material conditions.
Capitalism is VERY MUCH about gaining as much money as you possibly can, consequences to others be damned. Ultimately the aim of capitalism is to generate the largest amount of money you can get away with. Government regulation is needed for this to instead lead to decent/good wages for everyone. At least in the US this has however been systematically destroyed over several decades.
I don't see how that whole commentary would suddenly become bad because there's a chance she'd be communist. Americans have an unreasonable fear of it, it's just political and social inclinations, nobody's going to slaughter your family.
Communist often allied with socialist in my country, they're a big reasons why there's paid leave for workers, as well as reasonable working hours, women representation in political parties, unemployment compensation and workers' unions.
> Capitalism isn't supposed to be about gaining as much money as you can to the point where it means everyone else can't even live.
Lol that is literally everything that capitalism has ever supposed to have been. Ideology, system, execution, enforcement, spread and maintenance. It literally has no other element to it that isn't this.
There's other shit that people associate with it, out of misunderstanding or miseducation. Prosperity? That's just good government. Economic growth for prosperity, then, specifically? That's British Liberalism (specific to the early 19th century). Free trade, then? Mercantilism. A free economy where all can thrive? Libertarianism (at least before the term got coopted). An economic system where the government does not interfere and the market forces have free agency? That's Laissez-faire, which isn't a system, and more a handful of specific policies
Capitalism means "the people who own the means of production own the means to make and accumulate all wealth". There's more to the definition, of course, but in a nutshell that's what it is, what it makes it distinct from other systems such as socialism and feudalism and barter economies and such. And it has literally no other possible result than: the people who own the means of production "gaining as much money as [they] can to the point where it means everyone else can't even live." Whenever *something else happens* it's by forces external to capitalism. Usually oppositional forces (revolutions, colonial wars of liberation, strikes), but also frequently by forces that benefit from it but also see it for the self eating snake that it is and seek to mitigate its more annihilation-prone tendencies (the New Deal comes to mind).
Capitalism, as a system, cannot lead anywhere other than where we are now: the ever increasing and often accelerating gap of inequality, and the ever worsening living conditions of the working class. It is literally the only thing it's designed for, *the only thing it's capable of.*
This is actually not a good point at all, you are just wildly misinformed about the past.
1. Median real wages are at all time highs.
2. Life expectancy is near all time highs after climbing for decades
3. Home ownership is at or near all time highs.
4. Home sizes are way larger than they were in the past, and almost all homes now have indoor plumbing, AC, and other modern quality of life improvements.
5. More Americans own more cars than in the past
6. Americans are much more highly educated now than in the past, including many more people going to college over the past few decades when compared to the late 1900s
7. The percentage of income spent on food by Americans is essentially at all time lows, dropping from 40% to ~10% of annual income over 50-70 years.
If you think that the world is currently worse than some magical time in the past, you just aren’t accurately informed on what the past looked like.
In the “good old days” people didn’t pay rent. They bought their massive homes either with a ridiculous loan that they would pay out in a few years or with a few years of cash savings.
Capitalism is dead. What we have today just barely resembles the capitalism of the mid 20th century.
This is something new that doesn’t have a name yet because it’s still a transition.
And it’s worse. Definitely.
Of course it wasn’t all ideal back then. Those “good old days” were never sustainable in the long run, for starters. And we’re starting to see the consequences.
Ah the myth of the 50s or 60s or even the 40s, where people claim how we have fallen off both economicly and socially. What a [myth](https://youtu.be/cYJYzzT02MA?si=y18kGB38KOtqpRNH)
In the UK especially it wasn't until maybe after the 70's that people actually started to own their own homes, prior to this it was nearly all council houses (government funded), rent or lettings
There never has been a 'good old days' every decade has had its issues and pretending we're not in one of the best periods of human history is laughable
The capitalism of the 20th Century barely resembled the capitalism of the early 19th Century, the system has just evolved. The problem is that Americans delusionally think they're no longer in capitalism because now life sucks for white people too and not just everyone else.
It's cronies capitalism where the government stifles competition through regulation. Basically picking the winners because they get bribes. How else do regular senators beat the best investors in market returns?
Everyone in a position of power is trying to skim off the top or just straight plunder the public coffers and the justice system is so tangled and twisted that I'm honestly thinking public hangings should make a comeback.
We've got a powerful, centralized government that is quickly losing the backing of the people. Trust in government institutes is at an all time low.
And full of people that don't understand capitalism. Capitalism is just the means of production being in private hands, which was great. It got economic control away from the despots. What most people don't like is the income inequality, then blame capitalism for the problems. A large pay of the problem is from our increasing rate of technological advancement. It's creating new markets, but they're hard to find at first as other jobs become irrelevant.
There are many different forms of anti-capitalism bedsides communism. One of the best ones in my opinion is worker owned democracy.
The government has no extra power, we still have buisnesses like usual, but instead of being owned almost exclusively by the 0.01%, they are owned by the actual people that work there.
Neat so if I’m a business owner, I can expect the workers to come with checks in hand to buy their equal shares? Or would I be forced to give my company away at gun point?
Yeah, like when the US bombed the shit out of Vietnam, overthrew fledgling democratically elected socialist governments in Chile and the rest of the world and committed mass murder in Indonesia, all because they dared to dream a different dream to that of capitalists in the West.
north vietnam literally invaded the south and both the chilean coup and indonesian anti-communist killings were first and foremost perpetrated by local governments and there is no hard evidence of US killing in either…
>"It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to 24 October but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG and American hand be well hidden. While this imposes upon us a high degree of selectivity in making military contacts and dictates that these contacts be made in the most secure manner it definitely does not preclude contacts such as reported in Santiago 5442 which was a masterful piece of work."
-Telegram from the CIA to the station in Chile
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v21/d154
Well yeah… obviously the US was going to bomb the shit out of a country that was attacking its allies… didn’t matter if the north was capitalist or communist
Haha this so funny to me because imagine relying on such a utopian system that it cannot come into existence.
The myth that communism has been a victim that's been ganged up on is more hilarious when you see that communism as an ideology has been prevalent to over 60% of the world population. Yet you find almost no friends of it in those regions now and regrets remain.
Implying that communism or capitalism are the only two available options that could possibly exist. These lazy reductionist opinions are so fuckin played out.
Yall are in one of the best economic times of all of history and you go out and find molehills to turn into mountains. There is nothing “crashing and burning” in “our capitalist nation”
But reddit is allergic to data so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Look at quality of life, gdp per capita, life expectancy, real wage and the amount of luxuries available to a Pole or a Czech in 1989 vs today.
You don't even need to do a former communist state, virtually all capitalist nations have improved in virtually all of those metrics. People are better off today than ever before in human history. But you don't feel that way, because propaganda from... certain governments have convinced young people that the old times was a utopia that was destroyed by capitalism.
Shout-out to all the people in the comments who recognize the system we have now is bad but also recognize that switching to starvation simulator isn't the solution. In a sub for young people that's actually pretty heartwarming.
We will own nothing and we will be happy about it
"Socialism doesn't work, we know that because every time someone dared to try it or communism, we brutally murdered them and overthrew their government for a fruit company."
said every communist ever when trying to explain why communism have never succeeded. but hey an example of a successful communist country is north korea, i wonder why no one wants to be like north korea?
Most people are anti capitalist because they think America = capitalism, and in the same breath will compare America to other capitalist countries which have common sense regulations and functional welfare states.
