Hi all,
I’m seeing a lot of hate for capitalism here, and I’m wondering why that is and what the rationale behind it is. I’m pretty pro-capitalism myself, so I want to see the logic on the other side of the fence.
If this isn’t the right forum for a political/economic discussion-- I’m happy to take this somewhere else.
Cheers!
Capitalism itself isn’t really the problem though, a free market economy should work. The issue is that the owners, be they corporate or private, don’t view their workforces the same way.
The greed of those at the top is crippling the very people that are driving the economy.
Free market capitalism is inherently about generating wealth for primary stakeholders but externalizing the social and environmental costs. It’s basically how the entire system works.
You are misusing terms, a stakeholder is anyone affected by a company’s actions while a shareholder is anyone with ownership in a company. All shareholders are stakeholders, not all stakeholders are shareholders.
I was using the term in it’s original sense, i.e. investors, employees, and suppliers.
I didn’t want to say “shareholders” because not all businesses offer shares.
The problems you listed are a feature of capitalism. The rich owners have more power in the owner-worker relationship. Which means they get richer, which means they get more power, which means they get richer, which means they get more power, etc.
The only thing resembling some balance was unions, and they were gutted so that guess what, the rich child get richer. Which meant they got more powerful, and we’re back to the cycle.
Free market works only to create monopolies because in the real world companies compete and then one gets gobbled up and these mega corps can gobble, out compete or lobby for barriers to market if there arent any already inherently. Imagine a new telecomp trying to start but its small then it need a huge investment to cover only a small area, how will that compete with a giant already established telecom? That happens in all businesses and sectora
Oh FFS, the capitalist system shreds ‘free’ markets with abandon. Monopolies eliminate competition. Regulatory capture eliminates anti-monopoly regulations. Capitalism is the perpetual accumulation of more money by investing in the production of more commodities. It collapses when it cannot evolve to expand demand, as it did in the 1930’s. As it is doing again now., although rather slowly, as it has learned how to use governments to mitigate financial collapse. It does indeed use ‘markets’ for exchanges, but it only cares about ‘free’ markets as an ideology. It’s motivating force is accumulation. The ‘greed at the top’ is the system itself, not some bad apples.
No, it absolutely should not work. I can’t even imagine what you are imagining when you say that. HOW could it possibly work long term? Are you familiar with any game theory?
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.
You should know that most Marxists believe capitalism is an economic engine unlike anything that came before it. That doesn’t mean we can’t build a more rational system. If we wanted to approach the problem scientifically we would study capitalism, understand how it works and came to be, form hypotheses for how to build something better, and then experiment.
I’d also add that the formation of the modern government, ie liberal democratic states, and the development of capitalism are one and the same. Our totalizing market economy can not exist without governments ensuring conditions are right for market exchange to operate smoothly. As such, I don’t think it’s possible to say a failure of governments are not a failure of capitalism. It’s a package deal so to speak.