• Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Capitalism is a belief system where greed is encouraged as a central virtue.

      If it doesn’t include copious amounts of profiteering, it’s just sparkling market economies.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        No, capitalism is not a belief system. That’s just marxists’ image of capitalism.

        Capitalism is when a free market results in some people deciding to get wage jobs instead of being entrepreneurs. When you get a worker class, who accepts the trade of more income security for less potential profit, ie when there are “jobs” in the private sector, then you’ve got capitalism.

        Because capitalism is based on free markets, ie markets where people have choice of how they engage, a successful capitalist is one who resists short term greed in favor of long term profits.

        • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          No, capitalism is not a belief system. That’s just marxists’ image of capitalism

          False. Not that it matters since you’re wrong, but I’m no Marxist. Not a fan of authoritarianism.

          Capitalism is when a free market results in some people deciding to get wage jobs instead of being entrepreneurs

          Nope. People being employed by other people is MUCH older than capitalism and present in most economic systems.

          When you get a worker class, who accepts the trade of more income security for less potential profit, ie when there are “jobs” in the private sector, then you’ve got capitalism.

          Wrong again. Do you eb know what the word “capital” means? 🙄

          Because capitalism is based on free markets, ie markets where people have choice of how they engage, a successful capitalist is one who resists short term greed in favor of long term profits.

          You almost couldn’t be more wrong.

          Under-regulated capitalism, which is the purest form and the kind dominant in for example the US, inevitably leads to the already powerful consolidating and abusing their power, taking away the choices of workers.

          It also leads to exactly what you say it doesn’t: chasing short term gains at the expense of everything else, including the long term survival of humanity.

        • masquenox@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Capitalism is when a free market results in some the majority of people deciding to get wage jobs instead of being entrepreneurs being forced into wage labor because they weren’t born as nepobabies to the rich.

          FTFY.

        • J Lou@mastodon.social
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          3 months ago

          Who defines permitted contracts in a free market? Some right libertarians suggest that “free” markets include the “freedom” to sell labor by the lifetime or sell voting rights in the state.

          “The comparable question about an individual is whether a free system will allow him to sell himself into slavery. I believe that it would.” – Robert Nozick

          The theory that invalidates such contracts is the theory of inalienable rights. It has recently been shown to apply to capitalist employment

          @memes

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Greed is an individual characteristic - it has nothing to do with capitalism, which is a global system of ravenous and genocidal exploitation which would function in the exact way it does even if it’s main beneficiaries weren’t “greedy” at all.

        Greed is how liberals protect capitalism by pretending it’s individual behavior that is the cause of our problems and not the global system of ravenous and genocidal exploitation that it actually is.

          • masquenox@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Everybody wants to talk hysterically about the far-right - but people forget that there’s a bog-standard, garden-variety right, too.

            You know… the people that pretend they want change as long as the change doesn’t actually change anything?

            • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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              3 months ago

              I’m a liberal. I don’t particularly want change. I want the current set of rights and freedoms to stay. I just don’t want them to be taken away.

              • masquenox@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                I don’t particularly want change. I want the current set of rights and freedoms to stay.

                I know. I also know you will happily surrender those meagre “rights and freedoms” to prevent change.

                That’s why us leftists say, “scratch a fascist and a liberal bleeds.”

    • FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io
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      3 months ago

      Capitalism without meaningful regulation is just crapitalism and leads to enshittification. Regulatory capture is a real bitch.

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Ash without flame is just flame’s inevitability.

          This does not mean that going straight to the ash is the way to get heat. When you see the ash, that material has released its heat.

          A free market processes information to distribute resources, but it’s a finite-lifespan system. As that money moves around, directing resource flows through individual choice, it steadily accumulates at the center.

          Capitalism degrades into oligarchy. During its finite lifespan, it’s useful.

          You can extend the lifespan of capitalism by adding UBI which redistributes the money back out from the center.

          If you don’t do that, then the capitalism eventually degrades into a centrally-controlled economy like the soviet union. If you don’t like “late stage capitalism”, then you’re a free market lover at heart because “late stage capitalism” is where the other, non-free-market economic systems start out.

          • masquenox@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            A free market processes information to distribute resources to the already wealthy

            FTFY.

            During its finite lifespan, it’s useful.

            Useful to whom? The enormous amounts of cheap, expendable and impoverished labor required to keep the parasites rich, perhaps?

            If you don’t like “late stage capitalism”, then you’re a free market lover at heart

            Riiiight… if I don’t like beheadings I must (somehow) also be a fan of traumatic amputations? You’re a genius, Clyde.

            It’s not all bad, though… I do like your “ashes” metaphor - it’s pretty apt to describe what capitalism has delivered onto the world.

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Then why does all the bootlcikers use the term “greed” instead of talking about capitalism?

        • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Because too many morons like you do not understand they’re the same, so immediately do not think of shitty economic systems when they hear “greed”, and do not think “greed” when they hear capitalism.

          • masquenox@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Clyde, read this part real careful like, okay?

            Greed is an individual characteristic - it has nothing to do with capitalism, which is a global system of ravenous and genocidal exploitation which would function in the exact way it does even if it’s main beneficiaries weren’t “greedy” in any way whatsoever.

            Perhaps it’s best to not go around calling people online “moron” when it’s perfectly clear that you don’t have a damn clue what it is you are talking about.

            • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              bahahahahaaaaaaahaha keep drinking the koolaid, little one. It really makes you appear intelligent…

              No, they’re not LITERALLY the same thing, but if you cannot understand how capitalism is quite literally institutionalized greed, you are simply stupid. Pure and simple.

              • masquenox@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                Clyde, which part of…

                read this part real careful like, okay?

                …didn’t you comprehend the first time around?

                Your terminal mental incompetence notwithstanding, here is the important bit again.

                Greed is an individual characteristic - it has nothing to do with capitalism, which is a global system of ravenous and genocidal exploitation which would function in the exact way it does even if it’s main beneficiaries weren’t “greedy” in any way whatsoever.

                If you cannot understand how liberals hide the reality of a global system of ravenous and genocidal exploitation behind the (supposed) individualized “greed” of a (supposed) “few bad actors” it’s best you don’t go around feigning expertise on this stuff, okay?