I’ve yet to see any of these terminally online losers actually outline an economic plan that makes sense, draw upon historical examples and successes, or even make basic distinctions between social democracy vs socialism
You will always end up with an accumulation of wealth by the property owning class in capitalism that spills over into them influencing the government to create ideal conditions for them that exploit the common worker, Cronyism is a feature of Capitalism
Must be why the countries with the highest wealth equality and best standards of living are also third way capitalist countries right?
You have zero evidence to back up what you’re saying, this is the problem with kids who learn about socialism online and just repeat shit without understanding it
>You will always end up with an accumulation of wealth by the property owning class
You could have just stopped there. It applies to every economic form because human nature is not overcome by idealism.
Big government practically invites cronyism. If there wasn't a government regulator for X, the big business in X industry can't lobby for special favours if there are no favours to give. Wouldn't returning to a freer market reduce cronyism?
No system humanity has ever devised was ever great. Every single one of them has been fundamentally flawed, it's just a contest of which one is the least bad.
I don't necessarily disagree, but my problem is that everyone seems to think that we've reached the end of that chain and this godawful system is the one we should just stick with and stop trying to find a better one.
It's not even a system problem, it's a people problem, everyone has their own goals
People at the top of society goal is to make as much money as possible but it has caused a major problem because it damages the environment greatly
I won't say living conditions isn't great, it's better than most of history (not that difficult of a task) but as a Vietnamese the environmental problems is worse than you can imagine
I literally see things getting worse in real time, our outdated dam systems isn't helping either
You never know how bad life can get until you see venta black sewage water wash into your house and you just gotta hope that a centipede isn't in that water and might climb up your legs while watching your flip flops drift into oblivion, never to be seen again
Idk every country seems to go on a race to nowhere because they're afraid that if they fall back, someone will attack them,
I don't think there would be a system that just stop people from ...... Doing whatever the hell we're doing
The."good old days" are often quite exaggerated. Our quality of life today in many ways is far superior to any previous generation. Are things difficult right now? Sure, but I don't see how making things exponentially more difficult by enacting a revolution for an ideology that invariably devolves into failed authoritarian states* is the answer.
*Of the states that haven't failed like China and Vietnam, notice they had to open markets and basically become capitalist lite in order to stay afloat. And their workers are far more exploited than Western workers.
everything seems a lot worse when you read about it in past media or news or statistics when the vast amount of it doesnt affect your average american or citizen. life is so much better when you get off your computer and go outside because 95% of the regurgitated ‘america is on the verge of collapse’ news or stats are relegated to the internet, and this applies when reading abt the past too. lifes actually pretty fucking good
Apparently aping those other countries is the literal only option! Wow! It's also not like I need money to survive in capitalist America, and need a phone in order to organize things like everyone else nowadays. I guess principled people are supposed to cut themselves out so they can't change anyone else' s mind?
American propaganda has solidified the idea that there can be no change. Well be prepared for everyone to hate you, because if things are shit and you say "nothing can be done", we hate you more every second you stand in the way.
Lol I can thank some cobalt miner in the congo who probably isn't even alive thanks to our overlords. And some factory workers in South East Asia, or India. The guy who runs the company simply shows up, throws money at engineers, and takes credit.
So what's your answer to that? How do I limit that guy from controlling these thousands of people's lives? He provides nothing except capital, yet in the system we live in that makes him a king of his own land.
If you have zero means to actually stop crony-ism, and any means we do make are labeled as socialist, your functionally telling me nothing can change. If communism and socialism wasn't a legit alternative idea billionaires wouldn't spend so much money strangling it in the crib.
The funniest part is Im not a communist, but I just see that all of the comments saying "sorry this is it everyone, we are in the only workable system". How fucking convenient for the status quo billionaires, that the universe bends in their favor. It's not like they control the flow of resources and thus can bend anyone else.
Yeah I'm not joking😭, I can even trace him back to even influencing my church trauma to some extent especially cuz of his friendship with Jerry Falwell
I do find it interesting how he was a movie star, and our next disaster was electing a reality star. I bet we will see a pro wrestler get elected in our lifetime and that will bring its own problems. I bet Steve Austin because many people know his name and he has the tough guy attitude.
So many zoomers are anticapitalist because they are too young to lose connection with their ideals which just arent realistic. Just like every other generation. Young people are always like this. Lol
You weren't even legally employable during the worst of the 2008 recession and the supposed looming post-covid recession has mostly been averted(significant inflation is not a crash, that's not even remotely how that works)
housing is expensive, though. If you want that to even be remotely fixable, get involved in local and state level politics for zoning reforms and definitely don't let Trump win now that he's targeting zoning reforms as a "war on the suburbs".
Zoning is a primary lever for the modern state of capitalist exploitation in housing and can be directly reformed.
So what you’re telling me is that if a bunch of Gen Z was wealthy than they wouldn’t care about the supposed idealistic and utopian nature of beloved socialism?
So many Zoomers are anticapitalist because they’re young and aren’t making much money yet. They’ll grow out of it like every other generation before them did. The anticapitalists aren’t going to win.
I'm a millennial, make a lot of money, and I'm a proud socialist thank you very much.
If you think people start aligning with capitalist interests because they're making "a lot of money" (i.e. middle class or upper middle class incomes), you're sadly mistaken.
The doctor is closer to a homeless man than he is to a Billionaire.
I'm Gen z from the former Eastern bloc and I have to say that I and a lot of people around my age that I've met are in favour of capitalism because the idea of capitalism is still new there and it helped develop the countries. It's interesting to see if the opinions will shift away from capitalism in the future like it's doing in the west rn.
Hammer and sickle aside; she's completely right. The first world governments (mostly the United States, but it may apply other countries) and corporations got greedy and made a lot of decisions that royally screwed over much of the middle and working class because they delusionally thought they won the Cold War and were living at the "End of History". Now they're suffering the consequences by having to deal with a populace that isn't cooperative, doesn't want to fight their wars for them, and they're backpedaling *hard* because of that. You can see this, for example, in how they're trying to bring back (and subsidize) semiconductor manufacturing from places like Taiwan and China. As well as them now treating China less like a friend and more like an adversary.
There is also the fact though, that China very much is threatening Taiwan (and it's semiconductor industry), so them wanting to safeguard domestic production makes a lot of sense.
Lots of zoomers are "anti-capitalists" because they are lazy. They don't "feel" like trading time and convenience for prosperity. They want to keep whining on social media all day long and still be able to contain an unrealistic lifestyle.
That's not how it worked beck in the "good days". As someone who has experienced communism firsthand, I promise you - you do not want that. You had to work, irregardless of if you liked your job or not. Most of those jobs were hard labour in factories or even on the field. There was long queues in front of the stores even for essentials like bread or oil. Foreign technology, even importing Western music was banned and punishable.
So yeah, before waiving the hammer and sickle, educate yourselves. Also get your shit together. Nobody owes you anything.
Gen X saw a lot of this too. Memories of the Golden Age are probably a bit exaggerated. You look at how low prices were but comapre it to incomes of the same years.
That said, it was easier to afford houses, cars, college, etc. The reason why is largely explainable by two things: look at a chart of the money supply and what happened with manufacturing and some other jobs in the 90s.
For a long time the government was restrained in spending by the gold standard. This limited how much money was in circulation, to a degree. There were ways around it but Congress didn't really push things too much. Over time, the money supply was increased. This happens in virtually all governments. Money supply expands to increase money for taxing. Inflation expanded faster and faster, like we are seeing now.
In the 90s, a lot of manufacturing was sent overseas. Millions of jobs worth up front. This hurt the economy because those jobs made things people wanted and needed, and had fairly high incomes which then helped support all manner of services from grocery stores to doctors. Takes those away and largely replace them with service sector jobs or the dole, and things decline. Add in outsourcing and H1b visas, and white collar jobs were affected too. All of this had the effects of driving down wages and stifling economic growth.
