First, no alternative is required for something to be unacceptable to continue
Yes there is! This system is at least feeding most people in most countries. I refuse to say that “because this system is not ideal, we must destroy the system which is feeding billions of people without an alternative in mind”. Are you arguing that it should be okay for people to die?!?
So the outcome from a customer’s perspective is that the price fixers have dropped their prices way lower? That’s good, no?
And then once the 3rd party goes out of business and they resume their high price… they’re encouraging a new 3rd party to try again. So the prices lower again.
Meaning there’s pressure on prices to be lower, which is what we want. Therefore, good system.
Of course, I’m not saying it’s ideal. But is there a better system?
It’s not a side effect, it’s an effect. It’s a feature. If companies could, they would externalize everything they could. Including paying workers as little as they can (or not at all, see slavery), or externalizing the health problems with the work (see radium girls), etc, etc,
Right, but they can’t! That’s the whole point of capitalism! Slavery is the pinnacle of anti-capitalism, because slaves don’t own their own capital! It’s explicitly not capitalist.
That would be the last time I moved, so about a year ago.
Also, I happen to very much like my landlord. This is because they’re heavily incentivized to address my concerns because otherwise I’d leave a bad review which they care about. Examples are: they fixed a couple of times the laundry facilities were broken, they fixed broken windows a couple of times, etc. etc.
EDIT: Actually, you’re making a very good point which I didn’t address properly! You’re saying that voting gives society more power than prices do. This is a good point, but I disagree. I think prices control production more than any government can, because it allows a much more granular decision-making. For example, every single individual can “vote” that their apartment is too expensive by leaving and finding cheaper places, driving prices down.
Capitalism is defined as a set of rules/regulations that allows people to own the capital that they produce. Regulatory capture is when an organization gains control of the regulations to subvert other people’s ability to own their capital. This is why I say that the more regulatory capture that happens, the less capitalist the system.
And yes! Capitalist systems heavily incentivize caring about money and nothing else. But the system also makes it so that when people act purely selfishly for money, that it results in good outcomes for everyone. That’s why I think it’s a good system.
For example, if organizations price-fix, it heavily encourages a third party to undercut them. If they try to prevent the third party by legal means, then that’s not capitalism.
That’s an interesting perspective! Care to share some data?
Personally, I think the fact that the median person in capitalist nations has enough food to eat is a pretty big plus! I don’t think that’s been the case throughout most of history.
I’m really not trying to be a dick, but uhh… Look around? The world is literally on fire and efforts to put it out or even to stop pouring more gas on it are put down at every turn by capitalists in the never ending pursuit of more money for it’s own sake.
Well I mean it’s unclear to me that we’re much worse than previous points in history. I’d rather have the climate crisis over the nuclear one, or either of the world wars, or live under a feudal system where I’m owned by the local lord in his castle.
I sympathize (and agree) with the belief that the current system isn’t serving everyone, much less serving everyone equally. But the world is a complicated thing and we’ve got >7 billion people to feed! I think we should be very careful before deciding “yeah it’s time to tear down the existing systems and hope that there are better systems out there”. It’s easier to make things worse than to make things better.
I mean… it has, hasn’t it? It’s worked pretty well for the last ~200 years. Even in China, the successful parts are the capitalist parts.
Yes, it’s costing us in terms of environmental sustainability. This is an externality which can be (but hasn’t been) addressed. A failure of government, not a failure of capitalism.
Capitalism isn’t you buying a tool and using it. It’s buying the 3D printer, paying people to design and build widgets, paying people to sell the widgets, then taking most of the money for yourself.
Yes, I agree that this should be possible. Of course, if I’m taking too much money, the capitalist system will encourage my competitors to defeat me. Meaning that there a dis-incentive in place for doing bad/selfish things. Sounds like a pretty good system!
I hate that I can work (with others) to build a company from the ground up and have nothing to show for it, because the owner is using us to fund his lifestyle. I hate that landlords can buy up all the homes, driving up the cost to the point no one can afford one, then rent them out and sit on their ass while I pay their mortgage. That’s capitalism. People profiting off of ownership. It inevitably ends with some people owning almost everything, and the majority owning nothing.
Yes I agree! I hate these things too. But capitalism doesn’t prohibit every bad thing. Bad things can still happen under capitalism. I’m just saying that such things are harder to do under capitalism than any other system. For example, you mention landlords have to buy up every home before they can take advantage of you through their monopoly. That’s way harder than other systems, where the government already owns all the homes, and can simply drive up the cost whenever they want :/
Yes! I’m aware of externalities, and agree that these are a side-effect of capitalism. My belief is that externalities are failures of the governing bodies to correctly define the “rules of ownership”. Once that’s done, the externality is resolved. This is an ongoing effort that’s necessary to properly use capitalism.
In my opinion, saying “capitalism is bad because of externalities” is like saying “I used an electric saw without installing the safties and it had bad side effects”.
