Photons are an exception (at least, in as much as that they are a particle), and you can make new particls from energy, but definitely there’s a limit to how old a particle can be. No particle is older than the universe (as far as the big bang is concerned).
It’s possible that Lemmy in general is leftist because the people who came here wanted faster and more effective moderation against hate speech whereas more right wing people didn’t have a particularly strong need or desire for moderation.
I might have the wrong definition of fascism, but I typically think of it as extreme government overreach and control. Capitalism, however, needs a free market and free-will exchange, both of which government restrict.
If you wanted to argue that capitalism inevitably devolves into fascism you might be able to, but I suspect that any economic system would just as easily devolve to fascism.
In order for capitalism to devolve into fascism, you’ll have to corrupt the government (otherwise there’s no way to override free will exchange). However, what exists in capitalism that makes this easier/provides additional incentives for this? Every system with a government will have powerful people who want to manipulate the government for more power.
Employee and employer isn’t the only thing in an economy, and competition in other areas is very fruitful for everyone.
As for this area, yes, there’s a pressure to try to exploit workers, but you can’t exploit them too much or they won’t work for you, competitors will steal them, they’ll go off and found their own business, they might even form unions to apply extra pressure on you. There are lots of competing forces here.
Wouldn’t all the problems with a monopoly be 100 times worse when done by the government? You remove any potential for competition, government officials would still act in their own self interests (as they always have and always will), the government maintains their power through military force, there are no laws or legislations to stop them, it’d control everything it possibly could, and any objections are met with legal punishment.
I’m no fan of monopolies, but a totalitarian government (which is what every government strives for) is much worse.
Capitalism is all about mutually beneficial, free-will exchange. When you engage in a transaction, it’s because you believe what you are giving up is worth less to you than what you are receiving, otherwise you wouldn’t engage in the transaction.
One valid use of government power is punishing people who murder, and I’m not exactly sure what power cartels have outside of that.
I googled it and the Wikipedia page said they’re inherently unstable, but I don’t know how reliable that is.
In any case, I don’t see how my second example isn’t a cartel itself. All the bread companies are colluding to set the price of bread artificially high. The problem is there isn’t much to stop new competitors (or to stop members defecting).
I think everything I said applies to stupid people as well.
There’ll always be people who need to rely on charity, but if even a guy in a wheelchair can make a good living and has more opportunities than he can count I’d say that’s a really good sign.
If one company decided that the average bread should cost 50 bucks then I’m going to buy someone else’s bread and that company loses a lot of money.
If every company decided that the average bread should cost 50 bucks, that’s an extraordinary opportunity for a new competitor to come in with reasonable prices.
Save for pay for delay, all of those rely on patents and copy-rights, which are government intervention.
According to the first source, it also looks like competitors are entering and offering lower prices, including open source methods (though I have no idea how that really works). One of the biggest problems for all of them is the government saying “no, you can’t do this or that for whatever reason”. Sometimes it’s good for the government to intercede, but it seems like in this case it’s helping perpetuate monopolies.
If none of the winners offer you a job, make your own, or acquire some marketable skill. You have options and opportunities.
There aren’t as many options for housing as I’d like honestly. I’d prefer less regulation to allow for lower quality, cheaper housing. As it stands though, you still have options and the ability to improve your living conditions.
Insulin prices would be a lot lower if more people were allowed to produce and sell it.
Monopolies are pretty dangerous, and I’d like to avoid then as much as possible.
I think that they’re generally created and sustained by government intervention though. Bailouts, legal fees, red tape, price controls, exceedingly long copyrights, they all hurt new competitors more than established ones.
That leads to a beauty of capitalism though. People prioritize profit, yes, but with competition, the way to make a profit is to be appealing to people. You make a profit by providing the best good or service at the best price. This means that the people who have the goal of profits also have the goal of pleasing their customers.
There’s a quote from somewhere that goes something like this “capitalism takes the most ambitious, selfish, and capable people and forces them to stay up at night thinking about what everyone else wants”.
I wasn’t aware there are ao many other options? Could you reference some?
I guess you could grow and make everything yourself, buy that doesn’t seem like an economic system.
I’m actually not sure how pay was distributed in feudalism, so that could theoretically be another way, but I doubt it is.
Something like UBI would be the latter option.
Maybe if you had capitalism at a macro level, but communism at a micro level. Each town internally worked like communism, but interacted with others in a capitalist fashion. But even there, there will be people in the town distributing pay (or goods and services directly) without you having control over it. You might be able to be especially charismatic, or threaten a revolt, but I don’t think those are things people can typically do.
Not everyone in capitalism is a winner, and that’s ok. The big advantage is that the losers are usually offered the opportunity to work and make a living.
The alternative is crossing your fingers and hoping the government (or whatever body is responsible for distributing pay) gives you what you need. If they don’t, tough luck, there’s nothing you can do about it.
Except the big bang is the start of both space and time, so nothing in the universe could be older than the universe because there’s no time to speak of (not to mention the space for it to exist).
The moment after the big bang is called the Planck epoch. I just learned this from Wikipedia “In this stage, the characteristic scale length of the universe was the Planck length, 1.6×10−35 m, and consequently had a temperature of approximately 1032 degrees Celsius. Even the very concept of a particle breaks down in these conditions. A proper understanding of this period awaits the development of a theory of quantum gravity.”. I don’t really understand this, but it seems the early universe wasn’t conducive to particles. Even if it was, they wouldn’t be atoms. They’d just be quarks.
All of our physics breaks down at the singularity before the big bang, so assuming quarks that are around today existed then is just that, an assumption.