In adddition, things are more expensive. Houses are bigger, cars have tons of electronics, we have all manner of electronics and subscriptions, etc., that didn't used to be.
R/fluentinfinance is anything but fluent in finance.
Most of the "capitalist decay" is actually government intervention. For example, we'll use the issue of housing as it is used in the OP: the biggest issue is the inability of capitalist developers to build due to zoning restrictions; there's a whole lot of "not in my backyard" going on.
r/fluentinfinance can be pretty entertaining in a morbid curiosity type of way tho.
Also yeah NIMBY gets in the way of a lot of affordable housing projects. I’d have to look into it but I’m willing to bet NIMBY has probably also gotten in the way of some public transit projects.
I honestly give up, no system works because humans suck. Even systems BUILT to work around human nature fail, because most horribly evil sociopathic people that take advantage of others for personal gain are intelligent and find ways to sidestep anything that gets between them and what they want. We're in a losing battle with a minority of humans are genuinely terrible, cruel, detached from reality, and sociopathic.
You’re not “anti capitalist” bro you’re “lazy”
There was never a day where working a minimum wage job could raise a family. Ever. Why do people think they should be able to live in the burbs with a family of 5 while working at McDonald’s. Lmao
It doesn't help despite living in a shitty situation most gen zers are about as tough as a bowl of jello because they are only looking at the world from a 1st world perspective.
She never paid one bill in her life, is the irony not lost on morons who post these things?
Edit: OP deleted screenshot in post minutes after I posted this.
They looking in the wrong system. It not capitalism. Its us electing the wrong people who print money. Doesnt matter if its capitalist, socalist, dictatorship, or other. When you make money worth less and less it makes it harder on everyone.
I’m definitely not anti-capitalist but I’m not a fan of how America had implemented capatalism. I think, realistically, capitalism is the best economic system.
Millennial here. I guess I’ll take the bait, yes I’m capitalist.
So a key part of decay in capitalism comes the inevitable rebirth part. It’s a cycle. I’ve been around long enough I’ve seen good old days and the bad times. But our system trips self corrects without the violent revolution part. So if it’s between either bloodbath in the financial markets vs an actual bloodbath, then give me capitalism.
THIS NEVER FUCKING EXISTED.
THAT WAS A LIE.
Only select subset of white people had this "American Dream" that was a flat out propagnda that whitewashed most of history.
Please stop talking about how in the "Good Old Days" things were better. When that was only true for a select subgroup of people.
Yeah that's fine and all, but this person has a hammer and sickle next to her name. There's a reason no one can name a country that adopted communism that isn't a total hellhole.
Just because capitalism has problems doesn't somehow make communism great.
There were never "good old days" of a lavish life with no effort. It's always taken a lot of effort for a good life, but due to the nature of technology advancing, it's become more mental effort than raw physical effort.
And there's been one once in a lifetime economic crash for everyone who didn't live through the Depression.
“Late stage Capitalism” is one of the most ridiculous terms out there… Big Government supporters have F*cked up Healthcare, housing and education systems in the US, have persuaded the younger generation that Capitalism is to be blamed and are offering Bigger Governments as a solution…
The fact that someone supports communism is already an indication on how out of touch with reality they are.
communism would only make any economy even worse. today's capitalism that everyone likes to cry about is in a way better situation than any attempt at communism has been
The small mindedness of being born after technology also contributes to the feelings of insufficiency. I used to dig holes for fun as a kid. And I loved it. Work that out kiddies.
For some reason, when corrupt, unethical people are in power, a lot of folks assume it's the system's fault. Historically, there have been many eras where capitalist systems worked and citizens thrived utilizing it. Socialism and Communism don't have a good track record for that regardless who is steering the ship.
Assuming a different system will somehow eradicate corruption and immoral behaviors is extremely naive.
Yeah capitalism sucks but the alternative isn't very good either, in fact it's worse. The idea of living in a utopia where all of your needs are met sounds great on paper until you look a little closer and everything sours, instead of starving and living in poverty being a consequence of the economy it's a consequence of the government owning everything and taking things from you because it belongs to the people.
Zoomers don't know the "good old days", but they also don't know anything she's talking about either. Most zoomers probably don't even know what a foreclosure is. Fact is unless you're from a family below the poverty line you've likely been sheltered from anything involving the economy & haven't really experienced what living as an adult is like; it feels like this person just saw a bunch of scary headlines & out of context statistics & immediately assumed everything's shit.
I’d like to be in most capitalist countries rather than fallen communist/socialist states like Cuba or China. I have freedom to pursue whatever career I want. Although I don’t like social programs or policies that make people dependent on the government, I also hate the federal government’s increasing size, as most commie states have a monopoly over the land, the people, and history. God Bless America
It's not like communism would be any better. Until the day when your average human being isn't plagued by greed, thirsty for power, irresponsibility, ect. No form of government would exist without corruption of some kind.
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What's that symbol next to her username?
A hammer and sickle.
Had a feeling that she was a Communist, just had to be a 100% sure.
Nah I don’t think she’s communist, maybe she likes hammers and sickles, could be a farmer!
A farming blacksmith
Maybe she could add a brush to it to show her educated and cultural sophistication
I have a feeling she's desperate for change because her future is so hopeless.
That’s literally the reason for her post
My response is to the buzzword.
Yeah I find it fucking hilarious dude tried to do a gotcha with “she hates capitalism” Like, yeah, she literally says that in her post???
She probably is indeed a communist but with what she said she was more likely to be just a social-democrat
I agree but not everything everyone says 100% aligns with their political allegiance.
Or democratic socialist
Only Americans seem to be terrified by communist. Y'all are indoctrinated from a young age to do so it would seem.
We are indoctrinated I’m barely getting my feet wet learning about different forms of government. I’m having difficulty wrapping my head around most of it. The most communist education we got was a small mention in a junior high history class that amounted to “in communism everyone is exactly the same so no one has any incentive to do better” I do know this shit we have now is just exploited by the upper classes and it’s very obvious they want us poorly educated
Her @ mentions socialism. That isn’t communism.
The kids ain't alright.
Banger of a song
🫡🪖🏳️⚧️
ah yes the universal sign of having nothing of value to say
Finally people are waking up. In my motherland (Russia) 40% of all wealth belongs to 500 families, what is about 1/10000 of Russian population. In average, according to Swiss bank's research, 1% of people own 43% of wealth in the world. And rich getting richer while poor are getting more poor
Nice, I’ve got exactly 3ct in my Swiss bank account. My mother is from Ukraine and also tells that in the USSR it was much better than now. After the collapse the oligarchs started filling their pockets and basically started robbing the normal workers.
It was shock therapy when the USSR collapsed because most people had no idea how to live this new life where the state didn’t help them. Old pensioners got very screwed.
Those oligarchs were pretty much the government officials or those connected to the people running things in the USSR. They had the means to basically take over everything after the USSR’s fall.
Woah I didn't notice, damndude
People that advocate for communism are downright brain-dead. Yeah, capitalism sucks ass but if you think communism is the right replacement, you are dead wrong.. I hear all the excuses "oh it just needs to be done right" fuck right off, it won't ever be done right it's way too exploitable... My family grew up in communism and seeing people supporting and asking for it genuinely disgusts me. I'd rather see a dead Earth rather than Red Earth.