Quoting my response (link: programming.dev/comment/1167093) for how I believe that environmental concerns are an externality that can be addressed here:
What is your general plan for what we should do when we can see that something we currently do and rely on will have to stop in the near future? Not that we will have to choose to stop it, but that it will stop because of something being depleted or no longer possible.
This is an interesting question! I’m parsing it to mean “how can the current problems be solved within a capitalist system?”. It’s a good question, and I don’t have a 100% guaranteed answer. But I don’t see that any capitalism alternative has a good answer either, so still I don’t see how capitalism is the “bad guy”.
In any case, my answer is this: A side effect of all of capitalist driven efficient production is that the environment is harmed. Here, I think the governing bodies have failed in their roles: their role is to define what “capital” means and rules of ownership. They haven’t done that for environmental concerns, which is why capitalism isn’t taking it into account properly. My desired solution is that the government could define a “total amount of carbon emissions” that would be allowed by the country as a whole, and then distribute transferrable carbon credits on the open market. This turns “rights to emit carbon” into a form of capital, and capitalism will do what it do and optimize for it.
In essence, I believe that governments have done a bad job of using the tool of capitalism to solve the problem of pollution.
I’m really not trying to be a dick, but uhh… Look around? The world is literally on fire and efforts to put it out or even to stop pouring more gas on it are put down at every turn by capitalists in the never ending pursuit of more money for it’s own sake.
Well I mean it’s unclear to me that we’re much worse than previous points in history. I’d rather have the climate crisis over the nuclear one, or either of the world wars, or live under a feudal system where I’m owned by the local lord in his castle.
I sympathize (and agree) with the belief that the current system isn’t serving everyone, much less serving everyone equally. But the world is a complicated thing and we’ve got >7 billion people to feed! I think we should be very careful before deciding “yeah it’s time to tear down the existing systems and hope that there are better systems out there”. It’s easier to make things worse than to make things better.
Yeah, and if they serve the needs of customers better, then they’ll be given encouragement (money). If they don’t, they’ll be given discouragement (they lose their investments). Seems like a good system, no?
Of course, corruption and regulatory capture subvert this system and are bad for everyone, but those are subversions of capitalism.
I don’t see how that’s obvious. Can you give me the rationale for this other system?
The rationale for capitalism is, essentially, the information problem. Basically, no one person has enough information to decide where a society’s resources should be distributed. An analogy I’ve heard is: how should society decide whether they should build a bridge or a tunnel (one takes more wood, the other takes more steel)? The answer is extremely complicated, depending on society’s capacity for producing wood and steel, people’s desire for either a bridge or tunnel, and future expectations of the need for wood or steel. The answer is given by prices, which encode this information and incentivize making the right choice.
If wood is cheaper, it means there’s more wood available and no one expects a huge need of wood to pop up soon. The same for steel, labor, land, and all the other resources that go into building a tunnel or bridge. Society is incentivized to build it for the lowest cost, which also happens to be the most efficient way to do it.
Is there a system which can do better? Would love to hear about it.
And also, I’m very scared when people suggest “down with capitalism!” because it’s a pretty decent system and I worry about tearing society down unless we have very good reasons to believe it’ll be better for it.
I’m really not trying to be a dick, but uhh… Look around? The world is literally on fire and efforts to put it out or even to stop pouring more gas on it are put down at every turn by capitalists in the never ending pursuit of more money for it’s own sake.
Well I mean it’s unclear to me that we’re much worse than previous points in history. I’d rather have the climate crisis over the nuclear one, or either of the world wars, or live under a feudal system where I’m owned by the local lord in his castle.
I sympathize (and agree) with the belief that the current system isn’t serving everyone, much less serving everyone equally. But the world is a complicated thing and we’ve got >7 billion people to feed! I think we should be very careful before deciding “yeah it’s time to tear down the existing systems and hope that there are better systems out there”. It’s easier to make things worse than to make things better.
Let’s start here: are you a capitalist? Do you own any actual capital? I don’t mean your own house or car, that is personal property not private property or anything resembling the means of production.
I guess? I’ve wanted to start my own business a couple of times. I’m a programmer, so I’ve toyed with the idea and done some research into creating a few apps which I believe people would find useful, and might pay my bills. I don’t own a house or a car-- I live in an apartment in a mid-size US city.
I ask because many people consider themselves capitalist when really they are just workers who happen to own a bit of personal property, and they make themselves essentially useful pawns for actual capitalists. And, if you’re not an actual capitalist, why are you so pro capitalism?
I’m guessing you’d consider me a pawn, but I don’t. I fit your description of owning a bit of personal property, and being a worker. I’ve worked for some large companies in the past which are supposedly the “actual capitalists”. But I promise they don’t give two shits about social good (or social bad). They are just desperately trying to make products that people want to buy. In my view, it’s a pretty good system which constrains huge organizations like Apple to making devices, when the alternative is that they could be setting up their own governments.