This is actually a good point. There was a time at some point when capitalism meant having a job that could reasonably pay for one's life, and over time greedy individuals have ruined it. Capitalism isn't supposed to be about gaining as much money as you can to the point where it means everyone else can't even live. It's supposed to be about everybody being able to work honestly and have enough to support their families while maintaining as few restrictive measures as possible to avoid a dictatorship. If you happen to do particularly well, that's fine, help others too and work honestly, right? The rich should be providing decent wages and good jobs for others to work, shouldn't they? This is genuinely possible and has been done. I don't think this is even specific to any political ideology, I think this is just what everybody has a right to live in. Edit: damn I missed the hammer and sickle next to her name
No you’re right. It honestly doesn’t matter who this person is, facts are facts. If a communist says the sky is blue, are they wrong because they’re a communist? There’s solid data supporting this claim from gen Z and their parents, we have told the world how we feel and this person repeating it isn’t automatically wrong because they have problematic views. You may as well go around telling all the Zoomers that feel like this that they’re wrong because a communist agreed with them.
I'm honestly amazed how prevalent the red scare still is in America. Most of the people who are afraid of communists can't even explain why they're afraid of communists.
Ask an American why they hate communism and they'll describe capitalism
So much so that there's a whole sub for that : r/SocialismIsCapitalism
Ask a communist why they hate capitalism and they’ll describe corporatism.
violent revolution bad. centralizing power into one party bad. starving bad.
All those things happen in capitalist countries too. In fact I'd argue more violent revolutions have been staged by capitalists (usually backed by the US gov)
>violent revolution bad American Revolution bad?
>violent revolution bad. The irony of this in a country that only exists as it's own state thanks to revolution
Well, that’s because the “communists” your grandparents were conditioned to hate and fear weren’t really even communists…just totalitarian regimes of various stripes.
Any political revolution will result in countless deaths sooo... It's valid to be scared.
1989 Czechoslovakia would like to have a word with you
The Red Scare led to an after effect of saying that positive social changes are Marxist and thus scaring those who lived through it. And since the politicians today lived through the USSR. They think that way too
Seeiouslyyyyy this. And anything they don’t like it “communism”, as is Red Scare tradition. We’ve had several “waves” of it, and I’d argue we’re in one now.
capitalists have really brainwashed generations into thinking communism is this big bad monster that is coming to get you... not everyone who thinks communism is a viable economical system is evil, in fact most of them are not, they're just looking for alternatives to the mess that is capitalism.
"Capitalism isn't supposed to be about gaining as much money as you can to the point where it means everyone else can't live" That's the exact definition of capitalism, actually
It’s almost like we’ve consistently had to fight that aspect of it every step of the way or something because it’s inherent to the system itself.
Americans are brainwashed from the day they get dragged into the world to believe that the definition of capitalism is happiness and freedom. Most Americans genuinely couldn't tell you what it is in any coherent fashion if you held a gun to their head, they just know its good and they like it because authority figures told them it's good and they should like it.
the version of capitalism americans get sold in school ignores that detail, but in the real practiced ideology yes
Yeah I’m reading it and I’m like…that is what capitalism is about. Then they’re adverse to the post because of a hammer and sickle?
It's factually in the name. What is the purpose of CAPITALISM if not the acquisition and leverage of CAPITAL to acquire more capital and political power. That's why SCOTUS ruled in Citizens United the way it did. Its morally repugnant but its factually in line with what capitalism is about and how it works. All they did was codify the quiet part the middle class and above never wanted to admit out loud.
Dude do you not see the irony in what you are writing? You are literally describing the goal of socialism-communism. You are making a bunch of should have statements based on a morality and expectations that never applied. Meanwhile capitalism is by definition an economic system where the means of production are privately owned and are "operated" for a profit. Why are you suprised when private owners didn't stop a a some magic amount of wealth, where they had just enough but not too much. Captialism was never about prioritizing the needs of the workers.
People are so dumb when they get caught up in the names of things. We call our system democratic, when researchers looked at the facts of our system its much closer to oligarchy. They took a look at what people want and what gets voted in. Congress now votes on the interests of the rich, this is proven from many research projects at institutions. Thats the thing about labels and names, they are abused relentlessly. Every authoritarian regime does this, take a symbol used for good and abuse it to their will. The nazis stole the swastika an ancient symbol meant to symbolize good things and corrupted it. They corrupt their symbols and use them for their will. In the case of socialism, somehow it means bad. Even though socialism is just a name and the systems in place are closer to capitalism. Fuck, China isn't even really communist anymore. Its more like authoritarian capitalist now. You gotta look past the names. They are using the names to control you and the narrative. The names aren't even correct anymore. Do your own thinking, they are all lying to you. Socialism doesn't mean anything, even the people that made the name don't know what it means. At this point, people are just railing against an imaginary system, by imaginary enemies, implanted in your brain as wrong. We want a good government system, the name doesn't mean shit anymore. The accountability is the most important thing anyway. It usually isn't the system itself that fails anyways. Its that the system fails to protect itself from bad actors and corrupt people. Every system has trouble with these bad actors. I just want a system that truthfully holds the powerful and rich accountable. That's the only system that matters anyway. TL;DR U.S. isn't capitalist anymore, closer to oligarchy. China isn't communist, its authoritarian capitalist now, Nordic countries are socialist, but they support it with community oil. We do the exact same thing in Alaska and somehow its not socialism and good? Instead of naming things for mental shorthand. We actually have to consider the systems, how they've changed, how they work and what they do. In many cases calling a system a name, isn't just wrong, its insidious and on purpose. The mental shorthand is hurting a lot of people. Things are changing so fast, the names that once described something accurately, do not. People getting so caught up in what a system says it does, they don't even consider what it actually does.
Capitalism was meant for those who could buy their way anywhere. And the disparity just gets bigger. I don't understand how regular people are fighting for capitalism. It blows my mind
It's because many people think that one day they can be that billionaire that exploits the masses and contributes to the suffering of many, despite the odds of that being drastically low.
The fact that this is getting upvotes shows that people on this sub lack the understanding of even the definition of capitalism >over time greedy individuals have ruined it \*greedy individuals succeded because that is what a system of capitalism rewards with power >Capitalism isn't supposed to be about gaining as much money as you can to the point where it means everyone else can't even live. Under capitalism gaining money rewards with more money and power, it is what happens over time, money accumilates more and more where money already is >It's supposed to be about everybody being able to work honestly and have enough to support their families while maintaining as few restrictive measures as possible to avoid a dictatorship it's not supposed to be anything other than a society where the means of production can be privately owned
Actually, during the "good era" that you're describing, it had a heavily socialist influence, (e.g., Roosevelt, FDR) were the Federal Income Tax for wealthy people was 70-90%. A lot of things were done to protect labor and worker's rights. Now what we see is just capitalism going in hyperdrive, 100%, minimum wage not increasing for over a decade, and not keeping up with inflation and growth. And all due to capitalists buying politicians so the system is more capitalism and less social policies that help workers.
I think people our age are delusional and falling for boomer nostalgia. Also doomerism. Life was never that good. 1960: 7.7% attended college\ Today: 37.7% attended college 1960: 61.9% homeownership rate\ Today: 67.4% homeownership rate 1960: $13,250 disposable income per capita\ Today: $50,425 disposable income per capita (These are “real” disposable incomes, aka already adjusted for inflation) 1960: 22.1% poverty rate\ Today: 11.5% poverty rate And poverty is a relative statistic. The poverty threshold for a family of three in 1960 was <$2,359, while today it’s <$23,280. And we’re still doing so much better. Also, for perspective, Americans have the second-highest median disposable incomes in the world, after adjusting for purchasing power and transfers. Median, so it isn’t just the rich pulling the number up. And adjusted for transfers, so paying for health insurance and other costs Americans have that most other citizens don’t is already accounted for. It’s wild that people think we’re living in some sort of decay. I acknowledge that there are issues, especially housing in coastal cities, but we literally live in one of the richest countries in the most prosperous time in history. Doomers and communists complaining about “late stage capitalism” should spend some time abroad and look up some historical data, imo. https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attainment-in-the-us/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20about%2037.7%20percent,population%20had%20graduated%20from%20college. https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/housing-trends-visualized/ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income#Median https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/09/10/how-the-geography-of-u-s-poverty-has-shifted-since-1960/#:~:text=It's%20worth%20noting%20that%20as,according%20to%20Census%20Bureau%20data. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/income-poverty-health-insurance-coverage.html#:~:text=Official%20Poverty%20Measure-,The%20official%20poverty%20rate%20in%202022%20was%2011.5%25%2C%20with%2037.9,was%20the%20lowest%20on%20record. https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-series/historical-poverty-people/hstpov1.xlsx
Thank you for that. I hate it when so many people fantasise about the "golden age of US" in 50s and 60s that they only know through media and propaganda posters that focused on lives of wealthy individuals and not through actual statistics.
The most based comment here. Well done bro, I will save it.
Blud “Capitalism isn’t supposed to be about gaining as much money as you can to the point where it means everyone else can’t even live” It literally is, the point of capitalism is to have as much as money as possible, so it will thru any means, including making the general populace poorer
>Capitalism isn't supposed to be about gaining as much money as you can to the point where it means everyone else can't even live. Whoever said that? History suggests otherwise. Capital accumulation has been recorded since the early days. Some will win and some will lose in the battle of the market. Winners will consolidate: monopolize. Capitalism transforming into crony capitalism and then corporatism is a natural evolution of capitalism because those with the most money have the most influence on our politics. They buy our politicians. You can observe this phenomena all around you. >It's supposed to be about everybody being able to work honestly and have enough to support their families while maintaining as few restrictive measures as possible to avoid a dictatorship You're conflating liberalism with capitalism. They are two distinct things. Those who subscribe to liberalism tend to subscribe to the notion that market freedom = freedom proper. Ask Chileans how they feel about their market freedom. Ask the third-world how they feel about free markets being imposed upon them by the IMF. >There was a time at some point when capitalism meant having a job that could reasonably pay for one's life, and over time greedy individuals have ruined it. Those with the power to sway politics will use their power to make things easier for themselves. The working class don't have the money to sway politics the way that the ultra-wealthy do. This power dynamic will only ever serve to diminish our (the working class) rights and abilities.
>Capitalism isn't supposed to be about gaining as much money as you can to the point where it means everyone else can't even live. Expect that's exactly what capitalism is about. Gaining as much money as possible that is, what that leads to is irrelevant. Capitalism relies on people doing this, the whole incentive for investment is that you'll get more out than you put in. The fact is that during the dawn of capitalism shit sucked really fucking badly and quality of life for a lot of people for way worse. We had children dying in coal mines, a transatlantic chattle slavery industry more brutal than all slavery before it, families sleeping draped over ropes because they couldn't afford even a floor to lie down on etc. It was awful. Things got better because, despite its faults, the system did allow large investments into industrialization so production capacity drastically increased - but workers only saw a chunk of this when they organized and governments got so scared of communist organizing they made concessions. We're suffering now because those things have been reversed. We're regressing back towards the living conditions of earlier capitalism because they're no longer scared of workers organizing. Why should they be? They can just move their businesses to the other side of the planet instead.
It was doing much better when we had strong unions and a regulatory government with teeth. And then the neoliberals and Kapitalists came along and started preaching freedumb and the dummies fell for it. Still falling for it. They somehow think it's okay to pay a private insurance company 2000 a month than pay the goverment 20. Something about freedumb again.
The issue with that statement is that capitalism is a broad ideology with many different sub-groups. Blaming the problem on capitalism is akin to blaming our current political issues on democracy. The issue isn't with capitalism itself but the way it is implemented nowadays.
Valid point however I think if you really get down to the heart of what drives capitalism it inevitably leads to the same destination.
This is not true at all. Zoomers and Millenials keep saying this but it has never been true. Right now is the best time for the average quality of life for people in this country. [Zoomers have a higher home ownership rate than their parents](https://www.carriermanagement.com/news/2024/01/17/257878.htm#:~:text=Even%20so%2C%20most%20Gen%20Zers,2022%2C%20according%20to%20Redfin's%20data). I understand you're likely just entering the workforce and don't make enough to make a living. Guess what, that's always been in the case. I keep seeing this pop up in TikTok where Zoomers are gaslighting themselves into thinking that someone working at Target had enough money to live a comfortable life in a big city. This delusion is creating 2 things. Zoomers somehow thinking that their material conditions are terrible, when they're not which adds a ton of negativity to their life. And the worst thing it does is it robs you of agency, which I think adds to the reasons why younger generations are so depressed. Right now you think that the only way you can be happy is if you hold a violent revolution that has like no popular support. Instead of doing everything you can to make yourself happy, you are making it so that it depends on the actions of others. Gen Z definitely has way more problems than past generations. I really do feel of you, but all of these things seem to stem from lack of purpose rather than material conditions.
Capitalism is VERY MUCH about gaining as much money as you possibly can, consequences to others be damned. Ultimately the aim of capitalism is to generate the largest amount of money you can get away with. Government regulation is needed for this to instead lead to decent/good wages for everyone. At least in the US this has however been systematically destroyed over several decades.
I don't see how that whole commentary would suddenly become bad because there's a chance she'd be communist. Americans have an unreasonable fear of it, it's just political and social inclinations, nobody's going to slaughter your family. Communist often allied with socialist in my country, they're a big reasons why there's paid leave for workers, as well as reasonable working hours, women representation in political parties, unemployment compensation and workers' unions.
> Capitalism isn't supposed to be about gaining as much money as you can to the point where it means everyone else can't even live. Lol that is literally everything that capitalism has ever supposed to have been. Ideology, system, execution, enforcement, spread and maintenance. It literally has no other element to it that isn't this. There's other shit that people associate with it, out of misunderstanding or miseducation. Prosperity? That's just good government. Economic growth for prosperity, then, specifically? That's British Liberalism (specific to the early 19th century). Free trade, then? Mercantilism. A free economy where all can thrive? Libertarianism (at least before the term got coopted). An economic system where the government does not interfere and the market forces have free agency? That's Laissez-faire, which isn't a system, and more a handful of specific policies Capitalism means "the people who own the means of production own the means to make and accumulate all wealth". There's more to the definition, of course, but in a nutshell that's what it is, what it makes it distinct from other systems such as socialism and feudalism and barter economies and such. And it has literally no other possible result than: the people who own the means of production "gaining as much money as [they] can to the point where it means everyone else can't even live." Whenever *something else happens* it's by forces external to capitalism. Usually oppositional forces (revolutions, colonial wars of liberation, strikes), but also frequently by forces that benefit from it but also see it for the self eating snake that it is and seek to mitigate its more annihilation-prone tendencies (the New Deal comes to mind). Capitalism, as a system, cannot lead anywhere other than where we are now: the ever increasing and often accelerating gap of inequality, and the ever worsening living conditions of the working class. It is literally the only thing it's designed for, *the only thing it's capable of.*
That is literally the point of capitalism. It is about the subjugation of the whole world in pursuit of endless accumulation of capital
This is actually not a good point at all, you are just wildly misinformed about the past. 1. Median real wages are at all time highs. 2. Life expectancy is near all time highs after climbing for decades 3. Home ownership is at or near all time highs. 4. Home sizes are way larger than they were in the past, and almost all homes now have indoor plumbing, AC, and other modern quality of life improvements. 5. More Americans own more cars than in the past 6. Americans are much more highly educated now than in the past, including many more people going to college over the past few decades when compared to the late 1900s 7. The percentage of income spent on food by Americans is essentially at all time lows, dropping from 40% to ~10% of annual income over 50-70 years. If you think that the world is currently worse than some magical time in the past, you just aren’t accurately informed on what the past looked like.
In the “good old days” people didn’t pay rent. They bought their massive homes either with a ridiculous loan that they would pay out in a few years or with a few years of cash savings. Capitalism is dead. What we have today just barely resembles the capitalism of the mid 20th century. This is something new that doesn’t have a name yet because it’s still a transition. And it’s worse. Definitely. Of course it wasn’t all ideal back then. Those “good old days” were never sustainable in the long run, for starters. And we’re starting to see the consequences.
Late stage capitalism. It’s uncanny how much Marx correctly predicted about the future of this system.
Techno-fuedalism is my go-to atm ✌️
Late stage capitalism and techno-fuedalism is amazing
Ah the myth of the 50s or 60s or even the 40s, where people claim how we have fallen off both economicly and socially. What a [myth](https://youtu.be/cYJYzzT02MA?si=y18kGB38KOtqpRNH)
In the UK especially it wasn't until maybe after the 70's that people actually started to own their own homes, prior to this it was nearly all council houses (government funded), rent or lettings There never has been a 'good old days' every decade has had its issues and pretending we're not in one of the best periods of human history is laughable
The capitalism of the 20th Century barely resembled the capitalism of the early 19th Century, the system has just evolved. The problem is that Americans delusionally think they're no longer in capitalism because now life sucks for white people too and not just everyone else.
Capitalism died because people don't read history books or remember what both the Democrats and Republicans did to the government.
Greedflation? Corporatism? (Sin)ism? Vault-tec?
Complete nonsense. Home ownership rate is higher today than it was in the 60s lol. Stop living in echo chambers that spread lies.
It's cronies capitalism where the government stifles competition through regulation. Basically picking the winners because they get bribes. How else do regular senators beat the best investors in market returns? Everyone in a position of power is trying to skim off the top or just straight plunder the public coffers and the justice system is so tangled and twisted that I'm honestly thinking public hangings should make a comeback. We've got a powerful, centralized government that is quickly losing the backing of the people. Trust in government institutes is at an all time low.
I’m still not down to try communism
person : points out flaws in a system americans : BuT ThAAts CoMmUnIsM
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And full of people that don't understand capitalism. Capitalism is just the means of production being in private hands, which was great. It got economic control away from the despots. What most people don't like is the income inequality, then blame capitalism for the problems. A large pay of the problem is from our increasing rate of technological advancement. It's creating new markets, but they're hard to find at first as other jobs become irrelevant.
The OPP does have a hammer & sickle in their name tho
There are many different forms of anti-capitalism bedsides communism. One of the best ones in my opinion is worker owned democracy. The government has no extra power, we still have buisnesses like usual, but instead of being owned almost exclusively by the 0.01%, they are owned by the actual people that work there.
Neat so if I’m a business owner, I can expect the workers to come with checks in hand to buy their equal shares? Or would I be forced to give my company away at gun point?
Preferable the latter
I can't wait to continue my family's tradition of being gulaged.
Can’t wait to instead of spending my entire life behind a desk to finally transition into spending my entire life in a bread line
Shit with the way things are going now I feel like I could end in a bread line any day now.
i cant wait to continue my family tradition of being starved to death by rich overlords (context: bengal famine of 1943 )
Many zoomers are anticapitalist because they didn't get to see every single communist nation crash and burn in the 50's-90's
Yeah, like when the US bombed the shit out of Vietnam, overthrew fledgling democratically elected socialist governments in Chile and the rest of the world and committed mass murder in Indonesia, all because they dared to dream a different dream to that of capitalists in the West.
north vietnam literally invaded the south and both the chilean coup and indonesian anti-communist killings were first and foremost perpetrated by local governments and there is no hard evidence of US killing in either…
>"It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to 24 October but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG and American hand be well hidden. While this imposes upon us a high degree of selectivity in making military contacts and dictates that these contacts be made in the most secure manner it definitely does not preclude contacts such as reported in Santiago 5442 which was a masterful piece of work." -Telegram from the CIA to the station in Chile https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v21/d154
Well yeah… obviously the US was going to bomb the shit out of a country that was attacking its allies… didn’t matter if the north was capitalist or communist
Haha this so funny to me because imagine relying on such a utopian system that it cannot come into existence. The myth that communism has been a victim that's been ganged up on is more hilarious when you see that communism as an ideology has been prevalent to over 60% of the world population. Yet you find almost no friends of it in those regions now and regrets remain.
Implying that communism or capitalism are the only two available options that could possibly exist. These lazy reductionist opinions are so fuckin played out.
As opposed to watching our capitalist nation crash and burn now?
Yall are in one of the best economic times of all of history and you go out and find molehills to turn into mountains. There is nothing “crashing and burning” in “our capitalist nation” But reddit is allergic to data so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Someone who's looking for an excuse for why their life sucks is going to find one sadly.
Look at quality of life, gdp per capita, life expectancy, real wage and the amount of luxuries available to a Pole or a Czech in 1989 vs today. You don't even need to do a former communist state, virtually all capitalist nations have improved in virtually all of those metrics. People are better off today than ever before in human history. But you don't feel that way, because propaganda from... certain governments have convinced young people that the old times was a utopia that was destroyed by capitalism.
theyre not even remotely comparable
Shout-out to all the people in the comments who recognize the system we have now is bad but also recognize that switching to starvation simulator isn't the solution. In a sub for young people that's actually pretty heartwarming. We will own nothing and we will be happy about it
"Socialism doesn't work, we know that because every time someone dared to try it or communism, we brutally murdered them and overthrew their government for a fruit company."
said every communist ever when trying to explain why communism have never succeeded. but hey an example of a successful communist country is north korea, i wonder why no one wants to be like north korea?
Most people are anti capitalist because they think America = capitalism, and in the same breath will compare America to other capitalist countries which have common sense regulations and functional welfare states. I’ve yet to see any of these terminally online losers actually outline an economic plan that makes sense, draw upon historical examples and successes, or even make basic distinctions between social democracy vs socialism
You will always end up with an accumulation of wealth by the property owning class in capitalism that spills over into them influencing the government to create ideal conditions for them that exploit the common worker, Cronyism is a feature of Capitalism
Must be why the countries with the highest wealth equality and best standards of living are also third way capitalist countries right? You have zero evidence to back up what you’re saying, this is the problem with kids who learn about socialism online and just repeat shit without understanding it
>You will always end up with an accumulation of wealth by the property owning class You could have just stopped there. It applies to every economic form because human nature is not overcome by idealism.
Big government practically invites cronyism. If there wasn't a government regulator for X, the big business in X industry can't lobby for special favours if there are no favours to give. Wouldn't returning to a freer market reduce cronyism?
Compared to communist states, where the same thing happens but with Party elite that the population cannot vote out.
That's the senators job. If they get paid 170k they should be working 24/7 to come up with something better
I’m not anti capitalist. But a certain generation, (I won’t name drop) ruined it all for us
If it's capable of being ruined by a single generation, was it that great of a system?
No system humanity has ever devised was ever great. Every single one of them has been fundamentally flawed, it's just a contest of which one is the least bad.
I don't necessarily disagree, but my problem is that everyone seems to think that we've reached the end of that chain and this godawful system is the one we should just stick with and stop trying to find a better one.
It's not even a system problem, it's a people problem, everyone has their own goals People at the top of society goal is to make as much money as possible but it has caused a major problem because it damages the environment greatly I won't say living conditions isn't great, it's better than most of history (not that difficult of a task) but as a Vietnamese the environmental problems is worse than you can imagine I literally see things getting worse in real time, our outdated dam systems isn't helping either You never know how bad life can get until you see venta black sewage water wash into your house and you just gotta hope that a centipede isn't in that water and might climb up your legs while watching your flip flops drift into oblivion, never to be seen again Idk every country seems to go on a race to nowhere because they're afraid that if they fall back, someone will attack them, I don't think there would be a system that just stop people from ...... Doing whatever the hell we're doing
I agree that’s kind of obvious though
I wonder why it needs to be said then 🤔
The."good old days" are often quite exaggerated. Our quality of life today in many ways is far superior to any previous generation. Are things difficult right now? Sure, but I don't see how making things exponentially more difficult by enacting a revolution for an ideology that invariably devolves into failed authoritarian states* is the answer. *Of the states that haven't failed like China and Vietnam, notice they had to open markets and basically become capitalist lite in order to stay afloat. And their workers are far more exploited than Western workers.
So what you're saying is....capitalism is a good system we're just in a bad patch? Interesting....
Exactly
Yeah, and actually reading the history you realise the "good old days" overall weren't anywhere near as good as people remember them.
everything seems a lot worse when you read about it in past media or news or statistics when the vast amount of it doesnt affect your average american or citizen. life is so much better when you get off your computer and go outside because 95% of the regurgitated ‘america is on the verge of collapse’ news or stats are relegated to the internet, and this applies when reading abt the past too. lifes actually pretty fucking good
I’m so tired of seeing the absolute worst possible scenarios on the internet 24/7
Yea it's sick that mark Zuckerberg accounts for half of my entire generations wealth
people need to realize being anti crony capitalism isnt being anti capitalist. we have good examples in the nordic countries.
Gen Z hates Capitalism until they see Venezuela, India and North Korea. Gen Z also hates capitalism while typing on an iPhone.
Apparently aping those other countries is the literal only option! Wow! It's also not like I need money to survive in capitalist America, and need a phone in order to organize things like everyone else nowadays. I guess principled people are supposed to cut themselves out so they can't change anyone else' s mind? American propaganda has solidified the idea that there can be no change. Well be prepared for everyone to hate you, because if things are shit and you say "nothing can be done", we hate you more every second you stand in the way.
You type all that out on your Phone? Or PC? Either way, it’s thanks to Capitalism. Can things change? Yes. Is the answer Socialism? Fuck No.
Lol I can thank some cobalt miner in the congo who probably isn't even alive thanks to our overlords. And some factory workers in South East Asia, or India. The guy who runs the company simply shows up, throws money at engineers, and takes credit. So what's your answer to that? How do I limit that guy from controlling these thousands of people's lives? He provides nothing except capital, yet in the system we live in that makes him a king of his own land. If you have zero means to actually stop crony-ism, and any means we do make are labeled as socialist, your functionally telling me nothing can change. If communism and socialism wasn't a legit alternative idea billionaires wouldn't spend so much money strangling it in the crib. The funniest part is Im not a communist, but I just see that all of the comments saying "sorry this is it everyone, we are in the only workable system". How fucking convenient for the status quo billionaires, that the universe bends in their favor. It's not like they control the flow of resources and thus can bend anyone else.
The peasants complain about their lords while living on their lord's land? Curious...
Capitalism is when iPhone. Socialism is when no iPhone.
Thanks Regan 😒
I mean you joke, but literally that man was the fucking poison pill for most of America's problems today, from antitrust to climate change.
Yeah I'm not joking😭, I can even trace him back to even influencing my church trauma to some extent especially cuz of his friendship with Jerry Falwell
I do find it interesting how he was a movie star, and our next disaster was electing a reality star. I bet we will see a pro wrestler get elected in our lifetime and that will bring its own problems. I bet Steve Austin because many people know his name and he has the tough guy attitude.
So many zoomers are anticapitalist because they are too young to lose connection with their ideals which just arent realistic. Just like every other generation. Young people are always like this. Lol
God I hate communists. Not gonna let them fuck up my country a second time.
You weren't even legally employable during the worst of the 2008 recession and the supposed looming post-covid recession has mostly been averted(significant inflation is not a crash, that's not even remotely how that works) housing is expensive, though. If you want that to even be remotely fixable, get involved in local and state level politics for zoning reforms and definitely don't let Trump win now that he's targeting zoning reforms as a "war on the suburbs". Zoning is a primary lever for the modern state of capitalist exploitation in housing and can be directly reformed.
So what you’re telling me is that if a bunch of Gen Z was wealthy than they wouldn’t care about the supposed idealistic and utopian nature of beloved socialism?
So many Zoomers are anticapitalist because they’re young and aren’t making much money yet. They’ll grow out of it like every other generation before them did. The anticapitalists aren’t going to win.
I'm a millennial, make a lot of money, and I'm a proud socialist thank you very much. If you think people start aligning with capitalist interests because they're making "a lot of money" (i.e. middle class or upper middle class incomes), you're sadly mistaken. The doctor is closer to a homeless man than he is to a Billionaire.
Yeah except we aren’t making more money as we age
You guys are like max 25 or 26 years old. Barely any of you have even started your careers
If you think someone with 10 years experience in a skilled position isn't making way more money than a newbie you're trippin
Trust me, communistic decay is much much worse
I'm Gen z from the former Eastern bloc and I have to say that I and a lot of people around my age that I've met are in favour of capitalism because the idea of capitalism is still new there and it helped develop the countries. It's interesting to see if the opinions will shift away from capitalism in the future like it's doing in the west rn.
Not trying to start a fight. Are there any good examples of communism where it worked? Just seen a lot of pro communist post lately.
You realize the US has ensured that every nation that tried collectivism of any real sort was either bombed to shit or cut out of global trade, yes?
zooomers are doomers that dont study history. 'good old days' included a lot of bad days.
Hammer and sickle aside; she's completely right. The first world governments (mostly the United States, but it may apply other countries) and corporations got greedy and made a lot of decisions that royally screwed over much of the middle and working class because they delusionally thought they won the Cold War and were living at the "End of History". Now they're suffering the consequences by having to deal with a populace that isn't cooperative, doesn't want to fight their wars for them, and they're backpedaling *hard* because of that. You can see this, for example, in how they're trying to bring back (and subsidize) semiconductor manufacturing from places like Taiwan and China. As well as them now treating China less like a friend and more like an adversary.
There is also the fact though, that China very much is threatening Taiwan (and it's semiconductor industry), so them wanting to safeguard domestic production makes a lot of sense.
I find what you said very interesting. Especially the last sentence. I believe we see that happening real time on the world stage.
Lots of zoomers are "anti-capitalists" because they are lazy. They don't "feel" like trading time and convenience for prosperity. They want to keep whining on social media all day long and still be able to contain an unrealistic lifestyle. That's not how it worked beck in the "good days". As someone who has experienced communism firsthand, I promise you - you do not want that. You had to work, irregardless of if you liked your job or not. Most of those jobs were hard labour in factories or even on the field. There was long queues in front of the stores even for essentials like bread or oil. Foreign technology, even importing Western music was banned and punishable. So yeah, before waiving the hammer and sickle, educate yourselves. Also get your shit together. Nobody owes you anything.
Gen X saw a lot of this too. Memories of the Golden Age are probably a bit exaggerated. You look at how low prices were but comapre it to incomes of the same years. That said, it was easier to afford houses, cars, college, etc. The reason why is largely explainable by two things: look at a chart of the money supply and what happened with manufacturing and some other jobs in the 90s. For a long time the government was restrained in spending by the gold standard. This limited how much money was in circulation, to a degree. There were ways around it but Congress didn't really push things too much. Over time, the money supply was increased. This happens in virtually all governments. Money supply expands to increase money for taxing. Inflation expanded faster and faster, like we are seeing now. In the 90s, a lot of manufacturing was sent overseas. Millions of jobs worth up front. This hurt the economy because those jobs made things people wanted and needed, and had fairly high incomes which then helped support all manner of services from grocery stores to doctors. Takes those away and largely replace them with service sector jobs or the dole, and things decline. Add in outsourcing and H1b visas, and white collar jobs were affected too. All of this had the effects of driving down wages and stifling economic growth. In adddition, things are more expensive. Houses are bigger, cars have tons of electronics, we have all manner of electronics and subscriptions, etc., that didn't used to be.
R/fluentinfinance is anything but fluent in finance. Most of the "capitalist decay" is actually government intervention. For example, we'll use the issue of housing as it is used in the OP: the biggest issue is the inability of capitalist developers to build due to zoning restrictions; there's a whole lot of "not in my backyard" going on.
r/fluentinfinance can be pretty entertaining in a morbid curiosity type of way tho. Also yeah NIMBY gets in the way of a lot of affordable housing projects. I’d have to look into it but I’m willing to bet NIMBY has probably also gotten in the way of some public transit projects.
I honestly give up, no system works because humans suck. Even systems BUILT to work around human nature fail, because most horribly evil sociopathic people that take advantage of others for personal gain are intelligent and find ways to sidestep anything that gets between them and what they want. We're in a losing battle with a minority of humans are genuinely terrible, cruel, detached from reality, and sociopathic.
Most zoomers don't understand basic 10th grade economics so makes sense that they'd get butthurt about things that are uncontrollable.
You’re not “anti capitalist” bro you’re “lazy” There was never a day where working a minimum wage job could raise a family. Ever. Why do people think they should be able to live in the burbs with a family of 5 while working at McDonald’s. Lmao
It doesn't help despite living in a shitty situation most gen zers are about as tough as a bowl of jello because they are only looking at the world from a 1st world perspective.
She lost me when I saw she had that hammer and sickle. Fuck communism. Every attempt at it, has lead to authoritarianism and millions of people dying.
Can we send all these "Anti-capitalists" to non-capitalist countries please?
She never paid one bill in her life, is the irony not lost on morons who post these things? Edit: OP deleted screenshot in post minutes after I posted this.
There’s no such thing as capitalistic it’s monopoly are the problem. We are not anti-capitalist we are anti-Monopoly.
God this subreddit is a bootlicking shithole I hate how white this crappy website is
They looking in the wrong system. It not capitalism. Its us electing the wrong people who print money. Doesnt matter if its capitalist, socalist, dictatorship, or other. When you make money worth less and less it makes it harder on everyone.
funny word for word that was said about the generation before Z too
As much as I'm sure many redditors hate him tucker carlson even said it. What do you expect when our system has resulted in what it has
I’m definitely not anti-capitalist but I’m not a fan of how America had implemented capatalism. I think, realistically, capitalism is the best economic system.
\*Sees the hammer and sickle in username\* \*@ has "Socialist" in it\* Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Older people have been through more economic crashes than you ever have. I'm at 4 or 5 but that's life 🤷♂️
Most people in these generations aren’t anti-capitalist we are anti-monopoly and anti-corruption
Millennial here. I guess I’ll take the bait, yes I’m capitalist. So a key part of decay in capitalism comes the inevitable rebirth part. It’s a cycle. I’ve been around long enough I’ve seen good old days and the bad times. But our system trips self corrects without the violent revolution part. So if it’s between either bloodbath in the financial markets vs an actual bloodbath, then give me capitalism.
THIS NEVER FUCKING EXISTED. THAT WAS A LIE. Only select subset of white people had this "American Dream" that was a flat out propagnda that whitewashed most of history. Please stop talking about how in the "Good Old Days" things were better. When that was only true for a select subgroup of people.
No, they're anti capitalist because they're being indoctrinated by people playing politics and algorithms
Yes, let’s definitely replace capitalism with commu-I mean a dictatorship.
I'm the capitalistiest capitalist of all, but really... Fuck the big corps, they destroy the idea of capitalism itself
Yeah that's fine and all, but this person has a hammer and sickle next to her name. There's a reason no one can name a country that adopted communism that isn't a total hellhole. Just because capitalism has problems doesn't somehow make communism great.
There were never "good old days" of a lavish life with no effort. It's always taken a lot of effort for a good life, but due to the nature of technology advancing, it's become more mental effort than raw physical effort. And there's been one once in a lifetime economic crash for everyone who didn't live through the Depression.
“Late stage Capitalism” is one of the most ridiculous terms out there… Big Government supporters have F*cked up Healthcare, housing and education systems in the US, have persuaded the younger generation that Capitalism is to be blamed and are offering Bigger Governments as a solution… The fact that someone supports communism is already an indication on how out of touch with reality they are.
communism would only make any economy even worse. today's capitalism that everyone likes to cry about is in a way better situation than any attempt at communism has been
Dont blame capitalism. Blame the government for deficit spending and for printing trillions of dollars out of thin air
The small mindedness of being born after technology also contributes to the feelings of insufficiency. I used to dig holes for fun as a kid. And I loved it. Work that out kiddies.
So many zoomers are anti-capitalist because the majority of the generation are teenagers and don’t know shit about economics
For some reason, when corrupt, unethical people are in power, a lot of folks assume it's the system's fault. Historically, there have been many eras where capitalist systems worked and citizens thrived utilizing it. Socialism and Communism don't have a good track record for that regardless who is steering the ship. Assuming a different system will somehow eradicate corruption and immoral behaviors is extremely naive.
Yeah capitalism sucks but the alternative isn't very good either, in fact it's worse. The idea of living in a utopia where all of your needs are met sounds great on paper until you look a little closer and everything sours, instead of starving and living in poverty being a consequence of the economy it's a consequence of the government owning everything and taking things from you because it belongs to the people.
Zoomers don't know the "good old days", but they also don't know anything she's talking about either. Most zoomers probably don't even know what a foreclosure is. Fact is unless you're from a family below the poverty line you've likely been sheltered from anything involving the economy & haven't really experienced what living as an adult is like; it feels like this person just saw a bunch of scary headlines & out of context statistics & immediately assumed everything's shit.
so if capitalism worked back then, maybe the problem isn't the system but the people in charge of it?
I’d like to be in most capitalist countries rather than fallen communist/socialist states like Cuba or China. I have freedom to pursue whatever career I want. Although I don’t like social programs or policies that make people dependent on the government, I also hate the federal government’s increasing size, as most commie states have a monopoly over the land, the people, and history. God Bless America
It's not like communism would be any better. Until the day when your average human being isn't plagued by greed, thirsty for power, irresponsibility, ect. No form of government would exist without corruption of some kind.
Posted by somebody with a hammer and sickle in their name. Let’s talk about the good ole days of that symbol.